Book 14: Chapter 89
Night Night Night
“It seems inappropriate to kill him before we get anything worthwhile out of him.”
“Moreover, Chen Lin has always been faithful. Killing him like this is a little…”
“His father is a merchant, too. If he looks into his son’s death and reports it to Liu Shan Men, we will have a problem.”
The only one who didn’t speak up was the official who lost a chunk of his ear.
While Wang Zhenyun didn’t expect to hear an immediate response, the reactions of his colleagues had him seething. It all boiled down to nobody wanting to get their hands dirty.
You think people are just going to line your pockets when you’re such big cowards?!
They weren’t just spineless; they were also without ambitions. All they wanted was to make an extra lump sum at every exam every three years and then to return to getting by without any aspirations. Wang Zhenyun was frustrated because he needed such a band of disappointing colleagues to realise his grand ambition of pushing civil servants to the top.
“You think this old one shouldn’t kill him?” Nobody dared to meet Wang Zhenyun’s gaze as he swept it around. “Hmph, did you actually think this old one wants to kill him due to his impertinence? You’re wrong. What is our goal for this imperial exam? Feng Clan has paid the most among the five clans who’ve bought the top five placings from us. This is Young Master Feng’s first step into the political arena. He is the nephew of Consort Huang, who is most favoured at the moment, and is the only inheritor of the wealthiest family in our country. Do any of you realise how important that is? What purpose will he serve once he enters the political arena?
“Prime Minister Li won’t grow younger, yet there is nobody to succeed him in the imperial court. There are claims that Secretary Lu will succeed him if not Secretary Zhang, but think about it. How well do Secretary Zhang and His Majesty get along? Secretary Lu is not only a foreigner, but she’s also a woman. Kong Duan had hope, but there’s no need to say any more about him. Young Master Feng will be the person His Majesty trusts most if he can win this exam. At most, Prime Minister Li probably only has another ten years in him before retirement. Who will succeed him if Young Master Feng can add several big accomplishments to his name in the next ten years? Won’t we be credited with supporting him?”
Every word Wang Zhenyun spewed reassured his colleagues more and more.
“There’s no room for even the slightest error! Chen Lin seduced Young Master Feng to have an affair in the night. There’s no doubt he took a bribe from Young Master Feng. Everyone knows Young Master Feng spends generously. A small token of reward for him is enough for people to live off for an entire lifetime. If people find out Chen Lin and he were in this sort of relationship, would any of you be able to shoulder the consequences when Young Master Feng’s career is ruined? Who do you think our higher ups will choose to side with if they find out about our deal with Young Master Feng?”
If the “upper echelon” insisted on supporting Feng Clan into a Prime Minister role, then they’d be willing to offer up even blood and corpses, let alone material wealth. By all means, Hanlin Academy was important. As long as they had the power to choose the “home” of civil servants, then, presuming nothing went wrong, they wouldn’t have any competition. At the end of the day, however, Hanlin Academy was nothing more than a plaque; its members were what mattered. The upper echelon could’ve swapped out the members whenever they wanted, especially when His Majesty was already too busy with the Seven Champion White Princes to pay as much attention as usual to Hanlin Academy.
Wang Zhenyun’s compatriots immediately started searching for daggers, pocket knives and whatever else they could think of, but they couldn’t even find a pocket knife. Where were they going to get one from when they never thought about self-defence? Nevertheless, they were people who’d done plenty of studying, so they weren’t limited to only those crude tools. One after another, they made suggestions such as roasting, drowning, burying alive, bombing, having a horse stomp Chen Lin into mush and more.
“It doesn’t need to be that complicated. This old one has a dagger. My dear colleagues, we…”
“Say less, Sir. This one shall slit his throat, and then we shall take turns slashing his corpse once each. This way, everyone will have been part of it. What say you?”
See? They had done plenty of studying; they didn’t need a weapon to implicate someone.
“All right. Let’s do it.”
Ming Feizhen had no grudge against Chen Lin, not to mention he was the one responsible for Chen Lin’s predicament, but he didn’t stop the motley crew for he was waiting for the assassins. Someone from Hanlin Academy had to be assisting the archer to have assumed a high position without being detected, as well as to have Chen Lin brainwashed and dispatched. Judging from the position of the archer, he must’ve been cooperating with one of the examiners. Since Wang Zhenyun was high on energy, the brainwashed examiner had to be one of his colleagues.
The most ideal target to brainwash was someone weak minded, someone who wouldn’t dare to fight back even when someone bound bit their ear. In saying that, one examiner wasn’t enough to give them a sufficiently big advantage – as the operation tonight proved. The fact that Ming Feizhen was so “skilled” that he could hit an archer using “martial arts” highlighted the fact. The assassins weren’t going to accept the fact that they failed and alerted their target. After all, it’d be harder to assassinate him tomorrow now that he would be more prepared. In order to succeed, they needed a strong and authoritative command centre so that they could do as they pleased at the venue without detection. That’d only be possible if every examiner was helping out. If the examiners had solid spines, then the assassins would’ve been forced to resort to murder as a means of threatening them. Howbeit, the cowardice the examiners just showed put the assassins at ease.
“You certainly are ruthless, Sir.” A man chuckled as he seemingly spawned into the building from thin air.