The Jade Order Reveals Its Might

When Zhang Qiang saw Huang Peng stumble as he got out of the carriage,

he paid no heed to his injured eye. He hurriedly shoved through the crowd and was the first to rush over and support him. “Cousin, take it easy. Why are you in such a panic? They’re nothing but a few lowlife thugs. You should have stayed seated in the carriage.”

As he helped Huang Peng to his feet,

he turned and cursed viciously at Yang An and Li Yan: “You two plague-ridden wretches! How dare you meddle in the affairs of our Fireworks House? You frightened our boss so badly that he took a nasty fall. Just wait until I teach you a lesson—”

Before he could finish,

Huang Peng’s face had already turned from green to purple. He was so furious that he seemed ready to start smoking.

He roared, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Then he kicked Zhang Qiang away.

He swung his thick, pig-trotter-like palm and slapped Zhang Qiang hard across the face.

Huang Peng himself possessed some cultivation.

That single slap smashed Zhang Qiang’s face into the ground and sent him skidding two or three zhang across the snow before he finally came to a stop.

When Zhang Qiang lifted his head from the snow,

the skin on half his face was nearly torn to pieces, and most of his teeth had been shattered. Completely dazed by the blow, he had no idea why he had been hit or what he had done wrong.

Before he could even get up,

Zhang Qiang watched in horror as Huang Peng, all his fat trembling, ran up to the two men he had just called “troublemakers.” Bowing and scraping, he forced a sycophantic smile and said, “Please don’t be angry, honored sirs! That servant just joined our Fireworks House!”

“He’s not my cousin at all!”

“I don’t even know him!”

“That fool was ignorant and spoke out of turn, offending the two of you. It absolutely wasn’t at the command of our Fireworks House! It has nothing whatsoever to do with us!

“This humble one begs your forgiveness!”

As he spoke, Huang Peng first bowed deeply to Yang An and Li Yan. Then, when he straightened up, he discreetly pulled a thick stack of silver notes from his sleeve.

At a casual glance,

each note appeared to be worth one hundred taels of silver. There were at least twenty of them in the stack. With an ingratiating smile, he tried to press them into Li Yan’s hands.

A chill shot straight from Zhang Qiang’s tailbone to the crown of his head.

At last, he realized how serious a blunder he had made. These were men whom even Huang Peng had to curry favor with, yet he had gone and offended them!

His fear was so great that even the pain in his face seemed to lessen.

Desperate to stay alive,

Zhang Qiang endured the agony and viciously slapped his own bloody face while kneeling on the ground and begging for mercy. “This humble one was blind and offended an honored sir! This humble one was blind and offended an honored sir!”

Yang An could not be bothered to look at him.

He helped Zheng Fei and Old Hunter Zheng to their feet.

Li Yan had always upheld the law impartially and remained utterly incorruptible.

How could he possibly accept Huang Peng’s money?

He pushed Huang Peng’s hand aside and coldly demanded, “I’ll ask you one more time: why did you beat them? Why did you engage in a private brawl? Speak the truth at once!”

Li Yan’s imposing presence was overwhelming.

Under that pressure, Huang Peng immediately broke into a sweat. Even the silver notes in his hand grew damp. He swallowed and stammered, “It—it was nothing… just a minor dispute.” As he spoke, he hurriedly shot Zheng Shoutian and his son a meaningful glance, signaling for them to help smooth things over.

Zheng Shoutian thought to himself:

Beast meat was treated like salt and iron.

It was controlled by the imperial court, which strictly prohibited private buying and selling.

For Huang Peng to have secured a deal like this, there must surely be some official backing behind him. If this matter were blown out of proportion, it might implicate Li Yan.

Thinking of this, he wiped the blood from his face and said, “Thank you, Li Buliang! It really is just as Master Huang said—nothing more than a minor dispute.”

A minor dispute could leave someone beaten like this?

And judging from what had just happened, that group had clearly intended to beat Zheng Fei to death. Realizing that Zheng Shoutian was not telling the truth, Li Yan said, “Brother Zheng, you needn’t worry. If you’ve been wronged, just tell me. I’ll see that justice is done!”

Afraid that Li Yan would bring trouble upon himself, Hunter Zheng was deeply moved, but he repeatedly shook his head.

Yang An wanted to stand up for them. Seeing that Hunter Zheng was still refusing to tell the truth, he turned to Zheng Fei and asked, “Brother Zheng Fei, what did you mean when you said they were bullying you?”

Zheng Fei was straightforward and transparent by nature.

He was the worst at keeping things bottled up.

After holding in a bellyful of grievances, he could no longer contain himself when Yang An asked. He angrily pointed at Huang Peng and Zhang Qiang, who was still kneeling and slapping himself, and said through gritted teeth, “Brother An, they’re the ones who bullied us!”

Zheng Shoutian’s expression changed dramatically.

He hurriedly reached out to cover his son’s mouth, but his serious injuries left him unable to stop him. With red-rimmed eyes, Zheng Fei poured out his grievances to Yang An:

“Brother An! You have no idea! The black eagle leg my father and I brought in weighed at least five or six hundred jin even after the feathers and bones were removed. But they insisted it was only two hundred jin and would only pay us for two hundred!”

“They deliberately cheated us out of our silver!”

“We were counting on this money to save Mother’s life. Father begged them again and again and even kowtowed to them, but this fellow Huang still refused to pay. He even accused us of being thugs and had his men beat us!”

The more Zheng Fei spoke, the more agitated he became.

By the end, his voice had once again taken on a sobbing quality.

After hearing everything, Li Yan’s already grim expression grew even darker. He looked toward Zheng Shoutian and asked in a deep voice, “Brother Zheng, is this really what happened?”

Now that things had come to this, Zheng Fei had already said everything there was to say.

Zheng Shoutian could only nod helplessly.

Huang Peng, standing nearby, was so terrified that his heart seemed ready to leap out of his throat. He hurriedly defended himself, “My lord! Esteemed sir! It isn’t like that—it really is just a misunderstanding…”

“Enough!” Li Yan interrupted coldly. “This official will not blindly believe one side of the story. Go and bring out that black eagle leg! Find another scale and weigh it in front of everyone! The truth will speak for itself!”

The moment he heard that the black eagle leg was going to be inspected, Huang Peng’s entire body stiffened.

How could the tampered scale and the deliberately undervalued black eagle leg withstand scrutiny?

Seeing that he was not moving, Li Yan shouted, “Didn’t you hear me? What, do you want this official to fetch it personally?”

There was no way out now.

Huang Peng could only grit his teeth and order several of his men to carry out the black eagle leg. They placed it on the snowy ground in front of everyone. The black eagle leg had not even been stripped of its feathers and hide.

The moment Yang An saw it, he froze.

The black eagle had been killed by his own hand.

He was intimately familiar with it. Not to mention anything else, even the talon that had snapped when the eagle fell from the cliff was exactly the same! With one glance, he knew that this was the very eagle he had killed.

How did the black eagle I killed become Uncle Zheng’s…

Putting this together with what Zheng Fei had just said…

Yang An gave it some thought and quickly understood what had happened. Zheng Bo must have accidentally discovered the black eagle he had hidden. With Zheng Bo’s wife gravely ill and their family short of money, they had no choice but to take one of its legs.

Watching Zheng Bo and Zheng Fei suffer through their ordeal,

Yang An couldn’t help thinking of himself, who had once gone alone into the Snowridge Mountains to gather herbs. He sighed and said emotionally, “We’re all just unfortunate souls.”

He did not reveal anything about the black eagle leg.

But when Li Yan saw the black eagle leg—nearly as tall as a person—he didn’t even need to weigh it before becoming so furious that he nearly laughed.

Pointing at the leg, which was thicker than two or three people standing together, he roared, “A black eagle leg this huge, and you dare claim it weighs only two hundred jin? Are you blind, or is it your conscience that’s blind?!”

Huang Peng was a coward by nature.

On ordinary days, he merely bullied the common people.

He was nothing compared to great villains like Wang Gou’er and Zheng Huaiyi.

The moment Li Yan lost his temper, Huang Peng was scared witless. With a loud thump, he dropped to his knees, kowtowing as he cried, “Please don’t blame me, Military Secretary Li! It was my negligence! I deserve to die! But I was deceived too!”

Following the principle of “let someone else die in your place,”

Huang Peng pushed all the blame onto Zhang Qiang. “It was all him! Zhang Qiang was the one who said the black eagle leg weighed only two hundred jin. I trusted him too much and failed to inspect it carefully, which is why I made this mistake!”

“He was the one who hit people too! It has nothing to do with me!”

“Please don’t be angry, sir! I’ll send him to the authorities afterward. They can beat him, imprison him—whatever they see fit!”

Meanwhile, Zhang Qiang was still slapping himself in the face, doing it so hard that his mind had begun to go hazy. Upon hearing those words, he stared at his cousin in disbelief.

He had never imagined that Huang Peng’s heart could be so vicious.

He immediately wanted to turn against Huang Peng and accuse him in return.

But although the words had reached his lips, he didn’t dare say them. He had done far too many dirty deeds for Huang Peng, and Huang Peng held far too much evidence against him.

If he were sent to the authorities now,

at worst, he would suffer a savage beating and spend two years in prison before being released.

But if he dared betray Huang Peng,

he would be signing his own death warrant. Zhang Qiang lowered his head in despair.

Out of the corner of his eye, Huang Peng noticed that Zhang Qiang knew better than to resist.

Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief and hurriedly add, “I’ll go make up the payment right away. I absolutely won’t short Hunter Zheng by a single coin! I beg you, sir, please give me one chance!”

Yang An, who was standing beside Zheng Fei, listened to Huang Peng’s words.

He couldn’t help laughing aloud.

He truly hadn’t expected that even in this feudal society, there were “temporary workers” specifically employed to take the blame and shoulder the consequences. Huang Peng had dumped everything onto Zhang Qiang, cleanly severing himself from the matter and escaping unscathed.

His brother-in-law wanted to punish Huang Peng now, but there was little he could do.

After all, Huang Peng truly hadn’t personally struck anyone. Under Great Xia’s laws, there was no way to convict him.

Zheng Shoutian, who had known from the beginning that things would turn out this way, sighed.

Zheng Fei was so furious that his teeth ached from clenching them.

Just as Huang Peng was secretly congratulating himself, thinking that no one could do anything to him, Yang An stepped forward with a beaming smile.

“The ferocious-beast meat consumed by the Imperial Academy every month is supplied by Boss Huang as well, isn’t it?”

Huang Peng nodded instinctively.

Ferocious-beast meat, when consumed regularly, could increase one’s cultivation and was an important resource for martial artists. The students of the Imperial Academy were the Son of Heaven’s disciples and formed one of Great Xia’s vital foundations.

That was why ferocious-beast meat was given priority for supply to the Imperial Academy.

Although this could be considered a secret, quite a few people knew about it, so Huang Peng was not surprised that Yang An was aware of it. He simply could not understand why Yang An was bringing it up. Could it be that Yang An had connections within the Imperial Academy? Impossible. He must be trying to scare him.

Just as Huang Peng was sneering inwardly—

Yang An pulled a jade token from his robes and waved it before Huang Peng’s eyes.

Huang Peng: !!!

The Imperial Academy Dean’s jade token!

Seeing the token was the same as seeing the Dean himself. The Dean’s position was second only to that of the Imperial Academy’s Chancellor. How could Yang An possibly possess such a thing?!

Huang Peng’s face turned deathly pale, his eyes filled with terror.

Yang An walked over to him.

Leaning down, he whispered into Huang Peng’s ear, in a voice only the two of them could hear, “I’ve heard that corruption runs rampant in the Imperial Academy. I didn’t believe it before, but now it seems that looking into the matter might not be such a bad idea. Why don’t we start by investigating the monthly supply of ferocious-beast meat? What do you think, Boss Huang…?”

Schlick!

Before Yang An could finish speaking—

Huang Peng used his hand like a blade and chopped off two of his own fingers.

The profits from ferocious-beast meat were enormous, and quite a few people within the Imperial Academy took a share of them. If the matter were exposed, the consequences would be more than he could bear!

The pain of losing two fingers shot straight to his heart.

Huang Peng trembled uncontrollably, then begged Yang An, “Young Master, I truly know that I was wrong! Please, show mercy and forgive me this once! I swear I’ll never dare do it again!”

Yang An slipped the jade token back into his robes.

Indifferently, he said, “Boss Huang, you shouldn’t be begging me.”

Huang Peng was a shrewd man. He immediately understood Yang An’s meaning and hurriedly turned around to kowtow and beg forgiveness from Zheng Shoutian and his son.

The father and son were both stunned.

From their perspective, Yang An had merely whispered two sentences into Huang Peng’s ear, yet Huang Peng had been so frightened that he cut off his own fingers and ended up looking like this.

Looking at the familiar Yang An—

Zheng, the hunter, suddenly felt that he seemed like a stranger. As for Zheng Fei, who had always idolized Yang An, his admiration for him soared to an indescribable level.

The mountain rovers and hunters gathered around began whispering among themselves.

“Huang Peng has been bullying everyone and monopolizing the market for years, yet this young man scared him into looking like that! Who is he?”

“You’re incredibly ignorant. You don’t even know Young Master Yang An? He’s the genius who passed the first level of the civil examination at the age of ten!”

“A child prodigy! No wonder he’s so impressive!”

Hearing everyone praise Yang An, Li Yan was filled with pride as well. He laughed heartily twice before asking Zheng Shoutian, “Brother Zheng, how do you think we should deal with this Huang Peng?”

Seeing that Huang Peng had completely submitted, kneeling on the ground to apologize—

and had even cut off two of his own fingers—

Zheng Shoutian and his son were already satisfied. Besides, they still had to rely on selling ferocious-beast meat to make a living. They did not want to drive Huang Peng into a corner and risk provoking him into desperate retaliation.

That could lead to trouble in the future.

Zheng Shoutian said, “This is fine. This is more than enough.”

Although Li Yan was stubborn, he was not oblivious to the ways of the world. Worried that Huang Peng might retaliate against the father and son later, he said, “If you ever encounter anything like this again, come straight to me.”

Then he turned toward the surrounding mountain rovers and hunters and shouted, “And that goes for all of you as well! If you run into trouble, come to me without hesitation!”

We can do that too?

The mountain rovers and hunters looked at one another.

They could hardly believe it.

Then they saw Li Yan turn a cold gaze upon Huang Peng, who was kneeling before him. In a deep voice, he said, “I hope this is the last time. If you ever dare exploit these mountain hunters again, I will personally see you brought to justice.”

Huang Peng knelt on the ground, not daring to raise his head. Trembling, he said, “Rest assured, my lord. I guarantee there will never be a next time! I’ll return Zheng Shoutian’s money as soon as I get back!”

With the money, Mother could be saved.

Zheng Fei bowed gratefully to Yang An and Li Yan. “Thank you, Brother An! Thank you, Uncle Li!”

Yang An helped him up with a smile. “We’re family. What’s there to thank me for?”

And so, the matter was settled.

They still had to hunt the red-phosphorus horned python. After exchanging a few more words with Hunter Zheng and his son, Yang An and Li Yan did not linger any longer. They mounted their horses and rode away together.

The two steeds had only taken a few steps when—

From among the mountain hunters who had suffered oppression at the hands of Huang Peng and the other merchants for years, someone suddenly shouted, “Many thanks to Just Official Li!”

Immediately afterward, everyone joined in.

“Just and incorruptible magistrate!”

“Thank you, Li Buliang!”

“Many thanks to the Just and Incorruptible Magistrate!”

Hearing those cries, a flush of excitement spread across Li Yan’s dark face. Yang An, riding beside him, gave him a teasing grin.

“So, Brother-in-law, how does it feel to put on a show?”

It had been nothing more than a joke.

Unexpectedly, Li Yan seriously considered the question for a moment before answering frankly, “Quite exhilarating.”

As expected of his brother-in-law!

Yang An burst out laughing.

Li Yan followed with several hearty laughs of his own.

They flicked their whips, and the horses beneath them shot forward like bolts of lightning, racing deep into the mountains.

Neither of them noticed—

Four dark figures were lurking in the forest, following them from behind.

Only after the two men had disappeared completely, until even their shadows could no longer be seen, did Huang Peng finally dare to climb to his feet. His brocade robe was completely drenched in sweat.

He picked up his severed finger and wrapped it in ice and snow, intending to find someone in the city to reattach it.

Huang Peng glanced at Zhang Qiang. The man’s entire mouth had been slapped into a sausage, and half his face was so mangled it was impossible to look at.

“Damn, what rotten luck,” he cursed.

He ordered two servants to hurry and escort Zhang Qiang to the Yunzhou yamen.

Yang An had the backing of the Imperial Academy, and he also possessed the Academy Head’s jade token. Huang Peng did not dare offend him in the slightest, fearing that Yang An might come looking for trouble in the future. He abandoned his earlier arrogance and courteously stuffed more than ten banknotes into Zheng Shoutian’s hands.

“Brother Zheng, please don’t hold my earlier behavior against me.”

“Take this money. Consider it a small token of my sincerity. I hope you won’t refuse.”

Yet Zheng Shoutian merely pulled out three of the banknotes.

Three hundred taels was enough to save his wife. He did not take a single coin more.

“Brother Zheng, are you still angry with me?” Huang Peng asked nervously.

Zheng Shoutian shook his head. “Master, this is all I can accept.”

With that, he said no more. He clasped his hands, then left with Zheng Fei.

Watching their retreating figures, Huang Peng folded the banknotes he had failed to give away and tucked them back into his robe. Perplexed, he muttered, “There really are people who don’t want money. What the hell is wrong with them?”

Huang Peng was not the only one who failed to understand.

Even Zheng Fei was puzzled. “Father, they beat us so badly. If we hadn’t run into Brother An and Uncle Li, they would have beaten us to death. Why didn’t you take their money?”

Zheng Shoutian said nothing and simply continued walking.

Zheng Fei followed closely behind his father.

After they had gone a couple of li, Zheng Shoutian suddenly spoke. “The Black Eagle was originally someone else’s prey. We stole what belonged to them, and that was wrong. We must always remember that we owe them for it. If we ever find out whose prey it was, we’ll go to their home and apologize, letting them beat us or curse us as they please.”

“And we must also remember the kindness Erlang and Li Buliang showed us.”

“We have to keep it firmly in mind and find a chance to repay them someday.”

Zheng Fei nodded earnestly. “Don’t worry, Dad! We don’t know who the prey belonged to, or when we’ll be able to find them.”

“But Brother An’s family lives in Wanshou Ward.”

“Yang Ning’s health isn’t good. I picked those Vermilion Blood Fruits for her just now, but I forgot to give them to Brother An earlier. I’ll take them over to their place this afternoon.”

Zheng Shoutian said, “Good.”