The enemy had the toughest shields in the world, and the most peculiar rafts in the world — but they did not have the most powerful Prince Ning in the world.

Aboard one of the Fengbo warships, the soldiers were all engaged in killing the enemy. Yet inside the ship’s cabin, it was strangely quiet.

Liu Yuan sat in a chair, already bound completely and thoroughly. As an added precaution, both his hands and feet had also been broken.

That he would receive such treatment was clearly not solely due to the man sitting across from him being Zhang Tang.

“I still haven’t been able to figure out — from what point exactly was I exposed?”

Though his wounds were agonizing, Liu Yuan could not care less about that. What he cared about was why he had been detected.

Without waiting for Gui Yuanshu standing nearby to answer, Liu Yuan asked one more question: “At what point was it?”

Gui Yuanshu looked at him: “The moment I saw you at Yunlai Village and asked you my first question, I was already suspicious of you.”

Someone like Liu Yuan could not possibly forget so quickly what the first question had been.

He asked: “You asked me how far it was from Yunlai Village to Cradle Town?”

He asked the question, then without waiting for Gui Yuanshu to answer, worked it out himself.

He murmured to himself: “Of course — I should not have said it was only two and a half hours on horseback.”

Gui Yuanshu said: “You said exactly that — two and a half hours on horseback.”

Liu Yuan gave a quiet nod: “In enemy territory, with enemy forces everywhere and enemy agents and hidden sentries all around — I would never have been able to ride to Cradle Town on horseback, let alone time it to two and a half hours.”

He exhaled slowly: “I have told my subordinates countless times — it is the tiniest details that demand the most attention. In this line of work, a single small slip means death. I have taught it to many people. Yet I myself was careless.”

He looked at Gui Yuanshu: “But just because of that, you suspected me as the Yongzhou Army’s spy chief — isn’t that something of a leap?”

Gui Yuanshu said: “At that moment, I only suspected you were one of the Yongzhou Army’s people. I naturally would not have guessed you to be the leader. But — that night, a masked man arrived at the Cradle Town camp.”

Liu Yuan said: “And you suspected that was me?”

Gui Yuanshu said: “Two points. First — when we returned that night, you were indeed at Yunlai Village. But the dust on your person had not been cleaned off in time. You had been riding hard back to the village and overlooked that detail.

He paused, then continued: “Second — when you went to Cradle Town, you wore a mask.”

Liu Yuan looked at Gui Yuanshu: “What does wearing a mask prove?”

Gui Yuanshu said: “If you were not an operative planted on our side but had simply been working for the Yongzhou Army all along, you would have had no need for a mask. A mask is worn out of fear of being recognized — because you knew perfectly well that even though many of our operatives in the Spy Guard had been turned by your side, our side also had people in yours.”

Liu Yuan drew a long, slow breath. He had no choice but to concede a measure of admiration in his heart.

Everything Gui Yuanshu said struck true. The mask had indeed been worn out of fear of being recognized.

Gui Yuanshu continued: “Whether the agents of the Landscape Seal and Cloud-Mist Map represented a double-edged sword for your side or ours — to protect yourself from being recognized, you had only one option: you could show your face on our side, but you absolutely could not show it on the Yongzhou Army’s side.”

Liu Yuan sat in silence for a long while. Just one such small slip — and his entire plan had fallen to pieces completely.

“One last question.”

Liu Yuan looked into Gui Yuanshu’s eyes: “How did you determine that the soldiers who returned to the ships that night were the real Yongzhou Army, and not those rounded-up common people?”

Gui Yuanshu sighed: “If I said your mention of two and a half hours on horseback was a small slip on your part, then the switch of personnel that night was your greatest mistake.”

Liu Yuan did not understand.

Seeing the confusion in his eyes, Gui Yuanshu sighed: “Did you take me for a blind man?”

This remark left Liu Yuan even more bewildered. He still could not fathom how Gui Yuanshu had seen through it.

Zhang Tang, sitting to one side, spoke up. It was only the second sentence he had said since taking his seat.

He said: “Though I was not there to see the scene that night, even I have already figured it out… You issued the common people Yongzhou Army uniforms. Did you issue them shoes?”

Liu Yuan’s eyes snapped wide open.

Gui Yuanshu said: “The common people of Liangzhou have not had easy lives. Liangzhou’s Military Governor Du Ke, in order to support Yang Xuanji, had been extorting and plundering Liangzhou to the bone. Most of the common folk are barely clothed. Where would they have proper shoes?”

“Some of them were wearing straw sandals. Others were even barefoot. Yet the soldiers who came back — every single one had shoes.”

“Even in the dead of night, where one absolutely could not see the faces of those troops from a distance — could you really not tell whether they had shoes or not? You did think things through well enough, choosing to make the switch at night. But even if I was too far away to make out whether they had shoes — the sound of walking would still be different. People with and without shoes do not sound the same on their feet.”

Liu Yuan had never suffered a defeat so complete. Whether in the grand design or in the smallest of details, his stratagem — which had seemed airtight from every angle — had in truth been riddled with holes.

He fell into a long silence before finally exhaling a slow, deep breath: “So the Prince Ning’s forces, the moment they boarded, immediately moved against our people… while my people had received orders to wait for the signal before acting. But I was restrained from the very beginning, and no signal ever came — so no one gave them the order to act.”

Gui Yuanshu said: “There was also the fact that your people, to appear more convincing, almost none of them carried long weapons — there was nowhere to conceal them. So when the fighting broke out, they were naturally at a disadvantage.”

Liu Yuan nodded: “I’ve lost. I concede.”

Gui Yuanshu smiled: “Whether you concede or not — you’ve still lost.”

Liu Yuan said: “Even though your side won this time, it does not mean you will keep winning. You can no longer trust the Spy Guard Army. You have lost your eyes and ears — while we can still extract your information from within the Spy Guard.”

Gui Yuanshu nodded: “You are right. Unless we can obtain at minimum a list of names, we cannot move against your operatives. If we were to arrest people indiscriminately, the Spy Guard Army might mutiny.”

Liu Yuan smiled slightly: “You think you can get a list?”

Zhang Tang, sitting to one side, spoke then — his third and final sentence since taking his seat.

He said: “Otherwise — why do you think I’m sitting here?”

Liu Yuan’s expression changed in an instant. He stared hard at Zhang Tang.

Zhang Tang said in an unhurried, level tone: “I know that people in the intelligence trade cannot possibly have a comprehensive roster of most of their agents’ identities. Even a commander of as high a standing as yourself cannot know very many names — that is a security consideration. One capture cannot be allowed to blow the entire network.”

Liu Yuan said: “Good that you understand.”

Zhang Tang, still utterly composed, continued: “But I have never been a man who begrudges a smaller harvest. You’ve fallen into my hands. Even if I can only extract a single name from you — I will make you speak that name before you die.”

At that moment, fear appeared in Liu Yuan’s eyes.

He was not a member of the Tingwei force. But he had spent years working within the Ning Army’s Spy Guard. How could he not have heard of Zhang Tang’s name?

Out on the river, the Ning Army had already gained an overwhelming advantage.

Those inflatable rafts were no match whatsoever for ships in open water.

The Ning Army’s fleet, while looking like a jumbled assortment — fishing vessels, fire ships, and battered old Dachu warships — every single one of them was willing to charge head-on into the Yongzhou Army’s rafts. But would any Yongzhou soldier dare ram a ship with a raft?

The Fengbo warships in particular were like a handful of fierce battle champions cutting loose among ten thousand enemy rafts — charging back and forth through their midst at will.

The Ning Army firing arrows down from their warships onto the Yongzhou Army below — it was pure, effortless carnage.

The Yongzhou Army did indeed possess those tenacious — almost freakishly tough — vine shields. But a raft could not be protected by vine shields on all sides. So the speed at which the Yongzhou soldiers were cut down was swift.

Han Feibao had no choice but to sound the retreat horn. The troops who had already crossed the river — how could they possibly retreat back?

The Ning Army pursued and slaughtered across the river surface without restraint. That day on the river, floating corpses lay dense and thick beyond counting.

The Yongzhou Army was indeed battle-hardened and ferocious. Even in such a dire and passive situation, almost none of them thought of surrendering.

The Yongzhou Army’s remaining forces on the southern bank pulled back to shore. Every one of the forces on the river was killed by the Ning Army.

Han Feibao’s expression had grown as grim as it possibly could. He had believed this would be an assured and decisive victory — instead, he had been struck a thunderous blow squarely in the face.

The man known as the Holy Master had long since risen and departed. When he left, his expression was as cold as frost.

The battle lasted a full day. The Ning Army also gathered up the rafts floating on the river — the things did look rather impressive in their own right.

Li Chi and the others disembarked from the warships and came ashore. Xiahou Zuo led his generals forward to greet them.

“That was close.”

Xiahou Zuo laughed: “If the ships hadn’t turned fast enough, I had already given the order for all the heavy crossbows and catapults to train on you and fire.”

Li Chi broke into hearty laughter.

Because when Li Chi had set out, he still had not confirmed the identity of the enemy’s internal operative, nor had he known exactly how the enemy’s ships from Cradle Town would act. So Xiahou Zuo naturally had no way of knowing what had unfolded later — it had not been part of any prior plan.

“Let’s go have a look at those things.”

Li Chi had never been to Yongzhou before, and that region was relatively isolated, with few people ever making their way into the Central Plains heartland.

He crouched down and examined them for a while before working it out — they were sheepskin rafts.

The Yongzhou Army soldiers had used a special process to fashion sheepskin into inflatable pouches. Such a thing had indeed never been seen before anywhere in the Central Plains.

“Well done.”

Xiahou Zuo looked at Gui Yuanshu: “If you hadn’t seen through the enemy’s stratagem this time, we might well have lost this battle.”

This was no empty flattery — it was the simple truth.

Had Li Chi’s fleet been stopped, the Ning Army would have had no ships left. They would have been unable to stop the Yongzhou Army from crossing the river.

Once the Yongzhou Army was ashore, with their overwhelming numerical advantage and a combat strength equal to the Ning Army, breaking into Jingzhou would have been no difficult matter.

The Ning Army that Li Chi had led south from Yuzhou was considerable in number — but forces had to be divided across many locations, with garrisons required in numerous major cities.

This left the Ning Army unable to match the Yongzhou Army in troop numbers.

On top of that, a large contingent of troops was stationed along the eastern side of Jingzhou to guard against the Army of Heaven’s Mandate, with further forces deployed along the southeastern stretches of Jingzhou to defend against the possibility of Liangzhou forces moving north.

Xiahou Zuo raised his hand and clapped Gui Yuanshu firmly on the shoulder: “So for this battle — you shall claim the first merit.”

Gui Yuanshu let out a quiet, grinning laugh — the kind that comes from a release of tension felt deep in the bones.

Spy against spy.

I didn’t disgrace myself.