Ning Chen slid down out of the tree, meaning to use the moment and slip away.

He had barely turned when the cold went up his back.

The wolf that had been tearing at the leg of the man who’d checked the ashes let go of him and came at Ning Chen.

His head snapped around. His face changed, and he threw himself into a roll.

The wolf came down on nothing.

He came up out of the roll, and it was already coming again.

Something hardened in his eyes. He watched it come and had the dagger out in one movement.

THUNK.

A cold flash in the air.

Steady, exact, vicious. The dagger went straight through the wolf’s skull.

“Lan Xing!”

Their chief shouted it.

Ning Chen pulled the dagger free and grinned at him. “Enjoy yourselves, all of you. Good day.”

Then he turned and ran.

He had celebrated too early.

He hadn’t gone far when a wolf a full size larger than the rest came out of the grass beside him.

There was no time at all to get out of the way. It put him flat on the ground.

Christ!

The wolf king.

It opened a mouth full of fangs, took Ning Chen by the back, and wrenched. The bundle he was carrying tore open and the silver went everywhere, white and bright across the ground.

The wrench threw him and rolled him over and over.

It’s the king, all right. The strength on the animal.

It sprang again, both forepaws down on Ning Chen’s chest, and went for his throat.

With nothing left to think with, Ning Chen got a hand into the wolf king’s neck and held it off him, and with the dagger in his right he stabbed, wildly, over and over.

Warm blood, rank with it, came over his whole face and gummed his eyes shut.

He couldn’t spare anything for that. He went on stabbing.

“It’s dead.”

Only when he heard the voice did he register that the wolf king had stopped moving.

He wiped the blood off his eyes with a sleeve, breathing hard… and a bitter smile came onto his face.

The Inspectorate men had finished the rest of the pack and were standing around him.

One of them lifted the wolf king’s body off him.

Ning Chen looked up at them with the same bitter smile.

He knew he wasn’t getting away.

He rested a moment, then sat up and looked at the silver scattered across the ground. “All of that is yours. Can you let me go?”

Their chief shook his head. “The emperor’s command stands above heaven.”

“I killed one of those wolves just now. Without me your man there would have been bitten to death. That counts as saving one of yours, doesn’t it? Take the silver and say you never saw me… I promise you not one person will ever know.”

Their chief made a sound at that, but he shook his head. “Say you did save our brother’s life… We don’t dare go against the imperial command. We have families too.”

Ning Chen asked, “No room to talk about it?”

The man shook his head. “You’re welcome to try resisting.”

Something hardened in Ning Chen’s eyes, and then his whole body went rigid. There was a sword across his throat.

“Fighting and killing. I hate all of it.” Ning Chen let out a resigned breath. “Fine. I’ll go back with you.”

There was something mocking in their chief’s eyes.

He gave one of the others a look.

One of them produced manacles and leg irons from behind his back.

Ning Chen put his hands out, cooperative about it.

The man put the manacles and the leg irons on him.

Their chief sent two of them after the horses that had scattered.

The horses were well trained and would not have gone far.

While they waited, they picked the silver up off the ground and took Ning Chen’s dagger.

The man who had checked the ashes had his wounds dressed. He wasn’t badly hurt, and he came over limping.

Ning Chen looked at him. “I saved your life back there.”

The man knew perfectly well Ning Chen hadn’t meant to save him — the wolf had simply found him while he was running. But he had drawn some of it away all the same, and without that there was no telling how it would have gone.

“Thank you.”

Ning Chen lifted his hands and showed him the manacles, and couldn’t help himself. “You have an unusual way of thanking people.”

The man said, “We’re carrying out orders too.”

“Lan Xing. An emperor’s command isn’t a thing a man refuses… You did save me, whatever you meant by it, and I’ll be grateful for the rest of my life. If there’s anything left undone that you want, tell me and I’ll do it for you.”

Ning Chen was quiet a while. “A full meal. That isn’t too much trouble, is it?”

“No.”

He opened his own bundle, handed Ning Chen dry rations out of it, and produced a waterskin as well.

Their chief came over. “Lan Xing. What is it you actually did? You didn’t mean to save my man, but you did it. I might be able to put a word in the right place and get you a lighter sentence.”

Their orders had been to take Lan Xing. Nobody had told them what he had done.

Ning Chen gave him a flat smile. “Every three-year-old in the capital knows that nobody who goes into your Inspectorate comes out alive.”

“Things go the way men make them go. We might be able to help you… or at least make you comfortable before the end.”

Ning Chen shook his head. “You can’t help me… I took the Fifth Prince hostage, and then I beat him within an inch of his life like a man out of his mind. Can you help me with that?”

Every one of them froze.

Taking the Fifth Prince hostage, and beating him. That was a crime that put a man’s entire household to the sword.

Nobody said anything.

With the imperial house in it, and the Fifth Prince at that, not even Geng Jing, the head of the Inspectorate, could save Lan Xing.

Ning Chen ate his rations without saying anything. He knew he was finished this time, completely finished.

I come to this world and I don’t last three months.

And if I die this time — do I cross over again?

The scattered horses were brought back.

They took Ning Chen back to the capital.

That afternoon he was taken into the Inspectorate and put in the cells.

Ning Chen knew his life had gone into its countdown.

The strange thing was that he wasn’t frightened at all. Perhaps because he had already died once.

He even had attention to spare for working out how to pull the whole Ning household down with him.

Human garbage like Ning Ziming, who threw away a wife and a son. Calling him a scumbag would be flattering him. He was lower than a pig or a dog.

If he could take a few bad men with him when he went, the trip into this world wouldn’t have been wasted.

The palace. The Hall of Cultivated Heart.

Not only the Xuan Emperor. The crown prince and Old General Chen as well.

The Xuan Emperor’s face was terrible to look at, and there was worry in it.

So was Old General Chen’s.

He had only found out the night before, when Qi Yuanzhong told him Ning Chen had ridden off on one of the warhorses.

That was when he realized something had gone wrong.

The crown prince had his head down and said nothing.

He had just been dressed down again.

Between last night and now, that made three.

The Xuan Emperor dressed him down often, though. He was used to it.

Just then a young eunuch came in on small quick steps, quiet about it, and knelt. “Your Majesty. Lord Geng begs an audience.”

Lord Geng being Geng Jing.

The Xuan Emperor said at once, “Send him in.”

The eunuch withdrew, and shortly Geng Jing came in, a tall man in a fish-scale coat. He was starting to make his bow when the Xuan Emperor said, “No ceremony. Have you found him?”

Geng Jing had spent the last several days on the Black King of Hell matter and knew perfectly well who Ning Chen was.

The boy is nothing but a son of Ning Ziming, the Minister of Rites. Why does His Majesty set this much store by him?

“Reporting to Your Majesty. He has been found… As Your Majesty instructed, Ning Chen has been put in the Inspectorate cells.”

The Xuan Emperor let out a small breath and smiled. “Good. Good… The boy isn’t hurt?”

“Reporting to Your Majesty. Ning Chen is entirely well… More than that, he saved one of your subject’s men.”

“Oh? How was that? Tell it.”

Geng Jing told him about the wolves.

The dragon countenance was greatly pleased.

“Running for his life and he still stops to save a man. The stupidity of it. Did he give himself no thought at all?”

“The boy never once does what this emperor expects of him. Hahaha—”

It astonished everyone in the room.

The Xuan Emperor never let his feelings show in his face, and it was a rare thing to see him laugh openly like that.

And there was admiration all through it, and concern for Ning Chen.

Something went sour in the crown prince. Which of us is actually your son?

“Geng Jing. Leave him in the cells. Ask him nothing, tell him nothing… And see he doesn’t go short of food or drink. If he loses a hair of his head, this emperor will have it from you.”

Geng Jing had no idea what any of it meant and did not dare ask. “Your subject obeys the imperial command.”

Old General Chen’s head filled with question marks. Who is Ning Chen? Weren’t we talking about Lan Xing? Has His Majesty forgotten him?

He was frightened for Lan Xing and did not dare interrupt the emperor, and the worry had his forehead damp with sweat.

(End of Chapter 31)