Pang Yun sullenly drew his hand back.

“General Ning, I really am only a small fish… it isn’t just that I don’t know. Even if I did, I couldn’t say.”

Ning Chen smiled. “One name, two hundred taels.”

Pang Yun sighed and smiled bitterly. “I truly don’t know. It would do General Ning no good to cut me down.”

Ning Chen set down the half-gnawed dry ration, picked up his tea bowl and drank a few mouthfuls, and said mildly, “Who says it would do me no good? Kill you, and my Great Xuan has one enemy fewer.”

Pang Yun said helplessly, “Then General Ning should go ahead and do it.”

“You’re not afraid to die?”

“I am! But what good does being afraid do? I have no way to resist you now.”

Ning Chen’s expression turned playful. “At least you know your own measure… how about this? Give me one or two names and I’ll let you go.”

Pang Yun shook his head. “I don’t know them!”

Ning Chen’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Mr. Pang, now you’re being difficult.”

Pang Yun said in a low voice, “If General Ning means to kill me, then kill me. I truly know nothing.”

But Ning Chen only laughed.

“Mr. Pang is an envoy. I didn’t kill you before, and I won’t kill you now.”

“But I’ll trouble Mr. Pang to carry a message to your Wu woman emperor for me.”

Pang Yun looked at him. “Say it, General Ning.”

Ning Chen said mildly, “Tell your Wu woman emperor that a cornered rabbit bites too, and that she should stop provoking me and stop provoking the Great Xuan… or Ning here will personally lead the Great Xuan’s iron cavalry and level the Wu Kingdom’s capital.”

Pang Yun frowned slightly and said in a low voice, “I will carry General Ning’s words to her without fail.”

Ning Chen gave a nod and gave the order: “Yuan Long, get them some food and water and see them out of the pass.”

“Yes, sir!”

Yuan Long took Pang Yun out.

Pan Yucheng said, puzzled, “That’s it? You’re not going to question him?”

Ning Chen smiled bitterly. “I don’t want to provoke that madwoman of an emperor right now. Not right now, at least… if I had Pang Yun killed, there’s no telling what she’d do.”

“On top of that, what country doesn’t have enemy spies in it? Even if I hunted down every Wu spy and killed them all, the Wu would just send new ones.”

He needed time to prepare.

Then, even if the business between him and the woman emperor blew up later, he could come away whole.

So for now he had to keep the woman emperor steady, and keep her from making trouble at exactly the wrong moment.

Pan Yucheng inclined his head slightly. “From now on you’d do better to keep control of what’s below your waist. It’ll get you killed.”

Ning Chen’s face twitched, and he said sourly, “Was this me not keeping control of what’s below my waist?”

Pan Yucheng said, “Couldn’t you just not get hard? Then the woman emperor would have had nothing to work with.”

Ning Chen’s forehead filled with black lines, and ten thousand horses went thundering through his head.

“Old Pan. Was that a human being talking?”

Pan Yucheng thought about it. “Then how about cutting it off?”

Ning Chen was struck dumb.

The next day, in the morning.

Ning Chen, Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng left the frontier and rode straight for Mangzhou.

Because Ning Chen was wounded, and because there was no hurry, they did not travel fast… it took half a month to reach Mangzhou.

Back at the Mei residence.

Zhang Youcai told Ning Chen that His Majesty had already sent new officials to take charge of Mangzhou.

Ning Chen grunted. It was what he had expected.

“Zhang Youcai, go and get things ready. We leave for the capital in two days.”

Zhang Youcai took the order and went.

The next day, Ning Chen made time to receive the newly appointed officials of Mangzhou, high and low.

Every one of them was overcome with gratitude toward him.

Without Ning Chen, none of them would be sitting where they were sitting now.

There were only so many posts in the Great Xuan—too many wolves and too little meat—and passing the examinations for a degree did not mean you got to be an official.

The Great Xuan’s roll of officials-in-waiting ran to more than ten thousand men.

Anyone with connections, backing and people to speak for him had nothing to worry about.

But the poor scholars, the ones from humble houses—they could settle in and wait. Most of them would fritter their whole lives away and never be more than officials-in-waiting.

Two days later, Ning Chen and his men left Mangzhou.

Five days after that, they reached Lingzhou.

Once in Lingzhou, of course he had to call on Jiang Zhengyang.

When Jiang Zhengyang heard Ning Chen had come to see him, he dropped his brush in the middle of his official work and came hurrying out.

“General Ning, I’ve been waiting and waiting for you!”

Jiang Zhengyang was all smiles.

Ning Chen said with a smile, “I hope I’m not disturbing you, Lord Jiang.”

“Not at all, not at all… I’ve been wishing on stars and wishing on the moon. I’ve been waiting and waiting for you.”

“And I nearly forgot—congratulations on taking Mangzhou, General Ning, and on recovering the frontier and raising our country’s name.”

Jiang Zhengyang said it with a broad, easy laugh.

Ning Chen’s mouth pulled sideways. “That was our Great Xuan’s own territory to begin with, and it was our own people fighting our own people. What is there to congratulate?”

Jiang Zhengyang shook his head. “You can’t put it that way. If it hadn’t been recovered, it wouldn’t be our Great Xuan’s territory anymore.”

“A brilliant young man like General Ning—nothing would stand in front of you—”

Ning Chen quickly waved him off. “Stop, stop… Lord Jiang, when did you get so slippery? You sound like an old hand at court.”

Jiang Zhengyang grinned. “Can’t I just be excited?”

“Enough of that, come inside… we’re going to have a few proper cups later.”

They went through to the back hall of the prefectural office.

Jiang Zhengyang had a banquet laid out.

At the table Jiang Zhengyang raised his cup again and again, insisting that Ning Chen tell him about the battlefield.

Ning Chen remembered Jiang Zhengyang saying that if he hadn’t had two parents to support, he’d have thrown down the brush and gone off to be a soldier long ago.

Ning Chen didn’t feel like it, so he had Feng Qizheng tell him instead.

Jiang Zhengyang lifted his cup. “Feng the Silver Coat, a cup to you… now hurry up and tell me.”

Feng Qizheng grinned. “All right, let me blow some smoke… no—let me tell you how it was.”

“When we took the frontier, Ning Chen led us up onto the wall through a sky full of enemy arrows, and we hacked till the edges of our blades curled.”

“Think about it—the wall is only so wide, and it was packed body against body. Ning Chen had a long saber in each hand, like the god of slaughter come down into the world, and he killed his way from the east end to the west end and cut a road of blood clean through. He wrecked a dozen blades doing it.”

“And at the end Ning Chen came up against Zhao Bokang, and he let out one roar, and Zhao Bokang’s legs went out from under him and he dropped straight to his knees. Ning Chen roared again and Zhao Bokang fainted dead away on the spot.”

“And guess what happened then?”

Jiang Zhengyang’s eyes were shining and his blood was up. He asked urgently, “Feng the Silver Coat, don’t keep it back—what happened at the end?”

Feng Qizheng slurped down a mouthful of wine, threw an arm around Jiang Zhengyang’s shoulders, and said with wine on his breath:

“Just as Ning Chen was about to charge over and cut Zhao Bokang down, Zhao Bokang’s personal guards arrived—three thousand of them and more, every one of them a hard man who didn’t fear death.”

“Anyone else would have died of fright. But the man they ran into was our Great Xuan’s god of war, Ning Chen. You think Ning Chen would flinch? He had a dozen sabers stuck through his belt at the time… and do you know why he carried a dozen sabers?”

Jiang Zhengyang shook his head. “Why?”

Feng Qizheng said, “To swap them out as he went, of course. You hack long enough and the edge curls, and sometimes the blade sticks in a man’s bones and won’t come out at all.”

“Ning Chen wrecked every one of those dozen sabers at his belt, and he cut his way right up to Zhao Bokang, and the blade came down… one stroke and Zhao Bokang’s head came off. That head flew thirty feet.”

“Zhao Bokang’s personal guards dropped to their knees on the spot, the whole crowd of them, knocking their heads on the ground and begging for mercy till their foreheads bled…”

Ning Chen quietly covered his face. He’d asked Feng Qizheng to tell the story. He hadn’t asked him to blow smoke, and certainly not this much of it.

But Jiang Zhengyang was listening with his blood up and his face red to the ears.

(End of Chapter 284)