Ahead of Qingmian County lay Kaoshanr Pass, the gateway into Shu Province. The terrain was precipitous, the valley narrow and long — breaking through Kaoshanr Pass seemed, on the surface, all but impossible.

How many Shu Province soldiers garrisoned the pass was still unknown. The Bureau of Justice’s people had exhausted every resource and still could not infiltrate it.

A man like Pei Qi knew full well how vital Kaoshanr Pass was, so no non-essential personnel were permitted to move freely in or out.

Inside the pass there were almost no civilians — over ninety percent of the population were soldiers, and the finest soldiers at that.

The ones responsible for monitoring passage in and out were the Curtain Camp’s personnel. They subjected all travelers to the strictest scrutiny.

Strictest of all was the granary district. Apart from its garrison, anyone entering had to strip off every last piece of clothing and walk in bare. Even soldiers coming to draw the month’s grain rations had to strip naked before they could enter.

With such precautions in place, infiltrating Kaoshanr Pass was like trying to ascend to heaven.

In truth, all of Shu Province could be said to be controlled by the Curtain Camp without the slightest gap — at least, the chances of penetrating it from the outside were slim.

So Master Ye and his companions did not rush to leave the forest. They had to have a complete plan before acting.

Now that they had arrived, though they held a hand-drawn map — obtained at the cost of over two hundred brothers from the Bureau of Justice — its coverage was extremely limited.

Roughly two hundred *li* in radius: from Kaoshanr Pass to Qingmian County, with the positions of villages and the distances between towns all marked out.

Yet they had no information at all about the enemy inside the town. That was the hardest thing to deal with.

It was like arriving somewhere pitch-black, having to grope forward with every step. You didn’t know what lay beneath your next footfall — level ground, perhaps, or a swamp, or an abyss.

“Split into four small teams and go gather intelligence.”

Guiyuanshu crouched down and addressed the men he had brought: “Three people per team, no more. Any more and they’ll inevitably attract attention.”

“Your four teams have one task: watch every road into Qingmian County. Record everyone who passes in and out each day — not a single person can be missed.”

He looked at his subordinates. “Don’t expose yourselves. Don’t engage. Remember, just watch who comes and goes, and look for any patterns. Return in four days.”

“Understood!”

The four teams he had selected answered as one and dispersed, vanishing from the edge of the forest in moments.

“Master Ye.” Guiyuanshu turned to him. “The Bureau of Justice previously lost forty-six brothers inside Qingmian County, which means there are experts in town — possibly more than one.”

Master Ye nodded. “The Bureau agents sent behind enemy lines on reconnaissance missions are all the strongest of the strong. The fact that they perished there says everything.”

Guiyuanshu said, “That’s why I suspect something is wrong in Qingmian County.”

Master Ye said, “If it were merely an ordinary county seat, even with a Curtain Camp branch office and one Flag Officer in residence, forty-six skilled Bureau fighters failing to escape even one — that’s not normal.”

Guiyuanshu said, “Qingmian County is barely a hundred *li* from Kaoshanr Pass. If this place is the supply depot for the pass…” He looked at Master Ye. “Then there’s much we can do here.”

His reason for sending those four teams out had nothing to do with anything else — he simply wanted to watch the official roads and see if supply convoys passed through.

Kaoshanr Pass was built inside a mountain gorge; the space there was finite. It couldn’t possibly stockpile large quantities of grain and supplies.

The reason the Bureau of Justice’s people suffered such devastating losses inside Qingmian County was perhaps because the Curtain Camp’s presence here far exceeded a single branch office.

Four days was the limit in Guiyuanshu’s estimation — not the limit of the surveillance itself, but the limit of the personnel. After four days, when the teams returned, he would rotate a fresh group in.

To find a pattern, to identify the problem, four days was not enough, of course.

“This is what we’ll do,” Master Ye said. “You oversee everything outside the town.”

Having given Guiyuanshu his instructions, he turned to Fang Xidao and the other three Senior Agents from the Bureau.

“You four take your people and follow Commander Gui’s orders.”

The dead-faced one bowed. “As you command.”

“Tonight I’ll go into town alone to gather some information. No one needs to follow me — I’ll actually be safer by myself. I’ll enter if I can, withdraw if I can’t. If I haven’t returned by dawn, don’t risk going into town to search. If I’m still missing after three days, I’ve most likely met with trouble — and there’d be even less point looking for me then.”

Guiyuanshu started to object, but Master Ye shook his head. “We have to scout the inside of town. We’ve brought gold and silver for bribes, but we don’t know who to bribe — we’ll never make any progress that way.”

He clapped Guiyuanshu on the shoulder. “We each have our roles. The planning and deployment are yours. This kind of work is mine.”

Guiyuanshu and the others had no choice but to agree.

Though every man they’d brought was skilled, if anyone were to be compared to Master Ye, there would indeed be a gap. A place where Master Ye could move freely — follow him in, and they’d likely just become a burden.

When night fell, Master Ye changed into dark infiltration clothes, took up the special equipment issued by the Bureau, and set off through the darkness toward Qingmian County.

Thirty-odd *li* of road would take an ordinary person half a day to walk. Master Ye set out as soon as the sky turned black. He didn’t rush; he needed to climb the walls in the second half of the night.

Just as midnight struck, Master Ye arrived outside the county wall. He did not approach immediately, but found a hollow in the grass to hide himself.

From there he could observe the movements of the guards on the wall — he couldn’t see the men themselves, of course, only the glow of their torches.

After resting for roughly half an hour, Master Ye had recovered his strength. He opened his kit and checked his equipment.

He selected two iron spikes about an inch and a half long — the kind a commoner might use for stitching soles onto shoes.

He strapped the rest of his gear on his back, took a spike in each hand, and crept silently to the base of the wall.

The wall looked formidably solid, yet over the years, gaps and holes had inevitably opened in the mortar joints — especially in an old wall that had stood for a long time.

Using those two spikes, Master Ye stabbed them into the mortar cracks and inched his way upward.

Not only was the tool simple, it was practical — the sound of the spikes entering the cracks was almost negligible.

The half-hour Master Ye had spent lying in the grass earlier had been spent studying the patrol patterns.

Now he waited until no squad was passing, crept to the edge of the battlements, and cautiously peered over. Satisfied no one was nearby, he rolled onto the top of the wall.

Getting down the other side was far simpler — he simply jumped.

The wall was over three *zhang* high. No ordinary person would dare drop off at random; they’d die, or at least break both legs.

As Master Ye fell, he planted both feet against the wall and kicked outward, using the sideways momentum to shed the downward force, then hit the ground in a roll that absorbed the remaining inertia.

By now it was well past midnight. Qingmian County was under curfew — no lamp-light, no people.

Master Ye groped forward through the darkness, searching for the county offices, and hoping to find the location of the treasury.

Even Master Ye felt a degree of tension at a moment like this.

In a completely unfamiliar place, with danger lurking everywhere, no one knew what might happen in the next breath.

Perhaps, in the invisible darkness around him, Curtain Camp agents were hiding — pairs of eyes silently watching over the night of this county town.

To find the government offices, the easiest method was to look for light.

At this hour, ordinary households would long since have snuffed their lamps to save oil and gone to bed. Any place still blazing with light was sure to be unusual.

After threading his way through the streets for roughly two quarters of an hour, Master Ye saw a brighter glow ahead. He pressed himself into the shadow of a wall and crept along its base toward it.

When he was close, he didn’t approach rashly. He scanned all around. Not far away stood a tree of moderate height. He quietly moved toward it.

But after two or three steps, Master Ye immediately drew back into the shadows.

He had suddenly realized something: whenever he had gone out to handle a job in the past, he had never worried too much.

First, because he was confident in his own strength. Second, because no enemy had ever operated more meticulously than the Bureau of Justice.

But this place was different. He had to think differently.

Right now, what he faced *was* the Bureau of Justice — and he himself was in the position of the person the Bureau had once been guarding against.

So…

Since the tallest point here was that tree, then…

Master Ye glanced sideways. He quietly climbed a nearby wall and lay flat behind its battlements, watching.

He waited patiently for over half an hour. Then a dark figure came from the distance, moving directly to the base of that tree.

Shortly after, a figure in black dropped down from the tree. The two exchanged a few words, then the one who had come took to the tree, while the one who had descended walked toward the brightly lit area.

If Master Ye had approached that tree earlier, he would certainly have been spotted — and right now he’d likely be the subject of a citywide manhunt.

In that moment, Master Ye understood: the Bureau brothers who had perished here before had probably been exposed by exactly this kind of small oversight.

He retreated back into the darkness, thinking: what should have been his best tool — the cover of night — had become the very obstacle between him and that location, because the enemy had more people, also using the darkness.

Master Ye still didn’t know what that place was, but he had no choice but to withdraw for now and head toward another bright spot.

When he arrived, he discovered the first place hadn’t been the government offices at all — *this* was.

Though there were men on duty here too, the level of security was far below what he had seen before.

Master Ye would have liked to stay and observe longer, but he knew this was not something that could be figured out in a single night. If he was away too long, Guiyuanshu would act — even though he’d already told him not to come looking. But he knew his own people too well.

When had anyone at the Prince of Ning’s side ever abandoned a comrade?

Yet what they didn’t realize was that it was precisely because Bureau agents never abandoned their comrades that forty-six of them had all died together.

In the darkness, Master Ye slipped out of Qingmian County again.

“I’ll need to be inside for at least four or five days,” he told Guiyuanshu. “I’ve already scouted a safe route, so this time I’ll bring a few people with me. Let’s say five days.”

Guiyuanshu nodded. “Five days. Whether you’ve found anything or not, get out in time.”

The following night, Master Ye took a few men and set off toward Qingmian County once more.

And at the very moment Master Ye had slipped out of the county town, a dark figure had, in fact, been watching him from behind.

—