Su Mingyu entered her room and closed the door behind her. Gone was the bright, carefree, and uninhibited facade she had worn just moments before!
Every time she had brought up the Shenwu Army earlier, it was actually a probe directed at Prince Ning.
Three years ago, the Jin State had launched a massive invasion into the Northern Frontier of Daxia, swallowing two cities in one sweep.
Taking on the mission in a moment of crisis, Murong Ke led a force of eight thousand men, fighting his way through enemy lines to not only recover the lost territory, but even drive the barbarian dogs back a full dozen miles.
Following this battle, Emperor Chen personally bestowed upon Murong Ke the title of Prince Ning, and renamed the remaining three thousand-odd survivors the "Shenwu Army", incorporating them into the Imperial Guards to safeguard the interior and exterior of the imperial palace.
Yet, not long after, Emperor Chen went on an unannounced inspection tour to Yuzhou, where he encountered an organized assassination attempt.
The three thousand-man Shenwu Army had somehow nearly allowed the assassins to get close enough to threaten Emperor Chen himself.
Flying into a rage, Emperor Chen was on the verge of ordering the punishment of the Shenwu Army when renewed warfare broke out on the Northern Frontier, and Murong Ke submitted a memorial requesting military reinforcements from the court.
Murong Ke had always been a thorn in Emperor Chen's side, and having served the emperor for many years, Wei Zongan naturally knew the sovereign's mind inside and out.
Pushed by his instigation, Emperor Chen once again dispatched this group of "worthless trash" known as the Shenwu Army to the Northern Frontier.
Who could have imagined that once the Shenwu Army fell back into Murong Ke's hands, they would transform into an invincible "divine force" that struck terror into the hearts of the Great Jin!
No matter how he tried, Emperor Chen refused to believe that the exact same soldiers could display such drastically different combat effectiveness. The only possible explanation was that all of this was a play orchestrated and staged by Murong Ke himself!
He was simply dissatisfied with the imperial court and intended to take the elite troops he had personally nurtured back into his own hands!
If the Prince Ning had done this merely to fend off foreign invaders, it might have been somewhat excusable.
Yet over the years, Emperor Chen had sent no small number of operatives to infiltrate the Northern Frontier and monitor this son whose wings had grown too stiff.
Yet Liangzhou was like a fortress of bronze and iron; not a single spy had ever managed to successfully infiltrate it.
And yet, this Liangzhou—once a place of destitution and misery—had not only opened wide its markets ever since Murong Ke's arrival, but had somehow transformed from a poverty-stricken backwater into the commercial hub of the northwest.
Among the common folk, rumors had even circulated for a time that Liangzhou was a veritable "paradise on earth" within Daxia's Northern Frontier, and that Prince Ning would ultimately declare independence and carve out his own domain.
Emperor Chen had originally intended merely to banish this son to a remote fief far from the center of power, but who could have foreseen that this son was truly born to be his nemesis?
How could any sovereign tolerate another sleeping soundly beside his couch?
Finally, a month ago, a Brocade Guard spy successfully slipped into Liangzhou and accidentally discovered a merchant caravan transporting a massive quantity of warhorses and weaponry there.
Coupled with Prince Ning's endless, pressing demands for disaster relief grain...
A lingering unease gnawed at Emperor Chen's heart: was this Prince Ning plotting to stockpile provisions and raise the banner of rebellion?
Sitting on pins and needles in the Capital, Emperor Chen had hastily dispatched Su Mingyu to investigate.
In truth, Su Mingyu was well aware of what kind of "truth" Emperor Chen wanted to find.
He had long since ceased to tolerate his son, Prince Ning, but he needed a justification to silence the gossiping tongues of the world.
As the Commander of the Brocade Guard, Su Mingyu's mission was simply to find that "justification."
Su Mingyu closed the room's door tightly, sat silently before the table, and prepared to send a pigeon message reporting to Emperor Chen that Prince Ning had stolen the official seal and raided the granary.
Yet when she picked up her brush, a wave of hesitation washed over her.
Liangzhou was in the grip of disaster, with starving refugees littering the land. Whatever Prince Ning's actions lacked in compliance with state law, they were genuinely saving people from the fires of hell.
And yet, she had clawed her way to her current position with immense difficulty; she was only a single step away from winning Emperor Chen's complete trust and dismantling Wei Zongan's power...
Su Mingyu closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, seemingly wrestling with a momentous choice.
A single drop of ink fell from the tip of her brush onto the paper. Su Mingyu opened her eyes, snatched up the blotched sheet, crumpled it into a ball, and picked up her brush once more.
In the adjacent room, Murong Ke watched a goshawk fly past outside the window, a mocking smile curving the corner of his mouth.
Having changed into night-hiking garb, he slipped out of the relay station under the cover of darkness.
Murong Ke arrived alone at the courtyard housing the northwest granary, only to find that the military defenses here were indeed much heavier than usual.
Pulling his face mask into place, his ghostly figure slipped inside without a sound.
Heavy guards stood watch at the entrance of the granary. Without the slightest panic, Murong Ke covered his nose and mouth, ignited the prepared numbing smoke, and tossed it near their feet.
Within the space of a few breaths, the guards at the granary door had collapsed in a heap.
Murong Ke stepped forward calmly and stamped out the smoke pellet.
He searched through several soldiers' pockets, but try as he might, he could not find the granary keys.
With a cold expression, he drew the dagger at his waist, but just as he moved to break the bronze lock on the door, a slender hand intercepted his movement.
A jolt of shock ran through Murong Ke. Recognizing the person before him, he instantly pointed his sword straight at her.
"Why are you here?" Murong Ke asked in a lowered voice.
Su Mingyu jingled the keys in her hand and arched her eyebrows with triumph. "For the exact same reason you are here."
A flicker crossed Murong Ke's eyes, and he reached out to snatch the keys, but Su Mingyu whisked them away a step ahead of him.
"Aren't you afraid that Prince Ning will attract all the soldiers here?"
Glaring at her coldly, Murong Ke unexpectedly turned on his heel and walked away.
"Hey, don't you want the keys?" Su Mingyu asked in confusion.
Murong Ke didn't even bother to look back. "Keep them and play with them yourself."
Stunned for a moment, Su Mingyu chased after him in two or three strides and demanded, "Why? Shouldn't you be needing these desperately?"
Murong Ke abruptly halted, glanced at her with evident disdain, and said, "Do you honestly think the word 'fool' is written across my forehead?"
A spark of sudden interest caught Su Mingyu's attention.
In truth, she had arrived only half a cup of tea's time before Murong Ke. Disguising herself as a soldier, she had encountered little difficulty in obtaining the granary keys.
When she slipped inside during a shift change, however, she discovered the place was completely empty.
Tilting her head, Su Mingyu asked with curiosity, "How did you figure it out?"
Murong Ke gave a contemptuous smirk. "Did that even require thought? Would the keys to the granary be handed over to you so easily?
The grain in this granary must have already been transferred elsewhere, shouldn't it?"
Nodding, Su Mingyu felt a growing sense of appreciation for this Prince Ning. "Prince Ning is truly unfathomable. Would you care to guess where the grain was moved?"
Instead of answering her, Murong Ke gave her a long, deep look, the wariness in his eyes intensifying. "Who on earth are you?"
Su Mingyu met Murong Ke's intense scrutiny and heavy pressure with complete equanimity, offering only a slight smile.
"Why must Your Highness constantly be on guard against me? If I truly harbored malicious intentions toward you, I should have shouted out twice just now and drawn everyone here."
Murong Ke scoffed. "If you had actually tried that, I guarantee that the moment you made a sound, your neck would have snapped first!"
Su Mingyu touched her own slender neck, casting a disdainful look at this somewhat violence-prone man.
"Tsk tsk, His Highness is truly heartless. But I really am here to help you today.
I have a plan. Would Your Highness care to hear it out before making a decision?"