Wang Chong's hand shot out on pure instinct to loot the corpse, then drew sheepishly back—with so many eyes upon him, such an unseemly act would hardly do. To cover the slip, he announced, "This villain died at Brother Lu Zongfeng's hands. Every one of us brothers saw it with our own eyes. Tonight Brother Lu must treat us all to a feast."
Lu Zongfeng was delighted beyond words, beaming from ear to ear. "Gladly, gladly!"
The other brothers of the Chrysanthemum-Killing Alliance had long since been smoothed over by Qin Han, and they knew that without Wang Chong's intervention, slaying this "White Chrysanthemum" would have cost them blood. True, the great credit had gone to Lu Zongfeng, but the credit for aiding the case could not slip their grasp—and Qin Han and Lu Zongfeng were certain to make it up to them besides. No one felt shortchanged. They congratulated Lu Zongfeng together, and the mood was thoroughly congenial.
Sun Mingke, who had never seen a man from the Western Regions before, squatted down out of curiosity and prodded the body with a finger. "This fellow's martial arts were nothing to sneer at—he must have counted as a formidable figure even within the Qingshan Sect. A pity he came to the Central Plains to work evil. In the end, he got exactly what he deserved."
Wang Chong's heart stirred. "Brother Sun, search his body for me."
Looting a corpse himself would be awkward; if Sun Mingke did it, no one would think twice. Sun Mingke searched as bidden and came up with some flying notes and a scattering of loose silver. Trifling riches like these drew scarcely a glance from the young masters of the Chrysanthemum-Killing Alliance, but he also brought out a letter—antique in style, sealed with six gold seals that dazzled the eye. Qin Han took one look and cried out in shock, "This is a hawk letter of the eighteen grassland tribes! At least three great chieftains of the tribes must sign it jointly before it carries any weight. Nothing short of a matter of gravest importance would be sent this way."
He snatched it up, broke the seal, read it through, and knitted his brows, then handed it to Wang Chong. "This has grown serious. We must report to Divine Constable Li at once. I doubt even she can bear this—she'll hurry it up the chain without delay."
Wang Chong opened the letter. The writing was executed in strokes of tremendous vigor, and the opening line ran: "To the great chieftains of every tribe, in mutual understanding!"
"I have received word that the son of the Heavenly Empress drifts through the jianghu near Tongzhou, attended by a mere few dozen, his guard thin. This man bears upon the succession of the Central Plains throne. If he can be seized and carried back to the grasslands, he will be a rare prize worth hoarding, one that can set the Central Plains in turmoil. I ask the tribes of the grasslands to dispatch their masters in full force, to come to the Central Plains and ride east to hunt the qilin."
The letter was signed: Han Haxuan of the Xianbei.
Wang Chong still remembered that Qian Luo Yi had once said this man ranked second among the great foes of his life. But Han Haxuan was the foremost master of the Xianbei, and more than that, the Xianbei King's own uncle—for Qian Luo Yi to place him only second was rather generous self-flattery.
Wang Chong was on the point of passing the letter to someone else when Qin Han snatched it back. "Brother Wang Chong, this matter ought not be known to too many people."
Wang Chong thought, "Then why show it to me at all?" and said with a smile, "Brother Qin Han is cautious as ever."
What Wang Chong, no man of officialdom, could not see was that inside Qin Han at this moment raged a sea of storm waves; his emotions were barely steady, and all he wanted was to find someone quickly to share the crushing weight. That was precisely why he had passed the letter over on instinct—but the instant Wang Chong's eyes touched the page, Qin Han came back to himself. This was a matter of war and state. The eighteen grassland tribes sending all their masters into the Central Plains to take the Heavenly Empress's son alive—what a thing that would be!
Absolutely no one could be allowed to know of this. It had to be reported to the court as fast as possible—indeed, not even Li Qingge should hear of it. The stakes were simply too immense.
Qin Han stilled his mind and thought, "The man did admit to deeds of rape, but he is decidedly not White Chrysanthemum. For one, he had no mastery of the Ice Soul Finger. For another, with a mission of such weight on him, how would he run wild committing crimes?"
"I must get this case reported upward, and fast..."
"Better still, to go around Li Qingge and carry it straight to the ear of the throne."
"First, so no one shaves a slice off my credit; second, so this leaks no further."
"Little brother Wang Chong is truly my lucky star. Once this is reported up, the credit will stand far above killing White Chrysanthemum."
Wang Chong lowered his voice. "That son of the Heavenly Empress..."
"We'll speak of it once we're back," Qin Han said hastily.
Wang Chong took the hint and raised the matter no more. The young gentlemen of the Chrysanthemum-Killing Alliance, of course, would not stoop to heavy labor; they called up the yamen runners and constables, who hauled the Western Regions giant's corpse all the way back to Pengshan County at a hurried pace.
When Wang Chong had crossed hands with the man, he had thought little of it. But watching the runners and constables strain so desperately to move the body, he found himself musing, "This fellow is a proper giant—two meters twelve or so, I'd say? And not built like a basketball player either; closer to the frame of a weightlifting strongman. There's no telling how much strength is packed into that body."
"Huh? And yet when I traded blows with him head-on just now, his strength never felt like anything much?"
Wang Chong replayed the fight, turned a few details over in his mind, and suddenly it dawned on him. "Of course. My raw strength must fall short of his. Mine is a bare five hundred jin and a little above—but I also carry internal force. How much it amplifies strength is still unknown, yet it must boost me at least once or twice over. Above all, I have mastered martial arts, with methods for bleeding off force, transforming force, and turning force aside. That is how I could receive this man's full-power strikes with ease."
When Wang Chong had cultivated the Nine-Headed Dragon King Aspect and felt he could clash squarely with the tigers and bears of the mountains, that had rested on another logic altogether. A tiger's strike at full power can reach two thousand jin; a brown bear's can top two thousand jin and more. His own strength fell far short—but his lightness skill was superb, his speed far outstripped any wild beast's, and his technique surpassed theirs beyond all counting. It is the same principle by which a tiger or bear smaller in build and somewhat weaker in strength, when fighting a larger one, often has the slightly better odds of winning. For a martial artist of the Innate Realm—what sense would there be in pitting bare strength against wild beasts, without martial technique?
This battle had let Wang Chong test what his bitter training of late had produced, and he was deeply grateful to Sun Mingke for keeping him company at swordplay and drills. He thought, "Little brother Sun is a disciple of the Five Absolutes Sect—he has no need of my looking after him. This debt of friendship I can only keep locked in my heart."
Back in Pengshan County, Qin Han had vanished without a trace. Wang Chong had no choice but to head back with Sun Mingke, and after half a day's waiting, Su Luo Yan, Lu Yaoniang, and Li Qingge returned as well. He recounted everything that had happened that day; he was curious himself what manner of "thing" this "son of the Heavenly Empress" might be, and meant to ask until it was perfectly clear.
He had scarcely told them of the letter when Li Qingge shot to her feet in alarm. "This is going to set off a disaster!"
Wang Chong asked at once, "When the son of the Heavenly Empress travels, countless masters must attend him. Even if his guards are thin for the moment, one cry would bring every prefecture in the realm flocking to him like clouds in the wind's wake. Where is the worry for his safety?"
Su Luo Yan's brows lifted a touch. "Young Master Wang Chong, there is something you don't know. This realm is the Heavenly Empress's realm, and the realm of the Empress's father and brothers, and further still the realm of her grandfather, her late grandfather, and generations of ancestors—but it is not the realm of the Empress's husband's family. Behind the Empress stands the family she was born into, not the family she married into..."
Wang Chong hailed from a "new society" where men's power was heavily suppressed, where every soul was stamped from childhood with the steel seal of "men and women are the same." Yet he was still a man with some wits about him; he would never naively suppose that in a classical society like this there was no line drawn between men and women—least of all once the imperial succession was involved.
...A joke from this toad: West Asian literature has at least ten or more stories in which "a certain foreign prince (or, now and then, a vagrant) marries a Chinese princess and inherits the Chinese throne"...
Chapter 43