Chapter 215: Pressure Tactics

His weapon was a sword of ancient, mottled color, which would have been considered an antique even in the Ming Dynasty. The guide and escort’s eyes flickered—this sword was no ordinary object. This person was not some unknown figure in the jianghu.

There were also three darts and a few bottles of pills, typical belongings of a jianghu traveler.

The most suspicious item, of course, was the portrait of Zhang Yingchen. No one would carry around a portrait of a Daoist priest for no reason.

Min Zhanlian was stripped naked, his hands tied behind his back, and forced to kneel on the ground. This humiliating and painful experience was unbearable. With a slight struggle, all his joints were held firmly in place. No matter how heroic or strong he was, he couldn’t exert any force.

He panicked in his heart—this kind of technique seemed to be from the government. Could it be that he had provoked the factory guards or some powerful eunuch this time? At this thought, Min Zhanlian’s hands and feet turned cold.

“What do you do?” Ye Mengyan stared at him coldly.

Min Zhanlian was taken aback. This person was almost a boy, yet his eyes were cold and merciless, clearly someone who would kill without batting an eye.

“I am a jianghu traveler. I took a job here, couldn’t do it, and was on my way to Jining to take a boat back,” he said, forcing himself to remain calm, his mind racing for a way to save himself.

“What’s your name?”

“My name is Min Zhanlian,” Min Zhanlian knew that lying about this would be useless, so he answered honestly.

“Oh! So you’re a so-called assassin?” Ye Mengyan nodded after the escort whispered a few words in his ear.

“Yes, I have always taken money to solve problems for others.”

“Who hired you?”

“A local sect called the Nanwuliang sect—I wonder if you’ve heard of it?” He showed his sincerity by cooperating fully, answering fluently. “Three months ago, they sent someone to Henan to contact me and ask me to bring people here to deal with him.”

“Who were you supposed to kill?”

“A Daoist priest surnamed Zhang,” Min Zhanlian decided not to hide this fact. Who told him to be careless and still have the Daoist priest’s portrait on him?

He just didn’t expect that without this portrait, he would have been an anonymous corpse in a ditch by the side of the road long ago.

“And the person you were supposed to kill?”

“I didn’t dare to kill him,” Min Zhanlian immediately began to recount Zhang Yingchen’s “miracles.” He was very cunning, only saying what he had heard and not what he had seen with his own eyes. He didn’t know if the other party was a friend or foe of Zhang Yingchen, so it was better to keep some distance.

“I really didn’t dare to meddle with such a half-human, half-demon figure,” Min Zhanlian said. “So I had to take my men and head back. We lost our horses on the road, and I was blind and foolish to have offended you all!”

His words were both reasonable and, without making a sound, openly and honorably cleared his relationship with the Nanwuliang sect and Zhang Yingchen. Then he readily admitted that he was “blind,” which was tantamount to admitting defeat and acknowledging that the other party was stronger than him. This trick often satisfied the other party’s vanity and led them to let him go.

Although there were casualties on both sides in this conflict, the chances of the other party being lenient were extremely small, but he had to try.

They also interrogated Zhou Ruolan, and her testimony was largely the same. However, by comparing the two accounts, Ye Mengyan quickly understood the truth: this group had indeed come to kill Daoist Priest Zhang, and they had fled in panic because of Zhang Yingchen’s “magical power.”

“This Daoist Priest Zhang is playing tricks all day long, and he has magical powers?” Ye Mengyan found it incredible. He had already forgotten most of his high school physics.

Despite his doubts, he met with Zhang Yingchen that night, and the two exchanged information about the local situation.

Zhang Yingchen’s request was simple: to use force to protect his missionary activities in the local area, to strike at the local forces of the Nanwuliang sect, and to ensure the safety of himself and the local church.

“My current situation is quite delicate,” Zhang Yingchen said. “It’s almost at a precarious balance point. The problem is, I don’t know when my actions will break the balance.”

“Therefore, I need force to ensure that the balance is not broken. As you can see, our opponents have no qualms about using violence. So without force as a backup, it will be difficult for me to gain a foothold here, let alone spread the New Taoism.”

As Zhang Yingchen said these words, he looked directly at Ye Mengyan, putting on a sincere expression. He knew this kid was not easy to deal with.

Ye Mengyan was disgusted by Zhang Yingchen’s request. In his view, Daoist Priest Zhang was clearly running a “heretical cult.” As for Ye Mengyan himself, he hated all religions and was a thoroughgoing atheist crusader and Grand Inquisitor of the atheist inquisition. Whether it was Director Wu, Father Bai, or the two Daoist priests Zhang and Dai, they had all received his disdain. If it weren’t for the fact that they were “comrades” and that using religion was the established policy at this stage, these few might have received even worse treatment.

“No problem. Who do you want to kill?” Ye Mengyan said, getting straight to the point.

“For now, I’m not killing anyone—”

“So hypocritical.”

“Not at all. I don’t even know who to kill,” Zhang Yingchen said truthfully. So far, he knew nothing about the specific situation of his opponents in the local area.

The converts who had come over to him didn’t know much more than he did.

“Then what do you want us to do?”

“Protect my safety at all times, and protect the safety of Dadian Village,” Zhang Yingchen said seriously. “From now on, I will begin to use pressure tactics.”

Zhang Yingchen’s pressure tactics were to actively carry out missionary activities from now on, switching from a vague, low-key approach to a high-profile one, and fiercely competing for believers, forcing the other party to actively deal with him again.

The enemy was in the dark, and he was in the light. If the other party remained dormant, he would always be in a dangerous state of being on guard day and night. Only by provoking them to make a major move could he seize the opportunity to lure the snake out of its hole and wipe them out in one fell swoop.

“My missionaries will be here soon—I will also conduct a crash course for another batch here,” Zhang Yingchen said in a relaxed tone. “Soon, a small-scale religious dispute will be stirred up throughout Yizhou. I estimate that it won’t be long before it leads to a religious war…”

“And I’ll be your Knight Templar, right?”

“And my Inquisitor,” Zhang Yingchen said in a soft voice. “Little Ye.”

“No problem,” Ye Mengyan nodded.

Zhang Yingchen asked, “What do you plan to do with those two assassins?”

“Kill them and bury them in the latter half of the night.”

Zhang Yingchen’s heart tightened. Zhou Ruolan was one thing, but the thought of Min Zhanlian’s beautiful muscle lines and leopard-like flexibility made him secretly regret it. It was rare to find such a handsome and well-built man among the natives.

Seeing his uncertain expression, Ye Mengyan couldn’t help but laugh inwardly. He immediately changed his tune and said, “If there’s a suitable place for detention, we might as well hold them for now and deal with them later.”

He smiled slightly, and their eyes met. They each understood. Zhang Yingchen secretly praised him. He hadn’t expected Little Ye to become so understanding after a few years. He had indeed matured into a man.

In the next few days, new teams arrived continuously from Jining. First were the missionaries dispatched from the New Taoism headquarters. Considering that this group of old Tongsheng from Qiongshan mostly spoke a Qiongshan dialect that the locals couldn’t understand at all, Zhang Yingchen only requested three of the most reliable missionaries who spoke the best Mandarin to come and assist with the religious affairs. As for the specific missionary work, it would have to be handled by the local converts who had come over. Anyway, for the time being, he didn’t need the believers to have a deep understanding of the doctrines of the New Taoism. The first priority was to secure the territory.

Next came the other members of the first detachment, twenty team members and dozens of support personnel from the Qiwei Escort Agency, who set out from Jining with various equipment and supplies. This included a large amount of medicine and religious promotional materials for the New Taoism printed by the Hangzhou station’s printing house.

For ease of command, Zhang Yingchen moved his office from the Zhuang residence to the small temple outside the village, which he had officially renamed “Yunsheng Temple.” During the day, he trained missionaries and directed the missionary work here. At night, he still returned to the Zhuang residence to continue his work with the Zhuang family.

After a discussion with the Zhuang family, they reached an agreement to jointly open a pharmacy. It was well known that the various medicines in Daoist Priest Zhang’s hands were highly effective. Now, Zhang Yingchen used the offer of these Chinese patent medicines as a lure to get the Zhuang family to agree to conditions that were quite favorable to him. The most important of these was that the Zhuang family would join his charitable projects.

Zhang Yingchen’s charitable projects were no different from what Guo Yi had done in Guangzhou. Nominally, they handled all kinds of charity without distinction, but in reality, they mainly focused on receiving and transporting refugees. In the end, the reason why Zhang Yingchen had insisted on coming to southern Shandong alone, overcoming all difficulties, was precisely to receive the flood refugees here. Preaching was just a side job.

The southern Shandong area, including the present-day Xuzhou in northern Jiangsu, had been a place of frequent floods since the end of the Tianqi era. The great flood this spring had once again devastated several prefectures, and there were refugees everywhere. As long as there was food, there was no shortage of refugees to recruit.

The Senate had already prepared a sufficient amount of food. A considerable portion of the relief rations had already been transported to Hong Kong and was waiting to be shipped to the Hangzhou station and Qimu Island. Yizhou was only 200 kilometers from Jining, an important hub on the Grand Canal, and 200 kilometers from Rizhao Port. Both sea and water transport were very convenient. If they were to use the current sub-base on Qimu Island, they could also go up the Yi River from Yizhou. After a short land journey, they could follow the Juyang River to Laizhou Bay, which was not far from Qimu Island.

This route was clearly the most suitable. It could make full use of existing facilities, and the transport capacity was large enough. Currently, the work team in the Dengzhou and Laizhou area was conducting route surveys and preparing ships and warehouses to ensure that the relief rations transported from Hong Kong could be smoothly delivered to Yizhou.

The Foreign Intelligence Bureau’s report on Operation Engine pointed out that for all kinds of mobile transport within Shandong province, more attention should be paid to river transport. The local water system was crisscrossed, and there were many large rivers that could navigate ships of several hundred tons or more.