“Ning Chen, don’t believe him. Just take his head off and be done with it!”

Feng Qizheng swung his blade straight at Ning Gan’s neck.

Ning Gan shrieked until his voice broke.

Ning Chen’s eye and hand were quick. He got both arms around Feng Qizheng and pushed him back.

“Old Feng, steady… Give him one more chance. If he won’t come clean, and you want to cut him down, I won’t stand in your way.”

“Ning Chen, are you simple? You’d actually believe anything he says? Don’t hold me back, let me cut him down.”

Ning Chen held Feng Qizheng off with everything he had and shouted back over his shoulder, “Talk, will you! Do you want to die?”

“I’ll talk, I’ll talk… I don’t know anything about any Poisoner. Any Black King of Hell. I truly don’t know anything.”

Ning Chen stopped short.

And then he had the feeling that Ning Gan had been playing with him.

Feng Qizheng said angrily, “You see? I told you… He won’t tell the truth. Let’s just cut him down.”

“Ning Gan. Do you really want to die?”

Ning Chen roared it.

Ning Gan’s face was all innocence. “But I truly don’t know. You can kill me… and I still won’t know!”

Ning Chen and Feng Qizheng could not keep the act going any longer.

“Ning Gan. If that is what you are going to say… then there is nothing I can do for you.”

Ning Gan said, shaking as he did it, “I, I truly don’t know!”

Ning Chen could not help wondering. Had he been wrong about it all along? Wasn’t it Ning Gan who put the Black King of Hell in his bed?

No. When he had said the name of the Poisoner, something moved violently behind Ning Gan’s eyes… The man knew the Poisoner. He was certain of it.

Ning Chen smiled coldly. “Ning Gan. Nobody who goes into the cells of the Inspectorate walks out alive. I’ll have you try every instrument in this room, and then I’ll send you on your way.”

He went over, took hold of Ning Gan’s hair and dragged him toward the wooden donkey.

Ning Gan held onto the donkey’s leg for dear life and would not let go.

“Old Feng, come and help!”

Just then the door of the torture room opened, and Pan Yucheng came in.

When he saw Ning Chen hauling Ning Gan toward the wooden donkey, the corner of Pan Yucheng’s mouth twitched.

“Ning Chen, step outside with me a moment!”

Ning Chen made a small sound of acknowledgment and patted Ning Gan on the head. “Wait there. We’ll go on in a little while!”

He got up and followed Pan Yucheng outside.

“Ning Chen. Let them go!”

Pan Yucheng came straight to the point.

Ning Chen looked at him, taken aback. “Old Pan, what are you saying? Ning Gan put a Black King of Hell in my bed once. My guess is that the Poisoner gave it to him… He has certainly seen the Poisoner.”

Pan Yucheng asked, “Do you have proof?”

Ning Chen shook his head. “All three of them have soft bones. Give me a little time and I’ll get the proof.”

Pan Yucheng shook his head. “There isn’t time! The Left Chancellor has come in person to ask for them.”

“What of the Left Chancellor? This is the Inspectorate. He wouldn’t dare take them by force, would he?”

Pan Yucheng sighed. “By force, no, he wouldn’t dare. But he is the Left Chancellor, and his weight tips the whole court… The Inspectorate is not open and aboveboard in every case it handles. It would be very easy for him to get a hold on us.”

“Wu Dayuan, for one — raping and murdering the women of a convicted official’s household. That sort of thing used to happen from time to time… and there are other things that won’t bear daylight.”

“Ning Chen, to every civil and military officer of this court, the Inspectorate’s existence is a nail in the eye and a thorn in the flesh… Every one of them wants it broken up.”

“The Inspectorate has made too many enemies. Once it is broken up, the men lose its protection, and to men of that kind we are fish on the block, to be cut up as anyone pleases.”

“Ning Chen, let them go! There are times when it is hard for Geng the Purple Coat too.”

Ning Chen was very unwilling. He had been within reach of getting a hold on the Left Chancellor.

Pan Yucheng said, “Geng the Purple Coat telling you to let them go is also protecting you… They are guilty of stealing an imperial sword, but the charge of losing one is not light either.”

“His Majesty has shown you nothing but favor, but outside there is a Left Chancellor and a great officer of the Second Rank of this court… Which way it weighs in His Majesty’s mind is not easy to say.”

“Ning Chen, you took the Empress’s brother’s head off, you have done a good many things outside the line, and every time you have come away whole… His Majesty’s partiality for you is one part of it. But has it occurred to you that His Majesty may have wanted these people dealt with all along?”

Ning Chen fell silent.

Pan Yucheng patted him on the shoulder. “Let them go. You’ve had your anger out. Don’t carry this one up to His Majesty.”

“Bringing down a tree that reaches the sky is not the work of a single morning… You need a good blade in your hand first. Cut away the branches and the leaves, then cut the roots and the stem.”

“You march out soon. A war record is the best blade there is.”

Ning Chen sighed and nodded slightly.

Chang Ruyue and her sons were let go.

As Ning Gan was being taken out he stopped where he stood all at once, staring hard at Ning Chen with a challenge in his eyes.

Ning Chen looked back at him coldly.

“Stand still.”

The jailer escorting him saw him start toward Ning Chen and barked at once.

Ning Chen said mildly, “Let him come!”

The jailer let go of him.

Ning Gan came up in front of Ning Chen and dropped his voice. “That Black King of Hell. I was the one who put it in your bed… Though your life’s a hard one to take, bastard. Even that didn’t kill you.”

“And that act you and the fool were putting on just now was quite a show.”

Ning Chen looked at him, and his face showed nothing.

Ning Gan grew more pleased with himself.

“Do you know why I kept my teeth shut?”

Ning Chen said mildly, “Because I have no proof that you put the Black King of Hell there, and no proof that you have seen the Poisoner.”

“You knew the Left Chancellor would come and get you out. Keep your teeth shut and you live… And if you had talked, then even if I didn’t kill you the Left Chancellor would have closed your mouth for you.”

Ning Gan kept his eyes hard on Ning Chen. “I truly do wonder now whether you are that bastard at all. How can a man change this much?”

“Still, clever as you are, there is one thing… you will never know.”

Ning Chen watched the pleasure in Ning Gan’s eyes and narrowed his own. “What thing?”

Ning Gan’s face went into a savage grin. “When you’re dying, I’ll be sure to tell you!”

Ning Chen made a small, calm sound of acknowledgment, and then drove a fist into his face.

Ning Gan staggered back several steps and nearly went down.

Ning Chen came forward and put a foot in after it.

Bang!!!

Ning Gan was kicked flat on the ground, and lay there with his arms around his stomach, wailing.

Ning Chen said with a cold smile, “It seems I had too high an opinion of you. What you said just now — your mother taught you that, I take it?”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t stand there provoking a man who can take hold of me any time he likes, not while I was still in danger.”

“Frightened onto your knees in front of me, snot and tears all over your face, whipped, and within an inch of riding the wooden donkey… I don’t know what you have to swagger about. Anyone who didn’t know better would think you’d given me the beating.”

Ning Chen gave a cold, contemptuous laugh, put his hands behind his back and walked away.

Coming out of the cells, Ning Chen saw the Left Chancellor, Ning Ziming and Geng Jing.

The Left Chancellor’s face showed nothing, but his eyes were cold as a venomous snake’s.

It was Ning Ziming’s eyes that Ning Chen could not read. There was a great deal in them.

The Left Chancellor fixed his eyes on Ning Chen and said mildly, “Ning the Silver Coat carries a very high hand indeed. Even on his own kin he can lay so foul a hand as this.”

Ning Chen smiled slightly. “The Left Chancellor goes too far. The same father and different mothers hardly makes us kin… Besides, the law leaves no room for feeling. Ning Chen is a silver coat of the Inspectorate. He is deep in the emperor’s favor and eats his sovereign’s salary, and he ought to set an example, and he must certainly not bend the law for his own people.”

“The Left Chancellor, though — a man of your weight, coming all the way down to the Inspectorate in person. Are you up to it?”

The Left Chancellor made a cold sound in his nose. “Ning the Silver Coat need not trouble himself. This old man’s health is excellent!”

Ning Chen said with a perfectly straight face, “The Left Chancellor mistakes me. What I am worried about is the Inspectorate’s floor tiles.”

The Left Chancellor’s face went black, and his eyes went colder still.

Pan Yucheng and the others had their lips shut so hard it hurt, and even Geng Jing turned his head away in a hurry for fear of laughing out loud.

Ning Chen really was a piece of work. He was laughing at the Left Chancellor for being fat… The meaning was, don’t come again, the Inspectorate’s floor tiles won’t bear your weight.

The Left Chancellor was fat, though. He was like a mountain of meat.

(End of Chapter 131)