Tang Dynasty: Feeding Chang Le, Emperor Li Er exclaimed that she was a true immortal!

Wow--

A mouthful of blood spurted from the corner of his mouth and splattered onto the bluestone steps.

The confidant was horrified: "Young Master!"

Changsun Chong wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

His eyes changed at that moment.

It wasn't the same gentle, refined look from a young nobleman he used to have.

Rather, it is the venomous malice that only a wild beast driven to the brink of despair possesses.

"check."

His voice was hoarse and deep.

"Send out all the available spies in the household. Investigate the Princess's residence. Investigate Chang Le Palace. Investigate everyone around her."

The confidant hesitated for a moment: "Young Master, the Princess's residence is guarded by the Imperial Guards—"

"I said investigate!"

Changsun Chong turned around abruptly, his eyes bloodshot.

"Even if it alarms the gods and spirits, I must know what is hidden in the princess's bedchamber!"

The spies of the Changsun family were not ordinary scouts.

The five surnames and seven clans were able to stand for hundreds of years without falling because of more than just land and salt mines.

They also have knives.

A knife hidden in the shadows.

The Changsun family began raising assassins as early as the Northern Wei Dynasty.

A century of selection, a century of training.

Every survivor is a killer chosen from among thousands.

He possesses exceptional lightness skills and is proficient in hidden weapons and poisons, capable of taking a person's life from a hundred paces away with a single hair-like needle.

More importantly, they are loyal to the core.

If the plan fails, bite off the poison hidden under your tongue and leave no survivors.

Changsun Chong usually doesn't touch these people at all.

Using suicide squads means breaking off all relations.

But today, he no longer cares.

After news of the salt industry's collapse spread, the entire Changsun residence was shrouded in a deathly silence.

Changsun Wuji locked himself in his study for a whole day and didn't come out.

Several members of the collateral relatives who had invested heavily in the salt industry were arguing fiercely in the front hall.

Some people burst into tears, while others cursed loudly.

Millions of kilograms of stockpiled salt have become waste.

This isn't about losing money.

This is a serious injury.

Changsun Chong knew that if he could not find out the source of the technology behind the Royal Salt Company as soon as possible, the Changsun family's status in the aristocratic alliance would plummet.

The other four clans will not follow a leader who has lost everything.

Therefore, he must find the answer.

at all costs.

into the night.

After the curfew was imposed in Chang'an, the streets were deserted.

Only the torches of the patrolling Imperial Guards moved between the walls.

Twelve men in black flashed out from the back gate of the Changsun residence.

No sound.

There was no light.

They glided silently along the shadows of the workshop wall, like twelve black leaves.

They evaded the first patrol of the Imperial Guards.

They avoided the second team.

We passed through two neighborhoods.

We arrived at the outer perimeter of Changle Palace.

As the residence of the legitimate princess, Chang Le Palace has extremely high security standards.

The outer perimeter was guarded by three hidden sentries set up by the Qianniu Guard, while the inner perimeter was guarded by palace maids and eunuchs on duty in shifts.

But for the assassins of the Changsun family, who had been immersed in assassination techniques for decades, the Qianniu Guard's hidden sentry network was almost transparent to them.

The leader of the team was a middle-aged man codenamed "Night Falcon".

He spent the time it takes to drink a cup of tea lying on the wall, figuring out the exact rhythm of all the sentries' shift changes.

With a wave of his hand.

The twelve people scaled the palace wall like ghosts.

It landed silently.

They crept along the shadows of the corridor, taking turns providing cover, towards Chang Le's bedroom.

They avoided all patrols and guards along the way.

Clean and neat.

As they approached the outer courtyard of the sleeping quarters, the night falcon stopped.

He crouched in the canopy of an old locust tree, his gaze sweeping across the courtyard in front of him.

The main gate of the sleeping quarters was tightly closed.

The windows were also closed.

A faint glimmer of light shone through.

It's not the light of a candle.

The light was off-white and incredibly stable.

It was unlike any light source he had ever seen.

The Night Falcon narrowed its eyes.

He made a gesture—three people went forward, while the rest provided cover on the outside.

Three assassins silently descended from the treetops, stepping along the edges of the roof tiles as they approached the sleeping quarters.

Their footsteps were so light that not even the roof tiles made a sound.

There were still twenty steps to the palace gate.

Fifteen steps.

Ten steps —

In the sleeping hall.

Lu Ming was wearing noise-canceling headphones and was intently playing a ranked game.

The hero on the screen is engaged in a team fight; his movements are fast and steady, his fingers clattering on the keyboard.

On the other side of the light screen, Chang Le was reclining on a soft couch, reading a modern science magazine that Lu Ming had handed her earlier, using the light from the LED table lamp.

Although she couldn't understand most of the words, she was fascinated by the colorful illustrations.

The two of them were doing their own thing, one playing video games and the other flipping through a book.

Quiet and pleasant.

This feeling of doing things separately across time and space, yet being in the same space, has become their fixed pattern every night.

After finishing a team fight, Lu Ming took a sip of water while recalling to base.

He glanced at his phone out of the corner of his eye.

An app icon is flashing on my phone.

That was the monitoring software for the infrared thermal imaging system he installed a few days ago outside the Tang Dynasty's sleeping quarters.

Four cameras were mounted under the eaves at the four corners of the sleeping quarters.

The lens was so small, no bigger than a fingernail, that he taped it into the crack of the glazed tile.

Even if the people of the Tang Dynasty put their eyes right up, they might not be able to spot it.

Lu Ming installed this system purely out of caution.

After all, he had stored a lot of modern supplies in the Tang Dynasty, and it would be troublesome if a thief broke in.

At that moment, the app icon was flashing wildly.

Lu Ming clicked on it casually.

The phone screen switched to a four-grid surveillance camera view.

In infrared thermal imaging mode, all cool-colored backgrounds appear as dark blue.

And on the walls, corridors, and tree canopies surrounding the sleeping quarters—

A dozen bright red humanoid heat sources are moving rapidly.

Their movement patterns were extremely professional.

Alternating cover, advancing in a fan shape.

Three of them were already less than ten steps away from the main gate of the sleeping quarters.

Lu Ming's fingers hovered above the keyboard, then stopped.

The character in the game is standing next to the fountain, being chased and attacked by the enemy hero.

He ignored it.

He stared at the red figures on his phone screen, his pupils slowly constricting.

A dozen or so people.

Well-trained.

Sneaking in late at night.

The destination is Chang Le's bedroom.

This is not a thief.

This is an assassin.

Lu Ming slowly took off his noise-canceling headphones.

The game's audio leaked out of the headphones, sounding particularly jarring in the quiet room.

He didn't panic.

But his movements became faster.

He reached his right hand into the drawer on the left side of the desk and pulled it open.

Inside lay a black metal cylinder.

It is 20 centimeters long, with a non-slip grip and a red button at the end.

Modern tactical high-powered flashlight.

Ten thousand lumens.

Includes a strobe mode.

Direct sunlight shining into the eyes in complete darkness can cause temporary blindness, and in severe cases, it can burn the retina.

Lu Ming held the flashlight in his hand, his thumb resting on the button at the end.

He turned his head to look at the light screen.

Chang Le was still flipping through the magazine, completely unaware.

"Chang Le" (meaning "long happiness").

Lu Ming's voice wasn't loud, but his tone was completely different from usual.

Chang Le looked up and saw his expression.

Her smile froze instantly.

Because Lu Ming's eyes were as cold as iron.