There was only one short line on the calling card, but Ning Chen knew perfectly well who had sent it.
The woman emperor had stolen a seed of his… and now the seed had taken root and sprouted.
This was the very thing he had feared most.
It really is the thing you dread that comes!
Ning Chen closed the card and could not help a bitter smile.
If the Xuan Emperor ever learned of this, his end could well be imagined.
Just then footsteps sounded outside the door.
“Fourth Young Master, the doorkeeper is here!”
Uncle Chai’s voice came from outside.
Ning Chen put his feelings away. “Send him in.”
The door curtain lifted, and Uncle Chai came in with a solidly built middle-aged man.
The doorkeeper was one of the men Gu Yichun had brought in. Ning Chen thought his name was Zhu Yuan.
“I greet the marquis!”
Zhu Yuan bowed respectfully.
Ning Chen held up the card in his hand. “Do you remember who delivered this card?”
Zhu Yuan glanced at the writing on the outside of it, thought a moment, and nodded. “I do… A strongly built middle-aged man. Light on his feet — his skill in arms must be very good.”
Ning Chen made a sound of assent. “What else did he say?”
Zhu Yuan spoke as he cast his mind back. “He said he was a servant of the Wu household, come to borrow a book from his master.”
“What book?”
This time Zhu Yuan thought for a good while before saying, “Record of the Glorious Age of Great Xuan, I think.”
Ning Chen nodded. “Anything more?”
Zhu Yuan shook his head. “No. That was all of it.”
Ning Chen made a sound of assent and waved a hand. “Uncle Chai, you may both go.”
When the two of them had bowed and withdrawn, Ning Chen got up and went to the study.
He found Record of the Glorious Age of Great Xuan on the shelf, spread it on the desk and went through it carefully.
But he was halfway through the book and had found nothing.
It was a book that flattered the imperial house, making myths of the great deeds of every emperor of the Great Xuan and painting a picture of peace with the common people living settled and content.
Ning Chen turned it over and over and still could not make anything of it.
He threw the book down on the desk and was about to go and tell the doorkeeper that from now on, if he saw the man who had brought the card, he was to hold him.
But at the door his step stalled, and he turned and walked back.
He had remembered something the woman emperor had once said to him, a thing that made no sense at the time, and told him to keep in mind.
Head joined to tail, then seven, and after that the multiples of seven, and so on from there.
Was this a cipher?
Ning Chen fetched paper and brush and worked through the book, writing as he went.
Before long a line stood out on the paper: The Carefree Escort House. We await your coming.
Ning Chen’s eyes narrowed. He burned the paper and the calling card to ash, changed into plain clothes and went out.
Dark night, high wind.
Ning Chen rode an ordinary horse and came to the Carefree Escort House under cover of the dark, then went up and knocked with the door ring.
The door opened with a creak.
A thin little old man looked out at Ning Chen standing there in a cloak with the hood up, and showed no surprise.
Plenty of people came to place a consignment in the middle of the night, and most of what they sent could not bear the light of day.
“Come in.”
Ning Chen stepped inside and lowered his voice. “I want to see your chief escort master.”
The doorkeeper shut the door. “This way, please.”
Ning Chen followed the doorkeeper to the door of a room in the back courtyard.
Candlelight wavered inside, and a tall figure was thrown across the window.
“Chief escort master, someone to see you.”
After a moment the door opened.
The man who opened it was middle-aged, in close-fitting clothes, strongly built, his skin dark and rough.
He looked at Ning Chen for a while, then said to the doorkeeper, “You may go.”
When the doorkeeper had withdrawn, the middle-aged man gestured Ning Chen in.
Ning Chen put his hands behind his back, took a firm grip on the handle of his dagger, and stepped inside.
The middle-aged man shut the door. He had barely turned around when his body stiffened: a keen dagger was against his throat.
The middle-aged man looked at Ning Chen calmly.
Ning Chen spoke. “You sent that card?”
The middle-aged man made a sound of assent.
“A Wu Kingdom spy?”
The middle-aged man made a sound of assent again.
Ning Chen smiled coldly. “You’re honest enough. Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill you to close your mouth?”
“The marquis won’t… Killing me would not cover the truth over.”
The corner of Ning Chen’s mouth twitched. “Wouldn’t it? If I don’t admit it, who is going to believe my seed took root and sprouted in Wu Kingdom soil?”
“The marquis had nobody to depend on from childhood and had a hard life of it… Presumably he doesn’t want his own child to live the same way.”
Ning Chen’s brows drew together and he gave a cold laugh. “His mother is the sovereign of a state. Is there anyone who would dare mistreat him?”
The middle-aged man said, low, “If my mistress sat secure on her throne and slept easy, she would never have taken the crooked path and played so dangerous a hand.”
Ning Chen’s eyes flickered. “She’s in trouble?”
The middle-aged man nodded slightly.
Ning Chen watched him. “What is your name?”
“Silence.”
“How long have you been under cover in the capital of Great Xuan?”
“Five years.”
“How many of your spies are in the capital of Great Xuan?”
“About a thousand.”
Ning Chen’s eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you being a little too frank?”
“My mistress gave orders that nothing was to be hidden from the marquis… You are the child’s father, after all. Blood is thicker than water.”
Ning Chen’s face twitched hard.
“She told you even that. It seems she trusts you a great deal.”
Silence said, low, “The marquis may trust me too.”
Ning Chen’s eyes turned steadily harder. “I think it would be better to finish you. You know too much.”
Silence said, “Wen Zizhen.”
“What?”
“After I die, Wen Zizhen takes my place. The marquis can trust him.”
“Then there’d be no point in killing you.”
Ning Chen drew the dagger slowly back, turned, and went to the table and sat down.
Silence rubbed his neck, walked over and poured Ning Chen a cup of tea.
Ning Chen played with the dagger and said offhandedly, “Tell me. What trouble is she in?”
Silence nodded and began, slowly. “The Prince Regent, Song Tiancheng…”
When Silence had finished, Ning Chen had the shape of it.
Song Tiancheng, Prince Regent of the Wu Kingdom, was the master hand behind the woman emperor.
When the woman emperor took the throne, the Prince Regent took half the power in the Wu Kingdom into his hands.
Now the Prince Regent’s ambition had shown itself… He wanted not only the throne but the woman emperor with it.
The woman emperor had tried more than once to take the power back, and every attempt had failed.
So the Grand Tutor had not gone over to the woman emperor at all. He had gone over to Song Tiancheng, Prince Regent of Wu.
Song Tiancheng’s own troops had been pinned down by the Tuoluo Kingdom at the time and could not come up in support.
The woman emperor took the field in person, leading a hundred and fifty thousand men to the frontier. On the face of it she was going to the Grand Tutor’s support; in fact she meant to seize the moment and take his command from him, or destroy his army outright.
Whatever else happened, Song Tiancheng was not to get the Grand Tutor’s two hundred thousand men.
But word reached her on the way that the Grand Tutor had been beaten at Mangzhou… and after that Ning Chen led an army to the frontier too.
So the woman emperor spun out her march.
Her original plan had been to let Ning Chen and the Grand Tutor maul each other, and then take the fisherman’s profit.
What the woman emperor had not expected was that when she finally dawdled her way there, what she found was not two sides mauled but the Grand Tutor killed and his army brought over by Ning Chen.
And when the woman emperor saw what Ning Chen could do, a wild plan formed in her head… which is how the drugging and the stealing of the seed came about afterward.
(End of Chapter 335)