Nightfall Chapter 45

A moment later Ning Que stopped putting pressure. He took off the towel and viewed the back of Zhang Yi Qi’s head carefully. He used his finger to check the wound that was caused when the rusted nail penetrated the skull creating an extremely tiny wound just beneath the hair. The small blood drop had already solidified. It would be hard to discover the true reason for death without looking at the wound carefully and with light.

Ning Que lowered his head and checked the towel in his hand. There was a blood stain in the middle of the white towel, a little dark like a rotten berry.

But the weird thing was that Zhang Yi Qi didn’t die immediately. He was still struggling on the short bed due to the pain he was enduring. He tried to scream but his voice was weak and hoarse. His eyeballs kept rolling upward and showed most of the whites of his eyes. It looked terrifying.

The only thing he felt was the extreme pain from the back of his head. He thought Ning Que used a stick and swung at him. Little did he know that an iron nail was already inside his brain, or he would’ve been horrified to death.

“You need to be prepared for death when you followed someone’s order. But…..if you can make it to your carriage, then maybe you can still live.”

After informing the censorer, Ning Que unwrapped the towels holding his arms and legs down and threw them into a basket beside the bed. Then he disappeared into the fast approaching darkness of night.

When people hear anything when they are near death, they would think it is the last log in the roaring stream and follow the order. Especially at this moment the censorer was already under great pain and lost all ability of judgement. Even if he still had a little conscious left, it would only be the instinct to live. It didn’t matter if that crazy youngster would release him or not, he would definitely seek safety at his own carriage.

Ning Que stood in a bamboo forest not too far away from the side door and watched. He noticed that it was a little later than he had expected and wrinkled his eyebrows

Right when he was about to start worrying, he saw Zhang Yi Qi trembled out of the side door and his supposed naked body was covered by clothing. His body shook violently and his eyes were already loose. He opened his mouth and tried to yell something but nothing came out of it. Zhang Yi QI was like a drunk man, or rather like a fish about to die from thirst.

The face of the servants waiting beside the carriage outside of the side door was filled with worry but he didn’t notice anything wrong. He yelled loudly, “Master, I heard that your wife got the message and knows you are here. She is about to bring other women here and start something bad, we have to go!”

Zhang Yi Qi rushed toward the carriage while his feet were shaking weakly. He seemed to be able to get to his destination but couldn’t handle the last few steps. He hopelessly reached out his shaking arms and tried to grab that servant’s clothing. His pale face was seizing and twisted.

Perhaps that terrifying expression scared the horse. Hearing a loud crash, Ning Que saw the carriage collapse!

The structure of the carriage collapsed and fell apart like a lego piece. It pushed Zhang Yi Qi all the way down like a small mountain.

After the dust was settled, the few servants and guards stood beside the broken carriage dumbstruck and looked at their master’s face. He was bleeding all over and had already stopped breathing. They didn’t know what really happened.

Yes, we know that your wife is bold and fearsome and today you had drank a lot of liquor which amplified that fear. Hearing us yelling you ran a little too fast, but how….how could you just crashed straight into the carriage!?? And how come this carriage was so weak that it collapsed with just one crash!??

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The noises from the side door already alerted the workers in the Red Sleeve Club. They circled around the incident area with a grim face and didn’t listen to the vague explanations from the servants and guards. They directly held everyone present in the field and sent messengers to the police deparment of Chang An.

The unrelated people circling around the area didn’t know who the fat guy that got crushed by the carriage was. They thought he was just a sad customer who was unlucky. They pointed at his body and discussed his identification. But the workers of the Red Sleeve Club knew who he was. How could they explain that a censorer has died in front of their building?

Censorer Zhang Yi Qi became the first official who was so scared of his wife that he died in a hurry to get onto the carriage and was crushed by it in the history of Tang.

But when the censorer was finishing up the last race in his life, his true murderer Ning Que was standing in the shadow and was squeezing his hands tightly. He kept on cheering for him to run faster and faster.

Back when he was in the Great Plain and learning how to dissect a bull from the barbarians, he knew that there would be a short phase of consciousness after the small brain was damaged by a sharp blade. He tried this many times but it was his first time doing it on a person. He didn’t know how long this physically weak censorer could last, and it was like a small gamble. But scaring the horse and breaking down the carriage was no big deal to Ning Que.

“One cannot underestimate the will of a corrupt official to live.”

Watching Zhang Yi Qi successfully run to the carriage and crushed by the carriage, Ning Que sighed and turned to leave quickly. He wiped the sweat on his forehand with a white towel.

It was his first time killing a person in Chang An. It was inevitable that he was a little nervous. But right now he was preoccupied with when Zhang Qi Yi finally rushed out of the room, there was clothing on him. Even in such a threatening situation, the censors didn’t want anyone to see him naked and cared about his face so much. For sure he was a role model of preserving face and a pig in disguise.

Now the managers of the Red Sleeve Club heard about the incident and countless eyes were trying to find any suspicious details. Obviously Ning Que wouldn’t leave right now to attract those suspicions onto himself. He followed the lake and walked to the small house of a lady and chatted with her. Perhaps she was bored, when she saw him coming she was extremely happy. Ning Que was happy as well and talked with a smile on his face. Sometimes he would wipe the corner of his mouth with the towel that seemed clean but hid a rotten berry inside.

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The night has fallen over the Forty Seventh Street. The master and maid in the back house of the Old Brush was talking about the event that occurred earlier. The bowl beside the bed was filled with ashes left over from burning the towel.

Sang Sang was covered tightly under the cotton blanket on the other side of the bed. She asked curiously, “If this was called ‘creating false incident area‘, then why didn’t you fake that he got Ma Shang Feng?”

NIng Que asked surprisingly, “You know what Ma Shang Feng is?”

“Nope, but I heard it when you were telling me stories when I was young.”

“I told such stories? All right, maybe I forgot.”

“If the censorer got Ma Shang Feng in the brothel, then why wouldn’t his wife continue to bother the police? Why wouldn’t the government continue investigating? If this event reached the actual smart people in the police department, I’m not that confident in myself to get out of this.”

(Ma Shang Feng means to die from over excitement during sexual intercourse. I left it in ping ying because Sang Sang wasn’t suppose to know what it meant)

“Therefore our most important goal is to make the police department of Chang An think it was just an accident – only accidents wouldn’t bother the government – but most importantly, this conclusion is the easiest one for the police department to silence the department of censorer.”

Sang Sang was silent for a long time and spoke embarrassingly, “I don’t understand, it’s too complicated. Master you think about too much stuff.”

“And that’s why you don’t think for yourself?” Ning Que acted as he was Madam Jian and criticized, “You could only get dumber and dumber if you don’t think.”

Sang Sang replied honestly, “I’m a girl, it’s fine to be a little dumb. Don’t people always say dumb girl, dumb girl?”

Ning Que was speechless, he was silent for a moment and then asked with concern, “Are you tired from sending messages to both sides? Did anyone in the Zhang Mansion see you?”

“Don’t worry.” Sang Sang replied.