Zhu Ling paused. Indeed — most people like him had been unwilling to leave behind any descendants. They themselves were already without the freedom to choose their own lives; how could they bear to see their children and grandchildren bound by the same fate, generation after generation?

He had been nothing more than a selfish man wanting a piece of his own bloodline to carry something of himself forward.

That was right — Fang’er!

The thought of his daughter came to him, and Zhu Ling asked urgently, “My daughter Fang’er is still at the horse ranch. I do not know what the situation is there now?”

Zhu Fang — to give a daughter a name meaning the first light of dawn, and still carry hope in one’s heart despite everything. Hua Zhi had no regrets about her decision, and now she felt it more firmly than ever. “The horse ranch has been taken over by General Lu of the Qingye Battalion. Because of your involvement, Miss Zhu may have had to endure some hardship. I will send someone there immediately to bring Miss Zhu back.”

Zhu Ling was on the verge of saying it was unnecessary, but he could not bring himself to bear the thought of his daughter suffering. In the end, he did not refuse.

“Regarding the Chaoli tribe — is there anything else Magistrate Zhu knows?”

Zhu Ling thought for a moment and let out a long sigh. “They needed us to gather intelligence on Daqing for them, but they would never tell us anything about the Chaoli tribe’s own affairs. If you ask me to speak now, I honestly am not sure where to begin. I will say whatever comes to mind.”

Hua Zhi nodded and gestured for him to proceed.

“The Chaoli tribe lives on an island in the sea off Yuyi. It was there that the founding Emperor drove them in the final pursuit, and there he halted his army. More than a hundred years later, they discovered that the island was slowly sinking beneath the sea. By that time, no new life had been born among them for four years. The threat of extinction dissolved their internal divisions, and it was then that they began plotting to return.”

Zhu Ling accepted the tea Bao Xia offered and blew on it gently. “As the Chaoli people describe it, Ao descended at that very time, bearing the will of the Wolf God. He unified the Chaoli tribe, selecting those young men whose foreign features were less conspicuous and sending them to Daqing to take Daqing women as partners and father children. Those whose appearances took after their fathers were brought back to the tribe; those like me, who resembled their maternal people, were left in Daqing. Some women also traveled to Daqing, conceived children, and returned. Ao trained a group of elders who took on various identities and appeared at our sides.”

Zhu Ling lowered his gaze to the tea leaves drifting in his cup. “The one assigned to me was an old woman. When I was six years old, she told me I was a Chaoli person. She found history books and read every word written about the Chaoli tribe aloud to me, one character at a time. I did not need her to warn me against revealing my identity — I did not dare tell anyone myself. The hostility… I spent countless nights unable to sleep, and even the briefest doze would jolt me awake.”

A six-year-old child, forced to face that magnitude of hatred. Just thinking about it made Hua Zhi’s spine turn cold. “That you did not lose your mind speaks to an extraordinary strength of character.”

Zhu Ling smiled. He had merely once contemplated pouring poison into the Lotus River — enough to transform Jinyang from a city of gambling into a city of poison, from a city of the living into a city of the dead. Whether that counted as losing one’s mind or not, he could not say.

“What I have told you comes from fragments overheard from Chaoli tribe members over the years, and from conclusions drawn through correspondence with others like me. The timeline may not be entirely precise, but the general shape of events should be correct. I have never personally seen Ao. However, we have privately calculated his age among ourselves — he must be at least sixty.”

“He is still alive?”

“Still alive.”

Hua Zhi gave a small nod. “Which means he was exceptional from a young age, and the Chaoli tribe has not yet produced a second Sage.”

“I have not heard anything to suggest otherwise. Whether a second Sage has emerged, or whether their current Sage has died — either event would inevitably show in the emotions of the Chaoli tribespeople.”

That was a sound argument. Hua Zhi moved on. “Do you know how many people the Chaoli tribe numbers today?”

Zhu Ling shook his head. “I do not. However, they have had no internal strife for many years. After all this time of rest and recovery, their numbers have likely grown considerably compared to before.”

“There is truly not a single piece of good news.” Hua Zhi’s expression was helpless. The more she learned, the fuller and more vivid the picture of that people became — and the clearer it was that they had not wasted a single one of these years. By comparison, Daqing had been on a steady decline.

How absurd. With such an enemy lying alongside them in the dark, how did Daqing’s Emperor still have the nerve to speak so righteously of digging canals?

“Do you know anything about the Chaoli tribe’s presence in the capital? And — does the date of the nineteenth day of the sixth month hold any special significance?”

Zhu Ling considered, then shook his head. “I recall nothing of particular significance about that date, at least not in Jinyang. If it is connected to the Chaoli tribe, that is another matter — I cannot say for certain. As for the capital, it is close to the center of things, and I have paid it close attention. There is one matter I know of that you may find of interest.”

“What is it?”

“About six years ago, I happened to discover that orders were being sent from the capital. I paid careful attention during that period, and found that it was only that stretch of time — afterwards, the source shifted and became irregular again.”

Hua Zhi’s expression darkened. “You are saying that Ao once went to the capital?”

“It is not so strange. The difference between Chaoli people and Daqing people is mostly that the former tend to be somewhat taller and broader, with more defined features. With a little disguise, it can be concealed. And besides, not all Chaoli people are like that — some look no different from Daqing people at all.”

It was not strange in itself. What was worth examining was what he had gone to the capital to do. Six years ago — Hua Zhi committed that to memory. At the time, she had kept herself entirely removed from the world beyond her walls, but the elder officials who had kept their ears to the ground would certainly know. It was worth asking them.

Zhu Ling rose, folded back his sleeve, and said, “Would you have someone bring paper and brushes?”

Bao Xia caught her mistress’s nod and stepped to the door to give the instruction. Brushes, ink, and paper were brought at once.

Zhu Ling, with his sleeve pinned back, wrote out several lines, looked them over, and handed the paper to Bao Xia. “These are the people in the capital who share my situation and who are, more or less, trustworthy.”

As he continued to write at the desk, Hua Zhi did not disturb him. She looked down at the three lines of text.

Three names and their known public identities: Qu Xingzhi, a teacher at Red Cliff Academy; He Congjian, a document officer at the Ministry of War; Tang Qingyuan, the proprietor of Qingfeng Restaurant. Taken at face value, each was thoroughly unremarkable — people who could be crushed without a second thought in a city like the capital. Yet knowing of the other identity each one carried made them deeply unsettling.

Red Cliff Academy was one of the capital’s two great academies. Half the sons of noble families studied there, and it was a place where information flowed more freely than anywhere else — matters not known to the outside world were no secret within those walls.

The Ministry of War needed no explanation. The document officer’s rank was not high and his access to confidential information was limited, but document officers handled all official written correspondence.

As for Qingfeng Restaurant — Hua Zhi had not heard of it before, but since going into business herself she had come to know of it. It was a large establishment with an unpretentious threshold, and its proprietor, Old Master Tang, was famously generous, on familiar terms with people of every stripe across every walk of life.

Looking more carefully, the three positions together covered both the legitimate world and the underworld. If the capital stirred even slightly, the Chaoli tribe would likely know every detail.

To know your enemy is the foundation of every victory. Now the situation was reversed, and it was Daqing that was exposed.