Eunuch Quan left with his guards.

As the guards went, their eyes rested on Ning Chen with nothing in them but smiles and gratitude.

The silver coats and red coats who had crowded in for the show kept thanking him… They stopped just short of calling Ning Chen Daddy.

Feng Qizheng came over. “Are you stupid? A whole chest of gold and you scattered every last piece of it.”

Ning Chen smiled and said,

自古人生最忌滿， 半貧半富半自安。

The thing a life has always most to fear is having it full; half poor, half rich, and half at ease with yourself.

Feng Qizheng scratched his head. “What’s that mean?”

Ning Chen had nothing to say to that, and explained. “It means the courtesans’ quarter tonight. My treat!”

Feng Qizheng said, “No, no, no… Tonight is on me. It’s my turn to be Daddy this time. Call me Daddy, quick.”

“Call you what?”

“Call me Daddy.”

“Yes, son… Now go and find an empty room and help your daddy carry this stuff in.”

Feng Qizheng had several gold ingots in his hand. “How would you like me to brain you with my own money?”

Ning Chen gave him a flat look, then found an empty room, got some help, and had everything the Xuan Emperor had granted him carried inside.

Things given by the emperor’s own hand. There was no fear of anybody stealing them.

What he was most curious about now was the house. His Majesty had come like rain in a drought — he had just been thinking of buying a house and the Xuan Emperor granted him one.

Ning Chen meant to go and take a look at it… and in a while he would bring Uncle Chai back.

“Old Chen, Old Feng. Come and look at the house with me.”

Neither of them had any objection.

The three of them had barely come out of the Inspectorate when a fast horse came galloping up.

On it was a middle-aged man in a runner’s uniform.

The man reined in, swung down, came up to the three of them at a quick walk, looked at Ning Chen and bowed over his clasped hands. “Would this be Ning the Silver Coat?”

Ning Chen nodded. “That’s me!”

“Ning the Silver Coat, the Nanyue embassy has come within three miles of the south gate. This small man is under Lord Li’s orders to ask Ning the Silver Coat to come at once.”

Ning Chen was startled. “Three miles outside the city? Why is this only being reported now? Shouldn’t somebody have gone out thirty miles to meet them?”

“No word came up from ahead. The Nanyue embassy simply appeared three miles outside the city.”

Ning Chen frowned and smiled coldly. “Coming and going like ghosts. They’re doing this to make us look bad.”

“Where are Lord Li and Lord Shen?”

The man said quickly, “The two lords have already gone to the south gate to receive them!”

Ning Chen made a sound of assent!

“Wait for me a moment!”

Ning Chen turned and ran back inside.

In no time he came out again with Pan Yucheng.

He brought Pan Yucheng because he was worried there were real fighters in the Nanyue embassy and he would not be able to handle them alone.

They took their horses and rode for the south gate.

By now the Nanyue embassy had reached the gate.

Li Hanru and Shen Min stood with the sweat on their foreheads, because Ning Chen had still not appeared.

The two of them could only grit their teeth and do the thing, and receive the embassy themselves.

The Nanyue embassy came with three carriages in all and fifty or sixty guards.

In the first carriage was Nanyue’s prodigy, the Fourth Prince.

In the second carriage was Nanyue’s State Preceptor.

The third carriage held the gifts. When you come to another man’s house you have to bring something.

The carriages came slowly to a stop.

Li Hanru and Shen Min went forward to meet them with a dozen-odd soldiers of the garrison.

“Li Hanru, Director of the Hanlin Academy of the Great Xuan, and Shen Min, Vice Minister of Rites, welcome the envoys of the Nanyue Kingdom.”

Giving their own titles first showed how seriously they took the other side.

The carriage curtain lifted, and a tall, slender, handsome young man in white with a white cloak over it came out of the compartment, stepped down onto the mounting stool, and brought his people over to stand in front of Li Hanru and the rest.

The young man bowed, and his smile was mild. “Kang Luo, Fourth Prince of Nanyue, greets the two lords.”

Nanyue had taken its shape from the Great Xuan, down to manners very like the Great Xuan’s own.

Only this dog had never been tamed, and had begun baring its teeth at its master.

Li Hanru and Shen Min both tightened inside. They had both heard of this man. The Fourth Prince of Nanyue had a great name.

Kang Luo’s eyes went over the crowd as though he were looking for somebody.

“My lords, I hear the Great Xuan has produced a remarkable young prodigy. Is he here?”

Li Hanru smiled. “The Fourth Prince means Ning Chen? He is waiting at the Hall of the Four Barbarians to receive you all.”

The Hall of the Four Barbarians is where embassies are received, and nowhere else.

The name came from the founding emperor of the Great Xuan himself.

He said at the time that outside the Great Xuan every other country was barbarian, and so the place where embassies were received was called the Hall of the Four Barbarians.

Kang Luo looked a little disappointed, then asked with a smile,

“A letter reached me on the road here… It said that Ning Chen, a silver coat of the Great Xuan, led a thousand soldiers, cut his way clean through the North Royal Court, and took the King of the Left Court alive. Is there truth in it?”

Li Hanru smiled. “The Fourth Prince is well informed indeed. The King of the Left Court is in our Great Xuan at this moment.”

Kang Luo narrowed his eyes slightly. “I find I can hardly wait to meet this Ning the Silver Coat.”

“The Fourth Prince need not be impatient. You will see him soon enough… Gentlemen, please follow me into the city.”

Kang Luo bowed. “You have my thanks!”

With that he turned and got back into the carriage.

The embassy came into the city, and the people crowded both sides of the road to watch, heads packed together.

“Baizhan. Plant the banner.”

Kang Luo said it suddenly, and quietly, from inside the carriage.

A middle-aged man walking beside the carriage, plain in the face but sharp in the eyes, said heavily, “Yes!”

He went at a quick walk to the carriage behind, brought back a war banner, sprang high off the ground, pushed off the carriage shaft to carry himself higher still, and set the banner on the carriage roof.

Snap!!!

The war banner of Nanyue streamed out in the wind.

Li Hanru and Shen Min saw it and could not hold their anger down.

To plant a Nanyue war banner in the imperial capital of the Great Xuan was a naked provocation.

There was anger on the face of every soldier of the garrison.

The people on both sides saw what the Nanyue party meant by it too, and in a moment the whole crowd was hot with it.

Li Hanru said heavily, “Fourth Prince, this is hardly proper, is it?”

The Fourth Prince lifted the curtain of the little window in the carriage and said with a smile, “Forgive me! It is a custom of our Nanyue.”

“Does the Fourth Prince not know that a man follows the customs of the place he enters? If you rouse the people with this, this official cannot hold them back.”

The Fourth Prince smiled slightly. “I am sure the two lords can keep us perfectly safe.”

Li Hanru’s and Shen Min’s faces went livid.

If anything happened to the embassy in the Great Xuan’s own capital, it was the Great Xuan that lost face.

Just then the people began to shout.

“Ning the Immortal of Poetry…”

“Ning the Silver Coat…”

“General Ning…”

When Ning Chen came home in triumph a good many of them had gone down to the Sky River landing and seen his face.

For that one thing alone — cutting down the Empress’s brother for the people of Chongzhou — the common people loved him… to say nothing of his having just come back from winning a war.

Ning Chen in his silver fish-scale coat, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, on a tall horse, made a formidable figure.

He waved to the people as he came on.

I suppose I count as an A-lister now, Ning Chen thought.

Ning Chen looked at the embassy column coming toward him, and his eyes went to the war banner on the carriage roof and cooled several degrees.

“God damn it… coming into the imperial capital of the Great Xuan to plant a war banner. That’s a naked provocation.”

Feng Qizheng was swearing with rage.

The others’ faces were ugly with it too.

Ning Chen turned to Pan Yucheng and the others. “Are you sure you can take a horse down with one stroke?”

Feng Qizheng said with confidence, “Cut the neck. One stroke and it’s dead!”

The corner of Ning Chen’s mouth went up. “Good. Get ready to cut down the horses!”

Pan Yucheng started, and said quickly, “Ning Chen, don’t do anything wild… If something happens to the embassy it’s our Great Xuan that loses face.”

Ning Chen smiled coldly. “And if we let them ride all the way to the Hall of the Four Barbarians with that banner up, what face has our Great Xuan left?”

“I’ll break the banner. You cut down the horses. Try for one stroke and a clean kill, and don’t hurt anyone in the crowd.”

Pan Yucheng and the others had no idea what he meant. How was Ning Chen going to break the banner?

“Ning Chen, those men around the first carriage are all first-rate fighters… I doubt you can get near it. Better let me.”

Pan Yucheng said it.

Ning Chen shook his head. “No need!”

As he said it he took down the musket hanging at his saddle. It was the first musket ever made; Ning Chen had kept it as a memento and it had been sitting under his desk at the Inspectorate ever since.

He had reckoned long ago that the Nanyue people would not behave and would certainly pull something, so when he went back in for Pan Yucheng he had picked up the musket on his way out, in case he needed it.

Just then the embassy column came to a stop as well.

The carriage curtain lifted and Kang Luo came out.

So that must be Nanyue’s prodigy of a Fourth Prince. Good-looking bastard, too.

Ning Chen muttered it to himself.

Kang Luo stood on the carriage and clasped his hands. “Would this be Ning Chen, Ning the Silver Coat of the Great Xuan?”

Ning Chen said, “It is!”

Kang Luo looked him over, privately taken aback. He is this young?

A boy like this cut his way clean through the North Royal Court, took the King of the Left Court alive, and did not lose a man doing it.

This one cannot be left alive, or he will be the greatest enemy Nanyue has.

The truth was that murder had already risen in Kang Luo back on the road, when the news about Ning Chen reached him.

“I have long heard the name. Ning the Silver Coat’s name has rung in my ears like thunder.”

Ning Chen said flatly, “A lot of people say that.”

The corner of Kang Luo’s mouth twitched slightly, and then he said, “I am Kang Luo, Fourth Prince of Nanyue.”

Ning Chen only made a flat sound of assent!

There was anger on every Nanyue soldier’s face. Kang Luo’s standing in Nanyue was higher than Ning Chen’s in the Great Xuan.

Ning Chen pointed at the war banner on the carriage roof. “I’m giving you the chance. Take that banner down yourself.”

Kang Luo smiled. “Ning the Silver Coat will bear with us. It is a custom of our Nanyue!”

Ning Chen did not bother wasting words. He raised the musket in his hand.

Kang Luo looked at the iron thing in Ning Chen’s hand without understanding it, still wondering what it was. Then a blast like a thunderclap went off beside his ear.

Bang!!!

The noise was like a thunderbolt, and fire and black smoke spread out with it.

The war banner on the carriage roof snapped through at the sound and fell to the ground.

Every man there went white in the face at the sound of the musket.

The horses took fright, screaming and plunging, and dragged the carriage straight at Ning Chen.

Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng sprang from their saddles, pushed off their horses’ backs with one foot, and threw themselves through the air.

With the people crying out around them, their blades went up and came down, and the cold light of the blades brought the blood spraying up after.

Both horses were killed where they stood and went over backward, and took the carriage over with them.

Ning Chen had expected Kang Luo to be thrown clear. Instead, in the instant the carriage went over, Kang Luo sprang down from it, staggered a few steps and got his feet under him.

Only he had gone white in the face and looked thoroughly the worse for it.

The horses behind had taken fright too.

But the Nanyue guards riding with them held on hard and got the frightened animals under control.

Only then did Kang Luo’s own guards come to themselves and rush over.

“Fourth Prince, are you all right?”

“Your subordinates deserve to die. We failed to keep the Fourth Prince safe. Let the Fourth Prince punish us.”

Kang Luo waved a hand. “Get up. It is not your doing!”

Then his eyes went to Ning Chen, dark and vicious. “Is this how your Great Xuan welcomes an honored guest?”

“That’s right. It’s a custom of our Great Xuan — when a friend comes there’s good wine, and when an enemy comes there’s a stick… And to receive an honored guest like the Fourth Prince we have to fire a gun in welcome. It’s our highest ceremony.”

Ning Chen talked nonsense with a perfectly straight face.

(End of Chapter 183)