By the time Wu Du reaches the Hall of Success everyone is already gone, save one old servant staying behind to clean up. When Wu Du asks him, the servant doesn’t know where “Wang Shan” has gone either, which makes him rather annoyed, but all he can do is go back to the Jiangzhou Military Command and bring Benxiao out of the stables. Xie You asks, “I heard you two were having a street fight in the city?”
Wu Du answers him with, “Get outta here!”
Xie You is left rather speechless.
On horseback, Wu Du gallops off so quickly that he’s gone in an instant, leaving nary a trace.
Outside the courtyard house, Wu Du calls out, “Shan’er!”
No one answers him. Wu Du picks up the small knife lying at the foot of the flowerbed and realises something is wrong right away; he dashes inside to find medicinal ingredients spilled all over the floor and signs of a struggle as though there had been two people inside the house. Then he looks at the windowsill and the furrow between his brows deepens. He immediately leaves the house, but after chasing after the signs, he doesn’t find any footprints in the alleyway.
Chang Liujun comes by. “Where’s Wang Shan and Mu Qing? They’re waiting for you guys to come over for dinner at the estate.”
Wu Du stares back at him, at a loss. Baffled, Chang Liujun heads inside and after a single glance he comes out abruptly to stare at Wu Du, seeing dread in each other’s gaze.
When Duan Ling wakes up, he can hear people nearly speaking in an odd language that sounds like Khwarezmian. Blearily, he opens his eyes, but all he sees is darkness. He has no idea if Mu Qing is next to him. One of the kidnappers sounds more or less familiar, but he can’t quite remember from where.
A black sack has been thrown over his head, and he can make out some hazy light. From a distance he can hear the sound of girls’ laughter.
“And which one is that?”
“Ask him.”
“He’ll figure out who we are.”
“Once he notices that they’re gone, Wu Du will definitely realise it’s us. What’s worrying is if we ask the wrong one and the other one would be able to figure that out too.”
“Let’s just find out who they are first.”
It comes to Duan Ling in a flash — it’s the Mongolian! It’s the Khatanbaatar he saw in the imperial gardens! Why would he kidnap him? It can’t be that his plan’s exposed now and they found out who he is? There’s no way.
Duan Ling’s seen Khatanbaatar, but Khatanbaatar has never seen him. These two think they’re using a language that Duan Ling can’t understand, and that’s why they’re using it to converse with each other without any inhibition. They’d never be able to imagine that Duan Ling had recognised it as soon as they started speaking.
“You’re too careless.” Khatanbaatar’s voice is saying, “How could you put something so important in your scabbard?”
“How am I supposed to know he’d grab my scabbard?”
“Do you think they may have been watching us?”
“Let’s figure out what to say and get back as soon as possible. They’ll come looking for us soon enough.”
The other voice says to Khatanbaatar in Khwarezmian, “This one has to be Mu Kuangda’s son. Look, he’s wearing armour made of silver silk.”
A hand reaches for Duan Ling then, untying his outer robe to reveal the White Tiger Shining Armour beneath. Khatanbaatar’s voice says, “There’s no way Wu Du’s servant can get a valuable thing like that. Only the chancellor’s son would be wearing that to keep him safe.”
“Search him.” The other voice says, “See if he has anything on him that can prove his identity.”
A hand slips under Duan Ling’s lapel, groping this way and that. Duan Ling thinks to himself, wow, you’re really asking for it.
Pretty much right after that there’s a miserable scream. As expected, Khatanbaatar gets bitten by the centipede kept in Duan Ling’s clothing. Holding up his hand, he yells at the top of his lungs before stiffly crashing to the floor.
The other voice cries out in a panic, “Khatan!”
So it really is Khatan … thinks Duan Ling.
He’s feeling sorry for these two stupid kidnappers all of a sudden. Also, he really wants to laugh.
“Antidote! Find the antidote!”
And now the conversation between them in Khwarezmian has come to an end, the other party begins to speak in Han, pulling Duan Ling up roughly by the collar and moving him to another spot. “What’s your name?!”
“Who cares what my name is?” Duan Ling says with the black bag over his head, “Your companion’s life is in my hands. If you want the antidote, let my friend go first.”
Khatan’s voice is somewhere off to their side, going ah … ah …, growing weaker and weaker until he falls silent.
“He’s not going to die right away. You still have a bit of time to consider whether to let my friend go. Or maybe you can reach over here and search me again, and get a bite yourself.”
“Produce the antidote,” the voice says. “Otherwise I’ll kill you. Your neck isn’t covered in armour.”
“But I don’t have the antidote.” Duan Ling laughs behind his black cloth bag, “Do as you see fit.”
The man falls quiet for a moment, and Duan Ling continues, “Time isn’t going to wait for you. You may only have several hours.”
“I’ll let you go. Your friend is in my hands, and if you dare tell anyone anything at all, I’ll kill him. You have eight hours — you must bring the stuff back to me before dawn.”
“Tell me your conditions,” Duan Ling says.
“If you’re late, don’t bother coming back. We’ll be shattered jade and whole tile. Tell Wu Du …”
“It’s ‘you’ll take my friend down with you’, or ‘rather be shattered jade than to remain a whole tile’.”
“Thank you for the guidance. Bring me the stuff I want — other than the receipts there’s also what belongs to me. Bring everything to the harbour outside the city along with the antidote. Put them on the ground just past the third pier.”
Outside the city? Are they outside the city? Duan Ling’s mind runs a mile. “Wouldn’t it be better if you let my friend go instead?”
“No way. I’m only going to point you the way. This subordinate of mine … His life isn’t all that important to me anyway.”
“Take it easy. He’s just poisoned. He can still hear you, you know.”
The kidnapper sneers, and picking up Duan Ling, he says, “Let’s go!”
Wind whistles by Duan Ling’s ear as the kidnapper bangs into the door, pushing it open. From far away, he can hear music before the music grows distant and they’re eventually surrounded by silence. Duan Ling keeps thinking about where they are, trying to make out the noises nearby; he feels the kidnapper running up the wall with him at some point, then at others he’s running along level ground. There’s also the sound of bells nearby from passing carriages.
“If you keep running around in circles like this,” Duan Ling says, “you’ll waste time, and that’ll only end up killing your subordinate.”
“Hmph,” the man sneers. “You’re very smart. Go on then.”
After the rope tying Duan Ling’s hands together loosens, and the cloth bag over his head is pulled away, he finds himself standing in a small alley. He slowly walks outside. Jiangzhou’s main street in the full splendour of a spring evening is spread out before his eyes, but the kidnapper is long gone.
Outside the chancellor’s estate.
Chang Liujun says, “We’ll have to return the stuff to them. At any rate His Majesty’s already seen it.”
“It’s with Zheng Yan,” Wu Du says. “It’s already been presented to His Majesty, so all we can do is go get it now. Wait a bit … don’t panic …”
Wu Du thinks about it for a little while before turning to Chang Liujun. “Go stake out a spot outside the posthouse. I’m going to get Zheng Yan, sign the stuff out of the palace, and go have a talk inside with them. In the meantime, make sure they don’t get a chance to move the hostages, and don’t alert the chancellor for now.”
“How can we not inform the chancellor over something this serious?! Have you gone mad?!”
“You go ahead and let him know then. And when things go sideways later, don’t you come blaming me.”
“You …” Chang Liujun calls out, “ Wu Du! Wu Du!”
Wu Du swings his leg over Benxiao’s back and heads straight for the palace. When Mu Kuangda doesn’t see anyone coming to dinner, he sends another servant to hurry them along, and after some thinking, Chang Liujun can but make up his mind and tells the servant, “The young master dragged Wang Shan off to the Bouquet Pavilion, and I was just about to go bring them back. Please tell Chancellor Mu to go ahead and enjoy his dinner.”
Chang Liujun gets himself a horse as well and rushes off towards the inn at the posthouse.
Duan Ling though is in no hurry to get back to the estate, as he knows the chancellor’s estate must be a complete, panicked mess by now, and as soon as he goes inside he’ll be detained by Mu Kuangda and questioned in detail regarding what happened. And in order to safeguard his person he wouldn’t be let out again, so now must be the time in which he figures out what they have to do.
It must be because their adversary had gotten wind of it when Wu Du conducted his investigation into the bribery case today. The Mongolians have risked grabbing hostages in order to exchange for the evidence. When that person was holding onto him, Duan Ling had noticed that he seemed rather tall and wide of stature … was it Amga? Aside from the evidence of his bribery, Wu Du also took away something else from Amga, and it sounds rather important?
A hand pats him on the shoulder. Alarmed, Duan Ling whips around to defend himself.
“Master!” Chang Liujun says.
That had surprised Duan Ling. Chang Liujun asks, “Where’s Mu Qing?”
Duan Ling forces himself to calm down. “He’s been taken by Amga and Khatanbaatar.”
Duan Ling still feels a bit unaccustomed to Chang Liujun calling him “master”. He describes the ordeal in detail and says some things to Chang Liujun in an attempt to comfort him and make him not so worried.
Chang Liujun finishes listening to Duan Ling’s account and says, “We’ll have to move as fast as we can then. Wu Du’s gone to the palace to get Zheng Yan and he’ll be right over.”
Outside the posthouse, the two of them try to observe what’s going on inside. Duan Ling finds out that Mu Kuangda hasn’t realised that Mu Qing is gone yet, and there’s room to stop the situation from getting out of hand — good.
“I’m guessing they’re not here,” Duan Ling says. “He ran circles around the city with me for ages earlier, and he clearly never left the city.”
“I’ll go inside and look around, you wait for me out here …” Chang Liujun stops to think, and worried that something should go awry again, he decides to say, “I’ll take you with me. You can climb on my back.”
Chang Liujun is a big man, and as soon as Duan Ling leaps onto his back, he jumps into the inn’s courtyard. They dash right into the Xiliang building first, where a girl starts screaming, and Chang Liujun grabs Duan Ling and they rush out of the bathhouse. Duan Ling steps on Chang Liujun’s knee, vaults up the wall, and together they leap into the Yuan building.
Duan Ling thinks to himself, this guys is truly brave on account of his skills, charging into the place headlong like this.
“Who’s there?!”
The Yuan building is heavily guarded on the inside, and Duan Ling and Chang Liujun are surrounded as soon as they enter. Chang Liujun drops to the floor on one palm, kicks out both legs with a spin, kicking the guards right in the chest; blood spews out of the guards’ mouth and they start falling backwards. Chang Liujun takes a guard’s sword and tosses it to Duan Ling. “Can you use that?”
“Bow and quiver! I need a bow and quiver!”
Chang Liujun throws his momentum behind another kick and simply smashes the windows and doors to smithereens as he charges into a side hall, and from there he grabs a bow and quiver set for Duan Ling.
There’s nobody in there.
“They’re probably not here at the inn,” Duan Ling says. “This place is too obvious of a target. Let’s go and we’ll figure out something else.”
They turn around to find the outside of the room surrounded by Mongolians, blocking their exit.
Duan Ling is speechless for a beat. “We’ll leave the way we came.”
“No need,” Chang Liujun replies, and reaches up to pull down his mask. Facing the dozen or so Mongolians outside the room with his tattoo exposed, Chang Liujun says, “I’m going to start killing now, but I’ll give you all one last chance. Leave this place if you know what’s good for you.”
From the looks on their faces, the Mongolians have no idea what he just said, and with a war cry, they charge into the room with their weapons raised. Duan Ling quickly leaps backwards onto a table, getting ready to support Chang Liujun with his bow, but Chang Liujun has turned his body to the side and crashed right into the midst of the Mongolian formation.
Duan Ling barely had the time to reach back for an arrow, and to nock and draw it, but by then he realises that aside from Chang Liujun, there’s no one in the room left standing.
Duan Ling stares in front of him speechlessly.
“Come on, master.” Chang Liujun even reaches out to pull Duan Ling down from the table, and as Duan Ling leaves the inn behind he can’t help but look back at the mess of people lying all over the floor; he doesn’t even know how to feel.
They leave the inn and face a quiet avenue.
“Where could they be?” Chang Liujun crouches on top of a stone lion in his rogue’s blacks, looking as though he’s some sort of animal sitting on the lion’s head.
“Maybe we can get the Jiangzhou army to search the city?” Duan Ling says.
“I fear that may be dangerous for the young master. What if they hurt him?”
Duan Ling is the one who came up with this plan in the first place, but he never expected to end up getting hoisted by his own petard; if he’d known, he would have been even more cautious. But now it seems they’ve driven the Mongolians up against the wall, gone entirely desperate.
A speeding horse approaches. Wu Du is here.
“Wu Du!”
Wu Du jumps off the horse and runs towards Duan Ling. They catch each other in a tight hug. Wu Du has clearly let out a breath of relief. “Good thing you’re alright. Thank the heavens.”
Chang Liujun says, “It’s not over yet!”
“Let’s talk elsewhere,” Wu Du replies. “Zheng Yan is still in the palace. He dares not alarm His Majesty, and he’ll try to bring the stuff out somehow. He told us to wait at the noodle shop.”
Chang Liujun is worried about Mu Qing, but without knowing where he is, and presuming that he can’t be at the posthouse, he can only drop things for now and go to the Best Noodles In the Realm with Wu Du and Duan Ling. It’s already closing time at the noodle shop, but because of their association with Zheng Yan, the shop owner tidies up the second floor private dining room and lets them stay for a bit longer.
Duan Ling tells Wu Du what happened, and the three of them meditate on the events of the evening. Duan Ling asks, “What did you take from him?”
Wu Du looks entirely baffled, but he takes out Amga’s sabre sheath and shows it to them.
“This is it.” Chang Liujun says, “It’s one thing for you and Zhang Yan going around beating up people, but what’d you take his scabbard for?”
“I have to at least keep some evidence, don’t I? Otherwise what else was I supposed to show His Majesty?”
Duan Ling says, “No no, but it’s just a scabbard. Did he have to go this far?”
“It may have some sort of sentimental value?” Wu Du guesses.
The scabbard is inlaid with many precious stones and looks extremely valuable. It may be a gift bestowed by Ögedei or some family heirloom.
Chang Liujun says, “We can’t exactly poison the guy to death either. Do you have an antidote?”
“I can put it together now,” Wu Du replies.
He unties the steel belt he keeps under his outer robe, opens up a secret compartment, and ladles out some powders with a tiny little spoon to mix them. Then he asks the proprietor to bring him a soup spoon. Chang Liujun is still trying to guess where they could be hiding Mu Qing, and Wu Du answers him every once in a while. Duan Ling knows he must want to go home and sleep now; since Duan Ling’s already been let go, Mu Qing is none of his business, so he’s just sitting here watching Chang Liujun panic.
While the two of them are talking, Duan Ling looks at the scabbard and recalls Kublai Khan’s sword from before. The Mongolians seem to like inlaying tons of precious stones on the scabbards as an ostentatious display of one’s status. He picks it up, considering it for a moment, and with an accidental slide of his fingers over some hidden mechanism, a secret compartment pops open to reveal sheets of yellowing papers inside.
Wu Du and Chang Liujun’s conversation comes to an abrupt stop. Both of them are staring at the scabbard.
“What’s this?” Duan Ling pinches the edge with his fingers and carefully pulls out two sheets of paper, unrolling it on the table.
They’re the exam papers he and Cai Yan wrote when they were at Biyong College, and the bottom left of each sheet is stamped with their respective seals!
The three of them lean in close, their brows furrowed as they stare at the two sheets of paper.
As soon as Wu Du sees Cai Yan’s seal, his expression turns to shock and he looks at Duan Ling. Duan Ling is already entirely dazed, and the first idea that comes into his head is oh no! Chang Liujun is right here!
“Third … month … mouth …” Chang Liujun reads aloud, looking completely confused. He asks Duan Ling, “What’s it say?”
Neither Duan Ling nor Wu Du know what to say to him.
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By the time Wu Du reaches the Hall of Success everyone is already gone, save one old servant staying behind to clean up. When Wu Du asks him, the servant doesn’t know where “Wang Shan” has gone either, which makes him rather annoyed, but all he can do is go back to the Jiangzhou Military Command and bring Benxiao out of the stables. Xie You asks, “I heard you two were having a street fight in the city?”
Wu Du answers him with, “Get outta here!”
Xie You is left rather speechless.
On horseback, Wu Du gallops off so quickly that he’s gone in an instant, leaving nary a trace.
Outside the courtyard house, Wu Du calls out, “Shan’er!”
No one answers him. Wu Du picks up the small knife lying at the foot of the flowerbed and realises something is wrong right away; he dashes inside to find medicinal ingredients spilled all over the floor and signs of a struggle as though there had been two people inside the house. Then he looks at the windowsill and the furrow between his brows deepens. He immediately leaves the house, but after chasing after the signs, he doesn’t find any footprints in the alleyway.
Chang Liujun comes by. “Where’s Wang Shan and Mu Qing? They’re waiting for you guys to come over for dinner at the estate.”
Wu Du stares back at him, at a loss. Baffled, Chang Liujun heads inside and after a single glance he comes out abruptly to stare at Wu Du, seeing dread in each other’s gaze.
When Duan Ling wakes up, he can hear people nearly speaking in an odd language that sounds like Khwarezmian. Blearily, he opens his eyes, but all he sees is darkness. He has no idea if Mu Qing is next to him. One of the kidnappers sounds more or less familiar, but he can’t quite remember from where.
A black sack has been thrown over his head, and he can make out some hazy light. From a distance he can hear the sound of girls’ laughter.
“And which one is that?”
“Ask him.”
“He’ll figure out who we are.”
“Once he notices that they’re gone, Wu Du will definitely realise it’s us. What’s worrying is if we ask the wrong one and the other one would be able to figure that out too.”
“Let’s just find out who they are first.”
It comes to Duan Ling in a flash — it’s the Mongolian! It’s the Khatanbaatar he saw in the imperial gardens! Why would he kidnap him? It can’t be that his plan’s exposed now and they found out who he is? There’s no way.
Duan Ling’s seen Khatanbaatar, but Khatanbaatar has never seen him. These two think they’re using a language that Duan Ling can’t understand, and that’s why they’re using it to converse with each other without any inhibition. They’d never be able to imagine that Duan Ling had recognised it as soon as they started speaking.
“You’re too careless.” Khatanbaatar’s voice is saying, “How could you put something so important in your scabbard?”
“How am I supposed to know he’d grab my scabbard?”
“Do you think they may have been watching us?”
“Let’s figure out what to say and get back as soon as possible. They’ll come looking for us soon enough.”
The other voice says to Khatanbaatar in Khwarezmian, “This one has to be Mu Kuangda’s son. Look, he’s wearing armour made of silver silk.”
A hand reaches for Duan Ling then, untying his outer robe to reveal the White Tiger Shining Armour beneath. Khatanbaatar’s voice says, “There’s no way Wu Du’s servant can get a valuable thing like that. Only the chancellor’s son would be wearing that to keep him safe.”
“Search him.” The other voice says, “See if he has anything on him that can prove his identity.”
A hand slips under Duan Ling’s lapel, groping this way and that. Duan Ling thinks to himself, wow, you’re really asking for it.
Pretty much right after that there’s a miserable scream. As expected, Khatanbaatar gets bitten by the centipede kept in Duan Ling’s clothing. Holding up his hand, he yells at the top of his lungs before stiffly crashing to the floor.
The other voice cries out in a panic, “Khatan!”
So it really is Khatan … thinks Duan Ling.
He’s feeling sorry for these two stupid kidnappers all of a sudden. Also, he really wants to laugh.
“Antidote! Find the antidote!”
And now the conversation between them in Khwarezmian has come to an end, the other party begins to speak in Han, pulling Duan Ling up roughly by the collar and moving him to another spot. “What’s your name?!”
“Who cares what my name is?” Duan Ling says with the black bag over his head, “Your companion’s life is in my hands. If you want the antidote, let my friend go first.”
Khatan’s voice is somewhere off to their side, going ah … ah …, growing weaker and weaker until he falls silent.
“He’s not going to die right away. You still have a bit of time to consider whether to let my friend go. Or maybe you can reach over here and search me again, and get a bite yourself.”
“Produce the antidote,” the voice says. “Otherwise I’ll kill you. Your neck isn’t covered in armour.”
“But I don’t have the antidote.” Duan Ling laughs behind his black cloth bag, “Do as you see fit.”
The man falls quiet for a moment, and Duan Ling continues, “Time isn’t going to wait for you. You may only have several hours.”
“I’ll let you go. Your friend is in my hands, and if you dare tell anyone anything at all, I’ll kill him. You have eight hours — you must bring the stuff back to me before dawn.”
“Tell me your conditions,” Duan Ling says.
“If you’re late, don’t bother coming back. We’ll be shattered jade and whole tile. Tell Wu Du …”
“It’s ‘you’ll take my friend down with you’, or ‘rather be shattered jade than to remain a whole tile’.”
“Thank you for the guidance. Bring me the stuff I want — other than the receipts there’s also what belongs to me. Bring everything to the harbour outside the city along with the antidote. Put them on the ground just past the third pier.”
Outside the city? Are they outside the city? Duan Ling’s mind runs a mile. “Wouldn’t it be better if you let my friend go instead?”
“No way. I’m only going to point you the way. This subordinate of mine … His life isn’t all that important to me anyway.”
“Take it easy. He’s just poisoned. He can still hear you, you know.”
The kidnapper sneers, and picking up Duan Ling, he says, “Let’s go!”
Wind whistles by Duan Ling’s ear as the kidnapper bangs into the door, pushing it open. From far away, he can hear music before the music grows distant and they’re eventually surrounded by silence. Duan Ling keeps thinking about where they are, trying to make out the noises nearby; he feels the kidnapper running up the wall with him at some point, then at others he’s running along level ground. There’s also the sound of bells nearby from passing carriages.
“If you keep running around in circles like this,” Duan Ling says, “you’ll waste time, and that’ll only end up killing your subordinate.”
“Hmph,” the man sneers. “You’re very smart. Go on then.”
After the rope tying Duan Ling’s hands together loosens, and the cloth bag over his head is pulled away, he finds himself standing in a small alley. He slowly walks outside. Jiangzhou’s main street in the full splendour of a spring evening is spread out before his eyes, but the kidnapper is long gone.
Outside the chancellor’s estate.
Chang Liujun says, “We’ll have to return the stuff to them. At any rate His Majesty’s already seen it.”
“It’s with Zheng Yan,” Wu Du says. “It’s already been presented to His Majesty, so all we can do is go get it now. Wait a bit … don’t panic …”
Wu Du thinks about it for a little while before turning to Chang Liujun. “Go stake out a spot outside the posthouse. I’m going to get Zheng Yan, sign the stuff out of the palace, and go have a talk inside with them. In the meantime, make sure they don’t get a chance to move the hostages, and don’t alert the chancellor for now.”
“How can we not inform the chancellor over something this serious?! Have you gone mad?!”
“You go ahead and let him know then. And when things go sideways later, don’t you come blaming me.”
“You …” Chang Liujun calls out, “ Wu Du! Wu Du!”
Wu Du swings his leg over Benxiao’s back and heads straight for the palace. When Mu Kuangda doesn’t see anyone coming to dinner, he sends another servant to hurry them along, and after some thinking, Chang Liujun can but make up his mind and tells the servant, “The young master dragged Wang Shan off to the Bouquet Pavilion, and I was just about to go bring them back. Please tell Chancellor Mu to go ahead and enjoy his dinner.”
Chang Liujun gets himself a horse as well and rushes off towards the inn at the posthouse.
Duan Ling though is in no hurry to get back to the estate, as he knows the chancellor’s estate must be a complete, panicked mess by now, and as soon as he goes inside he’ll be detained by Mu Kuangda and questioned in detail regarding what happened. And in order to safeguard his person he wouldn’t be let out again, so now must be the time in which he figures out what they have to do.
It must be because their adversary had gotten wind of it when Wu Du conducted his investigation into the bribery case today. The Mongolians have risked grabbing hostages in order to exchange for the evidence. When that person was holding onto him, Duan Ling had noticed that he seemed rather tall and wide of stature … was it Amga? Aside from the evidence of his bribery, Wu Du also took away something else from Amga, and it sounds rather important?
A hand pats him on the shoulder. Alarmed, Duan Ling whips around to defend himself.
“Master!” Chang Liujun says.
That had surprised Duan Ling. Chang Liujun asks, “Where’s Mu Qing?”
Duan Ling forces himself to calm down. “He’s been taken by Amga and Khatanbaatar.”
Duan Ling still feels a bit unaccustomed to Chang Liujun calling him “master”. He describes the ordeal in detail and says some things to Chang Liujun in an attempt to comfort him and make him not so worried.
Chang Liujun finishes listening to Duan Ling’s account and says, “We’ll have to move as fast as we can then. Wu Du’s gone to the palace to get Zheng Yan and he’ll be right over.”
Outside the posthouse, the two of them try to observe what’s going on inside. Duan Ling finds out that Mu Kuangda hasn’t realised that Mu Qing is gone yet, and there’s room to stop the situation from getting out of hand — good.
“I’m guessing they’re not here,” Duan Ling says. “He ran circles around the city with me for ages earlier, and he clearly never left the city.”
“I’ll go inside and look around, you wait for me out here …” Chang Liujun stops to think, and worried that something should go awry again, he decides to say, “I’ll take you with me. You can climb on my back.”
Chang Liujun is a big man, and as soon as Duan Ling leaps onto his back, he jumps into the inn’s courtyard. They dash right into the Xiliang building first, where a girl starts screaming, and Chang Liujun grabs Duan Ling and they rush out of the bathhouse. Duan Ling steps on Chang Liujun’s knee, vaults up the wall, and together they leap into the Yuan building.
Duan Ling thinks to himself, this guys is truly brave on account of his skills, charging into the place headlong like this.
“Who’s there?!”
The Yuan building is heavily guarded on the inside, and Duan Ling and Chang Liujun are surrounded as soon as they enter. Chang Liujun drops to the floor on one palm, kicks out both legs with a spin, kicking the guards right in the chest; blood spews out of the guards’ mouth and they start falling backwards. Chang Liujun takes a guard’s sword and tosses it to Duan Ling. “Can you use that?”
“Bow and quiver! I need a bow and quiver!”
Chang Liujun throws his momentum behind another kick and simply smashes the windows and doors to smithereens as he charges into a side hall, and from there he grabs a bow and quiver set for Duan Ling.
There’s nobody in there.
“They’re probably not here at the inn,” Duan Ling says. “This place is too obvious of a target. Let’s go and we’ll figure out something else.”
They turn around to find the outside of the room surrounded by Mongolians, blocking their exit.
Duan Ling is speechless for a beat. “We’ll leave the way we came.”
“No need,” Chang Liujun replies, and reaches up to pull down his mask. Facing the dozen or so Mongolians outside the room with his tattoo exposed, Chang Liujun says, “I’m going to start killing now, but I’ll give you all one last chance. Leave this place if you know what’s good for you.”
From the looks on their faces, the Mongolians have no idea what he just said, and with a war cry, they charge into the room with their weapons raised. Duan Ling quickly leaps backwards onto a table, getting ready to support Chang Liujun with his bow, but Chang Liujun has turned his body to the side and crashed right into the midst of the Mongolian formation.
Duan Ling barely had the time to reach back for an arrow, and to nock and draw it, but by then he realises that aside from Chang Liujun, there’s no one in the room left standing.
Duan Ling stares in front of him speechlessly.
“Come on, master.” Chang Liujun even reaches out to pull Duan Ling down from the table, and as Duan Ling leaves the inn behind he can’t help but look back at the mess of people lying all over the floor; he doesn’t even know how to feel.
They leave the inn and face a quiet avenue.
“Where could they be?” Chang Liujun crouches on top of a stone lion in his rogue’s blacks, looking as though he’s some sort of animal sitting on the lion’s head.
“Maybe we can get the Jiangzhou army to search the city?” Duan Ling says.
“I fear that may be dangerous for the young master. What if they hurt him?”
Duan Ling is the one who came up with this plan in the first place, but he never expected to end up getting hoisted by his own petard; if he’d known, he would have been even more cautious. But now it seems they’ve driven the Mongolians up against the wall, gone entirely desperate.
A speeding horse approaches. Wu Du is here.
“Wu Du!”
Wu Du jumps off the horse and runs towards Duan Ling. They catch each other in a tight hug. Wu Du has clearly let out a breath of relief. “Good thing you’re alright. Thank the heavens.”
Chang Liujun says, “It’s not over yet!”
“Let’s talk elsewhere,” Wu Du replies. “Zheng Yan is still in the palace. He dares not alarm His Majesty, and he’ll try to bring the stuff out somehow. He told us to wait at the noodle shop.”
Chang Liujun is worried about Mu Qing, but without knowing where he is, and presuming that he can’t be at the posthouse, he can only drop things for now and go to the Best Noodles In the Realm with Wu Du and Duan Ling. It’s already closing time at the noodle shop, but because of their association with Zheng Yan, the shop owner tidies up the second floor private dining room and lets them stay for a bit longer.
Duan Ling tells Wu Du what happened, and the three of them meditate on the events of the evening. Duan Ling asks, “What did you take from him?”
Wu Du looks entirely baffled, but he takes out Amga’s sabre sheath and shows it to them.
“This is it.” Chang Liujun says, “It’s one thing for you and Zhang Yan going around beating up people, but what’d you take his scabbard for?”
“I have to at least keep some evidence, don’t I? Otherwise what else was I supposed to show His Majesty?”
Duan Ling says, “No no, but it’s just a scabbard. Did he have to go this far?”
“It may have some sort of sentimental value?” Wu Du guesses.
The scabbard is inlaid with many precious stones and looks extremely valuable. It may be a gift bestowed by Ögedei or some family heirloom.
Chang Liujun says, “We can’t exactly poison the guy to death either. Do you have an antidote?”
“I can put it together now,” Wu Du replies.
He unties the steel belt he keeps under his outer robe, opens up a secret compartment, and ladles out some powders with a tiny little spoon to mix them. Then he asks the proprietor to bring him a soup spoon. Chang Liujun is still trying to guess where they could be hiding Mu Qing, and Wu Du answers him every once in a while. Duan Ling knows he must want to go home and sleep now; since Duan Ling’s already been let go, Mu Qing is none of his business, so he’s just sitting here watching Chang Liujun panic.
While the two of them are talking, Duan Ling looks at the scabbard and recalls Kublai Khan’s sword from before. The Mongolians seem to like inlaying tons of precious stones on the scabbards as an ostentatious display of one’s status. He picks it up, considering it for a moment, and with an accidental slide of his fingers over some hidden mechanism, a secret compartment pops open to reveal sheets of yellowing papers inside.
Wu Du and Chang Liujun’s conversation comes to an abrupt stop. Both of them are staring at the scabbard.
“What’s this?” Duan Ling pinches the edge with his fingers and carefully pulls out two sheets of paper, unrolling it on the table.
They’re the exam papers he and Cai Yan wrote when they were at Biyong College, and the bottom left of each sheet is stamped with their respective seals!
The three of them lean in close, their brows furrowed as they stare at the two sheets of paper.
As soon as Wu Du sees Cai Yan’s seal, his expression turns to shock and he looks at Duan Ling. Duan Ling is already entirely dazed, and the first idea that comes into his head is oh no! Chang Liujun is right here!
“Third … month … mouth …” Chang Liujun reads aloud, looking completely confused. He asks Duan Ling, “What’s it say?”
Neither Duan Ling nor Wu Du know what to say to him.
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