Two hours later, Geng Jing came back.

The moment he was through the door he saw Pan Yucheng with a black face.

The room was a wreck — a smashed vase, a teapot and cups gone to pieces.

Only Ning Chen sat cheerfully playing with a few pebbles.

“Have you… run into bandits in here?”

Pan Yucheng gave Ning Chen a sour glare. He seriously suspected Ning Chen had come to wreck the place.

Ning Chen gave a snickering laugh and said, “Lord Geng, look out!”

With that he raised a hand and flicked it.

A streak of cold light came at Geng Jing with a hard wind behind it.

Geng Jing did not blink. Just as the pebble was about to strike him in the chest his hand went out like lightning, and he caught it between two fingers.

Holy shit!!!

Ning Chen was stunned!

“The Flower Rain Blades?” Geng Jing tossed the pebble away and looked at Pan Yucheng in surprise. “You taught Ning Chen the Flower Rain Blades?”

Pan Yucheng gave one nod and made a sound of assent!

Looking at the smashed vase, the teapot, the cups… he already regretted it.

Ning Chen asked, curious, “The Flower Rain Blades? What has throwing pebbles got to do with blades?”

Geng Jing said, “What you call throwing pebbles is really throwing knives, and it is named the Flower Rain Blades. It was the technique that made Old Pan’s mother’s name… She could put out dozens of throwing knives in an instant, like a whole sky of flowers falling in the rain, and that is where the name comes from.”

Astonishment filled Ning Chen’s face. “Old Pan’s mother was a master too?”

Geng Jing said, smiling, “In her day she was a famous heroine of the jianghu.”

Ning Chen looked at Pan Yucheng. “Old Pan, then why don’t you use throwing knives? Can’t you do it?”

Pan Yucheng said mildly, “Throwing knives do too much harm. They take a life too easily.”

The corner of Ning Chen’s mouth twitched. Listen to him putting it on.

Geng Jing said, smiling, “He isn’t lying about that. The Flower Rain Blades go through bone and strike the vital points, and they take a life very easily.”

“You could use throwing knives, though. With as little strength as you have behind them, you might not manage to hurt anybody at all.”

Ning Chen rolled his eyes. “I’ve only started learning, all right? I don’t have the technique yet… Give me a while and I’ll show you what it looks like when a man stands with his hands in his pockets and has no idea what the word opponent means.”

Geng Jing let out a small scoffing sound!

Scoff your ass, Ning Chen said inwardly.

He turned the subject. “By the look of you, you didn’t catch the Left Chancellor?”

Geng Jing’s face darkened slightly, and he nodded.

Ning Chen was not disappointed. All of this was what he had expected.

“Never mind! He is a dog with no home to go to… The Left Chancellor now is only a tiger with no teeth, and the man behind him got him out because he may still be worth something.”

“Once he has been used up, he will be no use at all… And then we won’t have to lift a hand. The man behind him will kill him to close his mouth.”

Geng Jing nodded slightly.

Pan Yucheng said, “Chen Lezhang had a part in this business as well.”

Geng Jing’s face changed slightly. “He has been questioned?”

“Chen Lezhang had a guilty conscience, and Ning Chen bluffed him once… and he killed himself on the spot.”

Geng Jing’s body went slightly rigid.

Pan Yucheng went through the whole of it in detail, but held back the part about the crown prince.

Geng Jing said nothing for a long time.

After a while he let out a deep sigh and turned toward the door.

“You two carry on with the investigation. I am going into the palace to ask for punishment… A season of troubles indeed. The Left Chancellor lost, Chen Lezhang a gold coat and in it up to his neck. I wonder whether I can keep this purple coat of mine at all.”

Ning Chen said, to comfort him, “Don’t worry. His Majesty still trusts you.”

“Trust is trust, but a gold coat under my command has done this. I am afraid His Majesty will begin to doubt whether I am capable.”

Geng Jing shook his head and left with a bitter smile.

Ning Chen said feelingly, “Poor man… Serving a sovereign really is like keeping company with a tiger.”

Pan Yucheng glared at him. “Watch your mouth!”

Ning Chen shrugged and turned toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

Ning Chen said, “Down to the cells… The Chang woman and her son will be going to drink tea with the King of Hell shortly. I ought to see them off.”

Ning Chen came to the cell where Chang Ruyue was held.

Chang Ruyue’s hair hung loose and she was huddled in the corner, in a wretched state.

Hearing footsteps she looked up, and when she saw it was Ning Chen the poison came into her eyes by degrees.

“Have you come to laugh at me?”

Ning Chen nodded. “I have!”

Chang Ruyue got to her feet, staggered to the cell door, stared hard at Ning Chen and said through her teeth:

“If that animal Ning Ziming hadn’t said that killing you would hurt his career, I would have gotten rid of you, you cursed seed, long ago.”

Ning Chen looked at her with no expression at all. “Chang Ruyue, everything you have today you brought on yourself… A man who does enough wrong brings himself down.”

“We were a widow and an orphan. We could not have been any threat to you… Why did you have to have us both dead?”

Chang Ruyue’s face twisted. “I am the Left Chancellor’s daughter. How could I bear to have my own husband carrying another woman in his heart? How could I stand and watch some bastard come and take a share of the Ning property?”

Ning Chen smiled coldly. “Chang Ruyue, stop finding excuses for yourself… You were simply afraid.”

“Afraid of what? I am the Left Chancellor’s daughter. Would I be afraid of village peasants like you?”

Ning Chen said mildly, “You were afraid Ning Ziming would find out that Ning Gan is not his.”

“You knew perfectly well that once he learned it, all would be well while the Left Chancellor lived — but the Left Chancellor was an old man, and the moment he died there would be nobody left to hold Ning Ziming down.”

“And then you can imagine what would become of you and your son… At best a writ of divorce and out of the Ning residence. At worst you would die and nobody would say how.”

“So you spent everything you had on getting rid of my mother and me, and cutting off what Ning Ziming was hoping for.”

The viciousness went out of Chang Ruyue’s face, and in a moment her face was a dreadful white, with no blood left in it.

She pointed at Ning Chen with a shaking finger and said in her alarm, “You, you… how do you know that?”

Ning Chen gave a cold smile and said, jeering, “Ning Ziming told me… You thought you had hidden it well. In fact Ning Ziming knew a very long time ago.”

“He was only afraid of the Left Chancellor, and he has been swallowing it all this while.”

Chang Ruyue swayed, sat down hard on the ground, her eyes blank.

“So he knew all along. No wonder he testified against my father… So he knew all along…”

Ning Chen smiled coldly. “Ning Ziming is greedy for power and greedy for vanity, and he is a selfish man… And the more selfish a man is, the less he can bear to be betrayed.”

“Chang Ruyue, from the moment you thought yourself clever, treated Ning Ziming as a man to hand your mess to, and forced him to marry you… from that moment you planted the seed of your father’s fall.”

“You are not only jealous, you did not keep to a wife’s duty. You got yourself secretly with child by a servant of the chancellor’s residence. You are worth less than the women of the pleasure houses. You really are filthy… Everything that has come to you is exactly what you have coming.”

“In this whole business my mother was the one who had done nothing. She knew nothing at all, and she died and nobody said how… So I will petition His Majesty to give you and your son a thousand cuts, and to have you cut apart by inches.”

Chang Ruyue’s face was the color of dead ash, and she had the face of a woman who had buried both her parents.

She scrambled up, went down on her knees and knocked her head on the ground toward Ning Chen, over and over, begging:

“Ning Chen, it was all my doing. Blame me if you must blame somebody, take out whatever grudge you have on me… I beg you, spare Gan’er, I beg you, spare them… They are your brothers, all of them!”

Ning Chen said mildly, “If you had known this was coming, why did you do it?”

“Chang Ruyue, you and your son can go down and beg my mother’s pardon.”

Ning Chen finished and was about to turn away when he found Ning Gan standing in the cell opposite, staring blankly across at them.

Ning Chen glanced at him and said mildly, “You heard, I suppose? You were always calling me a bastard… In fact you are the real bastard.”

Ning Gan’s blank eyes settled on Ning Chen, and then all at once he rushed the door with a roar, seized the bars and shook them like a madman, snarling:

“I’m not, you’re lying… I am Father’s son, I am not a bastard, I’m not…”

Ning Chen smiled coldly. “You are the bastard your mother got by coupling with a servant of the chancellor’s residence. You have no right to the Ning name at all.”

Ning Gan looked at Chang Ruyue in the cell opposite and snarled, “Mother, tell me this isn’t true, it isn’t true…”

“I am Father’s child, I am not a bastard. Tell me I am not a bastard.”

Chang Ruyue sat slumped on the ground and could not get out one word.

Ning Chen gave a cold smile and turned away… He had what he came for. He had come this time to kill the heart.

Ning Chen had just come out of the prison when a red coat came hurrying up.

“Ning the Silver Coat, somebody has come from the palace. He is waiting for you at Pan the Gold Coat’s.”

Ning Chen made a sound of assent and went to Pan Yucheng’s room.

The moment he was through the door he saw a eunuch, smooth-faced and beardless.

“I greet you, sir!”

Ning Chen bent from the waist.

The little eunuch said in his thin, soft voice, “Ning the Silver Coat does this servant too much honor… Ning the Silver Coat, the Ninth Princess sends word. She asks you to come into the palace.”

Ning Chen’s eyes lit up. Could the Ninth Princess have found the eunuch with the mole below his earlobe?

He said a word to Pan Yucheng and went into the palace.

He came to the Fallen Phoenix Court.

The Ninth Princess was in a red dress again, though of a different cut from before, bright and pretty all over.

“I greet the Ninth Princess!”

“No need for ceremony.” The Ninth Princess raised a hand, then hesitated and said, “Ning Chen, I found the man you asked me to find for you.”

Gladness came into Ning Chen’s face. “Where is he?”

The Ninth Princess was silent a moment, and then said, “He’s dead!”

Something jumped in Ning Chen’s chest.

The Ninth Princess went on: “He was drawing water and fell into the well by accident, and by the time anybody found him it was too late!”

Ning Chen laughed coldly to himself. Accident indeed. He had plainly been killed to close his mouth.

“Ninth Princess, whose palace did this eunuch serve in?”

The Ninth Princess shook her head. “An odd-job eunuch of the laundry court, I think.”

The laundry court was where the washing was done in the palace, and an odd-job eunuch did whatever small work there was.

Ning Chen was somewhat disappointed. Since this man had been silenced, whatever lay behind him had certainly been wiped clean as well.

It seemed that lead had gone cold too.

“My thanks to the Ninth Princess. Your subject will withdraw!”

The Ninth Princess hesitated, and bit her red lip. “Ah… you’re going already?”

Ning Chen checked and asked, “Is there something else, Ninth Princess?”

The Ninth Princess’s small face flushed pink, and she said in a small voice, “I want to hear you tell a story.”

Ning Chen smiled bitterly and said, “Your pardon, Ninth Princess. Your subject’s family are nearly all about to die. I truly have no heart for telling stories.”

The Ninth Princess checked. She had heard about the Ning residence being searched and seized.

“Ah… is there anything I could help with?”

Something flickered in Ning Chen’s eyes. Perhaps the Ninth Princess really could do him a favor… but there were things that could not be said outright.

Ning Chen sighed. “Ninth Princess, the crime Ning Ziming committed takes the entire household to the sword. They have deserved what they get… It is only a pity that the servants of the household are caught up in it. They have done nothing.”

“And my second and third brothers as well. There is something wrong with the heads of those two. They are as stupid as pigs and they know nothing at all… And now out of nowhere they are to be beheaded, and it sits badly with your subject.”

“Ah… your subject should not be saying such things to the Princess and spoiling her mood. When there is another chance I will come and tell the Princess a story. Your subject withdraws!”

Ning Chen turned and left.

Ning Ziming, I have done what I could. Whether Ning Xing and Ning Mao live is up to their own luck now, Ning Chen said inwardly.

Ning Ziming had helped him bring the Left Chancellor down, and he had promised to do what he could to save Ning Xing and Ning Mao. He had done everything he ought to do… As for the result, that was not his to worry about.

The Ninth Princess watched Ning Chen’s lonely back going away, and could not help a pang of pity… After this there would be nobody left in the Ning house but Ning Chen. It was too pitiful.

“Heye, get a bowl of lotus-seed soup ready. I am going to see Father Emperor.”

(End of Chapter 179)