Half a month later.

The imperial commissioners sent by the court arrived.

Commissioners naturally didn't travel as fast as an eight-hundred-li express, so they came more than half a month after the messenger who'd brought the edict.

Any longer and Ning Chen would have gone out of his mind with boredom.

All these days he'd been wandering around with Xiao Yanxi, catching birds up on the hills or groping for fish down in the river, and now and then having Xiao Yanxi catch a bird in the grass. (TL Note: In Chinese slang, 鳥 "bird" also means a penis.)

And at long last, here they were.

There were twenty-odd people in the party, led by two men: Meng Fan, Vice Minister of Rites, and Dong Zhien, the Minister of Justice.

They had come for three reasons.

First, to find out for certain whether Lei An really had killed Yue Congyun.

Second, to determine whether Yuan Long and the others really meant to rebel.

Third, to buy the court time to move its troops into place.

Inside a tent.

Meng Fan and Dong Zhien sat bolt upright.

They'd felt the pressure from the moment they entered the camp.

The soldiers who brought them here had looked at them with open hostility.

The soldiers had shown them to this tent and then, claiming a camp was a restricted area where no one could wander about, kept them inside it.

And the whole morning had gone by without Yuan Long coming to see them.

Meng Fan said gravely, "Lord Dong, this doesn't look good."

Dong Zhien gave a slight nod. "It looks like Her Majesty was right to worry. We're imperial commissioners appointed by Her Majesty herself, sent by edict to inspect the frontier defenses. We stand for her. By rights, Yuan Long should have come out of camp to meet us.

Yet so far we haven't even seen his face.

Ignoring imperial commissioners is a challenge to the throne's authority. It seems their intentions are already plain."

Meng Fan lowered his voice. "Don't panic. Keep steady! We stand for Her Majesty and…