The corner of the Xuan Emperor’s mouth twitched. So the boy had suspected who he was all along.

He had simply guessed wrong, and taken him for Prince Fu.

“Ning Chen. What made you think this emperor was Prince Fu?”

Obviously. Who could ever imagine an emperor so bored his balls ached that he’d leave three thousand beauties in the harem untouched and go out of the palace every other day? Without worrying about getting himself killed?

There was a certain amount of flattery in the way Ning Chen said it. “Because Uncle— no. Because Your Majesty is handsome, and pleasant to listen to, and carries himself out of the common run. Only a man of the imperial line has a bearing like that. So I took Your Majesty for Prince Fu.”

“And most of all because Your Majesty is diligent in government and loves the people, and has ten thousand matters a day to handle. I thought Your Majesty could have no time to leave the palace… which is how I came to mistake Your Majesty for Prince Fu.”

The Xuan Emperor’s face went flat. “You mean that if this emperor goes out of the palace often, he is not a good emperor?”

Ning Chen said quickly, “No, no… This humble commoner meant nothing of the sort. Only that Your Majesty is wise and vigorous, and understands that work must be balanced with rest, and that going out now and then to ease the mind is what allows the business of the state to be handled better.”

The corner of the Xuan Emperor’s mouth went up slightly. “Born with a good mouth on you and a dog’s brain behind it… To take this emperor for Prince Fu.”

Christ… you’re the one with the dog’s brain. If you hadn’t had me investigated you wouldn’t know my name either. We’re a matched pair. Neither of us gets to laugh at the other.

The Xuan Emperor made a sound. “Its eye is set in its own backside — it knows a man’s clothes, and never the man… This emperor makes you a present of that one.”

Ning Chen had nothing to say to that.

Christ… using my own lines on me. You really know how to play it.

“Uncle— no. Your Majesty is right to correct me. This humble commoner had eyes and no pupils in them, and failed to know the dragon countenance. I ask Your Majesty’s pardon.”

There was a smile in the Xuan Emperor’s eyes, and privately he was well satisfied with the boy’s manner.

They say Ning Chen has no fear of power. In front of this emperor he is a mouse that has seen a cat, like all the rest.

“Ning Chen. This emperor asks you. Do you want to die, or do you want to live?”

Ning Chen answered without a flicker of hesitation. “This humble commoner wants to live.”

A second’s hesitation would have been an insult to the way out he was being offered.

A bad life beats a good death, and even an ant clings to living… If a man can live, who wants to die?

The Xuan Emperor nodded. “This emperor may be the Son of Heaven, but he is bound by the law of the Great Xuan as well… If you want your life, you will have to earn your way out of the charge. Are you willing?”

What nonsense. Your son took a girl by force in broad daylight and treated the law of the Great Xuan as a toy, and here you are, his father, talking to me about being bound by it. Who exactly is this being sold to, a halfwit?

He got it off his chest and then said quickly, “This humble commoner is willing… What poems does Your Majesty want? This commoner will squeeze his brains dry and write them.”

The Xuan Emperor made a sound. “You imagine that writing a few poems is earning your way out of a charge?”

“This emperor is fond of poems and lyrics. He would not set aside the law of the Great Xuan for a few of them.”

Ning Chen’s head filled with question marks. He doesn’t want poems? Then what is all this leading to?

“Your Majesty is wise. This humble commoner admires it from flat on the ground.”

“Of all the useless things in the world, a scholar is the most useless. Poems and songs are for leisure and amusement and should not be built up… To prize letters and slight arms is not the road by which a country grows strong.”

The Xuan Emperor’s eyebrow went up. “To prize letters and slight arms is not the road by which a country grows strong. Why not?”

Ning Chen said it perfectly seriously. “A people amused to death, and scholars who ruin a country. No enemy of ours fears the Great Xuan because of a few poems… What they fear is the spear point and the arrow in the hands of a Great Xuan soldier.”

“Well said!”

Old General Chen’s breathing came fast and his beard shook with it.

There had been no great war for the Great Xuan in years, and so poems and songs had come by degrees to take the center of things, and the young men of every province had gone after their pleasures, and idleness had become the fashion. It grieved him to the bone.

Or to put it another way: a few days of full bellies and they had forgotten how cold the northwest wind is.

The Xuan Emperor was smiling. “Ning Chen. Then would you be willing to serve the country?”

Ning Chen said it perfectly seriously. “This humble commoner once knew a man who chose to give up his own life for a crowd of people he had never met.”

“Before he died, this commoner asked him whether it was worth it. He told me… A man alive has to do something with it. He can’t spend a whole life for nothing.”

The man Ning Chen was talking about was his old instructor. An iron-and-blood soldier, dead saving a crowd of people he had never met.

The Xuan Emperor and the others didn’t follow it, and looked at him without understanding.

Ning Chen said the rest of it one word at a time. “What this humble commoner is trying to say is… if a day comes when I am needed to do something for the common people, I am willing.”

Even at the cost of his life. It would mean his time in this world had not been spent for nothing.

Ning Chen had come to think that his crossing into this world was not luck. It was because the soldier in him hadn’t died.

The Xuan Emperor nodded, satisfied. What he did not notice was that Ning Chen had said for the common people. Not for the imperial house.

“Ning Chen. Since you are willing to earn your way out of the charge… then this emperor permits you to take a post in the Inspectorate, and grants you the silver.”

The silver meant the silver fish-scale coat. In the Inspectorate it was the third rung.

Men who had just come in could wear only red, which was the bottom.

Silver was nothing very grand either. A silver coat could not run a case on its own.

Only a man in a gold fish-scale coat could take charge of an investigation by himself.

In the whole Inspectorate there were eight gold coats, and every one of them was a master among masters.

As for the purple, there was one man in it, and that was the head of the Inspectorate — the man called Geng Jing standing right there. He could come before the throne without being summoned, and where an official stood below the fifth rank he had the right to execute first and report afterward.

Christ… the emperor’s a bit cheap. Silver is all I get.

Eunuch Quan spoke up to remind him. “Ning Chen. Kneel and give thanks for the imperial favor.”

Ning Chen hesitated, then set his teeth. “Your Majesty. This humble commoner does not want to enter the Inspectorate… This commoner wants to follow Old General Chen onto the battlefield, kill the enemy, earn merit, and defend his country and his home.”

Every person in the room was stunned.

The emperor had granted it with his own mouth, and Ning Chen dared refuse?

Eunuch Quan’s voice went sharp. “Ning Chen, you have some nerve. You dare go against the imperial word? Get down and knock your head and admit your fault.”

What Eunuch Quan was actually doing was warning him to accept, and quickly.

Defying an imperial command is a capital crime.

Old General Chen was full of worry. Ning Chen had the makings of a general, the kind you rarely see, and he wanted him on a battlefield too… but defying an imperial command is a serious offense.

He glanced at the Xuan Emperor, saw the face go dark, and something dropped inside him.

Nobody had ever dared go against the Xuan Emperor’s word… He had the name of a merciful ruler, but he was the Son of Heaven, and when he killed a man his hand never faltered.

The Xuan Emperor’s face was cold. “Give this emperor a reason.”

Because I don’t want to be one of the imperial family’s hawks and hounds. Will that do?

That was as far as the thought was allowed to go. Out loud it might have cost him his life inside a second.

Ning Chen put on his most honest face. “This humble commoner would not presume to deceive Your Majesty. It is only that… that the Inspectorate’s name stinks.”

The Xuan Emperor’s expression froze.

Everyone else’s face went strange as well. That’s the reason?

The Inspectorate’s name did stink. The officials of the court avoided it the way they would avoid snakes and scorpions, and the common people called it the Hall of the King of Hell.

Geng Jing’s face went through several colors and not one of them was good. That was point-blank, right in his face.

Part of it is our own doing, and part of it is you literary men, you sour scholars, making up stories about us behind our backs.

“Lord Geng, don’t be angry… I know you don’t hit a man in the face and you don’t answer a man by naming his faults, but I would not presume to deceive His Majesty. That is what is in my heart.”

The corner of Geng Jing’s mouth twitched. He wanted to throttle him. There are this many people here. Why point at me?

(End of Chapter 37)