Chapter 890: Settling Huge Debts, Nobles Fall into a Dead End

Wurigen turned over on the bed covered with six layers of white fox skin on the third floor of Chunman Lou, his arm draped over the headlining dancing girl beside him who was already sleeping soundly. A dried trail of drool still hung from the corner of his mouth, and his whole body was so sore and weak that he didn't want to move a single finger.

The sound of boots stepping on the wooden floor of the corridor came from outside the door, the rhythm neither fast nor slow, reaching the door in two or three steps.

"Manager Wurigen, it's time to get up. Boss Qian is waiting downstairs."

Wurigen's eyelids moved, his mouth opened and closed, and he squeezed a vague hum from his throat.

"Get up for what? It's not dawn yet."

"Manager, the sun is already at the top of your head. You have slept for a whole day and night. Boss Qian said there is an urgent matter to discuss with you today."

It took Wurigen a great deal of effort to pull himself out of the pile of white fox skins, stepping barefoot on the Persian carpet. His brain was still a mess. A month of continuous wine pools and meat forests had hollowed out his originally sturdy body like a piece of rotten wood ground halfway by wind and sand.

He draped a silk robe over his shoulders and shuffled downstairs in his shoes. The Turkic Teqin, Ashina, was already sitting in a private room on the first floor, his complexion even worse than his, with blue-black bags hanging under his two eyes. He held a bowl of hangover-curing sour soup in his hand, burping after every sip.

"Ashina, this dead look of yours is not even as good as that dead fish I saw yesterday that I fished out of the hot spring pool."

Ashina placed the sour soup bowl on the table and wiped his mouth messily with his sleeve.

"Cut the crap. When Boss Qian sent someone to call me, I was still soaking in the pool, talking about settling the account today."

Wurigen slumped into the chair in the private room, his silk robe sliding halfway off his shoulder.

"Settle what account? I still have twenty snow leopard skins left to spend."

Ashina glanced at him, the corners of his mouth pulling downward.

"I'm afraid those twenty snow leopard skins of yours aren't even enough for half a month's accommodation fee for this room of yours."

Wurigen slapped the table surface with his hand.

"Fart, I brought hundreds of snow leopard skins and dozens of jin of dog-head gold in. How much can I spend in a month?"

Ashina didn't pick up his words because the curtain of the private room was lifted from the outside.

Zhang Wenqian walked in wearing that dark purple Shu brocade long robe, the mutton-fat jade pendant at his waist clinking together. Behind him followed three thin-faced accountants holding thick stacks of ledgers, each with a paper booklet clamped under their arms thicker than a brick.

"The two honored guests are up. Good, it just so happens that Qian has some account matters that need to be checked with the two of you."

Zhang Wenqian's smiling face was no different from a month ago, his eyes squeezed into curves, his face full of wrinkles like a Maitreya Buddha.

Wurigen waved his hand lazily.

"Check what? It's not like you didn't receive my snow leopard skins and dog-head gold. Just return whatever is left to me. Ashina and I are preparing to return to the grasslands tomorrow."

Zhang Wenqian chuckled twice, gave a wink to the three accountants behind him, and the three thin-faced gentlemen filed forward, stacking the ledgers in their hands neatly on the Eight Immortals table in the private room, causing the table to creak.

"For the expenses of the two honored guests in our Xia Prefecture City this month, Qian had the accountants list a total itemized list. It just so happens that since the two of you are both here today, let's calculate this account clearly, so as to avoid pulling skin later."

Zhang Wenqian pulled a long piece of paper folded seven or eight times from the ledger on the very top of the table. When he shook it open, the paper rustled for a while, and the tail of the paper dragged over the edge of the Eight Immortals table and hung down, more than three feet long.

Wurigen's eyeballs followed the long paper downward, stopping at the number written in cinnabar at the tail of the paper.

His body, which had been slumped loosely against the back of the chair, sprang forward, and the silk robe slid completely off his shoulder onto the chair.

"How much?"

Zhang Wenqian's index finger tapped lightly on that cinnabar number.

"Including the five hundred warhorses owed by Manager Wurigen and the one thousand sturdy cattle owed by Teqin Ashina, plus the two of you's food, accommodation, wine, silk, jewelry, medicinal materials, hot spring bathing, maids, servants, rewards, and various miscellaneous expenses for this month, the total is equivalent to forty-seven thousand guan of copper coins."

Zhang Wenqian pushed that long piece of paper in front of Wurigen.

"Calculated according to the trade fair's card price, it is approximately equivalent to four thousand seven hundred top-grade warhorses, or twenty-three thousand five hundred sturdy cattle."

The private room fell silent, silent enough to hear the footsteps of someone carrying a tea tray walking past in the corridor outside.

The bowl of sour soup in Ashina's hand slid to the edge of the table at some point, the bottom of the bowl hitting the corner of the table with a crisp sound, and the soup splashed out and stained the tail of that long bill.

An incomplete syllable rolled in Wurigen's throat. His hand pressed on the table surface to support himself as he leaned forward half a body, his two eyeballs sweeping back and forth over that cinnabar number three times, as if to confirm that his eyes were not malfunctioning.

"Four thousand seven hundred warhorses?"

Zhang Wenqian nodded with a smile.

"Including interest, let's just count it as four thousand five hundred horses after a discount. Qian is not a stingy person either."

Wurigen stood up from the chair, the silk robe falling to the ground, but he didn't have time to pick it up. Bare-chested on one side, he pointed at Zhang Wenqian's nose.

"You fart, even if I ate with a gold bowl every day for a month, I couldn't spend this much. How did you calculate this account?"

Zhang Wenqian's smiling face didn't move at all, his fat palms pointing at the bill one by one.

"This item is the set of jade chess pieces customized by the honored guest at the jade shop on the third day, totaling eight hundred guan including the chessboard and pieces. This item is the batch of Jiangnan silk bought out by the honored guest on the seventh day, totaling one thousand two hundred guan including tailoring fees. This item is the appearance fee for the twenty Western Region dancing girls hired by the honored guest for fifteen consecutive days, totaling three thousand guan."

His finger slid down one item by one, and Wurigen's face turned pale for every item he slid.

"This item is the dragon saliva jade pendant auctioned by the honored guest at the auction house, six hundred guan. This item is the gold step-shaker rewarded by the honored guest to that headlining girl, four hundred guan. This item is..."

"Enough, enough, enough!"

Wurigen slapped the bill onto the table with one palm, his chest heaving violently, his voice like a wolf whose tail had been stepped on.

"You motherfucking black shop, selling a jade pendant for six hundred guan? Do you think I haven't seen the world?"

Zhang Wenqian tucked both hands into his sleeves, his smile unchanged.

"Honored guest, when it was bought, it was the honored guest himself who made the final decision. There are witnesses who pressed their handprints beside every transaction. At that time, the honored guest was drinking Liangzhou old cellar and even praised Qian for being kind."

Ashina's hand had already unconsciously touched the handle of the sword at his waist. His Adam's apple rolled up and down twice, and he opened his mouth, suppressing his voice.

"Boss Qian, what about my bill?"

Zhang Wenqian pulled another piece of paper from the second ledger that was also long enough to drag off the edge of the table.

"Teqin Ashina's bill is here. Including the mansion buyout fee, the daily maintenance fee for the hot spring pool, the monthly silver for twenty maids, plus wine, food, jewelry, rewards, and various miscellaneous expenses, the total is equivalent to thirty-two thousand guan of copper coins."

Ashina's hand loosened and tightened on the sword handle, back and forth three times.

"Thirty-two thousand guan?"

Zhang Wenqian handed that piece of paper toward Ashina.

"Correct, equivalent to three thousand two hundred warhorses, or sixteen thousand sturdy cattle. The one thousand sturdy cattle previously signed by the honored guest only offset a fraction."

Wurigen and Ashina looked at each other, that look full of the panic on the eve of a blizzard and the anger of being stuffed into a pocket.

Wurigen's hand reached toward the curved blade inlaid with turquoise leaning beside the chair, the moment his fingers touched the handle carrying a ferocity of being pushed into a corner.

"Boss Qian, do you think the White Wolf Tribe's curved blade is not fast enough?"

Ashina also stood up, his sword pulled out three inches from the scabbard, the cold light on the blade flashing under the lantern light in the private room.

"I tell you, Boss Qian, I am not some Turkic scattered soldier. I am Ashina Mukan, the Teqin of the Turkic Khan Court. If you dare to force me to pay this bad debt, I will cut off your head and take it back to the Khan to ask for merit."

Wurigen stepped across to Zhang Wenqian and placed the curved blade out of the scabbard against Zhang Wenqian's fat neck, the blade pressing against the skin and leaving a white mark.

"I won't pretend anymore either. I am Wen Ge Ti's own nephew, the son of the Rouran Right Wise King, Wurigen. You small Han merchant dare to swindle my money?"

The smile on Zhang Wenqian's face finally faded as the cold curved blade pressed against his neck.

It faded completely.

That fat face full of wrinkles changed into another appearance the moment the curved blade pressed against it, as if a soft mask had been torn off from underneath. The face revealed had no fear, no anger, only a cold contempt to the bones.

He raised his right hand and clapped his fat palms twice, not fast and not slow.

The applause echoed twice in the private room. Before the tail sound of the second clap dissipated, the sounds from all four sides exploded simultaneously.

The flower window on the left side of the private room shattered with a muffled sound, the window lattice along with the thin wooden board being kicked into fragments by something from the outside, and cold wind mixed with debris poured in.

A landscape painting originally hung on the partition wall on the right, and the wall board behind the painting flipped inward as a whole, smashing onto the ground and raising a cloud of dust.

The curtain of the door behind him was pulled down from both sides simultaneously, and the curtain hooks flew out and hit the ceiling with a clanging sound.

Something was moving in the cracks of the ceiling above his head, and wood chips fell down with a rustling sound.

Wurigen and Ashina's curved blades were still raised, but their hands were no longer moving.

Because the repeating crossbows in the hands of the black-clad men pouring in from all directions were all cocked, the iron tips of the crossbow arrows aimed at their heads and chests, close enough to see the slightly greenish luster on the arrowheads. That kind of green was not the color of rust.

The encirclement formed by hundreds of crossbow arrows turned the private room into an iron barrel, with the bottom, walls, and lid all being sharp thorns quenched with poison.

Zhang Wenqian sidestepped half a pace, slowly walking out from under the curved saber Wuri Gen had pressed against his neck; he rubbed the white mark on his neck with his palm, then patted the wood shavings that had fallen onto his lapels.

He turned to face these two grassland nobles who were frozen in place, his voice changing from that of the fat merchant who was bowing and scraping before into a completely different texture.

"Rouran Right Wise King's son Wurigen, Turkic Khan Court Teqin Ashina Mukan."

Zhang Wenqian pulled an iron plaque from his sleeve. The iron plaque turned half a circle in the light, engraved with a pattern that made everyone who did dark things shiver when they saw it.

"I am Zhang Wenqian, the Xia Prefecture Chief of the Da Zhou Mingjing Si."

Wurigen's curved blade trembled in his hand, the blade sliding into mid-air and hanging there, unable to advance or retreat.

Zhang Wenqian tucked the iron plaque back into his sleeve, both hands folded in front of him again.

"Since the two of you have revealed your identities, Zhang will not act with you two anymore."

He took a step forward, and Wurigen took a step back, his back hitting the arrowhead of a crossbow arrow. The arrowhead pierced through the silk robe's fabric and poked his skin, his shoulder blades tensing up fiercely.

Zhang Wenqian stopped at a position two steps away from Wurigen, his gaze sweeping across his and Ashina's faces flatly.

"On Da Zhou's territory, regardless of whether you are the Khan's nephew or the Khan's dog cub, you must pay back the debt you owe."

Ashina's sword trembled slightly in his hand, his eyeballs bouncing back and forth between those crossbow arrows and the black-clad men, his pupils reflecting the cold light of hundreds of iron arrowheads.

"You were a set trap from the beginning."

Zhang Wenqian tilted his head, the appearance of the fat merchant revealing the sharpness underneath in this tilt.

"Teqin official only reacts now? From the step you stepped into the trade fair gate, every inch of ground you stepped on was paved by Zhang."

Wurigen's curved blade finally hung down, the tip of the blade hitting the Persian carpet and sinking into the fabric's fibers. His hand was still gripping the handle, but he was gripping it without strength.

"What do you want?"

Zhang Wenqian loosened both hands from in front of him, put them behind his back, and lifted his chin slightly.

"What Zhang wants, the two of you are not yet qualified to ask."

He slowly pulled a roll of parchment from his bosom. The parchment was rolled very tightly, tied with a black silk thread on the outside, with a small lead seal hanging on the silk thread.

Zhang Wenqian crushed the lead seal, the silk thread loosened, and the parchment slowly unfolded in his hand.

"The two of you look at this first, and then we will talk about paying back the debt."

He turned the parchment over to face Wurigen and Ashina's direction.

A map was drawn on the parchment, marking the entire route they took from the grasslands to Xia Prefecture. Every stop, every supply station, and the location of every contact person were all marked with red dots, with annotations in Rouran script beside them.

Wurigen's face turned from white to gray.

Ashina's sword fell from his hand, hitting the carpet with a muffled sound.

Zhang Wenqian took the parchment back, rolled it up again, and twitched the corner of his mouth.

"The two of you's every movement, from the moment you stepped on the road south, was under the eyes of the Mingjing Si."

He tucked the parchment back into his bosom and pulled out something else from his sleeve.

It was a contract, the handwriting on it neat to the extreme, the ink dried for a long time.

"Zhang is not an unreasonable person. This debt must have a way to be paid."

He held the contract up to Wurigen's eyes.

"If the two of you are interested, you can look at this debt-offsetting plan first."

Wurigen's gaze fell on that contract, the reflection of the ink characters in his pupils, but his hand did not reach out to take it.

Zhang Wenqian's voice in the private room surrounded by crossbow arrows was so calm that it made one's scalp tingle.

"Of course, the two of you can also choose not to look."

He tilted his head and swept a circle around those cocked repeating crossbows.

"If you don't look, today's matter ends here. The two of you's heads will be put into boxes and sent to Wen Ge Ti and the Turkic side."

He paused and pinched something else from his sleeve. It was a letter, with a few lines written in Rouran script on the envelope.

"Together with this letter, it will be sent over. The letter contains all the evidence of how the two of you actively colluded with Da Zhou, intending to rebel against the Royal Court. The handwriting is the two of you's own, and the seal is the two of you's own."

Ashina's hand supported the edge of the table, his ten fingers digging into the wooden surface until his knuckles changed shape.

"Handwriting? When did I write that kind of thing?"

Zhang Wenqian flipped the letter in his hand.

"When Teqin official signed that mansion buyout contract, the pen used was Teqin official's own pen, and the words written were Teqin official's own words. It only takes three samples for the Mingjing Si people to imitate a person's handwriting. Teqin official has left more than three handwriting samples in my Xia Prefecture City."

A layer of gray-white dry skin covered Ashina's lips, and the voice squeezed from his throat shattered into residue.

"You Han people are all rotten in your hearts."

Zhang Wenqian tucked the letter back into his bosom, the contract still held in his hand, shaking it toward Wurigen and Ashina's direction.

"Two, look or not look?" ===== CHAPTER 891 =====