Feng Cheng smiled easily. “My lord, we have broken no law. What is there in that to be afraid of?”

“And besides, this business is not this small man’s alone. This small man knows a few high officials in the capital himself.”

Ning Chen narrowed his eyes. “Such as?”

Feng Cheng said proudly, “This small man will not say. To say it would sound like borrowing another man’s weight to lean on you.”

“My lord, let us not spoil everybody’s pleasure. Better we go to my room and talk there. I have very good tea, and we can sit and take our time over it.”

The officer at the head of the garrison had heard enough and said sharply, “Feng Cheng, do you know who is standing in front of you?”

Feng Cheng said in a snide voice, “This small man did ask a moment ago, and my lord took no notice of him.”

“This is Ning Chen. Ning the Silver Coat.”

Feng Cheng’s face changed completely.

The gambling house went quiet at once.

Even the gamblers who had been shouting a moment before put their heads down.

If it had been any other silver coat, they had broken no law and would have had nothing to fear.

But Ning Chen was another matter. This was a hard man who had dared cut down the Empress’s brother with a sword.

A fawning smile came over Feng Cheng’s face at once. “So it is Ning the Silver Coat. I did not know you, forgive me, forgive me!”

Ning Chen only smiled a little. “Keeper Feng said just now that he had very good tea in his room. I would like to try it.”

Something flickered in Feng Cheng’s eyes, and a touch of pleasure came into his face.

The gambling house was not his alone. There were men above him looking out for it.

So this Ning the Silver Coat is no different from the rest of them. He came here to scrape a little something off the top.

“Ning the Silver Coat, this way!”

Ning Chen had the garrison men wait where they were and followed Feng Cheng to a room inside.

Feng Cheng had barely shut the door when he heard Ning Chen ask, “I hear you have immortal powder here. Could you get hold of a little and let me try it?”

A slight change went over Feng Cheng’s face, and then he shook his head. “This small man does not know what this immortal powder is that Ning the Silver Coat speaks of.”

“Keeper Feng, now you are being a little close with me… The son of Lord Shao, the Secretary in the Ministry of War, told me with his own mouth that you have immortal powder here.”

Feng Cheng shook his head. “Ning the Silver Coat must have heard it wrong. This small man knows nothing at all about any immortal powder.”

“You really don’t know?”

“This small man truly does not.”

“Keeper Feng does not seem to know what is good for him… It looks as if I will have to take you back to the Inspectorate for a talk.”

Feng Cheng’s face changed. “This small man has broken no law. Ning the Silver Coat has no grounds to take me away by force.”

“Ning the Silver Coat, I will not hide it from you. This gambling house is not this small man’s alone. I’ll say it plainly — we have men above us too…”

Feng Cheng had not finished when he saw Ning Chen draw a dagger.

Feng Cheng backed off a few steps, on his guard. “Ning the Silver Coat, what do you mean to do? I am telling you, I have men above me, men in high favor with His Majesty, and I would advise—”

This time he did not finish either, and he stood there stunned.

Ning Chen had opened his own arm with the dagger, and dark red blood was seeping out of it.

Bang!!!

Ning Chen stepped in and kicked Feng Cheng over onto the floor.

Then he put a foot down on his face, flung the blood off his arm, and said coldly, “Feng Cheng, keeper of the Four Quarters gambling house, attempted the murder of a silver coat of the Inspectorate. He is taken. Bring him back to the Inspectorate for questioning.”

“Keeper Feng, how do you like that for a reason?”

Feng Cheng’s face was pressed out of shape under the foot, and he got the words out with difficulty. “That is slander.”

Ning Chen smiled coldly. “But my wound is real. So whatever I say is what happened.”

“Tell me about the immortal powder. Otherwise… all I can do is take you back to drink tea in the Inspectorate’s cells.”

If the immortal powder really was opium or something of the kind, this was no small matter.

As a modern man, he knew exactly what the stuff could do.

Once it spread there was no telling how many families would be broken apart, wives from husbands and children from parents, whole houses destroyed… and it could bring a whole country to ruin.

Ning Chen hated drugs to the bone.

In his last life he had watched with his own eyes as narcotics police went down under a dealer’s gun, and afterward not even a headstone could be set up for them, for fear the dealers would take it out on their families.

And now the stuff reached as far as a Secretary in the Ministry of War.

The Ministry of War was making cannon in secret, and that was the weapon he was counting on to beat Nanyue when he went south next year. It could not be allowed to get out yet.

Feng Cheng went white in the face, cold sweat standing out on his forehead, but he held out. “I know nothing at all about any immortal powder.”

Ning Chen made a cold sound in his nose.

He lifted his foot, crouched down, took hold of Feng Cheng’s jawbone, and with a crack put the jaw clean out of its socket.

Feng Cheng let out a scream of pain.

Ning Chen looked him over and made sure there was no poison tooth hidden in his mouth, and then smiled coldly. “Once we are at the Inspectorate, I promise you will talk.”

With that he went over and opened the door.

The garrison men had heard Feng Cheng scream and, afraid something had happened to Ning Chen, had already rushed to the door.

Seeing Ning Chen open it and come out, every one of them let out a breath.

The officer at the head of them noticed the wound on Ning Chen’s arm and his face changed completely. “Ning the Silver Coat, you’re hurt?”

“Feng Cheng tried to murder me and I have him down. Take him back to the Inspectorate for me.”

“Yes!”

Ning Chen walked over and ran a sharp eye across the gamblers. “Has anybody here heard of immortal powder?”

They all kept clear of that hard stare of his, and nobody made a sound.

Ning Chen took out a silver note. “Whoever can give me something to go on, these hundred taels are his.”

A good many of the gamblers stared at the note in his hand, their eyes hot.

In a gambling house a hundred taels is not much.

But not every gambler in the place is a rich man… To some of the small ones a hundred taels is a great deal.

Ning Chen spoke again. “Ning here keeps his word. Give me anything that puts me on the track of the immortal powder, and the hundred taels are yours.”

“Ning the Silver Coat, what is this immortal powder, exactly?”

One of the gamblers could not hold the question in.

Ning Chen said heavily, “A drug, and it takes hold of you very easily… After you smoke it you are like a man drunk, and in the worst cases you go raving mad.”

“Smoke it long enough and it damages the brain and does terrible harm to the body… In a few years it will not only strip you of everything you own, it will kill you, and the way you die will be a horror to look at.”

When Ning Chen had finished, there was hardly any reaction at all.

Ning Chen frowned. Damn it. A pack of rotten gamblers.

No wonder they say a man with gambling in his blood has stopped being a man… These people don’t count their own lives as worth anything.

One small, thin gambler kept stealing glances at Ning Chen, with the look of a man who had something to say and had stopped himself.

Ning Chen walked up to him and shook the note in his own hand. “Do you know something?”

The man stared at the note in Ning Chen’s hand with burning eyes, swallowed, and said:

“A few days ago this small man couldn’t hold it any longer and went out to the back court to relieve himself… I saw several men in fine clothes go into one of the rooms, furtive about it… I don’t know whether they were in there smoking that immortal powder my lord speaks of.”

Ning Chen said, “Where is that room? Take me there.”

The man looked longingly at the note in Ning Chen’s hand.

“Don’t worry. Take me to the place and the note is yours.”

Bowing and scraping, his face all fawning, the man said, “My lord, please follow me. I’ll take you there now.”

Ning Chen was about to follow when a crowd of men came bursting into the gambling house.

It was Pan Yucheng and the rest. The whole first department had come, and they had brought a good many red coats with them.

“Ning Chen, what has happened?”

Ning Chen said, “I’ll explain later. First put men on this place and hold it… Old Pan, come with me somewhere first.”

Pan Yucheng nodded.

With the gambler leading them, they came to the door of a room in the back court.

“My lord, this is the room.”

The door was locked.

Ning Chen stepped up, kicked the door in and went through.

There was nobody in the room.

The whole room had been built as one long sleeping platform, divided up by low tables.

Ning Chen sniffed. There was a sour, foul smell in the air.

“Search it. Don’t leave a corner of it. Watch especially for hidden compartments and anything of that sort.”

Feng Qizheng asked, at a loss, “Ning Chen, what are we searching for?”

Ning Chen shook his head. “I don’t know either. It could be a powder, it could be a paste… Turn out anything suspicious first.”

They began to go over the room carefully.

“What is this thing? Hidden away as carefully as that?”

Ning Chen turned his head and saw Chen Chong holding something that looked like a pipe.

He walked over, his eyes tightening. “Where did you find it?”

“Under a table.”

Ning Chen went over and turned one of the low tables up, and sure enough there was a pipe hidden underneath it.

Chen Chong came over and asked, “Ning Chen, that’s a pipe, isn’t it?”

Ning Chen nodded.

“Why hide a pipe as carefully as that?”

Ning Chen frowned. “It isn’t an ordinary pipe. It’s made for smoking immortal powder and nothing else.”

“What is immortal powder?”

Pan Yucheng and the others looked over, curious too.

Ning Chen went through the whole harm of immortal powder for them.

Households stripped bare, wives and children scattered, and a kingdom brought down with it?

Their faces changed all at once.

Pan Yucheng said heavily, “As bad as that?”

Ning Chen nodded, his face grave.

Feng Qizheng said, curious, “That stuff will kill a man. You’d have to be out of your head to smoke it.”

Ning Chen said, “It takes hold of a man very easily. When he starts, he feels as though he is floating up to join the immortals. By the time he comes to himself and wants to give it up, he finds he can’t.”

“And when the craving comes on him, it is like ten thousand ants eating him alive.”

“By then the man who smokes it is not a man any more… For one pull at the stuff he will cheat and swindle and steal, he will kill a man for his goods, he will sell his own sons and daughters. There is nothing he will not do.”

“So this must never be allowed to spread… Once it spreads, what follows does not bear thinking about.”

Pan Yucheng and the others saw how serious it was, and one after another they nodded.

Ning Chen said, “Keep searching!”

They set to going over the room again.

Before long Feng Qizheng found a hidden compartment behind a painting.

He got it open and lifted out a jar in both arms.

“Ning Chen, come and look at this.”

Ning Chen hurried over. Feng Qizheng opened the jar and his face fell. “How is it just pipe tobacco? Here I was thinking it would be that immortal powder of yours.”

Ning Chen took a pinch of the tobacco and rubbed it between his fingers, and a white powder came off on them.

“This is it. There is immortal powder mixed into the tobacco.”

Feng Qizheng brightened. “Does that mean I’ve earned some real credit?”

“Mm… I’ll reward you with a night in the courtesans’ quarter later.”

“Could it be the pleasure houses instead? The girls at the courtesans’ quarter won’t take my business.”

Ning Chen gave him a flat look.

Feng Qizheng asked, curious, “Ning Chen, what is immortal powder made out of?”

Ning Chen shook his head. “I don’t know yet either. But by the look of it, the sap is drawn out of the poppy, dried, and worked into a powder… That makes it far stronger, and easy to carry and to hide.”

“That’s only my guess, though. It could be something else… This has to be followed all the way down. Find where it comes from and pull it up by the root.”

“Look again. See whether there is any more.”

They turned the room over again, but apart from the one jar Feng Qizheng had found there was nothing else.

Ning Chen came out. The gambler was still waiting outside.

Ning Chen handed him the note. “Take the silver and go home and live properly… Nobody wins at gambling. However sharp you are, you will never be sharper than the house, and it will only pull you in deeper.”

The man took the note, bowing and scraping. “Thank you, my lord. This small man will remember it!”

Ning Chen nodded and waved him away.

He knew perfectly well that not a word of it had gone in… If gamblers were that easy to talk sense into, there would not be so many men who had gambled away everything they had.

Gambling does no less harm than a drug does.

Ning Chen turned to Pan Yucheng. “Old Pan, take everyone concerned and the evidence back with you… I have to go into the palace and report to His Majesty.”

(End of Chapter 201)