“Ning Chen, you bastard, you actually threw piss on us! I’ll— urgh—”

Ning Mao didn’t get to finish. He doubled over dry-heaving.

“Ning Chen, I am an official of the court, how dare you— ptooey— ptooey— urgh—”

Ning Gan was no better. Halfway through, the reek in his mouth won out and he started retching too.

Ning Chen said with a cold smile, “I’m sobering you up. No need to thank me.”

“Oh — and a boy’s piss is good medicine, you know. You two came out ahead tonight… it’s only that I’ve been running a little hot lately, so the flavor may not be all it could be.”

With that he turned back toward his room, kicking the bones across the floor and out the door as he went.

“I’ll leave these for you to enjoy.”

Then the door banged shut.

“Ning Chen, you get out here! You dare throw filth like that on us— I’ll— urgh—”

“I’m telling Father, and you will get more than you can handle— urgh—”

The two of them stood in the courtyard cursing him up and down.

They were just hitting their stride when the door creaked open and Ning Chen came out with the chamber pot in his hand.

“All that shouting must be drying you out. I’ve got another round ready for you. Wet your throats and keep going.”

He made as if to throw it.

Ning Gan and Ning Mao scrambled away in terror, half running, half falling over each other.

“Ning Chen, you wait. This isn’t over.”

“I’m telling Father in the morning. You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

Ning Chen gave a cold laugh, went back into the room, and shut the door.

He set the chamber pot under the bed, washed his hands in the copper basin, and went to sleep.

Early the next morning.

All through breakfast Ning Chen waited for Ning Ziming to come looking for him and take up his two precious sons’ cause.

Breakfast came and went with no sign of him.

Maybe Ning Gan and Ning Mao were still sleeping it off and hadn’t told him yet.

Ning Chen wasn’t going to sit around waiting to find out.

He went to the general’s residence and started another day of training.

When he got back that evening, Ning Ziming still hadn’t come.

Not a sound out of Ning Gan or Ning Mao either, as though the night before had never happened.

Ning Chen took it for the quiet before the storm.

Those two would never let a thing go. He’d have to watch himself.

That night he locked the door and the windows tight, half expecting the pair of them to slip in and kill him in his sleep.

He was in better shape than the day before. The medicinal bath had helped, though a full day of training still left him aching all over.

It would be like this for a few more days yet.

He decided to turn in early.

Old General Chen had told him on his way out that Tian Xuan would be waiting for him at the Top Scholar Tower the next day.

And he hadn’t slept properly the night before, thanks to Ning Gan and his brother.

He went to the bed and threw back the quilt to climb in.

The instant the quilt came up, a black shape shot straight at his face.

It was pure reflex — his head went to one side and his hand came up in the same motion and closed on it.

Two days of training were already showing. Before, he’d never have gotten a hand up in time.

The thing in his grip was cold. Ice cold. Ning Chen looked at it properly, and goosebumps came up all over him. Every hair on his body stood on end.

It was a black snake.

He had it by the body. The snake doubled back on itself and struck at his arm.

Ning Chen whipped his arm around and flung it. It hit the wall, dropped to the floor, and lay there twisting, out of the fight for the moment.

He crossed the room, grabbed the door bar, came back, and smashed the snake’s head flat with one blow.

It helped that he’d caught snakes before, back in the barracks. He was disgusted, not frightened.

An ordinary person would have gone stupid with terror.

Ning Chen didn’t know what kind of snake it was.

But it was black from end to end, its head was a triangle, and it was vicious… it had to be lethally venomous.

If the thing had actually gotten him, he doubted he’d have survived it.

Ning Chen’s face went livid. His eyes were cold and flat.

Ning Gan and Ning Mao. It had to be.

Sons of bitches. Devious ones, too.

He was in no hurry to go after them.

Without proof there was no point. They’d just deny it.

But the debt was on the books now. He would collect when the chance came.

With the door bar still in his hand, Ning Chen lifted the quilt away carefully, turned the mattress pad over, and went through the whole bed inch by inch.

He didn’t find anything else in it. He wasn’t getting back into it either.

He sat in a chair with the heavy cloak over him and more or less got through the night.

He woke with his back and hips in agony, worse than after a full day of training.

He skipped breakfast entirely and went straight to the general’s residence.

It was too early yet for the Top Scholar Tower. He would train first, and ask Old General Chen about something while he was there.

He got there.

Old General Chen was at breakfast.

The sight of Ning Chen filled him with satisfaction. The boy’s stubbornness had earned his respect.

Which of the young gentlemen of this capital got up at this hour? Which of them had that kind of grit? Which of them was willing to suffer for anything?

“Lan Xing. Have you eaten?”

Ning Chen shook his head honestly. “Not yet.”

“Come, come… sit down and eat with me. How is a man supposed to train on an empty stomach?”

Old General Chen was a fighting man, blunt by nature, and didn’t hold with a lot of rules.

“Thank you, Old General. Then I won’t stand on ceremony.”

Ning Chen sat down.

Only when he’d eaten his fill did he say, “Old General Chen, there’s something I’d like to ask you about.”

“What is it?”

Ning Chen hesitated, then drew a cloth bundle out from inside the heavy cloak and opened it.

The maids standing nearby went white, cried out, and backed away.

What he had brought out was a black snake with its head smashed flat. It was a hard thing to look at.

“Sorry — sorry… don’t be frightened. It’s dead. It can’t hurt anybody.”

Ning Chen apologized to them, embarrassed.

The maids went from frightened to dumbstruck.

They didn’t know who he was, but a man who sat at the same table as the old general had to be somebody of high birth.

And a man like that had just apologized to servants. It hardly seemed possible.

Even Old General Chen and Qi Yuanzhong, standing watch at the door, were staring at him.

Ning Chen saw nothing odd in it at all. You frighten somebody, you apologize. What else would a person do?

He asked, “Old General Chen, do you know what kind of snake this is?”

Old General Chen frowned. “That’s a Black King of Hell. Where did it come from?”

“Black King of Hell?” Ning Chen’s eyes narrowed. “You can hear the venom in the name.”

“Venomous doesn’t begin to cover it. There’s nothing worse in the world… The Tuoluo breed these on purpose. One bite and a warhorse of ours doesn’t last half an hour.”

“They coat their arrowheads with it. If one of our men has the bad luck to take an arrow, no medicine on earth will touch it. All he can do is wait to die.”

“The one mercy is that they’re very hard to keep — few of them live long in captivity… Otherwise there’s no telling how many of our men would have died to that snake.”

Cold went through Ning Chen from head to foot. If he hadn’t been fast last night, he would be a corpse right now.

“Lan Xing. Where did you find this Black King of Hell?”

Ning Chen’s face darkened. He said it one word at a time. “I found it in my bed.”

“What?”

Old General Chen’s face changed at once.

Everyone in the room was shaken.

To find a snake like that in your own bed — just thinking about it was enough to make the skin crawl.

(End of Chapter 22)