Ning Chen and Feng Qizheng were put up in the rear courtyard of the county yamen.

For safety's sake the two of them shared one room, so that if anything happened they could look out for each other.

That evening Qiu Mingde had a banquet made ready.

Ning Chen declined it on the grounds that he was not feeling well.

He did not dare eat anything of Qiu Mingde's carelessly.

Qiu Mingde might not dare kill him out in the open, but what if there were some slow poison in the food?

It was only a guess, but there was never anything wrong with being careful.

Ning Chen and Feng Qizheng shut themselves in the room and gnawed at dry rations, and did not even dare drink the tea.

Feng Qizheng took out two of the rations and knocked them together. They rang.

"This is all we have—two left... We won't hold out many days on this."

Ning Chen smiled. "Bear with it. Tomorrow I'll take you out and we'll eat properly... Qiu Mingde can't very well poison the food in the whole county town."

Feng Qizheng nodded, then asked, "How long do we stay here?"

Ning Chen shook his head. "Until Old Pan comes back with men... Qiu Mingde doesn't dare kill us inside Yangping County. But it's more than three hundred li from Yangping County to the city of Xiuzhou, and I doubt we'd get down that road alive."

Feng Qizheng said, "You're an imperial commissioner now. If anything happens to you, he answers for it too."

Ning Chen made a small sound. "How hard is it to find a few men to play hill bandits? Then they kill us and close the mouths... They hand the bodies over, and what blame is left is small enough for them to carry."

"Old Feng, we go out and walk around a lot more these next few days... I showed who I was on the road to the yamen, but the common people don't dare come to me with a complaint at all. It seems we'll have to go to…