"No problem!" Ning Chen agreed at once, then asked, "Anything else?"

Tantai Qingyue shook her head. "That is all for now... But whether the Xiliang royal family agrees is not up to me."

Ning Chen nodded. "Thanks!"

Tantai Qingyue stood up. "I will write to the Xiliang royal family now."

"Eat something before you go."

Tantai Qingyue ignored him and left.

Once outside, a smug smile curved Tantai Qingyue's lips.

She would suggest that the Xiliang royal family take the Great Xuan's Xiguan City, seize its grain and then lend it to Ning Chen... catching a white wolf with bare hands. (TL Note: 空手套白狼, "snaring a white wolf with bare hands": getting something for nothing, usually by a trick.)

She had been following Ning Chen long enough to pick up plenty of dirty tricks.

The palace of the Great Xuan, the imperial study.

The memorials from the desk lay scattered all over the floor.

The De Emperor was wheezing, his chest heaving violently, his face livid.

He rounded on Zong Sibo, who knelt below the dragon desk, strode down and started kicking him.

He kicked him and cursed him as he went: "You old dog, is this the talent you recommended to this emperor... Over a hundred thousand troops in his hands, and he let Ning Chen break through the northern frontier pass just like that. You call that talent? That's trash, an idiot!"

A few days earlier, he had received a memorial from Chai Jiayu saying Ning Chen had suddenly appeared outside the northern frontier pass with an army!

He'd been completely stumped at the time!

Wasn't Ning Chen at Beilin Pass? How had he suddenly turned up at the northern frontier pass?

But he had soon worked it out... Ning Chen had sent out two columns, one toward Lingzhou and one toward Chongzhou, and then they had turned back halfway, supposedly because the Tuoluo Kingdom was attacking.

It had all been Ning Chen's trick.

His real aim had been for those two columns to draw everyone's attention while he slipped away with his army across the grasslands, back…