Chapter 642: - Grief and Fury!

“Docks, city gates, porter guilds. How did you manage these accounts?”

“Eunuch Zhao, this subordinate truly never expected that new Prefect to start digging into the petty ledgers at those places the moment he arrived.”

Zhao Wenhua’s face had gone iron-blue.

Kneeling below him was Qian Shuxun, Deputy Transport Commissioner of Yingdu.

The Transport Commissioner himself was Sun Liang. Most of the entire Transport Office Yamen belonged to the Sun family’s faction. On the surface, Qian Shuxun did as well.

In reality, he belonged to Prince Cheng Residence.

After Great Cheng abandoned its state title and submitted to Yan, Prince Cheng Residence had deliberately withdrawn much of its visible influence as a gesture of compliance. Beneath the surface, however, it had preserved a great deal.

The moment Qian Shuxun learned that the new Prefect had personally sent men to retrieve the outbound ledgers from the docks, porter guilds, and similar places, he immediately realized where the danger lay.

To avoid attracting attention, he changed into black clothes and secretly entered Prince Cheng Residence through the rear gate after making the necessary arrangements.

This was not something he could send another person to report.

First, another person would not be able to explain it properly.

Second, another person would not possess the standing to discuss it.

Qian Shuxun understood perfectly well how serious the matter was.

This involved the leverage Prince Cheng Residence had been building in its attempt to extend influence back into the military.

A matter of truly enormous consequence.

Zhao Wenhua rubbed his forehead in frustration.

“For something this important, We warned you again and again. How did you still manage to leave a flaw?”

“Eunuch Zhao, this subordinate truly never expected the new Prefect to...”

“You never expected it? You did not know that before becoming Prefect here, Xu Wenzu managed logistics at Nanwang City? You did not think he would know how to audit accounts?”

“This subordinate deserves death! This subordinate deserves death!”

Qian Shuxun raised his head again, clutching at one last thread of hope.

“Eunuch Zhao, the Transport Office Yamen is full of people. The relationships inside it are tangled beyond measure. Even if the Prefect sees that something is wrong, if he keeps digging downward, he still will not be able to trace it clearly. Besides, the greatest parasite in those ledgers is not us. It is the Marquis of Pingxi Residence.”

“Idiot!”

Zhao Wenhua’s voice sharpened.

“When Zheng Fan was still Count Pingye and stationed at Snow Sea Pass, accusing him of colluding with the Sun family in Yingdu to eat more than his share could indeed count as a crime. But now he is Marquis Pingxi. Open your dog eyes and look at the situation. From now on, all the silver, grain, and military supplies Yingdu sends east are going to the Marquis of Pingxi Residence anyway. Before, they did not all belong to him, so taking extra could be called wrongdoing. Now, and from now on, it all belongs to him. How are you supposed to convict him for taking too much of what is already his? Heh. Marquis Pingxi puts on one performance at Stone Mountain. Immediately afterward, Xu Wenzu adds another cut on the very first day he enters the city. When Marquis Pingxi returned to Yingdu without fanfare, whose face was he giving? When Xu Wenzu immediately went to request an audience with him, whose face was he returning? That new Prefect and Marquis Pingxi are so close they may as well be wearing the same pair of trousers. And you still imagine Marquis Pingxi can take the blame for you? As long as Xu Wenzu is not a complete fool, he can simply flip past the Marquis Residence’s accounts. Once those are set aside, will the rest not become perfectly clear?”

“Ah... this subordinate... this subordinate...”

Cold sweat streamed down Qian Shuxun’s face.

Zhao Wenhua stared at him.

“No one saw you come here, did they?”

Qian Shuxun pointed at the black clothes on his body.

“Eunuch Zhao, rest assured. This subordinate has practiced some martial arts and knows how serious this is. Even my family thinks I am still working in my study.”

“Good. That is good. We still need to think this through carefully. We cannot panic. The more anxious we become, the more tracks we will leave.”

“Yes, Eunuch Zhao. This subordinate understands. I understand.”

“Mm. After you return, first...”

Zhao Wenhua rose and walked in front of Qian Shuxun.

“Please instruct me, Eunuch Zhao.”

“First...”

Bang!

Zhao Wenhua slammed one palm into Qian Shuxun’s forehead.

Blood burst from the man’s seven orifices.

He died instantly.

“Men.”

“Eunuch Zhao.”

Two eunuchs entered.

Neither showed the slightest alarm at the corpse lying on the floor.

“Throw him into the well in the front courtyard first. Find an opportunity to dispose of the body in a few days.”

“Yes, Eunuch Zhao.”

The two eunuchs lifted the corpse.

Zhao Wenhua left the room as well.

He drew in a breath of fresh air and looked up at the night sky.

The weather was poor tonight.

There were hardly any stars.

Zhao Wenhua could not help sighing.

“An unlucky year. Nothing goes smoothly...”

Then he suddenly made a small sound of surprise.

His gaze snapped toward the wall outside the courtyard.

There was movement.

...

Hero Chen had waited at the mouth of the alley for quite a while before a group of armored soldiers finally came rushing after him.

“Hoo...”

He drew a deep breath, pulled his mask back over his face, then used his scabbard to slash several branches as a reminder for the men behind him.

After that, he pushed off the ground and leapt onto the courtyard wall, moving rapidly along its edge.

The reason he ran on top of the walls was so his pursuers would not lose their way.

Before long, Hero Chen jumped back down.

He had heard the sound of crossbows being cocked behind him.

Marquis Zheng had once seriously studied how a powerful expert should be dealt with, hoping the answer would provide him with enough personal security.

Eventually he summarized two methods.

The first was to keep enough experts around you, or one expert strong enough.

Marquis Zheng had already accomplished that.

The second was to keep enough elite guards around you.

Why did even top experts often amount to little more than a somewhat larger splash when two armies collided?

Because a real battlefield was not a duel.

There was no nonsense where only two or three men attacked at once while everyone else circled outside with weapons and banners, patiently waiting for the first batch to fall before stepping in.

Everyone instinctively exploited every opening.

Men close by hacked at you.

Men farther away shot at you.

Every gap became another attempt to kill you.

That was also why high-grade Martial Artists tended to survive a little longer on battlefields than ordinary soldiers.

Nothing mystical about it.

They could simply endure a few extra saber cuts and take a few extra arrows before dying.

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

Hero Chen dodged one arrow and knocked another aside with his scabbard.

The pressure on him steadily increased as more and more armored soldiers from the City Patrol Office joined the pursuit.

The greatest difficulty was that he had to keep them hanging behind him while deliberately leading them onward.

It was like running with an enormous burden strapped to his back.

He could not truly open up and move freely.

Across from Prince Cheng Residence stood a restaurant.

During Situ Lei’s reign, the building had once been the mansion of a Great Cheng general. Unfortunately for that man, when the Savages entered the passes, he joined the rebels.

Naturally, his residence in Yingdu was confiscated.

The property changed hands several times afterward before the Sun family bought it and turned it into a restaurant.

Almost no one knew that the true owner behind the establishment was actually the Marquis of Pingxi Residence.

The Marquis Residence had no current plan to extend its hand deeply into Yingdu. And after Xu Wenzu took over as Prefect, that plan had been postponed again.

Even so, some kind of foothold had to be left behind.

In later generations, this restaurant would have amounted to the Marquis of Pingxi Residence’s liaison office in the capital.

At this moment, Marquis Zheng stood by a third-floor window holding a cup of fruit drink, gazing toward Prince Cheng Residence beneath the night sky.

The Sword Saint stood beside him.

“Do you think there are other experts inside the residence?” Zheng Fan asked.

The Sword Saint smiled.

“It would be stranger if there were none.”

Zheng Fan nodded.

“True. A centipede does not stop wriggling the moment it dies.”

Then he asked:

“Will Hero Chen be in danger?”

“That depends on whether you arranged everything properly.”

“Arranged?”

Zheng Fan looked puzzled.

“What else was I supposed to arrange?”

The Sword Saint turned his head.

“You arranged nothing?”

“No.”

...

Hero Chen flashed onto the outer wall of Prince Cheng Residence.

One hand caught the top.

His body inverted, turned, and dropped into the compound.

At that exact instant, two eerie green glints lit up in the darkness.

“However far Prince Cheng Residence may have fallen, it is still not a place where some petty thief may run wild!”

Zhao Wenhua lunged out.

Iron bands covered all ten of his fingers. Under the support of qi and blood, they flashed in the night like silver snakes.

Hero Chen drew his sword.

Faced with such a sudden attack, the safest response was to use the most tyrannical and direct sword strike possible to force the opponent back.

Unless the other side had decided from the beginning to trade injury for injury, he would have no choice but to retreat.

Zhao Wenhua did retreat.

But halfway through, just after slipping past the sword light, both hands abruptly clawed at the empty air before him.

His entire body seemed to be forcibly dragged back forward.

Like a starving tiger pouncing on prey, he charged Hero Chen again.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Weapon struck weapon in a rapid chain of impacts.

Hero Chen had already spent a great deal of strength drawing the pursuit here. When he landed inside Prince Cheng Residence, he had assumed he would finally have a chance to breathe.

Instead, Zhao Wenhua appeared at the precise moment when his old breath had just emptied and the new one had yet to rise.

Worse, this eunuch walked the path of a Martial Artist.

His technique was strange and sinister rather than upright and imposing like that of most Martial Artists, but the body, qi, and blood were genuine.

Zhao Wenhua also understood that Hero Chen was a swordsman.

From the very beginning, he relied on the Martial Artist’s greatest advantage, that seemingly endless tide of qi and blood, intending to grind this sword blunt through sheer force.

This was no longer purely a contest of cultivation grades.

It was the same principle as when Xue San had once killed the high-grade Prince Fu.

In a desperate fight opened in darkness and haste, life and death could be decided in a single instant.

If this had been the Hero Chen of earlier years, he might truly have died here.

Hero Chen was strong and enormously talented, but he had always traveled an unorthodox path.

Back at the relay station outside Yin City, how strong had the Blind Man and Xue San been then?

Not very.

Yet even they had managed to cripple one of Hero Chen’s legs.

And sometimes it was not merely the jianghu that could not be placed on the grand stage.

Even jianghu fighting itself often could not be placed there.

Because throughout history, the best men of each generation in the jianghu inevitably drifted toward the court.

Zhao Wenhua had once been Situ Lei’s companion eunuch.

He had followed the late sovereign on campaigns north and south and had personally experienced who knew how many battlefield clashes.

And the old storehouses of Great Cheng had once contained who knew how many martial manuals, secret methods, techniques, and insights.

Whether in practical experience or theoretical knowledge, Zhao Wenhua could be called exceptional.

Fortunately, when the Sword Maid called Hero Chen “Junior Brother,”

Hero Chen truly did not lose face by accepting it.

The Sword Saint had never been the sort to hoard his knowledge.

He had few disciples only because very few people were capable of catching his eye.

And one had to admit, true geniuses really did exist in this world.

A single flash of inspiration from them could make centuries of experience, theory, and accumulated knowledge lose their color.

The Sword Saint was exactly such a person.

Hero Chen had received the Sword Saint’s guidance.

Naturally, he possessed a way to break this predicament.

One sword:

Wild Geese Descend on the Level Sands.

Another:

Flying Sand and Rolling Stones.

Then one more:

Sunset over the Long River.

The names had all been invented by the Sword Maid.

Truthfully, they had almost nothing to do with the actual techniques.

But all three were unusually upright, forceful sword moves, completely unlike the common impression of a swordsman as a figure obsessed with sharpness and offense to the point of neglecting everything else.

Relying on those three strikes, Hero Chen not only endured Zhao Wenhua’s first relentless assault, he even forced open a short stretch of distance.

The price was a tight chest, surging blood, and sweetness in his throat.

A swordsman’s body forcibly producing something close to a Martial Artist’s brutal power inevitably carried an enormous burden.

The backlash could not be ignored either.

This was not a proper duel.

Hero Chen had never expected that after painstakingly leading the pursuers into Prince Cheng Residence, he would immediately be ambushed.

Fortunately, it was not a real duel either.

He had never intended to kill Zhao Wenhua.

His actual task was already complete.

Which meant he could run.

Whether or not he could defeat Zhao Wenhua could be discussed later.

This had never been a fair contest to begin with.

More importantly, there was no need to keep fighting at all.

Before he departed, Marquis Zheng had told him two things.

The first:

“Hero Chen, go without worry. This Marquis has made arrangements.”

The second:

“Hero Chen, preserving yourself comes first. When it is time to run, run. Whether the plan succeeds does not matter. You have to come back safely.”

Only now did Hero Chen realize that the first sentence had been complete nonsense.

The second was the true secret stratagem.

So Hero Chen forced his qi and blood once more and threw out another vicious sword strike.

Zhao Wenhua, unwilling to suffer a serious wound just to keep him here, was driven back two more steps.

Hero Chen immediately turned, leapt into the air, and fled without the slightest hesitation.

Wind was up.

Time to run.

Only now did the servants inside Prince Cheng Residence finally arrive.

That too was part of Hero Chen’s good fortune.

The residence’s registered guards had all been dealt with by Ran Min a few days earlier.

Naturally, Prince Cheng Residence possessed more strength than the men listed openly on its rolls.

It had once been the court of an entire state.

A rotten ship still had three thousand nails.

The Helian and Wenren families had been almost exterminated by the Yan army, yet remnants still survived and caused trouble, creating organization after organization resembling the Heaven and Earth Society.

All the more so for the Situ family, which had handed over power in something close to a peaceful transition.

The problem was that Yingdu might be enormous, but Prince Cheng Residence itself was only so large.

And extremely conspicuous.

The only armed force it could openly place on the surface was its registered guard.

Losing those guards did not mean the residence had no one left.

It still had many servants, household retainers, and attendants.

Some of them were quite skilled.

But they could not compare with the former guards in training, coordination, or discipline.

Hero Chen had happened to step directly into that temporary gap.

Otherwise, with Zhao Wenhua tying him down for so long, if four or five proper guards had arrived, Hero Chen probably would not have escaped even if he wanted to.

Of course, looking at the matter from the opposite direction, was that not exactly why Marquis Zheng had dared play this trick now?

Hero Chen cleared the outer wall.

Men from the residence tried to chase him.

They ran directly into the armored City Patrol soldiers pursuing from outside.

Both sides already carried anger.

One came with the desire for revenge.

The other had just had its home invaded.

They actually began fighting on the spot.

Fortunately, Zhao Wenhua appeared quickly enough.

He smashed the head off one of the stone lions at the gate with a single palm and roared:

“Stop!”

Only then did both sides force themselves to halt.

It was not that the City Patrol soldiers had lost their nerve.

Quite the opposite.

Precisely because most of them were Yan men, they did not fear this so-called princely residence from the bottom of their hearts.

They were holding back now because they were waiting for their superiors to arrive.

Waiting for someone to give them justice.

They possessed that confidence.

That certainty.

So they were willing to pause.

If they had been Jin soldiers instead, perhaps they would already have charged inside in one desperate wave to avenge their Commandant.

Only when people had fallen into complete despair did they gamble everything in one throw.

One Lieutenant Commander from Yan drove his saber point into the ground and snorted toward Zhao Wenhua, who stood atop the steps.

“Ha! Fucking bastards. I refuse to believe this damned Yingdu isn’t territory we Yan men conquered ourselves!”

...

Elsewhere, Hero Chen entered the restaurant and went upstairs.

He removed his black clothes.

The Sword Saint walked over.

“You are injured?”

Hero Chen shook his head.

“I will be fine after regulating my breathing.”

At that moment, a group of armored soldiers came along the street below carrying a stretcher frame.

Ran Min sat atop it, covered in blood.

In his arms lay the already dead Lady Liu.

Zheng Fan looked at Hero Chen.

“You killed the man’s wife too?”

Hero Chen blinked.

“How could I possibly do that?”

Zheng Fan nodded.

True.

Given Hero Chen’s character, he would never kill women and children as part of this kind of scheme.

The Sword Saint looked at Zheng Fan.

“Then what happened?”

Zheng Fan rubbed his chin and watched Ran Min on the stretcher below.

Slowly, he said:

“He did it himself. He raised the stakes in this play on his own.”

“Ruthless enough to do that. Will Xu Wenzu dare use him?”

The Sword Saint did not say the second half aloud.

Xu Wenzu, after all, was not Zheng Fan.

Zheng Fan exhaled.

“Old Yu, do you know what people below fear most?”

“What?”

“It is not being suspected by the men above them. It is not even being remembered too clearly. What they fear most is being ignored.”

...

The stretcher was carried to the front of Prince Cheng Residence.

More and more City Patrol soldiers gathered.

Those on duty.

Those off duty.

Men patrolling other districts.

All of them came.

Every pair of eyes fixed on their blood-covered Commandant and the corpse of the young woman in his arms.

Fire seemed to burn in every gaze.

There was a rule.

Fight if you wanted to fight.

But do not drag the family into it.

The guards of Prince Cheng Residence had been killed, but their families had not been implicated.

Was that mercy?

No.

It was simply a tacit understanding.

If you lost, that meant you lacked ability.

But if you truly harmed the other side’s family, then do not blame them for doing on the fifteenth what you did on the first.

The breathing of the City Patrol soldiers grew heavier.

Grief, fury, and killing intent began accumulating among them.

They were not yamen runners.

They were not ordinary constables.

At their core, these men had been transferred from the army. They merely wore the plaque of the City Patrol Office now.

In truth, they were soldiers stationed inside the city.

They were also battlefield veterans.

Yan men in the Jin capital of Yingdu stood above the locals.

And now they had been bullied like this?

Trampled like this?

Fuck.

Did those bastards think the City Patrol could not simply wash this filthy princely residence in blood tonight?

The stretcher was placed directly before the main gate.

The armored soldiers silently stepped aside.

Ran Min, still holding Lady Liu, slowly raised his head as though dazed.

His gaze first fell on the steps.

Then on Zhao Wenhua.

At last, on the plaque reading:

Prince Cheng Residence.

“AAAAAAAH!”

Ran Min opened his mouth and released a raw, miserable howl.

Because of his injuries, the sound was not particularly loud.

But it stretched on and on, filled with such profound grief and despair that it seemed to tear at the air.

Blood mixed with tears and mucus ran down his face and dripped onto Lady Liu in his arms.

Ran Min lowered his head.

He pressed his face against hers.

A man does not lightly shed tears, until grief reaches the heart.

This was a man who had gone to war, earned merit, and personally slain a Savage thousand-man commander.

Yet at this moment, he looked as helpless as a child.

“Why? Why? Why!”

Ran Min sobbed.

“If you wanted me, then come for me! Come for me! Come for me... She... What did she ever do? What did she ever do to deserve this!”

[End of Chapter 642]