Pursuit of Jade
Chapter 25
The night was deep, and the north wind made the battered window shutters creak and groan.
Weather like this always had a way of making a person yearn to burrow beneath the covers.
Especially when those covers had already been warmed by someone’s body, radiating an enticing heat.
Fan Changyu drew her arms closer around herself and rested against the bedpost, eyes closed as she stole a brief rest. Her ears, however, remained keenly attuned to every sound coming from downstairs.
Once Auntie Zhao and Carpenter Zhao had gone to sleep, she hurried home, fetched the land deed, then carried a quilt over to make herself a bed on the floor.
Ever since the incident with Fan Da yesterday, she had barely slept at all. Her body was already exhausted, but her mind had remained wound tight, never daring to relax for even a moment.
The person beside her had been breathing very lightly all this while. Perhaps it was because he had eaten the dried tangerine-peel candy—Fan Changyu could vaguely catch the faint, clean fragrance of tangerine peel lingering on him.
Without meaning to, she recalled the time in the pine forest when he had caught her hand and taught her how to strike, his breath brushing her ear as he spoke.
Her ears inexplicably grew warm, though fortunately, in the darkness, there was no way to see it.
Fan Changyu wanted to rub her ears, but before she could even lift a hand, the person beside her suddenly sat up without a sound. Before she could react, a long, slender finger, carrying only the faintest trace of warmth, had already come to rest against her lips. His long hair fell forward, brushing across the back of her hand and raising a faint tingling chill against her skin.
He was extremely close to her, and the fragrance of dried tangerine peel on him grew all the more pronounced.
Fan Changyu was startled at first, but the moment she heard footsteps as light as a cat’s coming from across the roof tiles, her ears instantly perked up.
Seeing this, Xie Zheng said nothing. He simply withdrew the index finger he had pressed against her lips.
The side of his finger had brushed that patch of red—smooth and warm, soft and tender as a flower petal still beaded with dew in the early morning.
His brows drew together slightly. He rubbed his fingertip hard against that hot, tingling patch of skin, forcing down every strange sensation stirring in his heart.
The footsteps on the roof were light and disorderly. There seemed to be more than one person. After a moment, some of the footsteps stopped nearby. Judging by the distance, they had stopped on the roof of the Fan family’s house.
The others continued onward and came to a stop on the roof of the Zhao family’s house.
A faint rustling followed as the roof tiles were shifted aside. A slender bamboo tube slipped through the gap between the tiles, releasing a wisp of pale smoke.
The two of them covered their mouths and noses with their collars and exchanged a glance in the dim darkness, lit only by the faint, murky glow filtering through the window.
The battered window suddenly rattled, and a shadow slipped silently inside.
Fan Changyu and Xie Zheng took up positions on either side of the bed curtains. At first, they had been silently gesturing to each other, working out how to dispatch the intruder without making a sound once he came close to the bed.
But after seven or eight people slipped in through the window one after another, the two of them had no plan left.
The room was cramped. It would not be long before the intruders discovered them.
Fan Changyu pressed her lips into a tight line and, without making a sound, drew the bone-deboning knife she kept concealed against her body.
A black-clad man swung his blade viciously down at the bed. When the blade sank into the bedding with a dull, heavy resistance, his expression changed instantly. “It’s a trap!”
Before he could react, a chill swept across his waist and abdomen. A figure shot rapidly out from beside the bed curtains and hurled herself headfirst toward the window.
Bang!
Outside, a black-clad man was still sliding down the rope fastened to the roof, not yet having made it inside. The figure bursting out of the room slammed straight into him, sending them both flying. He became her human cushion as they crashed into the courtyard, cracking several of the blue bricks (paving stones) beneath them.
The figure quickly scrambled to her feet.
It was a woman.
Taking advantage of the black-clad man being dazed from the fall, she hurriedly swung a great slap across his face. He was knocked unconscious on the spot. The woman then snatched up his saber and bolted out of the courtyard.
It all happened in the blink of an eye. The black-clad men still inside the room were completely dumbfounded. Once they finally came to their senses, they shouted, “After her!”
A whole group of them leaped through the window after her, tumbling out one after another like dumplings dropping into a pot.
From the other side of the bed curtains, Xie Zheng had not expected Fan Changyu to throw herself into danger alone. He immediately understood that she had deliberately drawn the black-clad men away in order to protect him, the elderly couple downstairs, and her younger sister.
His heart sank.
As the last few black-clad men in the room prepared to jump through the window, he flicked a crystal-clear piece of dried tangerine-peel candy from his fingertips.
The black-clad man who had just leaped through the window was struck clean through the hollow of his knee. His body lost balance in midair, and he went tumbling down.
Hearing the commotion behind them, the others finally realized that there was still someone inside the room. They were the cream of the crop among the death warriors. Yet after being inside for so long, they had failed to detect his presence. Just how consummate must his breath-holding technique be?
For a moment, none of them dared lower their guard. They wheeled around and brought their blades down upon him.
Several more pieces of dried tangerine-peel candy flicked from Xie Zheng’s fingers, striking the acupoints at their elbows, the hollows behind their knees, and their waists and abdomens. Their movements slowed by a fraction.
That single breath was all he needed to seize their weapons and take their lives.
After dealing with two of the black-clad men, he held one of the swords he had taken from them against the throat of the injured man.
The man was clutching his side, his hands covered in blood.
The weapon that had slashed across his waist and abdomen moments ago was sharp and slender. It did not look like a dagger, and he could not tell what sort of weapon it was. Now, with the blood-streaked blade pressed against his throat, the man did not dare make the slightest move.
Xie Zheng was just about to knock the man unconscious, leaving a living mouth for the time being so he could go out and help Fan Changyu.
But then, all at once, the main street outside the alley blazed with firelight. The thunder of hooves shattered the silence of the night, while the clatter of armor and pounding footsteps from the infantry wove together into an inescapable net. The sharp whoosh, whoosh of arrows sent a chill through the heart.
The black-clad men pursuing Fan Changyu were riddled with arrows in an instant, reduced to little more than human sieves.
Xie Zheng frowned slightly, suspicion weighing heavily on his mind.
Qingping County had no military garrison. How had these soldiers managed to appear so quickly in the next town over?
Seeing that Fan Changyu was already safe, he abandoned the thought of pursuing her outside. His five fingers hooked beneath the jaw of the black-clad man he had subdued, forcing him to spit out the poison capsule hidden between his teeth. Pressing the blade down against his throat, Xie Zheng asked coldly, “What did Wei Yan send you to look for?”
The black-clad man noticed how intimately familiar he was with the location of the Wei family death warriors’ poison capsules. After carefully distinguishing his voice, he ventured uncertainly, “Houyé?”
The sharp blade pressed down a little farther. Firelight filtered through the shattered window lattice and reflected off the blade onto Xie Zheng’s face, carving a bright arc through the thick, damp darkness. The slight downward turn of his lips was cold and impatient. “Answer me.”
A gust of cold wind swept snowflakes inside, scattering them against the black-clad man’s neck. Yet colder than the flying snow was the blade that had already sliced through the thin layer of skin along his throat.
Fear and oppression surged over him like a tide. The black-clad man swallowed with difficulty and pleaded, “Houyé knows the Prime Minister’s methods. Why make things difficult for a Xiaoren…?”
In the next instant, the blade drove straight back into the wound across his waist and abdomen. The black-clad man let out a muffled groan of unbearable pain, his entire body curling in on itself.
Xie Zheng lowered his eyes. His pale fingers, dark crusts of old blood clinging to them, twisted the hilt, almost literally wrenching a mass of flesh from the man’s abdomen.
His voice remained languid and cold, “The spies in the army have tougher mouths than yours. Vice Minister of Justice Zhang Su once witnessed an interrogation in the army. By the time he left the camp, he had nearly vomited bile, and afterward he was bedridden with illness for quite some time. Want to try the army’s methods of interrogation?”
Zhang Su, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Justice, was notorious throughout the court for his ruthless use of torture. They said that anyone who fell into his hands would have to lose a layer of skin even if they survived. Everyone called him the Living King of Hell.
The black-clad man could no longer suppress his screams. Cold sweat streamed down his forehead, and nearly all his senses had narrowed to that mass of flesh being twisted apart inside his abdomen. He could no longer tell whether the liquid soaking his clothes was blood or sweat.
He no longer begged for his life. He only begged for a quick death. Utterly exhausted, he finally gasped, “The letter… Prime Minister sent us to find a letter…”
Xie Zheng’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What letter?”
The black-clad man merely shook his head. His entire body had gone limp against the floor as he pleaded, “Xiaoren truly doesn’t know…”
The sword flashed across his throat, and blood spilled onto the ground.
A letter?
Xie Zheng knitted his brows.
What letter could there possibly be in that woman’s family that would make Wei Yan so wary?
He turned his gaze toward the entire street outside, where torches now burned brightly. The woman stood by the roadside, seemingly explaining the situation to the soldiers. The elderly couple had apparently decided that the danger had passed, yet were still worried about Fan Changyu, so they had brought the child with them and gone outside the courtyard gate to watch.
The soldiers were dragging away the bodies of the black-clad men. Several who were not quite dead yet quickly bit through their poison capsules and killed themselves.
An officer on horseback shouted, “Find one alive and bring him back!”
Xie Zheng’s gaze had merely swept over the man indifferently, but the moment he got a clear look at his face, his phoenix eyes narrowed.
Zheng Wenchang?
He was the favored general of He Jingyuan, the Governor of Jizhou Prefecture—and He Jingyuan was one of Wei Yan’s faction.
Had tonight’s affair simply been a case of the flood washing into the Dragon King’s temple?
Or was He Jingyuan also helping Wei Yan search for that letter, having deliberately arranged this interception to snatch it away first?
Yet judging from the black-clad men’s behavior, they clearly had not found what they were looking for. And for Jizhou soldiers to arrive at precisely such a convenient moment…
It was certainly worth pondering.
Xie Zheng suddenly realized that this seemingly insignificant butcher family in Lin’an Town might be hiding far more behind them than he had ever imagined.
The commander on horseback was directing his men to hurry and carry away all the bodies of the black-clad men when he suddenly felt a chilling gaze fall upon him. It was like being watched by a wild wolf on a desolate plain on a snowy night. His entire back stiffened involuntarily.
Zheng Wenchang swept his gaze around, but the chilling stare that had made his spine prickle was nowhere to be seen. He noticed that the window of the Zhao family’s loft stood empty and asked, “Is there anyone else upstairs?”
Earlier, Fan Changyu had thrown herself through the window to lure most of the black-clad men away in order to protect the old Zhao couple and her younger sister. She had gone into it fully expecting never to return. Who could have guessed that a contingent of soldiers would suddenly appear on the main street?
They had supposedly been dispatched after receiving the county magistrate’s memorial from the previous day reporting the bandit troubles in Qingping County. A unit of troops had been specially sent over to inspect the situation, and when scouts spotted unusual activity that night, a squad of soldiers had come to investigate. Their timely arrival had happened to save her.
Now, when this military officer asked about it, Fan Changyu remembered that Yan Zheng was injured, and she had no idea whether any of the black-clad men had discovered him inside. She hurried toward the loft. “My husband is badly injured. He’s still upstairs.”
Rather than sending one of the soldiers below, Zheng Wenchang dismounted himself. One hand resting on the sword at his waist, he followed her up the stairs, “Ben Jiangjun will go take a look myself.”
When Fan Changyu charged into the loft with a torch, she found several black-clad men sprawled across the floor, dead. Xie Zheng was lying in a pool of blood as well, his clothes torn in several places. Half his face was turned upward, smeared with blood so thoroughly that his original features were almost impossible to make out.
Fan Changyu had not expected so many black-clad men to still be inside. Seeing Xie Zheng covered in blood, she feared he was dead, and her heart clenched. She rushed over to examine his injuries, “Yan Zheng, how are you feeling?”
In her panic, she reached out to feel for his breath. Only after confirming that he was still alive did she breathe a sigh of relief, “Zhao Shu! Come take a look at Yan Zheng!”
Zheng Wenchang entered the attic with two soldiers and swept his gaze over the dead men inside. His eyes settled on the blood-smeared half of Xie Zheng’s face, as though he were trying hard to recognize him. Frowning, he asked, “Did your husband kill all these men?”
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