Ning Chen’s eyes were cold as ice. “You had better tell me the truth, or you’ll find I have methods you can’t imagine.”
The King of the Left Court made a cold sound in his nose. “This king does not stoop to lying.”
“He and I have worked together many times, and the man keeps his word. Whatever he promises, he delivers afterward.”
Ning Chen narrowed his eyes. He did put some faith in what the King of the Left Court said.
Kong Yongchun was the Left Chancellor’s man, and he was also the Army Supervisor at Beilin Pass. Getting a letter to the King of the Left Court was well within his reach.
So the man who really wanted him dead was the Left Chancellor.
Ning Chen asked mildly, “What else have the two of you worked on together?”
The King of the Left Court said, “Jobs of the same kind. Getting rid of one or another of your Great Xuan commanders. He paid, we did the work, and it went pleasantly enough every time.”
“It just never occurred to me that this time the hunted would turn into the hunter.”
Ning Chen said heavily, “And the rest of the letters between you?”
“Read and burn. This king burns every one of them the moment he has read it… I simply forgot to burn this one. To be exact, this king never thought you would turn up at my North Royal Court.”
Ning Chen looked at him and gave one cold smile after another.
“King of the Left Court. When a man overrates himself, he shouldn’t underrate everybody else along with it… Ning here may not be very clever, but he isn’t very stupid either.”
Ning Chen asked it one word at a time: “I’ll ask again. Where are the other secret letters?”
“If you dare tell me they were burned, I’ll cut you down right now… A hold as good as that one, and I don’t believe you read them and burned them.”
As he spoke Ning Chen slowly drew his blade, murder plain in his eyes.
The King of the Left Court stared at Ning Chen, a great deal going on behind his eyes, and for a long while said nothing.
“General Ning. When the secret letter first reached me, I did not take you seriously… This king thought too little of you. You really are a frightening opponent.”
The King of the Left Court’s gaze slid across and settled on a shabby old wooden chest in the corner. The lid stood open; a soldier had searched it a moment ago.
“The secret letters are all in the false bottom of that chest.”
Ning Chen looked at one of the soldiers.
The soldier took his meaning, went over and felt around for a while, and found that the bottom of the chest did have a second layer.
He opened it, took out a thick sheaf of secret letters, and handed them to Ning Chen.
Ning Chen counted them. Seven secret letters in all.
Which was to say that Kong Yongchun, that piece of garbage, had gotten seven Great Xuan commanders killed.
He opened one at random. The letter asked the King of the Left Court for help in killing a man named Xie Wen.
Ning Chen had never heard the name, but Liang Jingwu would certainly know it.
Ning Chen looked at the King of the Left Court. “None of these letters is signed. What makes you say Kong Yongchun wrote them to you?”
The King of the Left Court said, “Every one of them carries a private mark. A small hole is punched in the lower right corner of the paper with an embroidery needle. That stands for Kong Yongchun.”
Ning Chen held the letter up and looked closely. In the lower right corner there was indeed a small hole, almost impossible to notice.
“General Ning. Since you did not let your soldiers abuse the women of my North Royal Court, I’ll give you one more piece of news for nothing… As far as I know, this Kong Yongchun is only a small figure. There is a great man behind him pulling all the strings.”
“You Great Xuan people do love fighting among yourselves.”
Ning Chen made a cold sound in his nose, put the secret letters away and smiled coldly. “A prisoner has no standing to mock anybody else.”
Then he waved a hand and had the man taken away.
Just then Yuan Long came in at a quick walk.
“General Ning. The search is about done!”
A smile came over Ning Chen’s face. “How much good stuff did you turn up?”
Yuan Long grinned his big grin. “Gold, silver and jewels, a good twenty-odd chests. Better than five thousand warhorses. Cattle and sheep in the tens of thousands. Women, a few hundred of them. And better than three thousand prisoners.”
“Pan the Gold Coat is writing it all down. He’ll know the exact figures.”
Ning Chen nodded slightly.
“Come on. Take me to see it!”
Ning Chen came outside. Pan Yucheng was writing up the tally with a brush, and the chests on the ground were stacked into a small hill.
He opened one of the chests at random, and the gold inside came close to blinding his titanium-alloy worthless eyes.
Ning Chen asked offhandedly, “How much gold and silver and jewelry is there here altogether?”
Pan Yucheng looked at the record book in his hand. “Seventeen chests of gold, ten of silver, and about three of jewels.”
“I asked the Tuoluo soldiers just now. They regularly ship the gold and silver and jewels back to the Tuoluo capital. That’s why there’s so little of it here at the North Royal Court.”
The corner of Ning Chen’s mouth twitched. This is little?
Pan Yucheng said, “The army that went to Beilin Pass rode off with tens of thousands of warhorses. There are only five thousand and more left at the North Royal Court now… Cattle and sheep, about thirty thousand head.”
“As for grain and fodder, it’s pitiful… They say the Tuoluo army took nearly all of it when they went to Beilin Pass.”
Ning Chen nodded slightly. “Load all the gold and silver and jewels onto carts. Take every warhorse and every head of cattle and sheep back with us.”
Pan Yucheng said, “The trouble now is that we don’t have the hands… and we don’t know how to herd. Getting tens of thousands of head of livestock back is not going to be easy.”
Ning Chen smiled. “We don’t know how. The Tuoluo soldiers do.”
“Besides the women, the prisoners of war go back with us too.”
Pan Yucheng said, surprised, “You mean you’re letting all those women go?”
“What else? Drag a crowd of the old, the weak, the women, the children along with us, and are we marching or are we nursing them? Let them all go.”
Pan Yucheng nodded slightly. “All right. We’ll do as you say!”
“Pass the word. We leave early tomorrow, back to Beilin Pass.”
Pan Yucheng nodded and made a sound of agreement.
That night Ning Chen gave the order to kill sheep and butcher cattle and feast the Great Xuan soldiers.
After more than ten days on the road, everybody finally got a hot meal and ate their fill.
The next day, early morning, the army stood ready to move.
At Ning Chen’s word a great body of men came sweeping out of the North Royal Court.
The Tuoluo soldiers drove the cattle and sheep.
They were not unwilling, because Ning Chen had let the old, the weak, the women and the children go, and had left them some grain and fodder as well. It was barely enough to fill a belly, but it would not leave them to starve.
Ning Chen was no saint. He simply felt that dragging a crowd of the old, the weak, the women and the children along would slow the march down too much.
If the road home could have been cut in half, he would have taken them all back with him.
On the way back Ning Chen did not follow the track the Tuoluo army had beaten out. He went deliberately clear of it.
He had no idea how things stood at Beilin Pass right now.
Still, with Liang Jingwu’s ability, the Tuoluo army shouldn’t be getting much out of it.
If they ran into the Tuoluo army coming home on the way back, that would be trouble.
Even with the King of the Left Court as a hostage, Ning Chen was not easy about it.
Going back they were on horseback, but the cattle and sheep could not move fast, and they had a crowd of prisoners with them, and they were going around by another way. It took almost more time than the journey out had.
Ning Chen sent scouts ahead, riding hard, to reach Beilin Pass first… If Liang Jingwu had beaten off the Tuoluo army, he was to send men out to meet them.
“Old Pan. Let me have a look at that book of yours?”
Pan Yucheng glanced at him with the look of a man who had something to say and had stopped himself.
Ning Chen put out his hand and looked at him with a narrow-eyed smile.
Pan Yucheng hesitated, then handed the book over after all.
Ning Chen took it, opened it, and there was the whole of this trip’s takings written down.
He turned the pages for a while, something flickering in his eyes, and then tucked the book away inside his coat.
Pan Yucheng frowned slightly. “Don’t you go making trouble. Every piece of captured property has to go to the treasury… By the law of the Great Xuan, a man who embezzles is beheaded!”
Ning Chen said “Oh,” and then smiled. “What you’ve got written down here isn’t accurate. When we get back to Beilin Pass I’ll write out a new one.”
(End of Chapter 165)