Chapter 283 — A Shift in the Situation

It was proof that Amber's underlings truly were a den of hidden dragons and crouching tigers. True, the training they had later received in Cecil Territory and the ducal credentials they carried had greatly aided their operations—but the knack for picking up loose change and kicking up trouble all along the way was something no training could teach. That was pure natural talent...

Yet even as he marveled at their abilities, Gao Yang could not quite suppress a sliver of worry. "They won't go too far and make too much noise, will they—enough to expose themselves? You know as well as I do that the most important thing for an intelligence agent is secrecy. If they're too active and stand out front, that could ruin everything."

"Don't worry, that lot certainly knows this," Amber said, genuinely unconcerned on this point. "First, they all act strictly in accordance with their cover roles and never do anything inconsistent with their 'character'; even if someone notices them, it will only make that person more convinced of the false identity they're using. Second, when they act, none of them forgets the 'cleanup' I taught them: they appear at their destination in a plausible manner and leave in a plausible manner, never arousing suspicion. And last—do you think every lord and his advisors and scholars are like you? That lot is dreadfully slow, and they pay no attention at all to what happens among commoners. Apart from their own titles and property, anything commoners do is, in the eyes of traditional nobles, nothing but 'foolishness beneath notice.' Where would they have anything like your system—a complete household registration from top to bottom, strict personnel management, such that even one extra person in the territory can be reported to the civil administration office the very same day..."

Hearing Amber out, Gao Yang had to agree it was true. In this age, apart from Cecil Territory, where else was there any such thing as personnel control and registration? Lords did not even know how many subjects they had under them, let alone concepts of espionage and counter-espionage, infiltration and counter-infiltration that had already been played to death back on Earth. Spies existed in this age, intelligence work existed, nobles had their eyes and ears—but such things were either still crude and primitive, or amounted only to "same-level contests" of noble against noble. No one had ever considered intelligence work as a three-dimensional structure stretching from the bottom of society to the top. Were it otherwise, how could the spies sent to Cecil Territory by the great and small nobles of the Southern Region have been exposed so easily?

"That's excellent. The Bureau's first results are quite good," Gao Yi smiled and settled comfortably back into his chair. "This is your doing, so..."

"Give me six or seven days' extra wages, and while you're at it hand over that bottle of Bockel wine in your cellar, and then give me some leave or something..."

Gao Yang stared at this half-elf, feeling that her shameless knack for pushing her luck had advanced by leaps and bounds once again. He had not even finished his words of encouragement, and already Amber had drawn up her bill of rewards...

She had probably drawn it up before she even came to report...

At that same moment, in an ancient underground palace far from Cecil Territory, another group of people was also watching the shifting situation.

They wore priestly robes stripped of any specific religious symbols and stood in the assembly hall of the underground palace. Proliferating masses of flesh or plant tissue could be seen everywhere throughout the palace, yet these cultists, whose bodies and minds had long since been twisted, were utterly accustomed to the eerie, horrifying atmosphere.

After a brief silence, a woman suddenly walked into the hall. She wore green priestly vestments; her face was fair and lovely, and her upper body was shapely and well-formed. Yet beneath the hem of her priestly robe, a writhing mass of roots and vines, unspeakably strange to behold, carried her forward.

The woman swept her gaze over the gloomy assembly and spoke with a touch of mockery: "Gentlemen, have your discussions still produced no result?"

A priest of the Congregation of All Endings said with displeasure, "High Priestess Beiyila, you are late."

"It hardly matters. You were only having a useless discussion before, in any case," Beiyila smiled faintly and walked to her seat without a care. "No doubt you were about to explain... that the Ansu-Typhon war we have worked so long to ignite is about to come to nothing, isn't that so?"

"Gentlemen, accept the facts..."

"In the wasteland, a change beyond our expectations has appeared..."