Balling her slightly cold fingers into a fist, Zhi Wei has no time left to fret and quickly jump onto a horse to head straight for Minister Zhou’s office. In front of the Minister’s office, there is an eight person carrier sedan (Chinese sedan that requires eight men to transport it), the door guard smilingly informs Zhi Wei “Official Lu just got here.”
Zhi Wei nods before briskly makes her way inside heading straight for the library. However, there is no one in the library except for two tea cups that are still steaming. One of the servants tells her that Official Lu is looking for a specific record that is quite old and because records of that age are all kept in the archive so Minister Zhou has personally accompanied him to search for it. More and more convinced that her speculation is correct, Zhi Wei promptly sped toward the archive!
Minister Zhou is in the middle of accompanying Official Lu searching for a particular record with a bit of impatience in his expression. Why couldn’t this be done by their assistants? The man insists that this is very important and dragged him along, closed the door then proceeded to climb up and down on the ladder with an oil lamp. The guy then drops the lamp by accident so now the whole place is almost without light, how is he going to look for the record now?! Minister Zhou taps his fingers on a table wondering how he will bring up the matter of that new case involving all those officials. Right now Official Lu is in charge of the grain provisions for Minnan which means he needs lots of manpower right now. If they are not careful, this case could cause a lot of disruptions in the official’s lineup and that could make things complicated. His attention suddenly caught by a movement on Official Lu’s shoulder, Minister Zhou squints his eyes for a closer look and discovers that movement doesn’t seem to come from Official Lu himself but rather it is as if something is moving under his robe by the shoulder. Just as he is about to get an even closer look Official Lu has already got down from the ladder and says “I finally found it.”
“What is it actually?” His interest piqued, Minister asks.
Official Lu opens up the scroll and indicates for him to look down “See here…”
A green light flashes.
*BANG!* The storage door was kicked open, a person runs in and yells “Close your eyes!”
The moment Minister Zhou lowered his head and felt the sharp pain after the flash of green light, he knew immediately something was wrong when he heard the yell.
Quickly shutting his eyes, Minister Zhou backs away. He could hear Official Lu sneering laugh followed by the sense that something sharp is heading towards him but someone else is also coming from behind him with even more force. That person is Zhi Wei, with her eyes close, reaching into her robe and throwing out the two ink monkeys. The two golden lights shimmer in mid air then head straight for the green light. “The King” had just come out from Official Lu’s sleeve only to meet his old nemesis. Squawking angrily, “The King” promptly turns and runs off. In his wildest imagination could Official Lu have guessed that his precious treasure would run away. Stunned, Official Lu quickly tries to make his escape as well only to meet Feng Zhi Wei who is already waiting for him. Official Lu raises his hand to strike, obviously a fighter but unfortunately not a very good one. Even if Zhi Wei is not fully recovered, with just the few fighting moves she has been able to steal from Gu Nan Yi she was able to easily block all his escape routes.
“Black Gold!” Official Lu suddenly yells.
A shadow appears in the doorway to reveal a yellow robed man holding a gleaming green sword seemingly ready to run inside. Out of nowhere, another figure appears behind the yellow robed man. Dashing about, no matter what the yellow robed man tried, he could not shake off the silent figure.
With one accident after another, “The King” runs away and the super fighter he thought he had is now trapped unable to come to his rescue, Official Lu is already flustered by this point and Zhi Wei grinning coldly easily breaks through his defense and catches him by his throat.
Under her fingers, the man struggles in vain and begs her pleadingly with his eyes but Zhi Wei remains unmoved.
“Official Lu.” She smiles, “You’ve worked hard.”
Official Lu’s face ashen, Minister Zhou who is covering his teary eyes with a hand promptly asks “What’s going on, what’s going on…”
“It’s simple. This Official Lu is one of Cheng clan’s men.”
Zhi Wei ties Official Lu up and explains “He should be the highest official Cheng clan planted in South Sea. Very impressive…Cheng clan is truly impressive…. He even managed to land the assignment of overseeing the grain provisions. This might as well be sending the army into their mouth!”
Handing over Official Qian and Official Lu’s files to Minister Zhou, Zhi Wei continues “Earlier, when I had read Official Qian’s file I had felt a sense of familiarity. It wasn’t until later that I remembered that his resume was exactly the same as Official Lu’s. This sort of coincidence could only happen if someone arranged it on purpose. Official Qian was demoted to South Sea for not handling the mountain robbers properly, then the second year, Official Lu was promoted to South Sea for successfully handling the mountain robbers. And Official Qian just happens to become Official Lu’s subordinate…can such serendipity really happen?”
“Afraid that other people might discover the strange coincidences so Official Qian and Official Lu have always been at odds with each other, like water and oil. But think about it, if they are really like water and oil then how would Official Lu suffer Official Qian to keep working under him and keep making his life difficult?”
The other thing Zhi Wei didn’t explain out loud is that the reason those assassins came to South Sea after being chased around is because they came to seek protection from Official Lu. The leader named Black Gold brought “The King” with him to stay by Official Lu but all the other assassins ended up being discovered by the government and were killed by “The King” to silence them.
“Ah!” Minister Zhou suddenly remembers a matter that drains his face of all color “Official Qian is Official Lu’s specially appointed person in charge of grain provisions! At that time it was precisely because he had appointed his “nemesis” to this position we thought him to be an especially just person…”
“I have already ordered men to chase back the grain provision that is in transport. I have also ordered Yan clan to quickly amass a shipment of grain provision from the big clans to send to Minnan. Sir, please immediately order additional soldiers to guard the grain provisions and also arrange compensations to be sent to the clans.”
Minister Zhou stares blankly at Zhi Wei through his still slightly blurry eyes. This kid…he keeps feeling like he has underestimated him with each passing day. Such keen observation, such fearless decisiveness, before he even obtained concrete evidence he already dared to arrest the grain provision transport officials. He has never seen such courage in the past and he imagines he won’t be seeing it in the future either.
Come to think of how he had encouraged the people to protest at the port, it was truly a stupid move…
Zhi Wei doesn’t pay any heed to Minister Zhou’s shock expression but turns to look towards the southern sky and sighs silently in her heart. Ning Yi, I hope everything is well with you…
- Thanks to Zhi Wei who was able to stop the poisoned grain provision and replace it with the good grain gathered from the big clans, what Chang clan thought was a sure win ended up speeding their own demise. As expected, our heroine soon received a long long letter containing accolades from the emperor and all of the palace officials are discussing the great future it will be awaiting this 16 year old royal envoy when he comes back to the capital.
However, Zhi Wei doesn’t care about any of it. What she cares about is finding a cure for Ning Yi. Gu Nan Yi captured the so called “Black Gold” assassin leader from Minnan and forced him to find “the King”. Gu Nan Yi shut himself and the two in the same room and after half of a day, black gold turned to white gold, the now very agreeable man is very willing to discuss whatever topic they want.
All text copyright @ www.Ninja-Reflection.com
Awesome! Another excellent chapter that shows us Zhi Wei’s amazing skills dealing with corruption in government! Is it possible that this “Black Gold” guy knows something about a cure for Ning Yi? Can’t wait for next week, thank you for your wonderful work!
The black gold guy suddenly becoming “white gold” and very agreeable after spending some quality time with GNY made me laugh out loud.
Thanks for this week!!
Pls continue with your awesome work. I just donated to you. Hope every little helps!
Thank you! I sure appreciate it!
ZW é realmente muito inteligente.
Mais uma vez vou ficar na ansiedade até o próximo.
Obrigada 🐱!!!!
When is she and Ning Yi going to meet again?
It will be a while but we are about to diverge quite a bit from the drama and trust me, it is brilliant.
She is super intelligent for her age. My favorite heroine. Wish I had such strategic thinking lol! Thank you for your lovely translation.