The Soldier's Dao

It was the speed of Jin Wuchang's knowledge that kept nagging at Han Muyang in the days following the demonstration, a small, persistent irritation he couldn't quite set aside even as Redgate settled back into the grinding, uneasy rhythm of a siege that hadn't technically changed shape, only clarified its terms.

"Elder Zhuang's people made contact with the merchant house connections that same morning," he said, turning the timeline over aloud with Tao Jiu during a lull in the wall's rotation schedule, the two of them sharing a meager midday meal in the shadow of a watchtower. "Jin Wuchang knew about it and confronted us with it by evening. That's not the speed of rumor traveling through a besieged town's ordinary channels. That's the speed of someone reporting directly and immediately."

Tao Jiu chewed thoughtfully, considering the observation with more patience than dismissal. "Sieges breed suspicion faster than they breed anything useful, Han Muyang. Every long confinement produces a dozen theories about spies and traitors before it produces a single confirmed one."

"I'm not theorizing for the sake of it. I'm looking at a specific timeline that doesn't add up under any explanation except direct, fast communication to the enemy camp." Han Muyang set down his own meal, the old habit of methodical analysis settling over him with the same clarity it always brought. "Whoever Elder Zhuang's people spoke to that morning either has a channel of their own into Kaiming's camp, or someone overheard the conversation and passed it along within hours. Either way, that's a leak worth finding, because if it exists, it's not going to stop at one piece of information."

Tao Jiu studied him for a long moment, something considering behind his usual dry composure. "You've clearly already started looking."

"I've started noticing what I'd want to look at, if someone gave me the authority to actually investigate it." Han Muyang met his gaze directly. "Which is why I'm bringing it to you rather than pursuing it alone. I don't have standing in this town to question merchant house guards or garrison officers on my own authority. You do, or Elder Zhuang does."

It took the better part of an hour, and Elder Zhuang's visible skepticism giving way, gradually, to the same careful consideration Tao Jiu had eventually offered, before Han Muyang found himself granted a cautious, informal latitude to pursue the theory — paired, at Elder Bai's insistence, with a member of the town's own garrison who might lend the investigation legitimacy it otherwise lacked.

That garrison liaison turned out to be a woman named Captain Wren Yulan, head of the largest merchant house's private guard contingent, whose flat, exhausted competence Han Muyang recognized immediately as the specific texture of someone who'd been doing considerably more work than her official rank credited her for since the siege began.

"You think someone in this town is feeding Kaiming's camp information," she said, once Tao Jiu had made the introduction and explained, in careful, general terms, the concern that had brought them to her. "That's not exactly a revelation, disciple. I've suspected it for three weeks. The problem's never been suspecting it. It's proving which of several hundred possible suspects is actually responsible, in a town where half the population has relatives, debts, or old grudges connecting them to interests on both sides of this conflict."

"Then let's narrow the field," Han Muyang said. "The specific information that reached Jin Wuchang was discussed in a closed meeting — Elder Zhuang, Elder Bai, myself, a handful of senior disciples, and whichever merchant contacts Elder Zhuang's people approached afterward. That's a considerably smaller pool than the town's entire population."

Captain Wren considered this, something sharpening in her tired expression. "The merchant contacts approached that morning were three house representatives — Guild Master Tong of the grain merchants, First Steward Lian of the silk consortium, and a junior representative from the ironworkers' guild named Bo Hai, standing in for his master, who's been ill." She ticked them off with the brisk, practiced recall of someone who'd spent weeks tracking exactly this kind of information. "All three would have had several hours between the meeting and evening to pass word along, through legitimate channels or otherwise."

"Which of them has the clearest motive," Han Muyang asked, "or the clearest existing connection to Kaiming's camp?"

"Guild Master Tong lost two grain shipments to Kaiming's requisitioning columns before the siege fully closed the roads. If anything, that gives him a grudge, not an incentive to cooperate." Captain Wren frowned, working through it aloud. "First Steward Lian's silk consortium has trade relationships stretching into territory Kaiming currently controls, which gives him more to lose from an extended siege than most, but that cuts both ways — cooperation risks alienating the merchant houses that still favor Chengyu's eventual victory."

"And the ironworkers' representative?"

"Bo Hai." Something in Captain Wren's expression shifted, thoughtful. "Young. Ambitious, from what little I know of him directly. The ironworkers' guild has been hit harder than most by the siege — no ore shipments in seven weeks, half their forges cold. If Kaiming's camp offered guaranteed post-siege ore contracts in exchange for information, that's exactly the kind of desperate incentive a junior representative under pressure to save his guild's fortunes might find difficult to refuse."

Han Muyang turned the theory over, weighing it against everything else he'd learned about how desperation shaped decisions in circumstances this world's ordinary people found themselves trapped inside — the deserters on the road, the refugees fleeing empty villages, an entire town slowly starving under a siege none of them had chosen to be caught inside. "It fits a pattern I've seen before. People under enough pressure make choices they wouldn't otherwise consider, especially when the alternative looks like watching everything they've built collapse regardless."

"Suspicion isn't proof," Tao Jiu said, ever the cautious instructor even now. "We can't simply accuse a guild representative on a theory built from motive and opportunity alone."

"No," Han Muyang agreed. "Which means we need to catch the leak in the act, or close enough to it that the proof becomes undeniable." He turned to Captain Wren. "Does the ironworkers' guild have any meetings scheduled where information sensitive enough to test this might plausibly come up?"

Captain Wren considered this, something calculating entering her weathered expression. "There's a merchant council meeting tomorrow evening, addressing supply rationing for the coming weeks. All three guild representatives will attend, along with Elder Zhuang's liaison. If we seed a piece of false information into that meeting — something specific enough to trace, harmless enough that acting on the leak causes no real damage — and it reaches Kaiming's camp within the same suspicious window, we'll have narrowed the field considerably further, or confirmed it outright."

"A controlled test," Han Muyang said, something settling into place with the familiar satisfaction of a plan finally taking coherent shape. "Feed each representative a slightly different false detail, and see which version, if any, makes its way back to us through Kaiming's camp's response."

Tao Jiu's expression carried real approval now, the earlier caution giving way to genuine interest. "That's considerably more sophisticated than the mountain's usual approach to internal discipline problems, Han Muyang. Where, precisely, does a disciple from a minor Frostreed clan learn to think in these terms?"

"The same place I learned everything else that doesn't quite fit the story people expect from me," Han Muyang said, offering the same careful, honest evasion he'd given a dozen times before, and watched Tao Jiu file it away, same as everyone else eventually did.

The plan, presented to Elder Zhuang and Elder Bai that evening, met with cautious approval — three variants of a fabricated detail about a planned, minor sortie against Kaiming's supply lines, each attributed to a different guild representative's information channel, timed carefully to reach Kaiming's camp before any genuine sortie could actually be mounted or countered.

"If this works," Elder Bai said, once the arrangements were settled, "we'll know within two days which representative, if any, is compromised. If it doesn't, we'll have lost nothing beyond a small amount of misdirected caution on Kaiming's part." She studied Han Muyang for a long moment, something thoughtful behind her tired composure. "You've shown me two entirely different kinds of usefulness in the space of a single week, Han Muyang. Tactical clarity on the wall, and now this — a genuinely patient, methodical approach to a problem most disciples would either ignore or approach with considerably less subtlety."

"I've had practice with both," he said simply, and left it there, watching the evening's preparations continue around him — Captain Wren dispatching careful instructions to seed the three variants, Tao Jiu drafting a watch rotation to monitor Kaiming's camp for any unusual movement in the coming days, the whole quiet machinery of counterintelligence work assembling itself from people who'd never had reason to think in these terms before he'd raised the question.

Two days, he thought, watching Redgate's evening lanterns flicker to life across the crowded, tense rooftops, the siege lines beyond the walls settling into their own patient, waiting rhythm. Two days to find whatever crack in the town's defenses someone had already been quietly exploiting, before that crack widened into something considerably more costly than a single conversation's worth of leaked information.

He found himself, walking back toward the quarters Elder Zhuang's contingent had claimed near the northern gate, turning over Jin Wuchang's parting words from the wall once more — *I trust I've made myself sufficiently clear* — and understood, with the particular, cold clarity of a soldier who'd learned to distrust convenient timing, that a besieging force this patient, this politically careful, would very likely have arranged more than one avenue of leverage into a town it had spent seven weeks slowly, deliberately squeezing.

Finding Bo Hai, or whoever the leak actually turned out to be, felt, the more he considered it, less like solving the whole problem and more like finding the first loose thread in a considerably larger, more carefully woven net.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!