Zhang Zhengde narrowed his eyes at Pan Yucheng. “They say every gold coat in the Inspectorate is a first-rate fighter. Zhang here would like to find out today whether the name is deserved.”
“All of you, with me. Kill every one of them.”
Better than three hundred rebels came at Pan Yucheng like a flood.
Pan Yucheng took a step back and smiled coldly. “Fire!”
BANG! BANG! BANG!!!
The noise was like a peal of thunder, and firelight spread out with the black smoke.
In a moment blood was flying and the shrieking rang against the sky.
The men in front went down in swathes.
And the worst of it was the noise the muskets made. It was terrifying.
The rebels were frightened out of their wits.
The Left Chancellor’s eyes contracted and his old face went the color of dead ash.
He had assumed the hundred musketeers would all fire together.
He had assumed wrong.
Fifty of them came forward first and fired together.
The instant the shots were away they fell back and began to reload… and at the same moment the other fifty stepped up, front and rear relieving each other, and the firing never stopped.
The rebel soldiers had no time to react before a flower of blood burst open on them and they pitched over headfirst. It was exactly like wheat under the sickle.
Zhang Zhengde was frightened out of his wits too, and backed away and kept backing.
The officials of Mangzhou, high and low, were frightened clean out of their bodies and nearly went down where they stood.
BANG! BANG! BANG!!!
The noise like a peal of thunder came without a break, loud enough to make the deaf hear.
The rebels went down in swathes.
What man behind them was going to charge forward now?
Every one of them was giving ground in fright.
Pan Yucheng raised his hand and the firing stopped. The powder smoke hung in the air.
“Put down your weapons and your lives are spared… resist and you are cut down where you stand!”
The rebels, at a loss, looked to Zhang Zhengde.
Zhang Zhengde said furiously, “Pan Yucheng, fight me with real blades and real spears if you have it in you… what kind of skill is it to use crooked tricks like these?”
Pan Yucheng made a cold sound in his nose.
“Calling a musket a crooked trick only shows how little you have seen. A frog at the bottom of a well.”
“You want to cross blades with me for real. Fine. As you like!”
Pan Yucheng drew his saber and came at Zhang Zhengde a step at a time.
“Zhang Zhengde, kill him and I’ll enter it as the first credit to your name!”
The Left Chancellor said it low and hard.
Kill Pan Yucheng and the men would lose their nerve altogether, and there would still be one thread of a chance to get out.
Zhang Zhengde nodded, took his spear in both hands and charged at Pan Yucheng.
The spear came like a splinter of light, hissing with the sound of tearing air, straight at Pan Yucheng’s throat.
Clang!!!
Pan Yucheng swung his saber and knocked the spear aside, and sparks flew.
Before Zhang Zhengde could draw the spear back, Pan Yucheng closed a long stride and brought the saber down in a streak of cold light.
Zhang Zhengde got his arm up and blocked it with the shaft, and in that instant their left hands traded half a dozen moves.
Crack!!!
Two fists met, and the force of it drove them both back, step after step.
“Hah. So this is all a gold coat of the Inspectorate amounts to?”
Zhang Zhengde smiled coldly, with contempt in his face.
Pan Yucheng said mildly, “You’re a good fighter. It’s a pity you picked the wrong man to follow.”
With that he drove off his back foot and went at Zhang Zhengde like a loosed arrow.
Before he arrived, his hand came up and flicked, and several streaks of cold light went at Zhang Zhengde’s face with the sound of tearing air.
Zhang Zhengde bent his body back, and the cold light went past his face on a hard little wind.
Behind him there were several screams.
Several rebel soldiers had been hit by the pebbles Pan Yucheng had thrown.
Zhang Zhengde did not look back. He shook the spear out and drove it at Pan Yucheng.
Pan Yucheng cut down onto the shaft, jarred the spear away, and went past Zhang Zhengde like something out of a nightmare.
The two of them stood back to back.
Blood ran down off the edge of Pan Yucheng’s saber.
Zhang Zhengde pitched forward on his face, and dark red blood came pumping out of the wound at his throat and reddened the ground.
Pan Yucheng had taken him through the throat.
The Left Chancellor’s face went a dreadful white, sweat came out on his forehead in beads the size of soybeans, and every ounce of fat on him shook.
The officials of Mangzhou, high and low, had gone weak at the knees and could not stand steady.
“Back — get back, quickly…”
The Left Chancellor shouted it in terror.
With their hearts in their mouths the rebels covered the Left Chancellor and the officials of Mangzhou and gave ground.
And at that moment there was the sound of hooves.
Ning Chen had come up with his men.
The rebels’ way out was closed.
The Left Chancellor went the color of dead ash, and he had the face of a man who had buried both his parents.
Ning Chen sat his horse looking at the Left Chancellor and said, teasing him, “My lord Left Chancellor. We meet again. Did you miss me?”
The Left Chancellor knew he was a dead man.
There would be no getting out with his life a second time.
“The heroes really do come up young. Chang Chengyun has had a fine life, with great power in his hands… and who would have thought I would come apart in your hands at the end of it?”
“Ning Chen, the thing this old man regrets most in his whole life is trusting your father, and not getting rid of you early enough.”
“It is all fate. Who could have thought a little mongrel out of some poor backwater would turn the whole capital upside down?”
“Enough. Enough. This old man is tired! But don’t congratulate yourself too soon… I have already sent word to the Grand Tutor about the Empress. He will not let you go.”
Ning Chen gave a cold little laugh.
“Let the Grand Tutor come, by all means. The truth is I detest the court and its men cheating one another. If your people had not driven me step by step I would have had no interest in court affairs at all… the battlefield is my stage.”
The Left Chancellor’s eyes went cold. “Ning Chen, don’t be so arrogant… the Grand Tutor has spent his whole life in the saddle and has two hundred thousand men in his hands. This old man can promise you that you will die worse than I do.”
“Whoa…” Ning Chen let out an odd laugh. “The Grand Tutor’s that much of a badass? Then do you know the saying that you cheat the old and not the young? The Grand Tutor is an old man — how many days does he have left? I’m young. I can outlast him and be done with it.”
The Left Chancellor’s face went dark and he said nothing more.
Ning Chen beckoned, and a soldier put a musket into his hands.
Ning Chen turned the musket over in his hands and asked, “Does the Left Chancellor have anything else to say? Because if not, there’s a question I’d like to ask.”
The Left Chancellor stared at him with the poison in his eyes.
Ning Chen took no notice at all and asked, smiling, “The Left Chancellor mined gold on his own authority and piled up a fortune. Where have you put all that money?”
“His lordship may not know it yet, but His Majesty has given me your chancellor’s residence. It is called the Ning residence now.”
“I sent men to look through it and they did not find much of any value… tell me. Where have you hidden the money?”
The Left Chancellor smiled coldly, with contempt all over his face.
Ning Chen said, smiling, “Don’t be so stingy about it! You’re going to be dead shortly and you can’t take a single coin with you. You might as well tell me.”
The Left Chancellor said scornfully, “I’ll let every piece of it rot in the ground before you get it cheap.”
Ning Chen said, “Oh.”
“Left Chancellor, you are no kind of sport at all. I’m angry now.”
With that, there was a bang.
The Left Chancellor took the bullet between the brows, and his fat body went down and raised a little cloud of dust.
Pan Yucheng was stunned.
He had not expected Ning Chen to kill the Left Chancellor without a moment’s hesitation.
The Left Chancellor knew plenty, and was worth questioning.
But to Ning Chen the Left Chancellor was far too slippery. A man who could get himself out of the Inspectorate’s own cells was no small trick… only with the man thoroughly dead could Ning Chen’s mind be at rest, and His Majesty’s with it.
BANG!!!
Ning Chen called for another musket and put a second shot into the Left Chancellor’s heart, in case he was not properly dead.
He tossed the musket to the soldier beside him, narrowed his eyes at the rebels and said sharply, “Throw down your weapons and surrender. Do you want to die?”
“I’ll count to three. If you have not surrendered, I’ll kill you where you stand!”
Ning Chen opened his mouth, and before one was out of it there was a clattering all around, and the rebels’ weapons went down in a heap on the ground.
(End of Chapter 247)