Ning Chen’s gaze came to rest on Fan Taihe, his face calm.

He had long since stopped being the Ning Chen who acted on hot blood alone.

Once, seeing forged letters like these, he would have been angry enough to draw his blade and cut Fan Taihe down.

“Lord Fan. Where did these letters come from?”

Fan Taihe said in a low voice, “The marquis need not ask that… This minister wants only to ask the marquis one thing. Did the marquis write these secret letters?”

Ning Chen shook his head. “And if I say I did not?”

“No matter. That is simple enough. The hand can be compared here and now… If the marquis has been wronged, this minister will take the punishment.”

Ning Chen narrowed his eyes, covering the hard light in them. This Fan Taihe had come prepared.

Ning Chen turned to the Xuan Emperor and bowed. “Your Majesty, these letters are forgeries… Your subject never wrote them.”

The Xuan Emperor’s brows drew tight and he was about to speak, but Fan Taihe said loudly, “Your Majesty, your subject has no wish to wrong the marquis either… So your subject insists that the hand be compared here and now.”

Ning Chen said flatly, “If they are forgeries, then naturally the work will be seamless… Lord Fan, forging a hand is not so hard, is it?”

Fan Taihe said, “Making a hand match is not easy either.”

“The marquis says these letters are forged. Then let the hand be compared. Let the marquis clear his own name, and clear this minister’s with it.”

Ning Chen gave a cold laugh. “Let me ask Lord Fan something. With the standing Ning here holds now, why would he league with the Fourth Prince of Nanyue?”

Fan Taihe said in a low voice, “For gain, naturally.”

Ning Chen said coldly, “That is absurd. Does Lord Fan think Nanyue is richer than my Great Xuan, or that Nanyue could give me more than His Majesty gives me?”

“By standing, I am a marquis of the Great Xuan, a General of the Second Rank, and the future consort of a princess… By wealth and rank, what His Majesty has granted me would keep me in silk and delicacies for several lifetimes.”

At this Li Hanru came out of the ranks and bowed. “Your Majesty, Marquis Ning marched north against the Tuoluo Kingdom and took the King of the Left Court alive. He took Mangzhou, won back the frontier, and brought about the peace with the Wu Kingdom… To say he deals with the enemy — your subject does not believe it.”

Shen Min stepped out too. “Your Majesty, your subject does not believe it either… The marquis is a man of clean character, and what he has done is there for every eye to see.”

Ji Mingchen came out next. “The musket and the cannon the marquis designed have worked wonders on the battlefield and shielded the soldiers of our Great Xuan… To say the marquis deals with the enemy is simply laughable.”

Li Zhixing followed him out and bowed. “The marquis’s standing is high. Your subject cannot for the life of him think of a reason for him to league with Nanyue.”

The Xuan Emperor nodded slightly.

“Beloved Minister Fan. Ning Chen has won great merit in the field for the Great Xuan. This emperor does not believe he deals with the enemy either.”

Fan Taihe was not flustered in the least. He bowed. “Your Majesty, your subject does not wish to wrong the marquis… But having found this evidence, your subject cannot shut his eyes to it, for the sake of the Great Xuan and of Your Majesty.”

“The marquis stands high in rank and heavy in power. But a man’s greed has no end to it… Think of the Left Chancellor, below one man in this court and above ten thousand. Was he not greedy past all satisfying? He went further, and raised troops in rebellion.”

Shen Min came back at him. “Lord Fan, you would do well not to forget that it was the marquis who dug out the woodworm that was the Left Chancellor.”

Fan Taihe said in a low voice, “And who can promise that the marquis will not become the next Left Chancellor?”

“The marquis dug out the woodworm that was the Left Chancellor… If the marquis becomes the Left Chancellor, who is to dig him out?”

Shen Min was furious. “Lord Fan, guard your tongue. This is a groundless attack on the marquis… You have no evidence of any kind, you slander the marquis, and you offend against your superiors. What punishment do you deserve for it?”

Fan Taihe said evenly, “Lord Shen need not be in such a hurry. Having dared to say it, this minister naturally has evidence.”

Shen Min said angrily, “What evidence? Produce it and let us see.”

Fan Taihe turned to the Xuan Emperor and bowed. “Your Majesty, permit your subject to set it out point by point.”

The Xuan Emperor frowned and gave a slight nod.

Fan Taihe turned to Ning Chen again. “The marquis will bear with me. This minister is the Censor-in-Chief and has the duty of watching every official in the realm… So this minister is not acting against the marquis, but on the matter and not against the man.”

Ning Chen looked at him without any expression at all.

Fan Taihe said in a loud voice, “Last year the Nanyue embassy came to be received, and the marquis was charged with receiving them… The marquis sold the map of the southern frontier’s defenses to Nanyue for a million taels of silver.”

“With that map Nanyue caught our Great Xuan unprepared, and more than twenty thousand men lost their lives for nothing… I ask the marquis: did this happen or not?”

Ning Chen said flatly, “It did not.”

It had happened. But the map of the defenses he had sold Nanyue then was a false one.

And in any case, only three people knew of it — himself, Kang Luo, and the State Preceptor of Nanyue. He did not believe Fan Taihe could produce either of those two to name him.

And it would not matter if they did, because the map had been false from the start.

Fan Taihe gave a cold laugh, as though he had expected Ning Chen to deny it.

“Very well. Then this minister makes bold to ask the marquis one thing more. You said at the time that Nanyue wanted not only our Great Xuan’s Thirty-Mile Corridor but a million taels of silver on top of it. Did that happen?”

Ning Chen nodded. “It did.”

Every official in the court knew that one. There was no getting out of it.

Fan Taihe said sharply, “Yet the Great Xuan ceded no land and paid no indemnity, and the marquis drove the Nanyue embassy out under cover of darkness… And that is precisely what enraged Nanyue into sending troops, and why more than twenty thousand soldiers of our Great Xuan died wretchedly.”

“Marquis. You made fools of every official in this court and you deceived the sovereign… Embezzling the indemnity, the crime of deceiving the sovereign — do you admit to them?”

Ning Chen frowned, because this touched the Xuan Emperor, Li Hanru and Shen Min.

He and the Xuan Emperor had set the trap together and squeezed a million taels out of the officials.

He had known it could not stay hidden long. His plan had been to marry the Ninth Princess and then march south against Nanyue… Once he had won, it would have stopped being a problem.

He had not expected the thing to go off early.

An uproar broke out among the ministers.

Only now did they learn that the indemnity they had all subscribed had gone into Ning Chen’s own pocket.

“Your Majesty, Marquis Ning took the indemnity for himself and twenty thousand men on the southern frontier died wretchedly for it. His crime deserves death!”

“Your Majesty, the marquis made fools of your subjects, blinded the sovereign’s ear, and robbed what he was set to guard. Your Majesty must punish him severely.”

“Your Majesty, punish him severely…”

“Your Majesty, punish him severely…”

Nearly half the officials in the court came out of the ranks to demand that Ning Chen be punished severely.

Because what Ning Chen had taken was their silver.

The Xuan Emperor’s brows drew into three deep furrows, because he had a hand in this himself.

Li Hanru and Shen Min were sick with worry… This was not going to be easy to get past.

It was not one man or two who were involved, but several dozen great officers of the court.

And the whole body of them were in a fury.

The thing could not be allowed to touch His Majesty… An emperor and one subject conspiring to take the money of his ministers — if that got out, there would be nothing left of His Majesty’s authority.

And if the historians set it down in the annals on top of that, His Majesty would carry the name for a thousand years.

Li Hanru’s fists closed tight.

The Great Xuan could do without these soft bones. It could not do without the Idle Marquis.

The thing had happened, and it could not be allowed to touch His Majesty, and the marquis could not be made to carry it either… The Great Xuan needed Ning Chen.

The Tuoluo Kingdom had bowed its head and called itself a vassal, and the Wu Kingdom was willing to talk peace, and both were because of Ning Chen.

Without Ning Chen, the fighting on the frontier would begin again.

(End of Chapter 371)