Jin Wu shook his head. “That I don’t know. Lord Zhang sent me two diviners. They could find where the ore lay. We only did the digging.”

“Diviners? Where are they?”

Jin Wu looked at the bodies covering the ground. “Your men shot them.”

Ning Chen: “……”

“How much ore have you dug out altogether?”

“I don’t know. We split into two shifts and dug day and night. A lot of it, anyway.”

Ning Chen’s brows drew together. “You pack the ore into logs and throw them in the river and let the current take them down. Who takes delivery downstream?”

Jin Wu said, “Lord Zhang’s men too. The one in charge is called Li Ji.”

“And where does the ore go in the end?”

Jin Wu shook his head. “I couldn’t say. Lord Zhang never told me… But I happened to hear him muttering once when he was drunk. Once the ore is refined into gold, it goes to the capital in secret.”

Ning Chen’s eyes tightened.

To find a gold mine and dare to work it privately. The man has nerve, and he is certainly high up.

Could it be the Left Chancellor?

Every memorial passed through the Grand Secretariat for review. Small matters never reached the Xuan Emperor at all. Only large ones were sent up to His Majesty for his decision.

Jiang Zhengyang had sent up memorial after memorial, and every one of them had sunk like a stone into the sea.

It was very likely the Left Chancellor who had held them down.

The Left Chancellor. It’s very possible.

The mine was in Yang’an County. So besides Zhang Yuancang, the magistrate of Yang’an County was certainly in it too.

Ning Chen looked Jin Wu over. “What you’ve told me isn’t worth very much.”

Jin Wu’s face changed. He said quickly, “Ning the Silver Coat, I can name Lord Zhang to his face.”

Ning Chen made a small scoffing sound and said with contempt, “Do you think there’s a secret in Zhang Yuancang we can’t dig out of him once he’s inside the Inspectorate’s cells?”

“Your wife and son hang on this. Think hard. Is there anything else you’ve forgotten to tell me?”

Jin Wu thought a long while, then shook his head. “I’ve told you everything I know… I beg my lord’s mercy. Let my wife and son live.”

“If you knew it would come to this, why did you start?”

Ning Chen thought it over a moment. “All right. I’ll give you your chance. Name Zhang Yuancang and I’ll see your wife and son kept safe.”

“This small man is willing. Thank you, my lord. Thank you, my lord…”

Jin Wu was overcome with gratitude and knocked his head on the ground again and again.

Just then Yuan Long came over.

Ning Chen looked at him. “Did you get anything useful out of them?”

Yuan Long shook his head. “They’re chicken thieves and dog stealers, every one. They lost their silver in the gambling houses and were brought out here to dig the debt off… They know nothing else.”

“Their accounts all agree. I don’t think they’re lying.”

Ning Chen inclined his head slightly.

“Yuan Long. Since they’re no use, cut them all down. Not one left… Men like that living in the world are nothing but a waste of grain.”

Yuan Long nodded. “Sir!”

“Gather all the bodies together and burn them!” Ning Chen said it, and pointed at Jin Wu. “Take this one back to the county office at Yang’an for me. Nobody but me is to go near him.”

“And tell Qi Yuanzhong to take every man in the Yang’an county office into custody and hold them until I get back to deal with them.”

Yuan Long bowed. “As you order!”

Ning Chen turned and came to stand in front of Wu Tiezhu. “Go back with them for now… Jin Wu can’t die yet. He’s still of use to me. Rest easy. He will die. But not now.”

Wu Tiezhu’s eyes were red, and he nodded.

“Little Chen. Thank you.”

If it were not for Ning Chen he could have gone his whole life without settling the score.

Ning Chen smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “When I’ve finished what’s in front of me, I’ll go back to the village with you and pay our respects to Uncle Wu and the rest of them.”

Wu Tiezhu nodded.

Ning Chen left with a dozen or so men, searching downstream along the river.

About an hour later, they met two soldiers.

“General Ning!”

The two of them came forward quickly and made their bows.

Ning Chen asked, “How are things on your end?”

“We followed the river down and found a crowd of men fishing the logs out and getting them onto carts to haul away… We’ve taken all of them. Feng the Silver Coat ordered the two of us to report to General Ning.”

Ning Chen nodded and made a sound of assent. “Take me there.”

They had not gone far before he saw Feng Qizheng and the rest.

There was a well-hidden track along the riverside, not very wide, just enough for one cart to pass.

Five carts stood beside it with logs lashed onto them.

Feng Qizheng came out to meet him and pointed at the men they had taken… There were not many on this side, thirty or so all told.

“Ning Chen. A few dead, the rest all taken.”

“None of ours hurt?”

“A few light wounds. Nothing that matters.”

Ning Chen nodded. “Have the army surgeon look at them when we get back.”

Feng Qizheng nodded, then said with a puzzled look all over his face, “I had a look just now. They’re ordinary logs… Is a load of timber worth these men dying over?”

Ning Chen said, smiling, “Logs on the outside. There’s a whole world inside them… They’re hollow, and there’s gold ore in them. They found a gold mine and they’ve been working it in secret.”

Feng Qizheng’s mouth fell open.

“No wonder the weight of them was strange. I took it for the water soaking in and making them heavier.”

“Working a gold mine in secret. That’s a capital crime… No wonder they fought like their lives depended on it.”

Ning Chen smiled, then walked over to the men they had taken and ran a cold eye over them. “Which of you is Li Ji?”

Nobody made a sound.

Perhaps they knew the crime they had committed was a capital one. The color had gone out of every face, and every man among them had the face of a man who had buried both his parents.

Ning Chen drew his blade and pointed it at one of them. “Which of you is Li Ji?”

The man said nothing and shivered where he stood.

Ning Chen smiled coldly. The blade went up and came down, and the blood spattered three feet.

The long blade moved along and pointed at another man.

Before Ning Chen could ask, this one pointed at a middle-aged man with a goat’s beard. “Him. That’s Li Ji.”

Ning Chen ran his eye over Li Ji, sheathed his blade, and told Feng Qizheng, “Keep this Li Ji for me. Cut the rest of them down, not one left!”

“You’re not going to question them?”

“They’re chicken thieves and dog stealers. They don’t know anything. Cut them all down for me.”

Ning Chen said, low, “I lived in Changshou Village when I was small. I grew up eating out of a hundred households’ pots… And these animals went into that village not long ago and burned and killed and looted, and the people who once looked after me all died under their butchering blades.”

Feng Qizheng nodded. “Go and rest over there. Leave the rest to me.”

Ning Chen was about to nod when he caught Li Ji stealing glances at him with the look of a man who had something to say and had stopped himself.

Ning Chen went over and looked at him. “Do you have something to say to me?”

Li Ji hung his head and said nothing.

Ning Chen was in no hurry. He watched the thirty or so men marched down to the riverbank and put on their knees in a row.

Some of them begged without stopping.

Some were too frightened to get a word out and went limp on the ground like so much mud.

Some were frightened until they fouled themselves.

Feng Qizheng said sharply, “Cut!”

More than thirty long blades came down.

For a moment the screams rang against the sky.

The blood came pouring out, ran together into streams, ran down into the river, and great spreading patches of dark red came up on the water.

Li Ji was shaking like a sieve of chaff, his eyes rolling back, and he almost fainted dead away.

(End of Chapter 146)