967 Partition (1/2)

The intelligence reports sent over had doubled during the past few days, and almost all of them were related to the kung fu competition that would elect the Lord of Jade City. Zhong Heng, who had finished negotiating, was staying in the Dragon King's tent and helping him check and approve documents.

\”They're worthless.\” Zhong Heng stared at the stack of papers three or four feet high on the table and rubbed his temples, wondering how he had managed to read them all. \”All of these messages are merely speculations. The Dragon King has really startled Jade City.\”

In fact, Zhong Heng had heard the news merely six hours earlier than others did, so he was just as startled and had been hoping to be given an explanation. But the Dragon King had remained silent during the last few days and just asked him to read through the stacks of intelligence reports.

\”What do the residents think of Long Fanyun?\” asked Gu Shenwei.

\”They think highly of him.\” Zhong Heng knew that the Dragon King was finally going to talk about his true intentions. \”Over the past month, his performance in the Department of Guards has been given a high appraisal. A lot of people actually think that he is the best man to be the Lord of Jade City.\”

\”How did Pang Jing react?\”

\”He was very angry, but he seemed to be even angrier about the Dragon King's disclosure of your real name. He tried to hide it, but it was still very obvious. Everybody was curious about the Dragon King's real name, but he pretended that he didn't care about it at all. Heh-heh. The day when the registration started, Pang Jing did make a mistake.\”

\”So he has long since known about my parentage.\”

Zhong Heng nodded. He would rather stay out of the Dragon King's plan for revenge than raise specific objections to it like Fang Wenshi did, or encourage him like his killers did. \”I think so. Pang Jing used to be a fence-sitter for many years, but eventually, he still chose to side with his elder brother and ally with the faction led by the Empress Dowager.\”

\”This is the only strange thing. The General-in-chief, Pang Jing, and the Middle Assistant Minister, Yan Qin, are supposed to to be on the same side. However, Pang Jing's recent actions don't seem to be in accord with eunuch Zhang You's deeds.\”

\”Um. Nominally, Zhang You is merely an attendant of the envoy of the Central Plains. Now, both the envoy and the vice envoy are dead, but he is still in the military camp of the Central Plains. After Pang Jing was inaugurated, they have never met each other. It's as if they have been carrying out their own plans. Is Zhang You by any chance keeping anything back from the Dragon King?\”

Recalling that cowardly eunuch, Gu Shenwei said, \”I don't think so. He's merely waiting for further instructions.\”

The conversation seemed to drift further away from the topic of the Lord of Jade City, but Zhong Heng didn't get anxious. Instead, he liked conversations of this exploratory kind of style. \”Whatever the reason is, Zhang You, or Yan Qin, had intentions to co-opt the Dragon King, even if the cost was offending Golden Roc Castle. What is Pang Jing's purpose? Did his acceptance of the Unique King's bribe mean that he had ultimately decided to be an enemy of the Dragon King?\”

\”Pang Jing is our enemy.\” Gu Shenwei was absolutely certain about this. \”But he didn't decide to make an enemy of me after taking the bribe. Instead, he made that decision long ago. The Meng family's fortune was merely a symbol that would solidify the relationship between them.\”

\”Since the Dragon King has never met him before that, there's no doubt that his grudges against you originated from some matters that are related to the last generation.\” Zhong Heng had naturally come to this conclusion. He began to worry about whether the Dragon King had gone too far.

Gu Shenwei could tell what the Prime Minister was thinking about, so he said, \”The Imperial Court of the Central Plains has assigned a task to Pang Jing, which restricts him and also imposes certain rules on Jade City. I'll follow these rules. At least these rules have been more favorable for the Dragon Army so far.\”

\”Is Pang Jing giving the position of the Lord of Jade City to the Unique King?\” Somewhat urgently, Zhong Heng steered the conversation back to the topic of the Lord of Jade City.

\”I don't think so. First, there is no sign that Prince Xiao is going to lose his power in the Central Plains, which means there probably won't be any major changes to his Western-Regions strategy any time soon. Second, it seems unnecessary for the Unique King to pay such a high price for merely the position of Lord of Jade City. With the Meng family's fortune, he can definitely make much greater profits.\”

\”He wants the Central Plains to confer a king's title onto him,\” said Zhong Heng. This was a goal that the Unique King had always been pursuing, which had been temporarily ignored by many people due to the kung fu competition concerning the position of Lord of Jade City. He began to understand the Dragon King's intentions. \”The position of Lord of Jade City is merely a cover-up. While the Dragon King is trying your best to compete for it, the Unique King and Pang Jing will be carrying out another plan. What will it be? Dispatching their armies?\”

Gu Shenwei fished out a letter from his front inside pocket and handed it to Zhong Heng. \”This is from the counselor.\”

Fang Wenshi was in the Norland, so it had taken this letter over a month to be delivered to the Dragon King. He didn't know about Pang Jing's arrival when he was writing this letter, but it didn't make his judgement of the big picture any less accurate.

Zhong Heng read the letter. This letter was done in the typical Fang Wenshi style. The wording was rhetorical and difficult to read, impassioned and indisputable, but the core contents of the letter were explicit.

Back then, Fang Wenshi had heard the news that the two envoy teams of the Central Plains were heading to Shulitu's military camp and Luoluo's camp to deliver the Emperor's favorable offer: the Central Plains was willing to call a truce and confer the titles of 'East Khan' and 'West Khan' upon them.

Influenced by this news, Fang Wenshi had reminded the Dragon King that the Central Plains' strategy was to support several forces at the same time and let them have their autonomous territories. This strategy would then be applied to both large countries like the Norland and city-states like Jade City. No matter if Prince Xiao won the competition between the factions within the Imperial Court or not, there was no chance that the Central Plains would solely support the Dragon King.

Fang Wenshi deduced that in order to maintain the balance of power, no matter which one of the Dragon King and the Unique King became the Lord of Jade City, the Central Plains would offer more support to the losing side to prevent Jade City from being thrust under the winning side's sole control.