The young girl was in worn-out clothes, and her face was filthy. Perhaps she had dirtied it deliberately. It is a way of keeping yourself safe.

But she had a very beautiful pair of eyes.

Those beautiful eyes were full of terror now, and she had gotten herself behind the woman in fright.

The woman stood over her the way an old hen stands over a chick.

She was shaking from head to foot. Anyone could see how frightened she was.

But a woman is weak, and a mother is iron… She still squared herself as though she would fight to the death.

The household men were all big and strong, and a frail woman like that was beneath their notice.

The sharp-mouthed, hollow-cheeked man said it in his strange sing-song. “Your family owes His Lordship the Empress’s brother his rent. A debt is paid in money — that is the way of heaven and earth… No money, then hand over your daughter against it.”

“Come on. Take the girl back with me.”

The man who could not stop bringing up blood went down on his knees and pleaded with them bitterly. “I beg you. Give me a few days’ grace and I will find some way to pay the rent… I beg you not to hurt my daughter. I beg you. I’ll knock my head on the ground for you.”

“Pay? With what?” The rat-eyed man rolled his eyes at him. “Your family can’t produce a single copper. Pay be damned.”

“Take my advice and see sense. His Lordship has taken a liking to your daughter — you ought to be pleased about it… And His Lordship says that once your daughter goes to him, the rent you owe is wiped out.”

“Come on, take the girl back. Don’t keep His Lordship waiting.”

Several of the household men closed in a step at a time.

The woman held her daughter tight against her.

“Get out of the way, you stinking bitch… You’d set yourself against His Lordship? Do you want to die?”

One of the household men kicked the woman over.

Another kicked the man who was coughing blood off his feet and onto the ground.

With the girl about to be taken, the old man could not hold himself back. “Stop. This is my surgery, not a place for you to run wild in.”

The rat-eyed man with the sharp mouth and hollow cheeks laughed coldly, with contempt in it. “Old man, this is a girl His Lordship wants… You’d set yourself against His Lordship?”

“Take my advice and get out of the way this instant, or we’ll beat you along with them.”

“What are you standing there for? Take her back. If His Lordship is kept waiting I’ll skin the lot of you… And if this old man tries to stop you, beat him along with them.”

One of the household men stepped up. The old man tried to block him and was shoved over.

The man was reaching for the young girl.

And then a brick came through the air and took him on the side of the head.

He let out a howl, his eyes rolled back, and he went straight down, his head broken and bleeding, wailing with it.

Every man there froze in fright.

“All of you. Stop where you are.”

The roar of it came across the yard.

They turned to look, and saw a boy in a silver fish-scale coat with a sword at his hip, his left hand on the hilt, coming at them with long strides.

Ning Chen could no longer afford to worry about giving himself away.

An Empress’s brother had appeared out of nowhere. Without the fish-scale coat there would be no holding these men at all.

Then something contracted behind Ning Chen’s eyes. He remembered, all at once, the words His Majesty had sent him through Geng Jing… look into it to the bottom.

Pan Yucheng was leading. Every move was his to give. Those words should have gone to Pan Yucheng — and instead they had been given to him.

The Empress’s brother?

Does His Majesty want to move against the Empress’s brother, and find that for some reason he cannot do it openly… Are those four words a hint at something?

Is what the Xuan Emperor wants for me to be the blade that cuts imperial kin?

Just then the sharp-mouthed man’s face changed entirely. “You— a silver fish-scale coat. You’re from the Inspectorate?”

Where had a man of the Inspectorate come from, here?

There had been a party of Inspectorate men into Zhenyuan County a few days back, but those men were drinking tea and listening to music with His Lordship.

He looked at Ning Chen — a boy with the softness of childhood still on him, small and thin — and thought it over. This has to be a fake, surely? A little brat, in the Inspectorate?

“Are you from the Inspectorate?”

Ning Chen’s face was cold and he said nothing at all.

“Do you have a waist tally?”

Ning Chen said, “No.”

“How would a man of the Inspectorate have no waist tally? You’re a fake, and no mistake.”

That was the sentence Ning Chen had been waiting for.

“I am a silver coat named by the reigning sovereign himself. You dare slander a silver coat of the Inspectorate? That is a dog’s own nerve.”

“Today I’ll let you see for yourself whether I’m a fake.”

Ning Chen unhooked the long sword and brought it down hard, scabbard and all, on the man’s head.

CRACK.

The man screamed, clapped both hands to his head and went down.

Ning Chen took the sword up, put his whole weight behind it, and beat him about the head and face without stopping.

Every swing brought a scream out of the rat-eyed man like a pig on the block.

He was beaten until he was rolling all over the ground.

“That’s for saying I’m a fake. That’s for saying I’m a fake. That’s for slandering me—”

Ning Chen went at him with the sword, hammer blow after hammer blow.

“Help. Help me—”

“Are you dead, all of you? Take him. He’s a fake. Help me—”

The rat-eyed man screamed for the household men to take Ning Chen.

Ning Chen stopped all at once, looked at the men closing in, and finally showed the waist tally.

“Open your dog eyes and look at it properly. My name is Ning Chen. I am a silver coat named by His Majesty. Attacking a man of the Inspectorate is the same as rebellion, and it takes three generations of your family with you… On your knees.”

The household men were frightened stupid on the spot.

They threw the clubs down and went to their knees, every one of them shaking.

They might not know a silver coat from a gold one, but all of them had heard what the Inspectorate was. That was the Hall of the King of Hell. Nobody who went in came out.

The man Ning Chen had beaten went white, and was frightened stupid along with them.

You worthless— you had a waist tally and you didn’t produce it?

Ning Chen found the sword awkward in his hands. He went over, picked up one of the clubs, swung it a few times and heard it come through the air, and found it suited him very well.

He came back, looked down at the rat-eyed man on the ground, and said, smiling, “Come on, then. Let’s carry on.”

He said it and set about him with the club, at the rate of a man working iron.

The rat-eyed man screamed like a pig on the block and rolled all over the ground.

“Help. Help me—”

“Mercy, stop, I was wrong, I know I was wrong. I had eyes and no pupils in them and did not know my lord. I beg my lord’s mercy.”

Ning Chen paid him no attention at all and went on laying into him with the club.

“I am His Lordship’s man. His Lordship is the reigning Empress’s own younger brother. Beating me is setting yourself against His Lordship… His Lordship will not let you off.”

Ning Chen went still for a moment. The Empress’s own brother? That was frightening enough as a connection.

The officials of Chongzhou had been corrupt for a long time and nothing had ever rooted it out — and perhaps that was exactly because of this Empress’s brother.

Behind the Empress’s brother stood the Empress. Was that why the Xuan Emperor could not move against him openly?

When the capital magistrate’s office took the two boys who came to lay a complaint, Ning Chen had known then that officials in the capital were shielding the officials of Chongzhou… but by the look of it now, the one shielding this nest of woodworm might be the Empress herself.

Seeing Ning Chen stop, the rat-eyed man took it for fear, and said it sharply. “Frightened now, are you? His Lordship—”

“His Lordship my ass… Never mind a wretched servant like you. If His Lordship were standing here today I’d beat him just the same.”

Ning Chen had lost himself in thinking and had stopped without noticing. The reminder brought him back to what he still had to do.

He got the club up and set about him again in earnest.

The screaming, like a pig on the block, went on and on around that small yard.

It lasted until the club — as thick as a child’s arm — broke with a crack, and only then did Ning Chen stop… His breath was coming short. Beating a man is tiring work.

(End of Chapter 53)