Changliu and Ye Feisheng - Chapter 8

From morning until night, my mistress stayed in the Pavilion of Secrets.

Handling intelligence was nowhere near as easy as outsiders imagined.

The first hurdle was analysis: separating truth from falsehood.

She couldn’t put every report she received into her head.

But determining whether a report was true was much easier said than done.

She had to draw on the information already in her mind and cross-check each new piece against it.

In the end, reliable intelligence often made up only a tenth of the whole, or even less.

For that little truth, she spent enormous amounts of time sifting, from morning to night without a moment’s rest.

It was like washing endless sand for a few grains of gold.

Once she had sorted the intelligence, she memorized it all.

Then came the second hurdle: acting on it.

You couldn’t simply leave new intelligence sitting there.

It was like threads in a spider’s web. Countless strands converged before her, revealing unusual movements in one place or a possible change of allegiance in another. To her, the smallest shifts were warnings.

The best commanders were said to win no spectacular victories.

My mistress preferred to crush trouble before it began, leaving it no chance to grow.

Often, people were bewildered when she ordered someone dealt with.

They had no idea why.

Only much later would they realize those people had been operating beneath the surface for a long time. They simply hadn’t acted openly yet.

For instance, not long ago the youngest daughter of the vice minister of personnel acquired a purple dress, a color she rarely wore.

As soon as my mistress heard, she mobilized her influence at court and had the vice minister impeached until he resigned.

The officials who impeached him didn’t know why she had given the order. They obeyed without much thought.

Later, that purple dress found its way into her hands.

Everyone at Immortal Manor could see it wasn’t ordinary purple cloth. Its color was purer and deeper, with a faint, shifting sheen.

“It’s dyed with imperial-blood sea snails.”

My mistress picked it up, glanced at it, and tossed it back.

“They are found only in Great Tan, and they’re so scarce that even its imperial family doesn’t have enough.”

Everyone understood.

Where, then, had an ordinary Great Qi vice minister’s youngest daughter obtained a dress dyed entirely with that rare purple?

Following that clue, they soon discovered that he had long been colluding with Great Tan. He meant to use his office to plant its people inside Great Qi’s court.

What would have happened if he’d succeeded?

So my mistress had dealt with him.

In the most ordinary, inconspicuous way possible.

Even after losing his post, he thought he’d merely been unlucky enough to have his visits to pleasure houses exposed and been forced to resign.

He never imagined his dealings with Great Tan had come to light.

I asked her why she had been so sure the daughter’s purple dress was unusual.

She looked at me fondly.

“You’re adorable, Changliu.”

“How am I adorable this time?”

“If it caught our agent’s attention, how could it be ordinary? That dye produces an exceptional purple. I simply trusted our agents. After all their years of experience, their eyes are far keener than most.”

“Anything that attracts their notice is no ordinary object.”

Understanding dawned.

Things like that happened every day.

Countless reports flew into the Pavilion of Secrets like white doves.

Her orders flowed out without cease.

Like blood entering the heart and being pumped out again.

Immortal Manor was the heart of the Changming Order, and my mistress was the heart of Immortal Manor.

No one who had never borne that burden could understand the weight of the words “commanding all intelligence in the realm.”