Chapter 768

Gao Jiong respectfully picked up the heavy name list from the sand table with both hands, and after exiting the study, he summoned the hidden agents in the Mingjing Si who were most proficient in punishment overnight.

In this dark and damp underground water prison, he directly used more than a dozen kinds of extreme punishments that were enough to make people's hearts chill and even drive tough guys crazy, to interrogate those smuggling middlemen who had been secretly arrested one by one.

Accompanied by the miserable howls like ghosts crying and wolves howling all night and the sizzling sound of flesh being roasted by red-hot branding irons, those smuggling guests with hard mouths finally couldn't withstand the torture and spat out the clues in the border army cleanly.

Gao Jiong followed the vine to find the melon, carefully compared various confessions and accounts, and finally thoroughly investigated the context of the entire Xiazhou border defense smuggling, and a shocking interest transmission chain surfaced.

When this irrefutable evidence chain was organized into a book and placed on the desk, a distorted expression mixed with anger and cruelty appeared on Gao Jiong's dark and gloomy face, which was always unsmiling, extremely rarely.

The two core protectors outlined in cinnabar on the list were actually two commandants in the Xiazhou border army who were responsible for guarding the northwest defensive line and possessed absolute real power.

In the Council Hall of the Xiazhou Governor's Office the next morning, the morning wind blew the red tassels on the weapon racks on both sides through the open door, but the atmosphere was as heavy as the bottom of the water before the rainstorm.

Zhang Wenqian held the bamboo slips full of the war achievements and smuggling evidence of the two commandants with both hands, his brows tightly knotted together, a layer of fine cold sweat seeping out on his forehead, and even the back of his official robe was soaked through by sweat.

He faced Chen Yan's oppressive gaze, stepped forward half a step with extreme caution, bowed his body, and his throat, which was always eloquent, felt a bit dry at this moment.

"Pillar of State, these two commandants on the list are no small matter. They have followed the Xiazhou army in battles south and north for many years and possess a deep foundation of intertwined relationships among the bottom-level soldiers of the border army."

Zhang Wenqian wiped the sweat on his forehead with his sleeve, crazily weighing the pros and cons between the overall situation and military morale in his brain, his tone revealing an obvious worry and instinctive compromise.

"If we just send people to the military camp to arrest these two meritorious generals in such a big way, I fear it will anger those bottom-level proud soldiers and fierce generals who don't know the truth. If a military camp riot that cannot be cleaned up is caused, the northwest defensive line will be completely messed up."

He held up the bamboo slips with both hands, summoned the courage to offer a strategy that he considered the safest to preserve the situation to the master sitting high on the grand master's chair.

"In the subordinate's view, it is better to transfer these two people back to Xiazhou City in the name of reporting on their duties, find a fault to secretly poison them to death, or claim to the outside world that they died of a sudden illness, so that we can solve the hidden danger without shedding blood to stabilize military morale."

Chen Yan listened to this long-winded speech full of civil official thinking of muddling through, and there was not a hint of hesitation on his cold face because of the fear of military mutiny, but instead a sky-high anger that wanted to tear the sky apart surged up.

He slapped the hard purple sandalwood desk with a heavy palm, the huge reaction force causing the precious Duan inkstone to jump up half an inch, and the ink splashed onto the memorial.

"Fart! This kind of two-faced, cowardly, and compromising way of doing things is not the way to govern the army of our Xiazhou Governor's Office!"

Chen Yan's voice was like a thunderclap rolling down from the nine heavens, causing Zhang Wenqian's eardrums to buzz, and his legs went weak, almost kneeling on the ground.

He stood up, kicked over the chair in front of him, strode to Zhang Wenqian, snatched the bamboo slips, and smashed them heavily on the ground.

"They dare to take the foundation of Great Zhou's national fate to exchange for gold and silver treasures with foreign tribes on the grasslands to fill their own pockets, and use the blood of our own brothers to exchange for their bright future!"

Chen Yan pointed to the bamboo pieces scattered all over the ground, the violence in the depths of his eyes turning into substantial blades, wanting to cut all the weakness in the hall into pieces.

"This kind of unforgivable crime of treason, even if the King of Heaven himself descends to earth, he cannot protect those two heads of theirs, let alone those illusory past war achievements!"

He turned around, strode to the desk, snatched the list full of inner ghost crimes written in black and white, grabbed the wolf-hair brush from the rack, and pressed it into the cinnabar inkstone that was as thick as blood.

Chen Yan didn't hesitate at all, and wrote three blood-red characters that were full of evil spirit and whose strokes were as sharp as blades on top of the two commandants' names.

"Kill without pardon."

He threw the broken wolf-hair brush on the ground at will, turned to look at Gao Jiong who was waiting on the side, and issued this iron-blooded military order that left no retreat.

"Gao Jiong, take my token, go directly to the military camp in broad daylight and lock these two national thieves and bring them to justice. If anyone dares to draw a sword to stop you, kill them all on the spot according to the crime of rebellion."

After Gao Jiong received the order, a fanatical and cruel light flickered in his gloomy eyes; he was like a bloodthirsty evil wolf released from a cage, and immediately summoned three hundred Embroidered Attire Envoys armed to the teeth.

This group of law enforcers draped in armor and wearing black clothes rode tall horses, didn't cover their tracks at all, and galloped wildly on the wide official road of Xiazhou, breaking into the Xiazhou military camp with a destructive killing intent.

At that time, tens of thousands of soldiers in the Xiazhou camp were conducting daily battle formation drills on the training ground, the neighing of warhorses and the clashing of weapons resounding through the clouds, a scene of hot preparation for war.

The two commandants involved were hiding in the main tent of the middle army, surrounding a map, their faces pale as they calculated how to completely wipe out the bad accounts on the Fengshen Pass side, attempting to escape the investigation of the Mingjing Si.

When the rumbling horse hoof sound crashed open the camp gate without reservation and stopped forcibly below the point-general platform, the two commandants who were startled out of the tent saw Gao Jiong's face of claiming lives, and were shocked, their legs starting to tremble uncontrollably.

These two knew deeply that once they fell into the Mingjing Si's imperial prison, it would definitely be a situation where they couldn't live or die; the insane madness forced out by the desperate situation drowned their only remaining reason.

One of the commandants had his fat face crazily distorted, and he directly opened his throat and roared loudly at those personal guards who were stunned by this sudden change.

"Brothers, this group of dog-legged men from the Mingjing Si want to carry out a groundless purge in our Xiazhou army. They dare to arrest me today, and they will dare to cut off your heads tomorrow. Everyone draw your swords and form a formation, and drive them out!"

This kind of act of inciting a riot in the military camp instantly made the atmosphere in the camp like a furnace full of gunpowder, which would be completely ignited if one was not careful.

Hundreds of the commandant's personal guards, out of the instinct to protect their main officer, drew the horizontal blades flickering with cold light from their waists one after another, their footsteps crossing to block in front of Gao Jiong and the others, tightly surrounding the three hundred Embroidered Attire Envoys.

The two sides were confronting each other with swords drawn and bows bent in front of the point-general platform, and a suffocating tension permeated the military camp, the heavy breathing sounds intertwining and colliding in the air.

At this moment of extreme danger where blood could flow at any time, Gao Jiong sat on the horse's back, his face lacking half a trace of cowardice in the face of this mutiny formation.

He stepped forward very calmly, held high the black iron token symbolizing Chen Yan's absolute power of life and death from his bosom, and injected internal energy into his chest, his loud voice echoing over the huge military camp.

"Pillar of State Chen has an order: these two colluded with Qi State merchants and Lingzhou clans to resell military equipment and private salt out of the pass, using the lives of Xiazhou soldiers to exchange for ten thousand taels of wealth, evidence is conclusive!"

Gao Jiong didn't give the other party a chance to refute at all, shook out the confession he had copied from his sleeve, and read out the shocking transaction amounts and ironclad evidence of aiding the enemy, every sentence like a heavy object hitting the hearts of the soldiers around.

Those soldiers who were originally incited and full of hot blood wanting to protect their superiors were shocked when they heard this kind of dirty act of betraying their own brothers, and that it was an order personally issued by Chen Yan, whose prestige was like the sun in the sky; they looked at each other in dismay.

They looked at the two commandants who were sweating profusely and speechless in the face of ironclad evidence, and the feeling of protecting their master in the depths of their eyes was rapidly replaced by an extreme anger and shame of being betrayed.

Only a crisp "dang-lang" sound was heard, a personal guard sadly loosened his hands, the horizontal blade fell heavily into the mud, and immediately after, countless weapons were powerlessly lowered by their owners, and no one dared to stand up to cover for these two national thieves anymore.

Seeing this, Gao Jiong pulled a cold sneer at the corner of his mouth, put away the token, waved his arm forcefully forward, and issued the final arrest order.

"Take these two beasts in human skin for me, and peel off their skin that represents the Great Zhou military might."

The Embroidered Attire Envoys, who were like wolves and tigers, immediately dismounted, rushed forward like tigers pouncing on food, and pressed the two commandants who were trying to struggle onto the cold mud ground in three or two strokes.

The envoys acted roughly, cut off the armor ropes on their bodies, and forcibly stripped off their proud general heavy armor like peeling garbage in front of everyone, revealing the dirty white middle clothing inside.

The two once-arrogant commandants cried and wanted to beg for mercy, but were dragged by the Embroidered Attire Envoys like dead dogs, pulling their hair and arms, and dragged all the way out of the camp gate under the gaze of tens of thousands of pairs of eyes full of disdain and hatred in the whole army, and directly thrown into the death prison.

Tens of thousands of Xiazhou soldiers watched this scene with their own eyes, and the entire camp fell into extreme shock and hair-raising silence after experiencing this storm.

That night, in order to thoroughly clean up this corrupt military discipline spreading in the army, a cold military order stamped with Chen Yan's private seal was delivered by fast horse to every camp of the Xiazhou army.

The military order only had a few words, but it carried a pressure like a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, announcing that at the hour of the rabbit tomorrow, the three armies must be fully armed and assembled at the central grand training ground.

A terrifying rectification storm that was about to sweep the entire army and use knives, axes, and blood to thoroughly reshape faith and iron law had already opened its bloody curtain at the end of this long night.