Chapter 563 — A Tentative Trust

At least the Mithril Treasury was registered with the civil administration in the government hall; that made it a third-party intelligence organization already out in the open. And for a ruler, if he could not sweep away every hidden danger, then he must at least ensure that such factors remained within controllable range.

"The dragons will remember this trust," Meiheng said, lowering her head slightly after a moment of silence. "Rest assured, it may not be long before there is a deeper trust between us."

"I shall wait for that day."

Gao Yi said with a smile, watching Meiheng to the door of the study, but he suddenly remembered something and hurriedly called her back. "Wait—you are not taking this box?"

He picked up the box full of mithril rings and shook it at the agent lady.

From his experience of reading novels and watching television in his past life, he expected she would wave a hand with an easy air and declare such things no longer important—after all, these mithril rings now seemed merely a pretext by which she had opened a conversation with him, and surely they were not so very precious in themselves.

But in fact, the very next second Meiheng Pernia came striding back, snatching the box into her hands: "Ah, I forgot this..."

Gao Yang: "...Miss Mylittlepony, is this thing really that important?"

"Very important. And why has your accent slipped back again?"

Gao Yang waved a hand: "Calling you that still feels more natural."

Meiheng glanced at Gao Cen and shook her head: "Humans, truly hard to understand."

Then this elegant and mysterious agent lady clutched her box and hobbled away.

Gao Yang stood quietly behind the desk for a moment, then turned his head toward the corner by the window.

It was empty and bare, without the faintest trace of a presence.

Amber had slipped away quickly enough.

He shook his head helplessly, stepped forward to push open the window, and called out into the courtyard: "You can come back now—she's gone!"

The next second, a swift black shadow cut through the air and darted into the study, coalescing in the center of the room into the figure of the half-elf lady.

Amber patted her own chest, her face a caricature of belated terror: "My god!! My god!! That Meiheng Pernia is actually a dragon?! You spent two whole hours in one room with a human-shaped dragon?!"

When Meiheng Pernia had first entered the study, this disgrace to elfkind had still been in the room, lurking invisible as always—but Gao Yang sensed it clearly: the instant Meiheng revealed her dragon identity, the fellow had bolted.

Meiheng must have noticed, yet she plainly did not care about this little half-elf.

"Setting that aside—you, a lord's personal guard, ran off at the very first moment. Is that appropriate?" Gao Yang shot Amber a glance. "I thought you would at least run off to fetch help, but it turns out you were just in the courtyard catching ants for two hours?"

Amber wore a look of utter shamelessness: "I did mean to fetch help, but I scouted the situation first, and it turned out you two were getting along quite well, so I didn't—what was it you called it? Not beating the grass to startle the snake..."

So the fellow had not gone far after all, but had been observing from nearby—which, to some small degree, gratified Gao Yang.

"I really can't teach you those words anymore—you find an excuse to misuse them every chance you get," Gao Yang shook his head, then pondered briefly and gave his orders. "Time for real work—put every Mithril Treasury storefront and agent in the territory under priority surveillance, and keep a close eye on them from now on."

"Covert surveillance?"

"Covert surveillance will do."

Gao Yang had no way to drive out the dragon's agent, nor did he wish to sour relations with the dragons—where possible, he preferred to cultivate good relations with this ancient and mighty civilization from beyond the continent's bounds, but that did not mean he would simply do nothing.

He would keep the Mithril Treasury and its agents in the territory, but place them under appropriate surveillance—an utterly ordinary measure that would not provoke the dragon race, yet would preserve the government hall's capacity for at least minimal control over those low-ranking agents.

He had a judgment of his own: given the dragons' connection to the Black Pit, their interest in the secular nations, and their likely level of civilization, keeping those agents and lower-tier storefronts... would prove useful sooner or later.