Chapter 159: Night Reconnaissance

Nie Xiaoqian is right here in the city of Hangzhou... This news caught Chen Jianchen by surprise. When he pressed for more details, the words that followed from Yingning shocked him even further, revealing a truth that far exceeded his imagination.

It turned out that after Nie Zhiyuan was demoted from Jiangzhou, he came to Jinhua in Hangzhou to serve as the county magistrate. Only two months into his post, before he had even managed to establish himself, he became implicated in a headless criminal case. In the end, at a single command from the imperial court, Nie Zhiyuan was clapped in irons and thrown into prison, reduced to a common prisoner locked deep within the dungeons of the Hangzhou prefectural government office.

To rescue her father, Nie Xiaoqian had no choice but to linger within the city of Hangzhou, running about and pleading with various parties, though her exact whereabouts at present remained unknown.

No wonder that ever since their parting in Jiangzhou, Nie Xiaoqian had cut off all communication with him. Facing such a catastrophic disaster, she must have been overwhelmed and utterly exhausted, with not a moment to spare to write him a letter.

Even if she had written, it would have been of no use. In Nie Xiaoqian’s eyes, Chen Jianchen was merely a destitute scholar—talented, perhaps, but entirely devoid of connections, power, or influence, and utterly incapable of offering any real help.

And even if Chen Jianchen had taken the initiative to write to her back then, it was likely that Nie Xiaoqian would never have received it.

Originally, Chen Jianchen had worried that Nie Xiaoqian might fall victim to the tragedy of Lanruo Temple, living out a fate akin to that of a Chinese ghost story. Now, however, it seemed that the female ghost had yet to materialize, but the father had instead lost his official cap and been cast into the deep cells.

It was a misfortune that had fallen out of the clear blue sky.

From Nie Zhiyuan’s demotion down to his imprisonment, a mere two or three months had passed. Within these events, Chen Jianchen keenly sensed the thick, lingering scent of conspiracy.

Normally, such matters should have been far removed from Chen Jianchen, something he would only begin to perceive once he officially stepped onto the official career path. To his surprise, they were now crashing over him all at once, plunging him into a prolonged silence.

"Young Master, should Yingning go break him out of prison?"

Chen Jianchen wore a bitter smile as he replied, "How could it possibly be that simple?"

Breaking someone out of prison sounded easy enough, but what came after? Once branded as a wanted fugitive, the world would be vast, yet the Nie family father and daughter would have nowhere left in the world to call home.

Pondering for a moment, Chen Jianchen slowly said, "Yingning, you must not act rashly. Let us find Nie Xiaoqian first; we must learn the specific details from her directly."

Yingning had used her magic to investigate Jinhua, and all information regarding the Nie family had been gathered through inquiries, but the hidden truths behind the scenes could only be known by those directly involved.

"Oh, then where should we go to look for her?"

"Yingning, I'm afraid I must rely on you for this."

Yingning chuckled playfully. "Young Master, just give your orders."

Chen Jianchen said, "The city of Hangzhou is too vast, and finding someone is no easy task. Since your magic is profound and you can pass through walls and render yourself invisible, you can first sneak into the prison to find Magistrate Nie. He and his daughter should still be in contact, and through him, we can find out where Nie Xiaoqian actually is."

Yingning nodded in agreement and said, "Shall I go right now?"

Chen Jianchen cautioned, "Yingning, you just returned from Jinhua and consumed a considerable amount of spiritual energy. It would be best to rest for a while before going. The prison is a heavily guarded government precinct, surely patrolled by soldiers and guards, and it won't be easy to deal with."

Yingning was only at the Golden Core stage of cultivation, while the prison was filled with a dense, towering aura of grievances and malevolent spirits—precisely the kind of environment that wandering spirits and deities avoided at all costs. If her spiritual energy was not fully replenished, there was a strong chance that the onslaught of these resentful energies would strip away her disguise and instantly force her back into her true form.

"Well, now that you mention it, I really am a little sleepy. Young Master, I'm going to sleep first."

With that, Yingning gave a very lazy stretch, revealing her graceful and alluring curves to the fullest—it was only a pity that the twin peaks of her chest were deliberately bound tightly with cloth strips, otherwise their gentle undulations would have been enough to make anyone hold their breath.

"Good night, Young Master!"

With a sweet smile, she walked back to her bed and lay down fully clothed.

Under the lamplight, Yingning's profile looked as translucent and flawless as jade. Because her eyes were closed, her long eyelashes cast delicate shadows, resembling a dreamlike curtain...

Shortly after, Chen Jianchen blew out the lamp, lay down on the bed, and rested his hands behind his head. Yet, because his mind was heavy with worries, he found himself unable to sleep for a long time. Even without his connection to Nie Xiaoqian, Chen Jianchen felt that he ought to lend a helping hand if the opportunity arose, just given the calamity that had befell Magistrate Nie. He only worried about what charges Magistrate Nie was facing; if it involved factional struggles and political purges, things would become rather difficult.

As the night grew deeper and the moon waned, Chen Jianchen finally drifted into a hazy sleep.

On the other side of the bed, however, Yingning suddenly snapped her eyes open. She crept out on tiptoe and executed a wall-passing technique, slipping silently through the solid partition and vanishing outside.

Outside, all was silent and still, with faint starlight and moonlight dimly illuminating the pathways.

Abruptly, Yingning revealed her true form—a small fox with fur as white as snow. To prevent her white fur from being too conspicuous, Yingning had prepared in advance, wrapping herself snugly in a specially made dark cyan cloak that covered her from head to toe.

Swish, swish, swish!

The little fox moved with agility and grace, darting swiftly beneath the tree shadows as she fled the Kaitai Academy. For a moment she sped through the bustling streets and narrow alleys; the next, she was leaping across roofs and vaulting over walls.

She had not known where the Hangzhou prefectural office was located beforehand, but as the most solemn and magnificent structure in the city, finding it was not overly difficult.

Thus, about an hour later, Yingning arrived before the grand gates of the Hangzhou prefectural office.

Virtually all government offices across the realm shared a uniform design: the main gates faced south, flanked by a pair of fierce stone lions. Beyond the threshold stretched a grand flight of wide, towering stone steps, designed to signal that entering was no simple matter.

In the dead of night, three large lanterns hung suspended beneath the prefectural gates, casting a gentle glow. Yingning scampered quietly up the steps in a single breath. But right at that moment, with a faint click, the stone lion closest to her—whose eyes had originally been mere stone carvings—suddenly rolled, as if coming to life in that very instant and moving its eyeballs.

With that movement, two invisible beams of piercing light instantly shot out, heading straight toward Yingning.

"Hmph!"

Yingning halted her momentum, and her long tail whipped through the air with a swish, batting the two beams of light away and causing them to vanish into nothingness.

As the light dissipated, the stone lion returned to normal, except that its two intricately carved eyes suddenly cracked, producing a soft buzzing sound as countless fractures spread across them, looking exceedingly bizarre.

Those two guardian stone lions at the entrance of the prefectural office had clearly been consecrated by a master of the arcane, endowing them with a degree of spiritual power capable of detecting malevolent spirits. If an ordinary wandering ghost had attempted to sneak into the office under the cover of night, it would have been instantly slain by the magic activated by the stone lions' eyes.

Unfortunately for them, the one crashing the barrier tonight was Yingning.

"Old Wang, I thought I heard some noise outside just now..."

The four night-watch guards had been leaning on their water-fire staves and nodding off near the door. At that moment, one of the bailiffs was startled awake and whispered.

Another stout bailiff cracked his eyes open just a sliver and retorted irritably, "What noise could there be? You must be dreaming."

The first bailiff insisted, "There really was a noise, like something breaking or cracking."

The fat bailiff lazily replied, "Since you heard it, go have a look yourself. I'm going back to sleep." With that, he closed his eyes once more.

Still feeling uneasy about the strange sound, the bailiff picked up his staff and walked out alone to peer around, but he found nothing at all—not even a rat was to be seen. "Strange..."

Naturally, he didn't think to inspect the eyes of the stone lions. After sweeping his gaze across the surroundings and finding no movement, he walked back inside and rejoined the sleeping watchmen.

By this time, Yingning had long since used her wall-passing technique to slip inside the prefectural office. Rather than searching blindly like a headless fly for the location of the prison, she first scrambled up a pillar onto the rooftop. Standing upright on her hind legs, she cast her gaze about and began to chant an incantation under her breath, executing a specialized spell known as the Gaze-Qi Technique.

As the spell took effect, her pupils contracted like needles, glowing with a blue light like lanterns. She immediately saw that the sky not far to the south was shrouded in a layer of deep, murky gas. The gas defied classification as either black or red, a chaotic mixture of both, thick and viscous like churning porridge. Looking closer, this porridge-like gas faintly coalesced into the shapes of human figures.

These human figures were grotesque and unnatural—some kneeling, some crawling, others lying on their sides, every single one of them with their mouths wide open as though wailing, roaring, and crying out in absolute agony: "I am wronged!"

A massive wave of sound echoed deep within Yingning's mind, roaring outward and shaking her soul so violently that she nearly lost her composure and hurriedly cancelled the spell.

Resentment and malevolent energy—what an overwhelmingly heavy concentration of grievance!

There was an ancient saying: no prison exists without grievances, and it proved to be true beyond a doubt.

Yingning closed her eyes and took a deep breath before leaping down and racing toward the southern quarter.

Before long, she located the entrance to the prison, which was built behind the prefectural office.

"Invisibility Technique!"

Once here, she had to employ the invisibility technique to slip inside unnoticed. However, the resentment and malevolent aura within the prison were exceptionally heavy, requiring her to carefully regulate her energy to maintain the stability of the invisibility spell.

Upon entering, one first had to pass through the quarters where the jailers and prison guards lived before reaching the true cells proper.

The sound of snoring shook the air like thunder, and the stench was overwhelming; the environment inside the prison was truly unfit for human habitation.

Yet once she reached this level, Yingning ran into a dilemma: firstly, she did not know what Nie Zhiyuan looked like; secondly, she had no idea where he was being locked up. Where on earth should she begin her search?

This was a major problem.

After turning it over in her mind, Yingning realized that entering someone's dreams via a wandering spirit was the best method. She retreated to the jailers' quarters, hid herself away in a corner, and cast her spell. Her spiritual soul left her physical body and slipped directly into the dreaming consciousness of a deeply sleeping jailer...

This departure of her spiritual soul carried considerable risks; she could potentially suffer a backlash from the heavy grievance and malevolent energy, leading to unpredictable consequences.

Fortunately, after a short while, Yingning obtained the answer she was looking for. The jailer turned out to be far more spineless than she had imagined, spilling everything with just a little subtle psychological pressure.

With her spiritual soul returned to her physical body and after taking a brief rest, Yingning seized the moment to venture back into the prison cells. She knew that her invisibility spell was not permanent—it could only last for slightly over an hour and was susceptible to interference from the surrounding environment. Therefore, every single moment now was precious and had to be utilized with utmost efficiency.