Once Nie Liang had come back to himself, he signaled the imperial guards to wait where they were and rode forward alone.
“My lord, are you all right?”
Ning Chen produced a smile, but his whole face was covered in blood, and the smile was a chilling thing to see.
“I’m all right. His Majesty sent you?”
Nie Liang nodded and swung down from the saddle. “His Majesty ordered me to take men and search along the Heaven River to meet my lord!”
He looked at the bodies on the ground. “What in the world happened here? Who are these men?”
Ning Chen wiped his blade clean on one of the assassins and said slowly, “Somebody tried to kill me. They scuttled the warship I was on.”
“These men come from an assassins’ organization called the Dark Moon Tower.”
Nie Liang’s face changed with shock. “Scuttling a warship, assassinating a marquis… their nerve is past all measure. Aren’t they afraid of a crime that takes three generations of their family with them?”
“Does my lord know who put them up to it?”
Ning Chen glanced at him and said, “The Fifth Prince.”
Nie Liang’s expression stiffened.
“My lord, that is not a joke to make. How could it possibly be the Fifth Prince?”
Ning Chen smiled and said nothing.
Just as he thought. Nobody was going to believe these men had been sent by the Fifth Prince, who was simple and dull in the head.
He walked down to the bank, washed the blood off his hands and his face, and whistled. Diaochan came running over.
Ning Chen swung up into the saddle and asked, “Old Nie. Have Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng gone back to the capital?”
Nie Liang shook his head. “I don’t know! His Majesty summoned me in a hurry and told me to take men out to meet you… Until I saw you I had no idea what had happened.”
Ning Chen frowned. He guessed that Feng Qizheng and Pan Yucheng must have fallen into the other side’s hands.
“Come on. Back to the capital.”
Nie Liang left a party behind to deal with the bodies, and the rest escorted Ning Chen back to the capital.
Two days later Ning Chen reached the capital without trouble.
However bold the Dark Moon Tower’s assassins were, they were not bold enough to go head to head with the imperial guards.
It was already late in the day when they came in.
Ning Chen had Nie Liang go into the palace to report, and said that he himself would stand before His Majesty at tomorrow’s morning court.
In fact it was not too late to go into the palace and see the emperor now.
But Ning Chen had something more important to do.
Once he and Nie Liang had parted, he rode straight for the Right Chancellor’s residence.
He tied the horse, and Ning Chen stepped up and struck the door ring.
“Who is that, at this hour of the night?”
An irritated voice came from inside.
As the saying goes, the man at a chancellor’s gate ranks with an official of the third grade, and the doorkeeper of a chancellor’s residence is more overbearing than an ordinary official of the capital.
The gate opened.
The man who opened it was somewhere in his fifties. He frowned at Ning Chen… the young man in front of him looked familiar, but he could not think who he was.
“Who are you here for?”
Ning Chen put his hands behind his back and said flatly, “Go in and tell the Right Chancellor that Ning Chen asks to see him.”
Ning Chen?
The doorkeeper’s face changed sharply, and he asked cautiously, “You — are you Marquis Ning?”
Ning Chen gave a single nod.
The irritation went out of the doorkeeper’s face instantly, and it was all fawning. “Come in, my lord!”
The doorkeeper brought Ning Chen to the main hall and had tea brought in.
“A moment, my lord. This small man will report to His Excellency at once.”
Ning Chen made a sound of assent.
The doorkeeper stood there looking at Ning Chen with the fawning smile still on him, as though he were waiting for something.
Ning Chen narrowed his eyes at him. “What is it?”
“Nothing, nothing… A moment, my lord!”
The doorkeeper bowed and scraped his way out.
Ning Chen made a cold sound in his nose. He knew perfectly well the doorkeeper was waiting for a tip, and not everybody was entitled to a tip from him.
The doorkeeper came out of the main hall, looked back once, and spat. They say Marquis Ning is generous and free with his money. Who would have thought he was this stingy — not one coin of a tip. So much for what people say.
About a quarter of an hour later, the Right Chancellor appeared.
“Bear with me, Marquis. Official business keeps me busy, and I have been remiss.”
The Right Chancellor cupped his fist and said it smiling.
Ning Chen smiled easily. “Busy scheming against me, I suppose, Right Chancellor?”
The Right Chancellor’s expression stiffened a little. “The marquis is joking.”
Ning Chen said flatly, “This marquis is standing here without a scratch on him. Is the Right Chancellor disappointed?”
The Right Chancellor’s smile went a little stiff. “The marquis does love his jokes. When I heard something had happened to the ship the marquis was on, this chancellor could not sleep at night… Now that I see the marquis without a scratch on him, this chancellor’s mind is at rest.”
“Could not sleep at night?” Ning Chen gave a small laugh. “With me alive, you people really should be having trouble eating and sleeping.”
“If you want a sound night’s sleep, take the trouble to send some assassins worth looking at next time… The clay chickens and pottery dogs you sent — there weren’t even enough of them for me to kill.”
The Right Chancellor narrowed his eyes a little, hiding the sharp light at the back of them, and did not say much more, only, “Have some tea, Marquis.”
“I’ll skip the tea.”
Ning Chen stood up and came step by step to stand in front of the Right Chancellor, his eyes sharp enough to make a man flinch.
The Right Chancellor was not the man to give way, and met Ning Chen’s gaze.
Ning Chen put his hands behind his back and said quietly, “My lord Right Chancellor. I know Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng are in your hands. I will trouble you to take good care of them.”
“While they are alive, this marquis can forgive a lot. If anything happens to them, Ning here swears it — it will not end until one of us is dead.”
The Right Chancellor frowned and said heavily, “Is the marquis threatening me?”
Ning Chen gave him one word. “Yes.”
The Right Chancellor’s expression froze.
“This chancellor stands first among all the officials of the court. If I were a man who took fright, I would not be where I am today.”
Ning Chen stared at him and said it one word at a time. “The Left Chancellor once said the same thing to me… and the grass on his grave is over six feet high now.”
The Right Chancellor’s eyes narrowed sharply.
There was something wicked in Ning Chen’s smile. “When I go mad, even I am afraid of myself… Send men to kill me and I can bear it. But hurt my friends, and don’t blame Ning here for stopping at nothing to pay it back.”
“Your Excellency is a clever man. I am not asking you to hand them over — I know that isn’t realistic… I am only asking you to take good care of them, and that should not be hard to manage.”
“This marquis has been on the road the whole way, and man and horse are both worn out. I won’t trouble you any longer. I’ll take my leave.”
Ning Chen gave the Right Chancellor no chance to speak. He turned and walked toward the door.
At the door his step paused, and he said quietly, “If anything happens to those two, I promise you that certain people will be wiped out to the third generation of the family, and not a chicken or a dog left.”
The Right Chancellor stood up and stared at Ning Chen’s back as it went away, his face livid.
Nobody had ever dared threaten him. Even His Majesty would give him a little deference — let alone anyone daring to threaten him at his own door.
If an ordinary man threatened him like that, he would certainly have dismissed it out of hand… though of course an ordinary man would not dare threaten him, and the men who did threaten him never lived to see the next day’s sun.
But Ning Chen’s threat he truly did not dare ignore.
He did not dare hold the smallest contempt for this marquis, the most powerful man in the Great Xuan today.
The Left Chancellor, the Empress, the Grand Tutor… he had before him the ends that figures whose power reached the sky had come to, and every one of them was a warning.
Ning Chen came out of the Right Chancellor’s residence, and instead of going back to the Ning residence he went to the Carefree Escort House.
He made certain there was no tail on him, then led Diaochan in by the back way.
“I greet my lord!”
In a room inside, Silence made his bow.
Ning Chen sat down, looked at him, and came straight to the point. “In the more than two months I have been away, have you found anything?”
Silence bowed. “My lord guessed right. Somebody did smuggle in a batch of young women, and they went into that house… I did as my lord ordered and had a man get word secretly to the Inspectorate, but the Inspectorate did nothing.”
(End of Chapter 421)