It did not take Ning Chen long to run the carriage down.

“Stop the carriage!”

Ning Chen roared it.

Steward Liu shouted, “Don’t stop! Drive!”

He knew well enough how it stood. Make a run of it and there was still a way out alive.

Once they were inside the Inspectorate, they were dead men and no question about it.

The house servant laid on the whip for all he was worth.

Ning Chen was in a fury. He meant to jump across onto the carriage, but they were moving too fast, and he tried several times and failed.

“Diaochan. Run them down for me.”

Diaochan stood a full size larger than the horse in the carriage traces.

She seemed to understand what Ning Chen had said.

She put on speed all at once and went into the carriage horse.

The horse was knocked off its line and went careening off sideways, straight at a big tree at the side of the road.

The horse was clever and just scraped past the trunk — but the shaft of the carriage went into the tree hard.

Crack!

The shaft snapped, and then half the body of the carriage hit the tree.

Bang!!!

The whole carriage was in pieces in an instant.

The horse was not hurt in the least. The reins snapped, and it had been badly frightened as well, and it bolted off into the woods at a gallop.

Ning Chen reined Diaochan in and patted her neck. “Beautifully done!”

Then he swung down out of the saddle, drew the saber at his waist and walked over.

The house servant who had been driving had been run clean through the body by the broken shaft, and it was a bad way to die.

The men in the carriage box were still alive — Steward Liu and Hu Qiang, and one more house servant.

All three were badly hurt. The violence of the crash had broken bones and torn sinew in them, and they were groaning with the pain of it.

Ning Chen kicked the splintered wood out of his way and came to stand over Hu Qiang.

Hu Qiang’s face was all blood. He stared at Ning Chen in terror and opened his mouth as though to beg, but no sound came out of him — only an odd rasping in his throat, and blood running steadily from the corner of his mouth.

The violence of the crash had ruined him inside, then.

Ning Chen looked coldly down at him. “Hu Qiang. You raped a common man’s wife. You treated a human life as so much grass. You fled to escape the charge… I now sentence you to death, to be carried out at once!”

The saber in Ning Chen’s hand brought a sheet of cold light up with it.

Thuck!!!

The one stroke very nearly took the head off.

Ning Chen carried the saber over to where Steward Liu lay. “When Hu Qiang was doing his evil, you gave him plenty of the ideas yourself, I don’t doubt?”

He did not wait for Steward Liu to beg. The saber went up and came down, and sent him straight off to see the King of Hell.

Then he stepped over to the house servant with the last of the life going out of him, and without one word said, one stroke.

Ning Chen’s face showed nothing as he shook the blood off the blade, and he wiped the saber clean on the servant’s clothes.

He was about to leave when he stopped again.

Ning Chen went through the men’s clothes for a while.

In the end all he turned up was a hundred-tael silver note off Steward Liu, and a few taels of loose silver.

They had fled in too much of a hurry to carry any great sum with them.

Ning Chen put the note away. The silver could not bring Chai Dazhuang’s wife back to life, but for that family it would at least mean living a little better than they did.

Ning Chen put the horse to a gallop and rode back to the Hu house.

Men of the Inspectorate’s first department had arrived and taken the Hu residence over.

“Ning the Silver Coat.”

The red coat at the gate saw him and hurried to salute.

Ning Chen nodded, handed the horse over to them and walked in.

Feng Qizheng and the others saw him and came straight over.

Word had reached Pan Yucheng, and he came at once with his men.

Pan Yucheng frowned at him. “What is the matter with you? You just put a blade into a silver coat, and now you’ve killed a scholar.”

“The man held a degree. Even if he had committed a crime, he had to be convicted before he could be executed… You dealt with him on your own authority, and if the censors get wind of it they will be in front of His Majesty attacking you for it, and no mistake.”

“Can’t you keep to the rules a little? Does everything have to be done on the first impulse?”

Ning Chen asked, flat, “Has the body been brought up out of the well?”

Pan Yucheng frowned. “It has.”

“She was Uncle Chai’s daughter-in-law. Uncle Chai is the best anyone in this world has ever been to me… When I had nothing to eat, he went short on his own rations for me. When I was being knocked around, he was the only one who stood in front of me. When I was sick, he sat up the whole night looking after me.”

Pan Yucheng and the rest of them said nothing at all!

So it was not that Ning Chen was reckless, or that he had too much murder in him… he was paying back a debt.

Chen Chong said, “I’ve just had those house servants questioned. It’s all clear enough. Hu Maode had it coming and worse.”

Gao Ziping frowned. “The trouble is that Ning Chen is a silver coat. He has no right to run a case on his own… and on top of that he executed a prisoner on his own authority. Somebody is going to fasten on that and impeach him for it.”

Pan Yucheng said mildly:

“When did Ning Chen ever run a case on his own? He was acting on my orders, scouting ahead of us… and it happened that he came on the criminals trying to flee. Ning Chen moved to stop them, the criminals drew on him and resisted, and in the end Ning Chen fought with everything he had and cut the villains down single-handed.”

Gao Ziping and the other two stared at Pan Yucheng, dumbfounded.

Then all three of them stuck a thumb up at once.

“Clever. That is truly clever!”

“Chief, I admire you from flat on the ground.”

Pan Yucheng put his hands behind his back and said mildly, “Why do you think I’m a gold coat?”

Gao Ziping and the other two: →_→ (TL Note: an emoticon, printed as the author printed it. Two eyes cut sideways — a flat, unimpressed side-eye.)

“Ning Chen, I heard you went after Hu Qiang. How is it you’ve come back on your own? Didn’t you catch him?”

Feng Qizheng asked it.

Ning Chen said, “I caught him!”

“Where is he, then?”

“I sent them off to see the King of Hell.”

The men looked at one another with nothing to say.

Pan Yucheng said, “Where?”

Ning Chen said, “Out the north gate, follow the small road and keep going, seven miles or so. Their carriage is smashed to pieces. You can’t miss it.”

“Chen Chong. Take men and see to the scene.”

Pan Yucheng gave the order.

“Sir!”

Pan Yucheng looked at Ning Chen. “That body from the well. Do we send men back with it, or do you take it yourself?”

“I’ll take it myself.”

“Go on, then. Leave the rest to us.”

Ning Chen thanked him and turned and left.

Ning Chen took men with him and brought the body of Chai Dazhuang’s wife back.

Uncle Chai’s family had been watching the road for her, and what came was a body.

Chai Dazhuang wept fit to tear his heart out of him, and came near to fainting away several times.

The tears ran down Uncle Chai’s old face, and he seemed to age years all at once.

The little boy with the sturdy round head — who perhaps understood that he had no mother now — howled and howled.

“I beg my lord to see justice done for my wife, I beg my lord to bring those villains to account under the law, I beg you, my lord… my wife died so wrongfully…”

Chai Dazhuang knelt in front of Ning Chen, knocking his head on the ground over and over, begging bitterly.

Ning Chen hurried to lift him up. “The Hu father and son are both dead. I killed them with my own hands.”

Chai Dazhuang stared, stunned!

When it came home to him, he made to knock his head on the ground to Ning Chen again.

Ning Chen pulled him up quickly.

“Thank you, my lord, thank you…”

Ning Chen took out the silver note and pushed it into Chai Dazhuang’s hands. “Get her into the ground and at peace as soon as you can. The dead are dead. The living have to look ahead — for the boy’s sake, you have to pull yourself together.”

Chai Dazhuang shook his head again and again. “My lord avenged my wife. This commoner has nothing to repay you with. How could I take your money on top of it?”

“Fourth Young Master, we can’t take this silver… You have done more than enough for this old servant already!”

Ning Chen put on a stern face on purpose. “Uncle Chai. If you don’t take this silver, I’m going to be angry.”

Ning Chen pushed the note on Uncle Chai and would not hear another word about it.

He did not dare tell them where the note had come from. If he had, they would have been all the more set against taking it.

“Thank you, Fourth Young Master, thank you…”

In the end Uncle Chai could not hold out against him, and took the note.

Ning Chen sighed. “Uncle Chai. In a few days I have to go a long way off, and I’m afraid it will be a good while before I’m back. I won’t be able to come and see you in that time.”

“When I get back from it, I’m going to buy a big house — and then the three of you are moving in.”

(End of Chapter 101)