Every man there was struck dumb!

To take a blade to an edict of the late emperor is a capital crime.

No — Ning Ziming was already under a capital crime.

The Left Chancellor looked at the two halves of the edict in his hand, and the whole man went stupid.

His eyes were ready to split as he stared at Ning Ziming, and he said, hysterical, “You, you… you animal, you white-eyed wolf that could never be tamed. Have you forgotten who gave you everything you have now?”

“You animal. You searched out the evidence against me in secret, and now you cut off my last chance of living… You are lower than a pig or a dog!”

With the edict destroyed it was worth nothing!

Ning Ziming stared hard at him. “You had the woman I loved best in my life killed. If I don’t watch you die, what face will I have to meet her with when I go down below?”

Geng Jing came forward and kicked the Left Chancellor over.

“Somebody. Take him. Throw him into the death cells!”

The Left Chancellor struggled desperately, but manacles and leg irons went on him and he was dragged away.

Geng Jing looked at Ning Ziming.

Ning Ziming gave the blade back to Ning Chen, and the look in his eyes as he watched him was full of comfort.

Then he turned and put out his hands.

Manacles and leg irons went on him and he was taken away.

The officials were as quiet as cicadas in the cold, and none of them said a word.

The snow came down harder and harder!

The Xuan Emperor’s voice was low. “This emperor is tired. Whatever there is, leave it until tomorrow.”

The Second Prince’s sudden death had broken his heart, and it had taken him a long time to come out of it… and today the wound had been torn open again.

The Xuan Emperor went back to the palace, weariness all over him.

The officials scattered too.

Geng Jing looked at Ning Chen. “That business… I have to go to the Ning residence.”

Ning Chen nodded silently.

“Lord Geng. May I go down to the cells and see Ning Ziming?”

Geng Jing nodded.

Then Geng Jing took men and went to search and seize the Ning residence.

Ning Chen went down to the cells and saw Ning Ziming.

The two of them looked at each other through the barred door.

Ning Ziming came forward and said, “I wronged your mother, and I wronged you!”

Ning Chen said nothing.

Ning Ziming said slowly, “In those days your mother and I pledged ourselves to each other in private. I promised that when I had won a degree I would come home and marry her.”

“Do you know something? The money for my journey to the capital to take the examination — your mother washed other people’s clothes and saved it up a little at a time.”

“I never expected that I would really pass high. I was very happy… Did you know that when the results are posted, the young ladies of the great and noble houses all come to see the excitement and pick a husband? That was when Chang Ruyue’s eye fell on me.”

“They had my situation looked into very quickly… They used your mother to threaten me. I was only a bookworm then, and I was frightened, and I did not dare fight back, because that man was the Left Chancellor, and for him killing a man was easier than pinching an ant to death.”

“Later I could not hold the longing down any more, and I went back once, on the excuse of the ancestral sacrifice!”

“I should not have gone back. If I had not gone back there would have been no you, and I would not have brought a killing down on you and your mother.”

Ning Chen said coldly, “It isn’t that you shouldn’t have gone back. It’s that you should have kept the lower half of yourself under control.”

Ning Ziming smiled bitterly.

“Then you were born… and I was more frightened still. Chang Ruyue is a jealous woman, and I was afraid they would move against you.”

“I thought I had hidden it well, but they found out all the same… By the time word reached me, your mother was already lost.”

“And from that time on I swore I would bring the Left Chancellor down… because while he stood, you were in danger every hour.”

Ning Chen said mildly, “Ma Kaicheng said there was a master guarding me in secret when I was small. That was a man you sent, wasn’t it?”

Ning Ziming nodded.

“The truth is that if they had not made attempts on you again and again, I would never have brought you to the capital… I would have let you live in that village without a care in the world, and watched you marry and have children.”

“But they would not leave you alone… All I could do was put out the story that I had thrown away my wife and abandoned my son, and then tell Chang Ruyue that I was afraid of being impeached and had no choice but to bring you to the capital.”

“Only with you at my side could I keep you whole.”

“Keep me whole?” Ning Chen gave one cold smile after another. “Do you know how they treated me?”

Ning Ziming nodded. “I know. I always knew… But I did not dare be too close to you. Only by leaving you out in the cold and taking no notice of you would they be easy, and not put a hand to you.”

“The truth is I have been waiting all this time, waiting for you to come of age, and I meant to send you somewhere nobody would trouble you.”

“Only I never expected that you would change all at once as though you were another person — brilliant, and full of courage and calculation, and holding His Majesty’s favor besides.”

Ning Ziming watched Ning Chen closely. “I have often wondered, are you Ning Chen? How can one man change so much? Before and after, they were two different men.”

Ning Chen looked back at him and said nothing.

Ning Ziming’s gaze grew gentler by degrees, and he went on: “If you had amounted to nothing, I would have sent you somewhere nobody knew you and let you live out your life without a care.”

“But what you have shown me astonished your father past everything… When I learned you had taken the King of the Left Court alive, your father knew the moment had come.”

“You hold His Majesty’s favor and you have war merit behind you, so even though your father’s crimes are punishable to the ninth degree of kin, you will come through it untouched… Otherwise your father would have gone to his grave without ever bringing that evidence out.”

Ning Chen looked at him with no expression at all. “You say all this because you want me to forgive you?”

“Do you dare tell me you were not greedy for vanity, not greedy for power?”

“You say over and over that you loved my mother. If you had really loved her you would not have gone back to the village, and you would not have taken her body… You knew perfectly well that doing it would bring a killing down on her, and you did it anyway.”

“As your son, I have no right to condemn what you did, and I will not hold it against you any more… but I have no standing to forgive you on my mother’s behalf!”

There was a great deal in Ning Ziming’s eyes.

“When I get down below, I will apologize to your mother myself!”

“Ning Chen, may your father ask one thing of you?”

Ning Chen said distantly, “You want me to save Ning Gan and the rest?”

Ning Ziming shook his head. “I want you to save Ning Xing and Ning Mao. The two of them are dull-witted and know nothing at all.”

“They are not of the same mother as you, but in the end you are all my children… If you can, I beg you to save them.”

“Without Chang Ruyue directing them they are no threat to you whatever… I ask only that you save them, and afterward you can drive them out of the capital. I ask only that they be left alive.”

Ning Chen’s eyebrow lifted slightly. “Why not ask me to save Ning Gan? Isn’t he the son you’re proudest of?”

Ning Ziming’s eyes turned hard, and his voice was full of rage, and he said it one word at a time: “Because Ning Gan is not my blood at all.”

Ning Chen’s eyes went wide all at once.

“In those days Chang Ruyue’s eye fell on me and she could not wait to marry me… The truth is that by then she had already been coupling with somebody and was secretly with child, which is why she was in such a hurry.”

Holy shit!!!

Ning Chen was struck dumb.

Ning Chen asked out of curiosity, “Whose blood is Ning Gan?”

Ning Ziming said, “A servant of the chancellor’s residence.”

“Christ… The Left Chancellor’s own daughter carrying on with a servant, and getting a child by him. Could it get any more lurid than that?”

“When did you find out?”

“Several years afterward.”

Ning Chen made a small scoffing sound, and said, smiling coldly, “Part of the reason you collected the evidence against the Left Chancellor was revenge on him, wasn’t it?”

“And you went back to the village five years later. Taking my mother’s body — that was revenge on Chang Ruyue too, wasn’t it?”

“Ning Ziming, oh, Ning Ziming. You really are a small man. Unfit to be a father, unfit to be a husband.”

Ning Ziming sighed. “Ning Chen, I did truly love your mother… and I have already paid the price for what I did.”

Ning Chen was silent for a while, then said, “There’s just this one thing you did like a man… Whatever else, I have to thank you. Without you I could not have brought the Left Chancellor down.”

“So in return I will find a way to save Ning Xing and Ning Mao… Though I can’t promise I’ll get them out.”

Ning Ziming nodded, and then all at once his expression turned utterly grave. “Chen’er, be careful of the crown prince!”

Ning Chen’s eyebrow went up.

Ning Ziming said, “I am not certain of it, but I have always felt there is some connection between the Left Chancellor and the crown prince.”

Ning Chen said in surprise, “Isn’t it the Third Prince the Left Chancellor supports?”

Ning Ziming said, “That’s right. On the face of it the Left Chancellor does support the Third Prince, but I have always felt he has a connection to the crown prince. They did it very secretly, and I was never able to find anything.”

“But there is this. The man with the best hope of becoming heir apparent in those days was not the present crown prince. It was the Second Prince, who died suddenly.”

“The Second Prince died suddenly, and the man who gained most by it is the crown prince as he is now.”

Ning Chen’s pupils contracted slightly, but very soon they were normal again.

He shrugged. “What has that to do with me?”

Ning Ziming said, “If it is the crown prince the Left Chancellor supports, then now that you have brought the Left Chancellor down, be careful of the crown prince all the same.”

Ning Chen inclined his head slightly.

“Is there anything else you want to say to me?”

Ning Ziming said seriously, “Take care of yourself!”

Ning Chen made a sound of assent, turned and left.

Too much had happened today, and his head was in some confusion.

Ning Ziming’s sudden turning had left him at a loss, not knowing what attitude to face the man with.

To hate a man that long and then find out all at once that he is a good man — the feeling is a strange one.

Ning Ziming did not count as a good man, but what he had done today was the act of a good man, and of a real man besides.

Ning Chen came up out of the prison.

Pan Yucheng had been waiting outside all this time, and when he saw Ning Chen he came over quickly.

“Are you all right?”

Ning Chen shook his head slightly.

“If you’re feeling bad, I’ll drink a few cups with you?”

Ning Chen shook his head. “Never mind. I’m going to the courtesans’ quarter. Coming?”

Pan Yucheng: “???”

“At a time like this you still have a mind for the courtesans’ quarter?”

Ning Chen looked up at the snow filling the sky and smiled bitterly. “Because I have no home to go to now. Where else is there but the courtesans’ quarter?”

Pan Yucheng said nothing.

The Left Chancellor was down and Ning Chen’s mother was avenged… but the Ning residence had been searched and seized.

Pan Yucheng said, “Come on. Together!”

The two of them left the Inspectorate and rode to the courtesans’ quarter.

Pan Yucheng went to find Nanzhi.

Ning Chen came to Yudie’s room.

“Ning, dear?”

At the sight of Ning Chen, Yudie leapt with delight, and could not hold down the longing in her heart. She threw herself into Ning Chen’s arms and held him tight around the waist.

Ning Chen held her soft body, and just then there was not one wicked thought in him.

“Ning, dear, what is it?”

Yudie had felt that Ning Chen’s spirits were low.

Ning Chen said softly, “Yudie, today I brought the Left Chancellor down and avenged my mother… but the Ning residence has been searched and seized. I have no home to go to now.”

Brought the Left Chancellor down?

Any other time, worship would have filled Yudie’s face.

But now there was only pity in her. She held Ning Chen tight. “If Ning, dear, does not think it beneath him, this girl’s place here is Ning, dear’s home.”

(End of Chapter 174)