Chapter 440: Without the Zhao Character Camp

"Camp officers, follow me. The rest of you, return to camp and rest." Zhao Jin gave the order. Over on that side, Wang Zhaojing and Lei Cai had already come out to meet them. Anyone with sharp eyes could notice that the moment these two saw Zhao Jin under the lantern light, they both looked visibly relieved.

Zhao Jin dismounted. A household retainer came over and led the horse away. Throughout this, Zhao Jin remained silent, merely stepping up to pat Wang Zhaojing on the shoulder, then pulling Lei Cai into a fierce, tight hug. This behavior made everyone even more puzzled.

The oddities didn't stop there. Normally, Ruhui and Zhou Xuezhi should have come out to greet them as well, yet neither of them was anywhere to be seen at the moment. Someone had just asked around and learned that both Ruhui and Zhou Xuezhi were still inside the city.

"Inside, let's talk. Everyone inside!" Once only the few of them, the sworn brothers, remained, Zhao Jin spoke in a clear, ringing voice.

Hearing this, Wang Zhaojing froze for a second. He leaned in closer and said in a low, deep voice, "Is it convenient?"

"We're all brothers here. This is something everyone should hear together," Zhao Jin said quietly.

By the time this matter had dragged on to this point, Chen Sheng and the others were growing more and more bewildered. Hearing the summons, they all quickened their pace and followed in.

Zhao Jin ordered the household retainers to stand twenty paces away from the courtyard. Just before closing the gate, he even took a deliberate look outside. These details made everyone all the more curious.

"Big Brother, do you want to tell the brothers?" Wang Zhaojing asked hesitantly.

The moment Wang Zhaojing said this, Chen Sheng, Ji Xiang, Dong Bingfeng, and Liu Yong all looked over. The displeasure in Chen Sheng's eyes was already impossible to hide. Ji Xiang's brow furrowed. Dong Bingfeng glanced left and right. Liu Yong's expression had turned somewhat dark.

Footsteps sounded. Lei Cai moved swiftly and opened the door. Shi Manqiang walked in, his face full of delight. The moment he entered, he said, "Big Brother, you all just got back?"

Even someone as simple and honest as Shi Manqiang could sense that the atmosphere in the room was off. After saying that, he looked around at everyone with a face full of blank confusion.

"Speak. Since we are brothers, what is there that cannot be said?" Zhao Jin said solemnly, his tone weighted with emphasis.

Wang Zhaojing still wanted to argue a few more words, but seeing the rather unfriendly expressions on everyone's faces in the room, he couldn't help shaking his head with a bitter smile and began to explain.

He hadn't spoken more than a couple of sentences before everyone in the room had their eyes wide open, their faces full of utter shock. Wang Zhaojing's account was very brief. Before his voice had even faded, Liu Yong urgently asked, "How did you dispose of the bodies? Burning them separately would draw attention."

"There was a dead horse. Burned them together. Watched with our own eyes until they were ashes," Lei Cai answered.

"What about their clothes and the loose items on them?" Liu Yong continued asking, heedless of anything else.

Lei Cai glanced at the few people beside him and answered unhurriedly, "Third Brother and I personally inspected everything. When we burned them, not a single item was missing."

"... Did anyone see them coming or going..."

Ignoring the reactions of Wang Zhaojing and Lei Cai, Liu Yong fired off a series of further questions, covering every last detail, no matter how minor. Having handled covert affairs for so long, Liu Yong considered things far more thoroughly than most people.

There was no displeasure or impatience on the faces of Wang Zhaojing and Lei Cai, because they noticed that Zhao Jin was also listening with rapt attention. The others were all listening very carefully as well. Only on Shi Manqiang's face did fury begin to surface.

Once the questions and answers were finished, Liu Yong let out a soft breath. Shi Manqiang, however, demanded angrily, "How could something this huge happen in the camp without me knowing? What do you all take me for?"

He didn't even use the title "Third Brother." Shi Manqiang was truly enraged. Just as Wang Zhaojing was about to explain, Zhao Jin waved a hand, stopping both sides. Raising his voice slightly, he said, "Zhaojing and Lei Zi did nothing wrong. The fewer people who knew about this matter, the better."

After saying this, Zhao Jin fell silent for a moment, then looked around the room and said, "You've killed so many that you no longer treat killing as a serious matter. Don't dwell on whether you were told or not. Think carefully — what kind of people did we kill?"

"They were agents of the Brocade Guard, they were officials!" Zhao Jin emphasized two more times.

The room fell silent. The first time they had killed was to save Mu Shulan, when a few of them had stormed the kidnapper's den. Time after time, all the way up to bloody battles against the refugee armies and the private troops of powerful gentry, every man's hands were stained with many lives. But those deaths and injuries had little to do with the authorities.

Every previous killing had either been done in secret or under some pretext, something that could somehow be justified on the surface. But killing Brocade Guard agents was completely different.

Thinking carefully, Brocade Guard agents were not like ordinary government runners. They were sent from "above." They were the claws and fangs of the imperial house. And they weren't those unofficial white-robed constables with no real status — they were genuine, bona fide hawks and hounds of the imperial court.

In truth, it went even deeper than that. The men in this room had experienced much and broadened their horizons. They could think of even more implications. There were several directions their thoughts could go, but no one wanted to think about them, didn't even dare to think about them — such as "killing officials and rebelling"...

Murdering imperial court officers — and not just any officers, but agents of the Brocade Guard, whose name was known throughout the realm and made everyone turn pale — this was tantamount to defying the authority of the imperial court. It was tantamount to rebellion.

Those whose minds worked fast could reach this conclusion; those whose minds worked slower could reach it too. The expressions of the men in the room shifted and changed. All of them began to grow uneasy.

Wang Zhaojing and Lei Cai, who had done the deed with their own hands, now wore the calmest expressions. They sat quietly to one side. Wang Zhaojing was even observing the reactions of everyone else in the room.

Zhao Jin's expression was grave. What made him grave was not the killing of the two Brocade Guard agents. The act itself meant nothing — if he had been the one handling it, he would have made the same decision. What Zhao Jin was thinking about were the consequences. Although the authorities would be slow and evasive, sooner or later they would discover that these two men had not returned. They would send more people. They would keep investigating. When that time came, how would they respond?

When Ji Xiang heard this topic, his body jolted. Then he lowered his head, and no one else could make out his expression. Only after a while did he lift his head again, simply staring at the others.

On Shi Manqiang's face, there was some fear, some bewilderment — as if he realized this matter was very serious, yet also as if he couldn't quite gauge its gravity.

The most nervous was none other than Dong Bingfeng. The moment he heard this news, his face changed color. His hands rubbed together ceaselessly. He looked left and right, hoping to get an answer from someone else.

Chen Sheng merely froze for a second, then fell silent, his face calm and unruffled. Liu Yong was first shocked, but immediately after, he looked no different from usual, glancing at Zhao Jin from time to time as if waiting for him to make a decision.

"They're already dead, so why think so much about it!" The one who spoke was Chen Sheng, his tone carrying a hint of impatience.

Before anyone else could speak, Dong Bingfeng, usually so taciturn, hurriedly said, "These were agents of the Brocade Guard! If they really start investigating, we — and our entire families — will all be arrested!"

His tone was utterly panicked. Ji Xiang's expression changed and he immediately looked at Zhao Jin. Shi Manqiang scratched his head and also looked over. Chen Sheng's brow furrowed, his face turning extremely irritated. He was just about to open his mouth when Zhao Jin shot him a look.

Zhao Jin cleared his throat and said, "Now that things have come to this..."

Hearing Zhao Jin's first words, Wang Zhaojing suddenly interrupted, "Big Brother, allow me to say a few words first."

Wang Zhaojing came from a scholarly family and always placed great emphasis on propriety. He also held deep respect for Zhao Jin. For him to interrupt like this today struck everyone as very strange.

"Brothers, I want to ask you all something. Without the Zhao Character Camp, what would you be right now? What would your futures be? Everyone, speak your piece. Big Brother, you go first." Wang Zhaojing asked this question with a smile.

Zhao Jin furrowed his brow slightly. After seeing the look in Wang Zhaojing's eyes, he still answered in a deep voice, "Without the Zhao Character Camp, today I would be working as an executioner at the yamen. Perhaps I would have died during the refugee siege of the city."

Chen Sheng shot a glance at Wang Zhaojing and also spoke up, "I would probably be a constable at the yamen. Could have even competed for the position of Chief Constable or Head Constable. Erhong would probably be managing that charcoal yard..."

"I would probably have gone to serve as someone's personal retainer or household soldier," Dong Bingfeng said. He was not the eldest son of his family, so the position of Thousand-Household Commander naturally had nothing to do with him. He had martial skills and his father's connections, so finding a post under some military commander would not have been difficult. If his luck was good, he might even have been sent out to hold an independent command.

Ji Xiang and Shi Manqiang exchanged a glance. One man spoke the words for both of them: "I'd be out on the streets hawking goods as a peddler. Shitou would be forging iron at home."

"Without Big Brother, without the Zhao Character Camp, I would be dead on the streets by now," Liu Yong said calmly.

A marketplace thug, one of the lowlifes of the rivers and lakes — if you managed to make something of yourself, fine. But a rootless, friendless wretch like Liu Yong would nine times out of ten have been used as cannon fodder, dead with no one even to collect his corpse.

A smile appeared on Lei Cai's face, but his voice was muffled: "I'm not even qualified to talk about 'without the Zhao Character Camp.' Without Big Brother and Brother Yong, I would have starved to death."

The state he had been in when he entered the Zhao Character Camp was truly wretched — everyone had seen it. Back then, he had been barely a step above a starving corpse on the roadside. Now, Master Lei was a name that rang out loud and clear across Xuzhou.

Once everyone had spoken, Wang Zhaojing finally said with a smile, "For me, without the Zhao Character Camp, I would have followed my path to the capital to gain experience in officialdom. This year, I might have first sat for one examination. If I passed, I would advance along the path of official career. If I failed, I would try again in three years. If by then I still lacked the fortune to see my name on the golden roster, I would assist my father in his affairs, or perhaps return to Xuzhou to live as a peaceful gentry scholar, a life of wealth and comfort."

Even though no explanations or reasoning had been given, after everyone had spoken these words, their expressions all grew much calmer. Without the Zhao Character Camp, what kind of people would they be? At best, a runner bullying others under borrowed authority, or a military officer's trusted man with no worries about food and clothing. Yet now, their names shook Xuzhou. They commanded thousands of elite troops. Mountains of gold and seas of silver passed through their hands every year.

What's more, it was Wang Zhaojing who had killed the man. Among all the brothers, Wang Zhaojing was the only one whose future prospects would not have been affected without the Zhao Character Camp — they might even have been more glorious and far-reaching. If even he didn't care, what use was there for the rest of them to think so much?

"Those two agents were sent by Eunuch Yu. Though it was ostensibly to settle a personal grudge, how could they not covet the Zhao Character Camp's vast assets once they saw them? Eunuchs cannot produce descendants, so all their thoughts are fixated on silver. Given time, he would have seized everything our Zhao Character Camp owns, completely. Their goal was to throw us into prison, sentence us to death, and then steal all of our property. How could men like that not be killed!" Wang Zhaojing said solemnly.

Chen Sheng nodded. In a rare show of agreement, he said, "Well killed!"

Over on that side, Ji Xiang and Shi Manqiang's expressions had already returned to normal. Ji Xiang even added hatefully, "They deserved to die!"

Only the look of fear on Dong Bingfeng's face had not yet fully faded. He followed up, saying, "Big Brother, Third Brother, the Brocade Guard isn't just those two agents. And since this involves a eunuch, what about the Eastern Depot? What if... what if..."