Extreme Frontier Army: Starting from the bottom ranks, conquering the chaotic world

Shen Qingqiu looked at him in disbelief.

"What...what did you say?"

Lu Jing raised his eyes to look at her.

"This fragment is incomplete; some parts are missing context. I can make out the general outline, but you'll have to fill in the details."

Shen Qingqiu was stunned.

Lu Jing pointed his finger at a line of messy characters.

"Is this the Yanmen Black Market?"

Shen Qingqiu stared at the line of words: "Yes."

"Date, March 15th?"

"Yes."

"Left Warehouse... no, it's Left Warehouse's premium rations?"

The shock in Shen Qingqiu's eyes grew stronger.

"Eighty thousand shi (a unit of dry measure)."

Lu Jing continued to slide his finger backward.

"Exchange it for 100,000 taels of silver and put it into the Wang family's private treasury."

Before his death, Shen Qingqiu's father gave him countless instructions.

This vulgar soldier actually managed to decipher what was supposedly an unsolvable top-secret ledger.

Lu Jing clicked on the next line.

"Juma Town, April 8th, soldiers' pay... Is this three million taels?"

"right."

Shen Qingqiu gritted her teeth and added the missing part.

"Seventy percent was intercepted and transferred to the Xie family's trading company in Youzhou."

Lu Jing's eyes grew brighter as he listened, and in the end, he slammed his hand heavily on the table, almost knocking over the oil lamp.

"Good heavens!"

He tilted his head back and burst into laughter.

"A transaction involving three million taels of military pay! That old bastard Gu Changfeng has a real appetite; he's practically sold the entire Northern Xuan Army's underwear!"

Shen Qingqiu was completely dumbfounded.

Ji Ruxue was also stunned, her beautiful phoenix eyes wide open.

She is in charge of the Lan Yue Pavilion and has the most outstanding code-breaking experts in the Great Yan Dynasty under her command. Even when faced with encrypted ledgers like those of the Ministry of Revenue, she would have a headache for ten days to half a month.

Even though the man hadn't completely broken through, he had already grasped the most vital joints.

This is enough.

A deadly weakness doesn't require the entire ledger.

A place name, a number, a destination—enough to make Gu Changfeng hesitate to fire the first arrow tonight.

"Lu Jing..."

Shen Qingqiu's voice trembled slightly.

"How...how could you understand it?"

"Is this difficult?"

Lu Jing picked up the torn page on the table and flicked it.

"You guys play with codes like kids playing with mud, you keep changing the same few sets, not even adding a layer of nesting dolls. If this were where I used to live, any fortune teller sitting by the wall could guess most of it after a couple of glances."

Without time to explain further, he turned around and pulled out a piece of burnt charcoal from the corner of the wall.

They tore off a relatively clean piece of white cloth from the tattered screen in the tent.

"Gu Changfeng is not retreating because he thinks we have no leverage and that killing us is as easy as crushing a few ants."

Lu Jing spread a white cloth on the table and began to write on it in a flamboyant style with a black charcoal stick.

The charcoal pencil made a rustling sound as it scribbled across the coarse cloth.

"I'll send him a big treasure right now and see if his precious crotch can hold it."

The characters he wrote were enormous and extremely ugly, almost like a dog crawling.

Not only was he ugly, but he also deliberately wrote several typos, aiming to portray himself as a crude and uncultured soldier.

After finishing writing, he rolled up the white cloth and tied it with a hemp rope to a wooden arrow without an arrowhead.

Lu Jing grabbed the horn bow he had just seized from the Northern Barbarian soldiers and strode out of the tent.

Outside, the countdown for the supervising officers has reached its final stage.

"There's only half an incense stick left!"

The captain drew his long sword from his waist and raised it high.

"Balloons, prepare! Load!"

"Creak... Bang!"

The loud creaking of the bowstring sent chills down my spine.

Lu Jing stood in the center of the Eighth Battalion's drill ground, facing the blazing firelight outside, and drew back the bow in his hand.

The bow is fully drawn.

"Old dog Gu!"

Gathering all his strength, he let out a roar that drowned out the sound of wind and snow.

"Receive my letter!"

"Whoosh!"

The wooden arrow, with the tightly bound white cloth attached, was fired towards the front of the supervising team.

The wooden arrow was extremely powerful, embedding itself directly in the frozen ground in front of the supervising captain's horse, its tail feathers trembling violently.

The captain was startled, and his warhorse reared up with a neigh.

He steadied himself and glared angrily at the arrow on the ground.

"What a piece of junk! Throw it away! Get ready to fire!"

"Wait!"

A sharp-eyed guard nearby dismounted and pulled out the wooden arrow.

I saw the white cloth tied on top, and I also saw several large black characters peeking out from the outside of the white cloth.

The guard's expression changed drastically: "Captain... this... this must be delivered to Advisor Gu immediately."

The captain frowned: "What does it say?"

He picked up the white cloth, looked at it for a moment, and finally realized something was wrong.

"Send it to the central army by fast horse!"

......

Central command tent.

Inside the tent, four copper charcoal braziers burned, making it warm and cozy.

Gu Changfeng, dressed in a moon-white scholar's robe, sat on a grand chair covered with sable fur.

Holding a Ru kiln teacup in his hand, he gently stirred the floating tea leaves on the surface of the water with the lid.

Several generals stood nearby, not daring to even breathe loudly.

"Judging by the time, the Eighth Battalion should be almost out of control."

Gu Changfeng took a sip of tea, his tone indifferent.

"A bunch of death row inmates dare to dream of turning the world upside down. Lu Jing is a variable, but no matter how big the variable is, in the face of absolute power, he is just a slightly stronger ant."

Set down the teacup.

"Pass down the order: after the camp is breached, cut off Lu Jing's head separately; I want to use it to make a wine bowl. As for the others, they must be buried alive and reported as bandits attacking the camp."

Just then.

The curtain of the main tent was lifted, and the guard rushed in, stumbling and crawling, holding the piece of coarse cloth in his hand.

"Mr. Gu! The signal fired by the Eighth Battalion!"

Gu Changfeng frowned.

"Trying to beg for mercy when you're about to die? Read it."

The guard knelt on the ground, unfolded the coarse cloth, and trembled as soon as he glanced at it.

"This subordinate...this subordinate dares not read it..."

Gu Changfeng snorted coldly, put down his teacup, walked over himself, and yanked the piece of coarse cloth away.

First, I saw the scrawled handwriting.

"A crude and vulgar brute."

He sneered.

But when his gaze fell on those sentences riddled with typos, the cold laugh stopped.

The white cloth had the following written on it:

"Old dog Gu, on the fifteenth of March, 80,000 shi of fine grain from Zuo Cang at the Yanmen black market will be exchanged for 100,000 taels of silver to be deposited into the Wang family's private treasury. On the eighth of April, you will go to the Xie family in Youzhou with 3 million taels of military pay."

"I have the original records! If you dare fire even one arrow, I guarantee that by tomorrow the entire Great Yan will know how much you embezzled!"

"Same as always, give me 100,000 taels as hush money, or we'll all die together!"

Signed: Your father, Lu Jing.

Gu Changfeng's pupils suddenly contracted as he stared at the words "three million taels" and "the Xie family of Youzhou".

A thunderbolt struck my mind.