Tiger Owl

Chapter 272: School officials
Wang Yao calmly said, "His name is Zheng Zhao. He is Lu Su's military advisor. His wife is seriously ill and needs expensive medicine to sustain her, but his salary cannot support her. So I took advantage of his visit to the pharmacy to buy medicine for his wife and get to know him, and then slowly won him over."

Last December, his wife was critically ill and needed a century-old ginseng to keep her alive, but century-old ginseng was too expensive for him to afford. I took the opportunity to give him one hundred taels of gold, which he accepted to save his wife's life. Later, I explained my situation to him, and he asked about my needs, then provided me with intelligence on the Western Chu army's deployment north of the Yangtze River.

"Are you still in contact?" the man asked again in a deep voice.

Wang Yao gave a wry smile. "One hundred taels of gold is enough for him to use for a long time. He is not short of money now, so of course he won't come looking for me. I didn't go looking for him either, because I was afraid of being discovered."

The man nodded, then took out a silver token and waved it at Wang Yao. "My name is Shen Tong, and I am one of the stewards of the Imperial Academy."

The School Affairs Office was an internal affairs organization established by Cao Cao, with the same functions as the Inner Guard established by Gan Ning. However, the School Affairs Office was more secretive, and its eight chief stewards were all ruthless and feared by all.

Wang Yao shuddered in fright. This Shen Tong was actually the infamous Director of the Imperial Academy. Suddenly, a thought struck him: Wait a minute! The Imperial Academy only deals with internal affairs and never with external affairs.

He looked at Shen Tong with a puzzled expression. Shen Tong seemed to understand what he was thinking and said calmly, "I'm here to carry out a mission."

Wang Yao's face turned pale instantly; he had come to get rid of him.

Shen Tong looked at him again and said in his usual calm tone, "My mission is that if you betray me, I will kill you without hesitation."

Wang Yao was finally relieved. The fact that the man hadn't killed him meant that he believed Wang Yao hadn't betrayed him and had passed his test.

"How did you cross the river?"

This is also a question, since the river is blocked off.

"I crossed the river from Jiangling."

At this moment, the carriage slowly came to a stop, and Wang Yao realized that he had returned to the entrance of the pharmacy.

"Go ahead!"

Shen Tong's gaze remained calm. As he got out of the car, he calmly said, "Someone will come looking for you in the next couple of days. The password is 'Flowers in Full Bloom and the Moon at its Fullest,' and your response is 'The Moon is Full and the Flowers are in Full Bloom.' Don't get it wrong."

Wang Yao nodded slightly and got out of the car. At the entrance of the pharmacy, a shop assistant looked at him nervously. He was not a shop assistant, but an imperial guard.

Wang Yao watched the carriage disappear into the distance. As he passed the waiter's door, he whispered, "Don't contact me yet. I'm being watched."

The waiter smiled and nodded, as if he were greeting the shopkeeper.

Wang Yao knew very well that the people from the School Affairs Office were not so easy to deal with, and Shen Tong would never trust him so easily. Among these patients, there was a high possibility that there were surveillance agents sent by Shen Tong.

Wang Yao returned to his room, wrote a note, and secretly slipped it to the guard disguised as a waiter when he had the chance.

In the afternoon, Li Qun handed Wang Yao's note to Wang Xiaoman.

Wang Xiaoman frowned deeply. It was absurd that there were officials from the School Affairs Office in Chaisang City.

He immediately went to report to Pang Tong. Pang Tong was not his superior, but he was the mastermind behind the whole thing, including the intelligence agents in Jiangdong.

Pang Tong thought for a moment and said, "Let's go see the Marquis of Chu!"

Soon, the two arrived at Gan Ning's official residence. Pang Tong reported the matter and said with some concern, "Cao Cao actually sent the Director of the Imperial Secretariat to deal with Wang Yao. It feels like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I suspect that his mission is not just this, but that he has a more important mission."

"For example, what?" Gan Ning asked.

“For example, assassinating the Marquis of Chu.” Wang Xiaoman, who was standing next to him, suddenly widened his eyes. Assassinating the Marquis of Chu? He was stunned.

Gan Ning walked a few steps with his hands behind his back and said calmly, "Does the School Affairs Office have this kind of function?"

"Yes! The Office of the Directorate of State Affairs has the function of surveillance and assassination. Grand Commandant Yang Biao died suddenly two years ago, and the cause of death is unknown. The Office of the Directorate of State Affairs is very ruthless in its assassinations. Sometimes it is very covert, but sometimes it will directly assassinate people in public. It is always a one-hit kill."

At this point, Pang Tong looked at Wang Xiaoman with a serious expression and said, "Regardless of whether the people from the School Affairs Bureau are here to assassinate Marquis Chu, we cannot afford to be complacent or careless. We must raise our defense level across the board and find the people from the School Affairs Bureau."

Wang Xiaoman nodded silently, feeling a great responsibility on his shoulders.

Gan Ning pondered for a moment and said, "Cao Cao doesn't need to send out any more false information. Once someone contacts Wang Yao, arrest them immediately and use Wang Yao as bait to lure Shen Tong into making a move."

The Imperial Guard strengthened the comprehensive protection of Gan Ning's residence. The original twelve female guards were tripled to thirty-six. They hid in the shadows and monitored the movements inside the residence. Five hundred Imperial Guard soldiers were also stationed outside the residence, standing guard day and night outside the high walls.

Gan Ning also strengthened his guard when he went out. Three hundred cavalrymen closely guarded the carriage he was riding in, making it completely impenetrable.

Five more bodyguards were added to Jichun Pharmacy. They were all chosen to be ordinary-looking people who did not look like bodyguards at all, and to pretend to be patients or people buying medicine.

Han Miao, who had just been recruited into the Inner Guard, squatted in front of the pharmacy with his distinctly roguish image, looking every bit the scoundrel who was about to extort money from the pharmacy. There were many such people; their way of life was to squat in front of shops with many customers, looking for opportunities to extort money. In the end, the shopkeepers would usually give in and give them some money to send them away.

Han Miao's mission is to find Shen Tong's subordinate who is monitoring the pharmacy. This person is very important; finding him will lead to Shen Tong's hiding place.

After three days of waiting, Han Miao finally made a discovery: he found that a person had been using three different identities to enter the pharmacy over those three days: a merchant, an old farmer, and a dying patient.

Han Miao has a sharp eye. Although these three people are completely different and most people wouldn't be able to tell them apart, Han Miao recognized that they were all disguised by the same person.

In the afternoon, at the entrance of an alley across from the pharmacy, Han Miao pointed to a patient being helped out of the pharmacy by a shop assistant and whispered to Li Qun beside him, "That's the patient. Yesterday he was an old farmer, the day before he was a businessman. Although he changes his appearance every day, I can't mistake his eyes!"

Li Qun nodded and winked at his two skilled trackers, "Follow him and find his hideout."

For Li Qun now, the most important thing is not to make the wrong move, but to avoid missing something.

The patient boarded an oxcart and slowly drove away, while the two skilled trackers followed the oxcart until it gradually disappeared.

As night fell, a thousand imperial guards surrounded a secluded courtyard in the city. The guards were divided into three layers and deployed within 500 paces of the courtyard wall, making the courtyard impenetrable. Some were armed with crossbows, while others held spears.

The dozen or so Imperial Guards were discovered as soon as they scaled the courtyard wall, and a fierce battle ensued. Dozens of Imperial Guards used battering rams to force open the gate and rushed inside.

The sounds of fighting quickly subsided and gradually ceased. Suddenly, a nimble black figure leaped onto the high wall and ran swiftly along it.

The guards outside had already received orders: 'Better to kill the innocent than let the guilty go free!'

Hundreds of crossbow bolts were fired at once. Even Lü Bu would need iron armor to withstand such a dense barrage of arrows.

But the man in black was clearly not armored. No matter how skilled he was, he couldn't dodge the hundreds of crossbow bolts. In an instant, the man in black was pierced by more than three hundred crossbow bolts. He screamed and fell off the high wall, his body covered in arrows like a hedgehog.

The soldiers stepped forward with torches in hand; this man was none other than Shen Tong, the steward of the Imperial Academy.

Along with his thirteen men, they were all killed; none of them managed to escape.

(End of this chapter)