The censors turned up their noses at what Ning Chen had said.

In the old days, when Ning Chen was the Idle Marquis and a general and the future consort of a princess... they had yapped a little in the hall of court, and meeting Ning Chen anywhere else they had not dared break wind.

After all, Ning Chen was the hard man who had cut down the Empress's brother and come to no harm for it.

But today was not those days. Ning Chen was a base commoner now, and to touch so much as a hair of one of them would be a grave crime.

And their backbone, Fan Taihe, was back.

"Ning Chen, when you were the Idle Marquis we respected you. What sort of thing are you now? A base commoner, and you still dare threaten us?"

"I will give you ten men's worth of nerve. Try laying a finger on me."

"What you are now is not even an ant in our eyes."

Ning Chen looked at the censors jabbering in front of him, and the smile on his face grew wider and wider.

He went forward in one stride.

Thud!!!

One heavy punch opened peach blossoms all over a censor's face and knocked him flat on his back, screaming like a pig on the block.

Thud!!!

One savage whipping kick swept a censor several meters through the air.

He turned and drove an elbow into another censor's face and knocked him flying, with several teeth going with him.

Against a pack of censors without the strength to truss a chicken, Ning Chen was a tiger loose among sheep.

One punch each.

In the space of a blink the censors were lying all over the ground, some holding their faces, some their bellies, some their heads, howling with the pain of it.

The screaming went up on every side.

"Ning Chen, you— you dare beat officers of the court. You are a dead man."

"You base commoner. We will go to His Majesty and impeach you, and nothing will stop us."

"Are you dead men?…