Chen Lezhang came out of one of the rooms.
He had gone livid, and that face of his, already thick with meat, looked more frightful than ever!
Ning Chen met his eyes without a trace of fear.
After holding Ning Chen’s eyes a moment, Chen Lezhang turned his head and said to one of the silver coats, “Bring out a bench.”
Thirty strokes of the rod was an imperial order. He did not dare refuse it.
The silver coat ran into the room and carried out a long bench.
Chen Lezhang went over and laid himself down on it.
“Ning Chen. Get it over with.”
Ning Chen said to himself that this Chen Lezhang was a man of some spine after all.
Thirty strokes. And the rod was solid wood, with a rough, uneven surface on it.
He had a feeling that this small frame of his would not stand five.
Ning Chen swept a hand out. “Carry it out!”
Gao Ziping and Feng Qizheng went over and took station on either side of Chen Lezhang.
Ning Chen was about to say begin when his eyes narrowed.
“Well now. You’d never have guessed Chen the Gold Coat had such a shapely backside on him.”
There was mockery all over Ning Chen’s face. Chen Lezhang had padding down his trousers.
He had taken the man for someone with spine. It turned out he had simply come prepared.
Chen Lezhang’s face grew darker still.
What he had put in there was a pad, sand and pigskin inside it, and it would take a great deal of the force out.
Chen Chong said a few words low in Ning Chen’s ear.
Only then did Ning Chen learn that this was an unwritten rule of the Inspectorate.
When a man below was punished, he always wore one. They were colleagues, after all, and they would have to face each other afterward, and a thing like this should not be taken too far.
Ning Chen had known nothing about any of that, and even if he had, he would not have let Chen Lezhang cheat.
Wu Dayuan had been hateful past bearing, but without Chen Lezhang letting him run, he would never have dared rape and kill women for his own amusement as freely as he did.
And besides, he was still taking medicine for that whipping kick Chen Lezhang had given him the other day.
“Old Gao, Old Feng. Get his trousers off him and take the padding out.”
Gao Ziping’s face stiffened slightly, and Feng Qizheng’s with it.
Chen Lezhang said through his back teeth, “Ning Chen. Do not push this too far.”
Ning Chen made one cold sound and walked straight at him.
Shk!!!
He reached him, and the long blade came out of the sheath.
Without a moment’s hesitation Ning Chen took the saber in both hands and swung it down at Chen Lezhang’s neck.
Chen Lezhang’s face changed on the instant. He shoved off with both hands, sprang up off the bench and got back fast.
Crack!!!
And that long bench had been cut clean through by Ning Chen.
It left every man there rooted where he stood, with the shock plain on his face.
Chen Lezhang roared, “Ning Chen! What do you think you are doing?”
The saber in Ning Chen’s hand came around to point at him, and his face showed nothing, and he said it one word at a time. “Killing you.”
Chen Lezhang was beside himself. “Ning Chen. You are a silver coat, a nothing, and you dare raise a hand to me? I think you must want to die.”
Ning Chen brought the long blade level and said hard, “Chen Lezhang. Thirty strokes of the rod is an imperial order, and you dare to cheat at it, and deceive His Majesty, and hold the imperial authority in contempt… What of it, if I cut you down?”
Every color went out of Chen Lezhang’s face. That was a charge he could not carry.
“Ning Chen. Where a man can let another off, he ought to let him off.”
Ning Chen had a hold on him, and Chen Lezhang had no choice but to come down off his height.
Ning Chen said in a fury, “And you think you’re fit to say that to me? When that beast Wu Dayuan was doing what he did, did you ever say it to him?”
Chen Lezhang was past holding himself in.
But he understood that this was not the moment to be throwing his weight about. If this business ever got as far as His Majesty, what came of it was past imagining.
Once a charge of deceiving the sovereign and holding the imperial authority in contempt was fastened on him… at the lighter end it meant the entire household to the sword, and at the heavier end it meant being wiped out to the third generation of the family.
“Ning Chen. Wu Dayuan was taken to the market crossing yesterday and beheaded in front of everybody, and I have taken the punishment I had coming. Can this business be over now?”
Ning Chen narrowed his eyes slightly. He knew there were only eight gold coats in the whole Inspectorate, all of them long-serving men… His Majesty would not put one of them to death lightly.
But when he thought of that young girl Wu Dayuan had raped and killed, he wanted nothing so much as to cut Chen Lezhang to pieces alive.
He also knew that he could not kill Chen Lezhang now.
“Chen Lezhang. I’ll give you two choices. One, take off your trousers and take your punishment like a good boy. Two, I go into the palace right now and present myself to His Majesty.”
Chen Lezhang stared hard at Ning Chen.
But there was more edge in Ning Chen’s eyes than in his.
A chill rose in Chen Lezhang from nowhere he could name, because what he felt coming off Ning Chen was murder, and a great deal of it.
“Fine. I choose the first.”
Ning Chen smiled coldly. “A wise choice.”
Chen Lezhang wanted to swallow Ning Chen whole and skin him raw, and did not dare let a scrap of it show.
He had them bring out another long bench, and undid his trousers, and took the pad out, and laid himself down on the bench with his backside bare.
“Heh… Chen the Gold Coat, when you get a moment, you might give those two black cheeks of yours a wash.”
Ning Chen said it with mockery all over his face.
Chen Lezhang could have died of the shame and the rage. His skin was dark, that was all; it was not that he did not wash.
He knew perfectly well, of course, that Ning Chen was humiliating him in front of all these men on purpose. And there was not one thing he could do about it.
Ning Chen swept a hand out. “Carry it out!”
Feng Qizheng and Gao Ziping traded a look, then swung the punishment rods up and brought them down hard across Chen Lezhang’s backside.
It is called a stroke. It was closer to a hammering.
Because the punishment rods were solid wood, and coming down on a man’s backside they did not make a slapping sound but a heavy, hollow thud.
At the first stroke Ning Chen saw plainly how Chen Lezhang’s whole body pulled tight, the veins standing out on him, his eyeballs going red with the pain, and a roar of it coming out of his throat.
Thud, thud, thud…!
Feng Qizheng and Gao Ziping worked together perfectly.
The rods kept the rhythm, coming down one after another on Chen Lezhang’s backside.
At the start Chen Lezhang could still hold it in.
But at the fifth, the whole man screamed like a pig on the block.
At the tenth, Chen Lezhang’s backside was a mess of blood and meat.
At the twentieth, Chen Lezhang had shouted his voice raw, and what came out of him was a cracked screaming… and the rods had been dyed red with blood.
At the thirtieth, Chen Lezhang was soaked through with cold sweat, his long hair plastered wet against his face, both arms hanging down without strength, and no sound coming out of him at all any more, because he had gone out cold.
Ning Chen looked coldly at the silver coats standing white-faced about the courtyard, and said it one word at a time:
“From this day on, when there’s a confiscation, if your hands aren’t clean, that’s no business of mine… But if any one of you ever again bullies the weak, or forces himself on another man’s wife or daughter… I promise you that you’ll die worse than Wu Dayuan did.”
Ning Chen finished, and looked to Gao Ziping. “We’re going.”
They all left the fourth department.
The fourth department’s silver coats got the half-dead Chen Lezhang off to the sixth department in a great hurry.
On the way back Feng Qizheng was grinning wide, showing his big front teeth in a foolish happy smile. “Who’d have thought I’d live to take the rod to a gold coat?”
Gao Ziping was a steadier man, and looked further ahead than Feng Qizheng did.
“We had all better be careful after this. We’ve offended Chen the Gold Coat past mending this time. He’s a gold coat and we’re silver coats. It would be very easy for him to make trouble for us.”
The smile went off Feng Qizheng’s face all at once.
“Ning Chen, I’m still young. I haven’t been to the courtesans’ quarter enough, and I’ve never slept with a girl of the twelve houses. I don’t want to die… You’ll have to look out for us from here on.”
Ning Chen patted him on the shoulder and said, with great seriousness, “You go ahead and die… I’ll sleep with the girls of the twelve houses for you. No need to thank me.”
Feng Qizheng howled with rage and cursed Ning Chen for being inhuman.
And did Ning Chen not know perfectly well that he had offended Chen Lezhang past mending? It made no difference to him… He would find his chance, and finish Chen Lezhang for good, and be done with it once and for all.
Chen Lezhang and Wu Dayuan were two of a kind, and a beast like that with power in his hands is a terrifying thing.
They all got back to the first department.
Pan Yucheng was standing in the courtyard, and when he saw Ning Chen he said, flat, “They’re all dead.”
Ning Chen was blank for a moment, and then it came to him at once — Pan Yucheng meant the ants and the rat… So his suspicion had been right. There was something wrong with that elixir.
“Old Pan. Have you seen Lord Geng?”
Ning Chen asked it. He was ready to move on the Elixir Bureau.
His Majesty had shown him nothing but favor, and he did not want His Majesty dead… Without His Majesty’s favor, with all the people he had offended, life was going to get very hard indeed.
(End of Chapter 107)