Chapter 13: Another Kind of

Knocking Zhang Wantong unconscious and sending him back to his lover's bed, Chen Guanlou turned around outside to ensure safety before returning home.

Lying on the bed, he couldn't sleep for a long time.

He and Prison Clerk Wan had never dealt with each other, and hadn't even spoken. But the origin between the two was quite deep. The radish hole left by his dead ghost father was snatched away by Prison Clerk Wan using connections, which almost made him miss the Heavenly Prison iron rice bowl.

Prison Clerk Wan wanted to fight for the position of Jiang Jiang Yucheng—saying nothing else, he couldn't let him succeed. It's just that, where should he start? He was a small prison guard, completely unqualified to participate in the struggle, and had no way to influence the decision above?

Did he have to watch Prison Clerk Wan succeed?

Then how could he have a good life in the future?

However...

It wasn't that there was no room for operation.

Jiang Jiang Yucheng, no matter how lowly, was still an official, entering the official sequence, although it was the lowest level.

Prison Clerk, no matter how great, was still a clerk. It had always been a flowing government office and an iron-clad clerk.

A prison clerk wanting to cross the class to become a Jiang Jiang Yucheng—not to mention it was extremely difficult, it could only be said to be rare, rare to the point of being a phoenix feather or unicorn horn. No official would risk being looked down upon and spurned by people of the same level to promote a clerk to an official. Unless they encountered an official with a hard backer and a hard background who could ignore the officialdom rules, it was possible to break the tradition of thousands of years.

Prison Clerk Wan wanted a promotion, so he had to pass the relationship above. If this person's background was really hard enough to ignore traditional rules, he wouldn't be a prison clerk. It could be seen that his background relationship wasn't as powerful as he imagined. He wanted a promotion—it wasn't an easy thing.

Other prison clerks also had relationships and backgrounds, just like Xu Fugui—an old oil-slicker who had worked in the Heavenly Prison for so many years, he must know a few powerful people. He might not be able to compete with Prison Clerk Wan, but he definitely had a way to ruin Prison Clerk Wan's good deeds.

This was another kind of "more than enough to fail, less than enough to succeed."

Early the next morning, Zhang Wantong woke up from his coma; the pain in his chest proved that everything was true and not a dream. On one hand, he was hateful and cursing, threatening to take revenge. On the other hand, he was terrified, thinking left and right, suspecting that someone in the Heavenly Prison wanted to harm him.

The kidnapper only cared about the Heavenly Prison's internal affairs throughout the whole process, clearly aiming at the recent struggle for Jiang Jiang Yucheng. Thinking about it this way, the person who kidnapped and interrogated him last night was likely someone in the Heavenly Prison. He remembered the kidnapper's voice; as long as the person was still in the Heavenly Prison, he would definitely be able to find this bastard and chop him into ten thousand pieces.

For this reason, he didn't even think about asking for leave to see a doctor for his injuries, dragging his pain to the Heavenly Prison to work.

When entering the door, the new guy under Xu Fugui, named Chen Guanlou, took the initiative to greet him—a quite polite young man who hadn't been polluted by this big dyeing vat of the Heavenly Prison yet. It's just a pity that he was too kind, actually releasing kindness to the prisoners—a fool. Heard he liked to collect martial arts secret books; *heng*, a person without a martial pulse collecting more secret books wouldn't be of any use. It might even attract big trouble.

Young people, don't understand things!

Next time, give him a lesson, letting the other party know what social sinister is.

Entering the Heavenly Prison, he met his gambling friends, and everyone blew cowhide randomly. He didn't suspect these gambling friends; they were familiar to the point of being familiar, and they definitely weren't the ones who kidnapped him.

Actually, he already had a suspected target. He suspected the prison guards of the Jia-character prison. Prison Clerk Wan promised him that after the matter was done, he would let him be a prison clerk and manage the Jia-character prison. It clearly touched the interests of the prison guards of the Jia-character prison.

Everyone wanted to advance, not just him.

He wanted to be a prison clerk, and others definitely wanted to even more.

He even suspected that Prison Clerk Wan had made similar promises to other prison guards. It was possible that the news of him helping Prison Clerk Wan do things was leaked by the people around Prison Clerk Wan. Otherwise, why would he, a small prison guard, be specifically targeted?

*Teme* of it.

The more he thought about it, the more he felt it was the case.

Zhang Wantong spat fiercely, cursing all the old and young men of the Jia-character prison in his heart. While cursing, he thought of ways to mix into the Jia-character team to find last night's kidnapper. Gambling was the best social method; for this, he even stole his lover's money, just to successfully implement the plan.

At lunch, Lu Datou complained to Chen Guanlou, "That bastard Zhang Wantong is getting more and more excessive. Playing is playing; before, he at least stayed in the duty room. Today, I haven't seen him since morning. Guess where he went. He ran to the Jia-character prison to lick other people's butt grooves. *Heng*, just him—he still wants to be transferred to the Jia-character prison to work; he doesn't even look at himself—an illiterate, doesn't know a single big character, how to deal with those government officials."

Chen Guanlou smiled knowingly in his heart. He guessed the reason Zhang Wantong ran to the Jia-character prison; he estimated that the other party suspected the kidnapper came from the Jia-character prison.

However, he was more curious about another thing. "Since when do prison guards need to be literate to work?"

*Teme* of it, how many scholars are there in these years who would run to be prison guards?

That is, he had read a few years of books and was willing to hold this Heavenly Prison iron rice bowl.

Lu Datou picked his teeth and chatted, "Before, there was no such rule; the prison guards of the Jia, Yi, and Bing characters were all a group of illiterate big rough men, and it didn't delay the work. I don't know which year the rule was changed; it is said that there was a fallen big official who left a fatal note before he died. The prison guard didn't know how to read and destroyed the note on the spot. Originally, this was nothing; according to the rules, everything with words had to be destroyed. The bad thing was that the official's case was later overturned, and the matter of him leaving a note was also overturned. This time, it was equivalent to poking a hornet's nest, costing lives.

Since then, entering the Jia-character prison to work requires literacy. Actually, according to your conditions, you can completely enter the Jia-character prison to work. However, you are a newcomer and don't understand the rules; if you rashly enter the Jia-character prison to work, I'm afraid you will lose your life if you are not careful."

"Datou-ge is right; I still have many things I don't understand, and I have to learn more from Datou-ge." Chen Guanlou appropriately flattered the other party.

"Hahaha..." Lu Datou loved to hear this. "Actually, the Jia-character prison is just like that; although the treatment is higher, the risk is also greater. Those imprisoned officials—don't look at them falling into trouble today; who knows when they will rise again and return to their original positions. This job is not easy to do! It's better to be free in our Bing-character prison, without worrying about offending anyone."

"Datou-ge has such insight; it really is this reason. In the world, government officials are the hardest to serve." Chen Guanlou poured tea and flattered him diligently.

Lu Datou started talking with spirit, and there was no gate in his mouth. "That's right; if it were me, I definitely wouldn't be willing to go to the Jia-character prison to work, being a grandson to others—it's boring to the extreme. Moreover, in the past few years, officials from the Jixia Academy have fallen frequently. You know the Jixia Academy, right? That bunch of people love to hug in groups and are very hard to provoke. Each one has nostrils facing the sky and doesn't treat us prison guards as people at all. But you have to serve them carefully, fearing that if you don't agree, snap—a sword will take our lives, and there's no place to reason. You say, is this the reason?" ===== CHAPTER 14 =====