Chapter 264 — The Spymaster

To be honest, the idea of the Twenty-Fifth Production and Construction Brigade had popped into Gao Yang's head the instant he realized someone was trying to investigate the Cecil domain—and he could admit, with perfect composure and considerable delight, that more than half the name came from his own twisted sense of humor. The people of this other world couldn't possibly get an Earth meme anyway. Gao Yang had come to terms with it: running wild with memes in this world wouldn't dent his prestige as the Coffin-Opening Patriarch—if anything, people might take it as a sign of profound and unfathomable cunning...

But twisted humor aside, dealing with the spies who had infiltrated the domain this way did have its uses, as far as Gao Yang was concerned.

Dead spies would no longer threaten the domain, true—but neither would they produce the slightest bit of value. And Gao Yang... was a man who never let any "value" slip through his fingers.

He was building an economic and intelligence network that would span the entire Southern Region, but it would be a long process before that network matured and became useful. The merchants needed time to establish themselves in every corner; the intelligence channels needed even longer to open up and run smoothly; and even those future "Military Intelligence Bureau operatives" were still receiving the most basic training back in the Cecil domain. Which meant the spies landing in Gao Yang's hands right now, gathered from every corner of the Southern Region... were treasure dropped straight from the heavens.

Had they been top-tier agents like the Royal Shadow Guards, Gao Yang might have resorted to harsher measures—because a Royal Shadow Guard, armed with all manner of extraordinary abilities and liable to charge into a crowd swinging a two-handed greatsword in a whirlwind the moment he was exposed, could wreak enormous havoc (the blame for which lay squarely on Gao Yang Cecil, the first-generation Shadow Guard instructor). Keeping such a one around posed more risk than reward. But the spies sent by the various minor lords of the Southern Region were on an entirely different level. Judging by their "professional standards," Gao Yang could tell at a glance that these were nothing but rank-and-file grunts—when it came to surviving in hostile territory, they probably couldn't even match a hundred of Amber's lackeys...

Part of it was that the Southern Region nobles had limited resources. But more to the point, they clearly didn't yet take the Cecil domain seriously enough to send their finest spies to a place like this. And these common-grunt spies they had sent were less about ferreting out the Cecil family's secrets or sabotaging the pioneer territory's development—their real purpose, for the most part, was simply to figure out one thing: what on earth was the Xuanmai Sect doing down in the south?

That was precisely why Gao Yang hadn't given in to nerves and resorted to thunderous measures. Instead, he had chosen to gather the spies together and raise them like gu—letting them poison and devour one another.

Of course, for the spies who had already been caught and already exposed, there was nothing to be done—they had to be dealt with, and word of them had to be made public. And that was fine, really. A batch of exposed spies actually made things more convincing. If not a single spy sent to the Cecil domain had ever run into trouble, the Southern Region nobles would only grow more suspicious: if they can't even catch a spy, this Xuanmai Sect is probably a fake.

As for the consequences of sending spies and having them discovered by the Duke of Cecil, the various nobles were largely unconcerned. Scheming and intrigue were the stuff of daily life for nobles—especially in an age of fragmented, partitioned territories, where everyone poking around in everyone else's business was simply routine. At bottom, it was just the gathering of the most peripheral intelligence; so long as there was no real sabotage and things didn't go too far, no one was going to tear off all pretense over it. Add to that the near-nonexistent household registration of this era, and even if things blew up rather badly, there was always the option of shamelessly denying everything to the bitter end.

But one thing Gao Yang knew perfectly well: the "25th Brigade" would not last forever. Sooner or later, some clever soul would realize the truth and blow the whole thing wide open. The spies being raised like gu would eventually catch on, or try to break free of their handlers. Yet given the current level of organization in the Cecil domain, that day was probably still a long way off. And before the truth of the "25th Brigade" was exposed...

Gao Yang figured he could use this great flock of spies to accomplish quite a lot.

After seeing Heddy off, Gao Yang sent someone to fetch Amber back from wherever she'd gone off to slack off.

The moment they met, before the half-elf could even open her mouth, Gao Yang asked bluntly, "How's the training coming along with your bunch?"

"Anton and the others?" One look at Gao Yang's expression told Amber this was serious-business time. Cracking jokes now would only earn her a rap on the skull, so she shelved any suicidal urge to tease the old zongzi. "That depends on which aspect you mean. In a straight-up fight? They can still only scare people. Reading and writing? No way you'd see results this fast. But if you're asking whether they understand the current situation—whether they get what the lord is gathering them for... oh, they've understood that for a while now."

Gao Yang raised an eyebrow. "And the basics of identity cover, intelligence gathering, message passing?"

Amber smiled. "That's their old trade. Throw in the specialized courses you arranged for them, and it'd be harder not to learn it."

"Good. Time to send out the first batch."

Amber was a little surprised. "That soon?"

"People are already sending spies into the Cecil domain. We need to get our own intelligence apparatus running faster," Gao Yang shook his head. "And I'm not planning to hand them anything too difficult right away—their basic training isn't even finished. Didn't you say last time that those people could recruit more 'help' from elsewhere? That's their first assignment. Go find people, bring back more promising seedlings, and keep training them. Come next spring—that's when they'll flow out across the whole Southern Region along the Cecil trade routes."

"Got it. Leave the arrangements to me," Amber volunteered, thumping her chest. "I know those little brats better than anyone. I'll assign them their tasks—you just sign off on the operational funds."

Gao Yang was one hundred and ten percent certain that last sentence was the half-elf's true objective...

Still, he knew perfectly well that this woman simply enjoyed running her mouth; when real business came up, she could tell what mattered and what could wait. And from the very beginning, he'd intended to put Amber in charge of this. "I was going to send you even if you hadn't said anything. And not just this once—from now on, this whole group is yours to oversee, including whatever expanded units they grow into later."

Amber's ears twitched twice, as if she hadn't caught it. "Huh?"

"There's no one in the domain better suited to this than you," Gao Yang said, looking at the half-elf seriously. "And no one knows your bunch of underlings better than you do."