The blade came fast, straight and vicious.
Ning Chen had no time to react at all, but his body dodged on instinct and the saber in his hand went out like lightning.
Clang!!!
Sparks flew.
The woman’s blade was knocked aside and went past, grazing his flank.
Ning Chen spun on the spot like a top and drove his left elbow hard into the woman’s face.
Crack!!!
The woman’s slight body went straight off her feet and flew.
It had all happened too fast. Only now did Pan Yucheng react, closing a long stride and laying his blade against the woman’s neck.
Only now did the Changling Army men come to themselves, and they rushed in at once.
And only now did the people around them cry out.
The fright brought Ning Chen out in a cold sweat. Still shaken, he looked down… the cloth at his flank had been laid open.
The skin under it burned.
He pulled the cut cloth aside. There was a wound along his flank and the blood was welling up out of it.
The lucky thing was that it was shallow.
The kind of wound that would close on its own without anyone hurrying to treat it.
Pan Yucheng handed the woman over to the Changling Army and came across quickly.
“How bad?”
Ning Chen shook his head. “It’s nothing. A scratch.”
“Does she have a poison tooth in her mouth?”
Pan Yucheng shook his head. “I checked. No.”
Ning Chen made a sound of acknowledgment. His eyes went to the woman and he said, low and hard, “Take her back to the Governor’s residence. The rest of you deal with the bodies in the street.”
“Yes!”
The Changling Army men took their orders.
Ning Chen fished out a broken piece of silver, walked back to the little stall and put it on the table. “Settling up.”
The stallkeeper was dumbfounded.
The man was wounded and he had not forgotten to pay.
“General Ning, how could this small man take your money? This small man can’t—”
Ning Chen waved a hand. “You eat, you pay. That is the way of heaven and earth, and it goes for everybody.”
With that he pressed one hand over the wound at his waist and led his men away.
“General Ning really is a good man. Not like those dog officials before him.”
“Isn’t he just. General Ning is wounded and he still doesn’t forget to pay… those dog officials before, a night-soil cart went by and they’d have had a taste of it to see if it was salty.”
“Life is going to be better for the likes of us…”
What Ning Chen had done sent the people’s opinion of him through the roof.
On the way back, Pan Yucheng knitted his brows and said, low, “It looks as though we have something unclean close to us.”
He and Ning Chen had gone out on the spur of the moment and told nobody, and the assassin had still found them exactly where they were.
Ning Chen thought about it. “I don’t think it’s anyone close to us. The men of the musket battalion can be trusted.”
“The Left Chancellor was a deep schemer, and he had been working Mangzhou a long while. Besides mustering twenty thousand men on his own authority, he will have kept no small number of assassins… we were probably picked up the moment we walked out.”
Pan Yucheng nodded slightly. “Either way, take more men with you from now on. Better to be careful.”
Ning Chen was about to speak when he saw Feng Qizheng coming toward them at the head of a troop.
The man had wanted to go to the courtesans’ quarter the night before, and Ning Chen had given him a dressing-down and sent him off to put rebels down.
Seeing Ning Chen, Feng Qizheng picked up his pace — and then saw the Changling Army men behind him with a quietly pretty young woman under guard, and his mouth fell open.
“Ning Chen, how could you do a thing like this?”
Ning Chen was taken aback. “What have I done?”
Feng Qizheng dropped his voice. “I never thought you’d carry off a decent woman right there in the street. If we have needs there’s the courtesans’ quarter for it. Don’t go ruining respectable girls.”
Ning Chen’s forehead filled with black lines.
“She’s an assassin!”
“Her? An assassin?” Feng Qizheng stared at the woman. “Carrying off a decent woman is one thing, but hanging an assassin charge on her as well — I think that’s a little cheap of you.”
Ning Chen rolled his eyes in exasperation. The blockhead. The way this man’s mind worked.
He pointed at the wound in his flank. “Take a good look. She did that… if I hadn’t been quick you’d be in mourning white for me now, breaking the bowl at the graveside like a son.”
Feng Qizheng looked at the blood soaking through at Ning Chen’s waist and his face went dark all at once.
“God damn it, she really is an assassin?” And with that he pulled his blade straight out and went at the woman. “I’ll split you open!”
Ning Chen’s eye and hand were quick enough to catch hold of him, and the brute dragged him several staggering steps anyway.
“Settle down. She’s still worth questioning!”
Feng Qizheng said furiously, “I’d never have known. This little slip of a woman, an assassin?”
Ning Chen said sourly, “Is there something wrong with you? When did you ever see an assassin with I am an assassin carved on his forehead? It’s exactly this soft little kind of woman who fools people.”
In all honesty, if it had been Feng Qizheng standing there a moment ago — a lecher with nothing in his head but going to the courtesans’ quarter to sleep with women — this woman would certainly have got him.
Ning Chen waved a hand. “Let’s go.”
Feng Qizheng sent the rest of his men on to keep hunting rebels and went back to the Governor’s residence with Ning Chen himself.
They came through to the main hall.
The woman was brought in too.
Ning Chen turned around without warning, walked up to her and put two hard punches into her stomach, then finished with a savage kick.
The woman went straight off her feet.
The two Changling Army soldiers holding her were nearly dragged down with her.
The woman’s face went chalk white. She clutched her stomach, curled into a ball and let out a groan of pain.
He had nearly been killed, and Ning Chen had been holding that in the whole way back.
He felt a lot better now.
Ning Chen walked over and sat down, square and at his ease.
“Bring her here.”
The woman was brought over, and the two soldiers pushed her down on her knees in front of him.
Ning Chen looked at her coldly. “You were a fine woman. Why turn bandit?”
“Talk. Who sent you? And how many of you are there?”
Her face was all pain. Ning Chen had not held back.
She kept her head down and said nothing.
Ning Chen smiled coldly and said, “I’m a man who takes pity on a pretty face. But an enemy is an enemy, and in my eyes there is no man or woman, old or young about it… I advise you to make a clean breast of it, or don’t blame me for what a hard hand does to a flower.”
The woman still did not say a word.
“Very good. I admire your backbone… you don’t want to talk and I won’t press you.”
“But I’ll tell you one thing. I have twenty thousand men under me… no, better than thirty thousand now, and every one of them a man.”
“Take her out to the camp outside the city and let the men have her, one after another.”
At that, the color changed in Pan Yucheng’s face and in Feng Qizheng’s.
The woman’s head came up sharply to look at Ning Chen. There was no blood left in her face and her eyes were full of terror.
Ning Chen said without any expression at all, “What are the two of you standing there for? Didn’t you hear me?”
The two soldiers came to themselves with a start and said quickly, “Yes!”
They took hold of the woman and started to drag her away.
The woman suddenly began to struggle for her life. “I’ll talk, I’ll talk…”
Ning Chen raised an eyebrow and put out a hand to stop the two soldiers.
The woman assassin stared hard at Ning Chen. “Everyone says that Ning the Silver Coat of Great Xuan has the heart of a knight, that he is a good man who speaks up for the people… it seems what people say is not to be trusted. You are worse than a devil.”
Ning Chen gave a small, contemptuous laugh and pointed at the wound at his waist. “You came close to taking my life. Am I supposed to set you up on an altar and wait on you with good food and drink?”
“For good people, I will do everything in my power to protect them. But for bad ones, and above all for an enemy like you, I will stop at nothing to be rid of you.”
Ning Chen paused and asked mildly, “What’s your name?”
“Bai Lian.” (TL Note: Her name means “white lotus.”)
Ning Chen said scornfully, “You do look like a white lotus that never harmed man or beast. But underneath you’re a black-hearted one.”
“Talk. Who sent you to kill me? And how many of you are there?”
(End of Chapter 254)