Ning Chen finally got the Hu's folded flatbread he had been thinking about all this time.

The whole party went back to the inn holding their bellies. They were all stuffed.

The flatbread was roasted crisp outside and soft inside, folded around mutton stewed pink and tender and full of juice, with mutton soup and a little salted vegetable on the side to cut the richness. In cold weather like this, eating it was a real pleasure!

Feng Qizheng held his belly and kept saying he wanted to go again the next day.

Ning Chen returned to his room and shut the door. He turned around and stopped short.

He went over to the table.

There was a letter on it.

What surprised Ning Chen was the thing weighing the letter down — a gold cake.

A gold cake like that weighed the same as an ingot of gold. Only the shape was different, to make it easier to carry.

Who was being so generous?

Ning Chen did not touch it. What if there was poison on the gold cake or the letter?

He went out and called Xie Siyu over.

Xie Siyu had started out as an assassin and knew a lot about poisons too.

Xie Siyu looked it over and made certain there was no poison.

Only then did Ning Chen tuck the gold cake away and open the letter.

The man who wrote it asked Ning Chen to come to the Cloud Sky House at the hour of the Dog for a meeting.

Ning Chen could not help laughing. "That's a high-handed way to invite a man."

After that Ning Chen asked Pan Yucheng and the others in.

They talked it over and decided to go and meet this mysterious person.

That night, at the hour of the Dog, Ning Chen went to the Cloud Sky House with Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng.

The Cloud Sky House was one of the largest tea houses in the city of Lingzhou.

The doors of the Cloud Sky House were shut fast.

Feng Qizheng went up and knocked.

The doors…