Chapter 293: Longyan Battle Record (Sixteen)

For a literatus like Nan Wang, his greatest advantage lay not in murder and arson, but in his ability to infiltrate Ming society. This was a capability that 99% of the mud-legged men under the Transmigrators' command simply could not match.

A Xiucai with enormous resources behind him could easily penetrate the official-gentry class of the Ming state. On this point, a certain Juren master had already achieved tremendous success so far.

Therefore, the Intelligence Bureau's training for Nan Wang had its own focus: the most critical 007 subjects like hand-to-hand combat, physical fitness, and NS were unimportant for him — barely passing was enough.

Instead, the unremarkable skills of intelligence gathering and analysis, operating electronic instruments, chemical mastery, and telegraphy were the very skills a gentleman moving through officialdom and commerce ought to possess.

And so Nan Wang, together with a few other trainees, began his formal training courses at the training base.

As expected, the Xiucai accustomed to wielding a brush initially struggled badly with the physical fitness and combat training. Even the scaled-down training plan left Nan Wang half-dead.

Yet he persevered — he had no choice but to persevere. This was no sunlit academy classroom; this was a training ground ringed by mountains, and the ferocious instructors wielding deerskin whips were not as easygoing as Ma Yue.

Alongside physical and combat training, the trainees also had to intersperse marksmanship training: the Ming Dynasty Bird Gun, the Three-Eye Blunderbuss, the European Matchlock, the Type 28, the sniper rifle, the BS — they had to master them all.

And once marksmanship training began, the maintenance and care of N naturally became a required course.

Unlike later generations, in the 17th century, trainees had many opportunities to participate in live-combat shooting — note, not live-fire, but live combat.

Previously, after pacifying the two native communities of Madou and Xiaolong south of the Zengwen River, a certain faction had temporarily settled down: digesting territory takes time.

However, as relations between the Transmigrator Group and Zheng Zhilong's group gradually deteriorated, the occupation plan for the area north of the Zengwen River up to the Jiayi region was put on the agenda.

Bunka in the Jiayi region was the very stronghold of the Fujian immigrants in N, inherited by Zheng Zhilong ever since Yan Siqi's colonization.

The aborigines living near Jiayi at that time were the Heanya Tribe under the Pingpu people, with subordinate village communities including Maoluo Community, Dawu County Community, Talivu Community, and several others.

So the Army began sustained, small-scale operations to clear out the northern natives: first clean up those blocking the path, and once Zheng Zhilong was finished, the Fujian immigrants in the Bunka area would be a meal on a certain faction's plate.

And Nan Wang and his fellow trainees were temporarily assigned to a company under their instructors' leadership, experiencing the march and combat of an ordinary soldier firsthand.

This kind of operation — attacking native stockade villages that stubbornly resisted — was mainly to help the trainees overcome the psychological barrier. The requirement wasn't high: fire a few shots alongside the soldiers, an S would be best, and if you couldn't kill anyone, just go clean up the corpses with burst skulls in the aftermath.

Yet the trainees generally indicated that this barrier posed little problem. This was the 17th century; from the lowliest pauper to the gentry elite, every person who survived to adulthood had, without exception, witnessed countless harrowing scenes. Fly-blown corpses by the roadside were the most common spectacle, beheadings at Caishikou were routine, and live dismemberment was a festival centerpiece.

This was a barbaric age; the common people were utterly numb to death and blood. The kind of soldier who fires one shot and then cries to go home to his mother did not exist in this era — that is a product of affluent societies with refined divisions of labor.

Unlike physical conditioning, Nan Wang picked up the operation of various N instruments rather quickly — he was no illiterate, after all. Besides, these gadgets were all very simple to operate, on the difficulty level of a household remote control. Once the initial shock passed, mastering them was not hard.

Telegraphy took him some time, because he needed to practice his fingers and memorize a set of fixed telegraph codes.

The Crossing Faction's adversaries had no radio interception capability, so telegrams did not need to go through complex procedures like encryption and deciphering. When carrying out missions, special agents simply transmitted in plain code, sending out common phrases using code numbers. It was just like the code books back when pagers were popular — far easier than what the underground Party had to deal with back in the day.

The one subject Nan Wang was genuinely interested in was chemistry.

He, who hovered around the passing mark in nearly every other subject, was uniquely filled with interest and a spirit of inquiry for this one course on chemical agents. Not only was he fascinated by the various poisons and medicinal agents essential for a special agent, but he also traced things back to their roots, insisting on understanding the origins and formulas of these agents.

Ma Yue, who rushed over upon hearing the news, had no choice but to conduct an impromptu investigation on him.

The result of the investigation was somewhat comical: "Pointing stone into gold" — this very technique — had actually been Nan Wang's greatest dream during his youth.

Of course, this was not strange. The ancients' pursuit of the two techniques of refining elixirs for longevity and pointing stone into gold had always existed.

From Emperor Wu of Han onward, distantly there were Emperor Taizong and Emperor Xianzong of Tang, and recently the Yongzheng Emperor — all died from consuming elixirs. The Ming Guangzong Emperor's "Red Pill Case" remains a controversy to this day, and the Jiajing Emperor even personally rolled up his sleeves to concoct elixirs.

With the Emperor behaving so, the scholar-gentry class below was not to be outdone.

Never mind those wealthy households who used all sorts of raw materials, even infants, to concoct medicines — the tale of "pointing stone into gold" alone had, over thousands of years, duped who knows how many people into investing in and launching projects.

Various alchemists and swindlers had spun the grand hoax of "pointing stone into gold" almost to perfection, much like pyramid schemes in later generations, even giving rise to different schools with distinct methods.

Nan Wang was one of the victims.

Although he had been swindled once in his youth, cheated out of a sum of silver by a wandering Daoist, his obsession remained unchanged to this day, and the dream hidden deep in his heart had still not shattered.

Fine. This time, when he saw the bottles, jars, various powders, and various potions in the laboratory, a certain someone's dream was momentarily rekindled — the Exiled Immortals surely must know the trick of pointing stone into gold; otherwise, why were they so extravagantly wealthy?

Ma Yue, upon learning the reason, didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Chemistry is a subject very difficult to explain clearly. In the end, having no other choice, he arranged junior high school chemistry lessons for Nan Wang. In between his training, Licentiate Nan could return to Chikan Academy to study under Teacher Jiang once more.

Watching Licentiate Nan gleefully dash off to school to learn "alchemy," Ma Yue promptly assigned this dream-chasing special agent the codename "Chemist."

After being recruited by the Intelligence Bureau, Nan Wang had actually begun carrying out missions not long after. It was just that those initial missions were all of a testing nature, lacking any real difficulty, and for some missions, he did not even know what role he had played.

For instance, as early as the New Year period of 162, Nan Wang had been ordered to go to the docks of Dayuan Island, playing the role of an ordinary attendant from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

At that time, preparing to set sail from the dock was the Sloten, captained by Nuytz. The Red Hairs had just reached an agreement with the Transmigrators and were preparing to return to Batavia.

And Nan Wang's mission was this: when Cai Feiming of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs bid farewell to the Red Hairs, he was responsible for handing a special glass of red wine from a tray to a Dutch pastor named Gandius.

The mission was simple, and Nan Wang made no mistakes: after receiving the red wine that Nan Wang separately handed to them, Cai Feiming and the pastor clinked glasses and then drained them in one gulp.

At this point, Nan Wang's mission was over. Simple as it was, this was his first time carrying out a mission under the Intelligence Bureau.

In fact, it was not until half a year later, when Putemansi led the Dutch Fleet back to Dayuan, that Nan Wang learned from a crewman the fate of Pastor Gandius: on the third day after setting sail, Gandius came down with a severe cold, and on the fifth day, he was dead.

The act of inquiring about this matter itself was also one of the missions Nan Wang had received.

Nan Wang had been completing similar missions in Dayuan all along. His first true "field assignment," however, came after he had finished most of his training subjects, in June of 162, when he went to Fuzhou City as a retinue member of the envoy mission posing as Cao Chuan and Zhang Dongdong.

Within that envoy mission was Tang Mude, Division Chief of the Intelligence Bureau's Action Division. And Nan Wang, as Tang Mude's subordinate, was originally there for a publicly funded trip: the Bureau had not assigned Nan Wang any specific task; he only needed to help Tang Mude send and receive telegrams and get a feel for the atmosphere of secret work "behind enemy lines."

However, life is unpredictable: because N Shui Xiuer had extracted intelligence from Xiong Qi's mouth, it led to that night's chain of NS operations throughout Fuzhou City.

The situation that night was tense. Nan Wang not only spent the entire night sending and receiving telegrams at the station, but also received orders the next day: to pose as a brothel client and go to Sanfu Pavilion to poison Shui Xiuer.

This time, Nan Wang again completed the mission beautifully: he first used his literati-poet mannerisms to gain an audience with Shui Xiuer, then slipped castor toxin into the wine, tricked her into drinking it, and successfully withdrew.

In this sudden emergency, Nan Wang performed professionally no matter which post he was at. Intelligence Bureau Chief Dai Yun's initial assessment that he had the aptitude for this line of work had now been fully validated.

Not long after returning to Dayuan in the aftermath, Nan Wang became a formal special agent of the Intelligence Bureau, received his own codename, received his sidearm, and truly became an elite high-ranking native under the Transmigrators' command. Now, every Transmigrator involved in intelligence knew that the Bureau had a special agent adept at using all sorts of poisons.

After resting and reorganizing in Dayuan until October, Nan Wang received an upgraded mission: go to Longyan County and settle a den of bandits — recruitment and amnesty, or death, either was acceptable.

And thus, the Blue Great Master made his dazzling entrance. Leveraging the connections of a local broker, Nan Wang became a Guest Retainer at Yantou Stronghold and smoothly went undercover.

Not long ago, after receiving the instructions sent up the mountain by his subordinates, Nan Wang knew it was time to wrap things up, so he gave Ma Shixia's Bandit Gang one last chance to choose. However, the Bandit Gang was very obstinate; they were unwilling to be the government's dogs.

Unwilling to be dogs, and unwilling to die — this is rather difficult to resolve, isn't it?

Nan Wang could only find an excuse to descend the mountain. At the foot of the mountain, he first secretly met with Ding Liqiu, then prepared 30 jars of poisoned wine, and then brought the telegraph set and line, along with the divination paper pre-written with invisible ink. Finally, Comrade "Chemist" carried these props back up the mountain.

Now, everything was over. The Yantou Stronghold Bandit Gang, over 200 souls from top to bottom, had all been poisoned to death by the special agent "Chemist" alone — clean, efficient, effortless.

At this moment, Nan Wang sat alone at the main gate of Yantou Stronghold, gazing at the distant troop of men and horses slowly approaching, and could not help but smile faintly.

The next moment, he drew from his bosom a soft leather mask with a blue face and protruding fangs, and put it on his face.