“…It was probably through this very connection that your adoptive father got in touch with General Duan,” Zhao Erhan recalled, thus resolving the shared question lingering between Qiu Huan and Duan Yunhe.

To be sure, just now Duan Yunhe’s obvious fear had actually drawn the attention of the two people who were on the brink of conflict. In order to calm her down, they both ended up saying a lot of soft words, and it was then that Zhao Erhan remembered this old story.

It turned out that during the decades when General Duan Shihong was stationed at the frontier, there was once an invasion by a foreign tribe that put the situation in grave danger. At that time, whether it was because Qiu Huan’s adoptive father happened to hear the news and went there on purpose or simply ran into it by chance, he nonetheless saved General Duan’s life—and also saved the lives of tens of thousands of his soldiers. Zhao Erhan speculated that General Duan must have been indebted to Qiu Huan’s adoptive father, which is why later, in order to repay the favor, he accepted Bai Xiao Ling and kept it for him.

“My late emperor went to so much trouble for Bai Xiao Ling, yet you managed to hand it over to Feng Ze so easily,” Zhao Erhan said with a wry smile as he ruffled Duan Yunhe’s hair.

Duan Yunhe rolled her eyes inwardly. If she didn’t have her special ability, she wouldn’t even know where Bai Xiao Ling was hidden—how could it possibly be “easy”?

Qiu Huan just smiled without saying a word. Since Gao Yang Wang has been secretly searching for Bai Xiao Ling while carefully avoiding detection by Tonglou, the effort involved is probably beyond anything Duan Yunhe could imagine; calling it “easy” is hardly an exaggeration.

“May I ask you something?” Duan Yunhe looked at the two of them cautiously.

“Of course,” Zhao Erhan and Qiu Huan replied in unison.

“So what you’re saying is that back then, Qiu Huan’s adoptive father, using his status as a masterless agent with covert affiliations as leverage, pledged allegiance to Emperor Erhan, and only with the joint efforts of Gao Yang and Tonglou were so many lands seized? And then, three years ago, after Qiu Huan’s adoptive father passed away, Emperor Erhan has been searching for the whereabouts of Bai Xiao Ling ever since, all in order to truly bring Tonglou under his control and incorporate the masterless agents into his own ranks? What about Li Bai, though? How does he relate to Feng Ze’s ‘death squad’?” After all, she’d already heard it all—since death was inevitable anyway, might as well get some clarity. Miss Duan thought to herself, rather amused by the whole situation.

Qiu Huan, meanwhile, had no idea what she was thinking, so he briefly explained the matter of the Gao Yang royal family’s death squad, then added, “Who would’ve thought that Emperor Gao Yang harbored such grand ambitions? Back then, he was already plotting to use Tonglou to seize the empire and then wipe out Tonglou altogether—using even such a young child as a pawn. Still, your father does seem to value you quite a bit; it looks like Prince Lan being assigned such a mission means he’ll never have any chance of ascending the throne.” Of course, “who would’ve thought” was just her excuse for being lazy and refusing to think things through.

Zhao Erhan let out a bitter laugh. His father hadn’t told him a thing about these plans more than ten years ago; it wasn’t until he grew up and built his own power base that he gradually pieced together bits and pieces of information—information that was always fragmentary, leaving him to guess at the details on his own. As for the Li Bai affair, he only found out about it after Qiu Huan spilled the beans. His younger brother may be a bit cold and aloof, but he’s never shown any sign of ambition, so Zhao Erhan has always felt reassured. After all, who wouldn’t want their loved ones to be close to them? He’s certainly been cautious, but not overly so. Now it seems that perhaps his father had hoped they’d grow up to be harmonious brothers, with him ascending the throne and his younger brother quietly assisting behind the scenes. But if Li Bai really does end up controlling Tonglou completely, how could he possibly allow such a powerful, high-ranking imperial prince—who possesses the kind of influence capable of overturning the entire court—to remain by his side? Qiu Huan’s words may sound like an expression of admiration for having such a good father, but underneath they’re laced with mockery.

Setting aside the sudden pressure, Zhao Erhan now has a basic understanding of Tonglou’s intelligence-gathering capabilities—and it’s downright frightening! The very existence of royal body doubles is something that can never be revealed to anyone else; to be more precise, it’s not the royal family as a whole that has body doubles, but only the emperor and the princes—princesses don’t enjoy this privilege at all (after all, women in Gao Yang have no right of succession). Yet Tonglou manages to find out even such top-secret information, and what’s more, it seems to treat it as perfectly ordinary. Suddenly, Zhao Erhan began to wonder whether, on some starry night when he used to brood alone years ago, there might have been some unusual sounds around him.

Well, actually, he’s a bit too invested in the issue. After all, Tonglou’s focus is on the entire imperial family, not on matters of imperial power; they’re not particularly interested in the private lives of the princes.

Speaking of intelligence, it’s worth mentioning that, by sheer coincidence, the information each of the three of them holds happens to fit together perfectly, reconstructing the full picture of the tangled relationships among Gao Yang Wang, the former Bai Xiao, and Duan Shihong: Gao Yang Wang and the former Bai Xiao were mutually exploiting each other. On the one hand, Gao Yang Wang pretended to ally with Bai Xiao in public to seize the empire, while secretly planning for his son Li Bai to gradually erode Tonglou’s influence; he even chose Li Bai’s death squad early on and planted them deep within Tonglou, hoping to use Li as a proxy to take over Tonglou’s position. As for Bai Xiao, he probably wasn’t unaware of this either: with a Gao Yang prince holding a high-ranking post in Tonglou, Bai Xiao could indeed be seen as a threat to Tonglou. But if Tonglou could capitalize on this fact and turn it against Gao Yang, it might actually help restrain the Gao Yang royal family. It’s just that the former Bai Xiao was eliminated before the war even ended, due to a conflict with Ming Zhen Yuan Mo; otherwise, if he’d lived until now, he might well have turned on Gao Yang Wang himself.

End of Chapter 32: Dust That Covers the Land