When the men drawn from the other departments had joined up with the men of the first department, Ning Chen took them all into one room.
“This assignment is a heavy matter. From now until we move tonight, nobody leaves this room.”
“Old Gao, Old Chen, the two of you see to it… If anybody has to go to the privy, one of you goes with him.”
Ning Chen said it heavily.
Gao Ziping and Chen Chong took the order.
Ning Chen left the Inspectorate and did not come back for four hours.
Geng Jing had come back from the palace too.
“You’ve gathered all these men. What are you going to do with them?”
Geng Jing asked it curiously, there in the room.
Ning Chen said, smiling, “Rescue Old Pan and Old Feng.”
Geng Jing could not help getting to his feet. “There’s word of them?”
Ning Chen shook his head.
Geng Jing frowned. “Then what are you… What is it you’re actually doing? All this mystery.”
Ning Chen said, smiling, “Drawing the snake out of its hole. Though I’m not certain yet whether it will work. When it does, I’ll explain it to you properly.”
In the sealed room of a certain house.
The Right Chancellor and a plump, pale young man — the Fifth Prince, that is — sat facing each other.
“The Inspectorate has found Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng?”
The Right Chancellor was badly shaken.
The Fifth Prince’s brows drew tight. “Don’t be in such a hurry. I think there is something odd about this.”
The Right Chancellor asked quickly, “What do you mean?”
The Fifth Prince narrowed his eyes. “I keep feeling as though Ning Chen has found out I’m playing a part.”
The Right Chancellor was badly startled, and his face changed sharply. “This… you’ve been exposed?”
The Fifth Prince shook his head. “I’d say I’ve played it very well. In more than ten years, nobody but you people has known I was playing the fool.”
“But Ning Chen keeps giving me the feeling that he has found out I’m playing a part… I don’t know whether I’m imagining it.”
The Right Chancellor asked quickly, “Did he say anything?”
“No. It’s only a feeling.”
The Fifth Prince paused, then went on. “And it was out of Ning Chen’s own mouth that I got the news that Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng had been found.”
The Right Chancellor was taken aback. “He told you of his own accord?”
The Fifth Prince shook his head. “No, not that. I pressed him hard and it came out of him as though he had not meant it to.”
The Right Chancellor said quickly, “Could he have said it to you on purpose?”
The Fifth Prince nodded. “I have my doubts about it too. I’m afraid Ning Chen has found out I’m playing a part and said it to me on purpose… If we send men to look, or move Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng, his people will be on us.”
The Right Chancellor said, “Then we keep the troops still.”
The Fifth Prince hesitated for a while, then said, “But I’m also afraid that what Ning Chen said is true, because it looks as though Geng Jing was the one who told him.”
“You and I both know perfectly well what the Inspectorate can do… If Geng Jing really has found where Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng are hidden, we lose two very important cards for nothing.”
Both of them fell silent, unable to decide, not knowing whether to move or not.
Just then the bronze bell hanging on the stone wall rang.
There was a cord tied to the bronze bell that ran all the way out of the sealed room.
If the man outside had something urgent, he could pull the cord on the bronze bell, and the bell inside would ring.
Only the Fifth Prince’s trusted men knew about the cord, of course.
“Wait for me a moment.”
The Fifth Prince got up, went over and worked the mechanism on the stone door of the sealed room.
The stone door opened slowly.
A powerfully built fellow in close-fitting black stood outside.
This man was called Zhu Ku, one of the Fifth Prince’s trusted men and one of his personal bodyguards.
“What is it?”
Zhu Ku held out a thin bamboo tube. “Young master. A secret report, just come in.”
The Fifth Prince opened the tube, shook the rolled slip of paper out of it, opened it and looked — and a slight change went over his face.
“Wait here for me.”
With that the Fifth Prince turned and went back into the sealed room.
He handed the slip to the Right Chancellor. “This is from our man in the Inspectorate.”
The Right Chancellor took it and looked. What was written on it was: Ning Chen is drawing men from every department, the assignment is secret, there will be a large operation.
The Right Chancellor frowned. “Drawing men, a secret assignment, a large operation… can they really have found where Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng are hidden?”
The Fifth Prince said heavily, “That is what I think too… Ning Chen, Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng are the closest of friends. He would never put together a party of nothing but silver coats for an ordinary assignment.”
The Right Chancellor said, “Then what do we do now? Move or not move?”
The Fifth Prince was silent for a long while, then spoke slowly. “We have to move. Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng are the sharp blades for dealing with Ning Chen. We cannot afford to lose them.”
“But nobody from your household or mine can be used — they would be watched too easily… I’ll send word to the men of the Dark Moon Tower. Let them do it, and get ahead of Ning Chen and move the two of them.”
The Right Chancellor thought for a moment, and nodded slightly.
A little later, two pigeons flew out of the house.
The pigeons came down at last in the back courtyard of an inn.
A plain-looking woman who was washing clothes got up, wiped her hands dry on her clothes, went over and caught the pigeons, took the bamboo tubes off their legs, shook out the letters inside and glanced at them.
Not long after, the woman and a dark-skinned middle-aged man with a simple, honest look about him drove a goods cart out by the inn’s back gate.
The two of them drove the cart out of the city looking exactly like an ordinary husband and wife setting out on a long journey.
All the way along, the two of them seemed to be chatting on and off.
In fact they were sweeping their eyes over everything around them, on their guard.
By now the light was going.
The cart the two of them were driving came, of all places, to the burying ground.
They stopped, as though to rest, and in fact to watch what was around them.
They made certain there was no ambush anywhere near.
The two of them jumped down from the cart, took their tools and made for the middle of the burying ground at a run.
They stopped under a tree.
They looked left and right, then pulled aside a patch of withered, straggling weeds and drew two bamboo tubes as thick as a child’s arm out of the ground.
Then the two of them began to dig.
Before long they had dug two large chests out of the ground.
They opened one of the chests, and a stench came up into their faces.
There was a man inside, trussed hand and foot with iron chain. He was in a bad way, but he was alive.
This man was nobody else. He was Pan Yucheng.
Pan Yucheng was conscious too, and his eyes were close to shooting fire.
The bitterest humiliation of his life.
That he, a gold coat of the Inspectorate, should be handled like this — it made his eyes ready to split, and he could have died of the shame and the rage.
The chest was so small that he could not straighten his legs and could only curl up in a ball. There was a hole in the top of it with a bamboo tube fitted into it, and the other end of the tube was hidden in the grass, so that they would not smother.
Every three days somebody would come in the dark and bring them a little to eat and drink, but only enough to keep them barely alive.
For these last days he had done his eating, drinking, pissing and shitting in this chest, and he was close to breaking.
“Who in the world are you people?”
Pan Yucheng roared it, his voice raw, his eyes bloodshot, hatred pouring off him.
The middle-aged man with the honest, simple look about him had a savage grin all over his face and was about to speak — and then his expression changed all at once and he leaped backward like lightning.
Whip!!!
An arrow came tearing through the air, grazing his face as it passed, and buried itself in the trunk of the tree beside him.
(End of Chapter 425)