Chapter 2096 - The Intelligence Conference
Before long, the gate tower sentries were sprawled carelessly around the stone floor, mumbling contentedly through their stupor: "Good wine! Damned good wine!" These simple country bumpkins—to them literally any wine qualified as good wine. This particular batch was merely cheap watered-down wine, heavily doctored with powerful knockout drops.
Luo Yangming sneered inwardly at their pathetic ignorance, but he had absolutely no time to waste on such trifles. He moved quickly to retrieve the precious Australian oil lamp hanging from its iron carrying-pole and began carefully signaling toward the dark river and the Fubo fleet positions beyond the city's exterior walls.
If circumstances had permitted any choice in the matter, Luo Yangming would never have voluntarily chosen such an inefficient and risky method as Morse code lamp signals to transmit critical intelligence. The code's inherently limited nature absolutely demanded the briefest possible messages, stripped of all nuance and context. He much preferred the traditional, safer methods employed in normal operations—using the established courier network, he could compose a detailed, comprehensive intelligence analysis with proper supporting evidence and reasoning.
But Luo Yangming had no viable choice remaining now, and there existed absolutely no guarantee anyone in the Fubo camp would even notice his desperate signals, let alone respond appropriately. He sent the same terse message over and over into the darkness with disciplined patience: "I am Lone Wolf. Please respond immediately!"
Every External Intelligence Bureau operative working in the field possessed a unique operational codename for security. Luo Yangming's designated codename was "Lone Wolf." Right now, trapped inside the sealed city, he truly felt every inch a lone wolf—completely isolated from support, without backup or extraction options, fighting utterly alone against overwhelming odds.
After what felt like countless repetitive transmissions, Luo Yangming grew physically weary, his hope gradually fading like the guttering lamp flame. The night was already half gone—perhaps he should simply give up this futile effort and focus on survival?
Then, miraculously, the Fubo Army fleet anchored out on the dark West River finally sent back a clear acknowledgment signal: "This is the Center. Your message received and understood."
"The Center" was the External Intelligence Bureau's standard internal designation for "headquarters" and command authority. Seeing this professional signal response, he felt himself relax completely for the first time in hours. The Fubo Army had not only actually noticed his desperate improvised signal—there was clearly a trained intelligence officer among the fleet command staff who understood proper protocols. This made everything infinitely easier and more hopeful. Luo Yangming felt an overwhelming surge of relief and excitement flood through him, but an excellent operative's iron discipline quickly steadied his racing emotions.
Luo Yangming immediately began carefully transmitting his three critical intelligence messages using the most efficient wording possible. Just then, however, his seemingly abnormal behavior with the lamp finally caught someone's unwelcome attention.
As on every previous miserable night this week, the unfortunate Yang Yi was pulling watch duty atop the cold Nanxun Gate tower. Fortunately for the suffering soldiers, tonight a prosperous rice merchant from inside the city had unexpectedly arrived bearing generous gifts of wine and cooked meat for the freezing troops—an unusual kindness. The wine had been remarkably strong, going straight to Yang Yi's head with pleasant warmth—genuinely good stuff, far better than the usual swill. Yang Yi dimly felt he hadn't actually drunk all that much yet was already getting seriously drunk, increasingly unsteady on his feet and struggling to focus his vision.
He had no idea how long he'd been passed out unconscious, but eventually some confused awareness sluggishly returned to his foggy mind. He wanted desperately to drink more of that excellent wine, eat more of that savory meat—only to discover through his blurred vision the rice merchant Luo Yangming standing by the stone battlements, furtively doing something highly suspicious with the lamp.
Luo Yangming was carefully manipulating the Australian lamp's metal cover, repeatedly opening and deliberately shutting it in a clear pattern, making the bright light blink on and off with obvious purpose. Yang Yi felt deeply puzzled by this bizarre behavior and called out groggily: "Hey! What the hell are you doing over there?"
Luo Yangming was badly startled by the unexpected challenge but deliberately showed no visible reaction or guilty flinch. This particular soldier had consumed drugged wine yet somehow woken again so quickly—his natural constitution must be truly unusual, almost unnaturally strong. But Luo Yangming had no time to waste expressing surprise at this inconvenient development. He feigned perfect calm and casual innocence: "Nothing important, soldier. Just checking the lamp oil level."
Then, recognizing through the darkness that it was specifically Yang Yi who had challenged him, Luo Yangming's tactical mind instantly formulated the necessary response to this threat.
He decided with cold finality to silence the man permanently. He absolutely couldn't risk letting Yang Yi's observation of his odd behavior with the lamp be reported to officers. The paranoid Ming authorities had already begun killing people essentially indiscriminately throughout the tense city on the flimsiest suspicions; the very slightest hint of questionable activity meant immediate death as a suspected spy without any semblance of trial. Luo Yangming still desperately wanted to live long enough to see the glorious day when the Council of Elders' righteous banner illuminated the entire world in triumph. Therefore Yang Yi had to die immediately, tonight—there was simply no alternative.
Yang Yi was transparently greedy, that much was obvious. From the pathetically eager way he'd persistently begged for reward money when Luo had originally brought the wine and meat up to the tower earlier, his character was perfectly clear. Luo Yangming smoothly drew a substantial piece of gleaming silver weighing well over an ounce from inside his coat and waved it temptingly at the drunk soldier: "Soldier—come closer here. This handsome reward is for you, for your loyal service."
Yang Yi's eyes went wide and he swallowed hard with visible greed, unconsciously drawn toward the battlement and the promise of easy silver. Luo Yangming mentally rehearsed the lethal close-combat techniques he'd extensively learned and drilled during intensive intelligence training. In a single instant, moving fast as wind and thunder, he darted forward with economical precision, seized Yang Yi's head firmly with both trained hands, and twisted sharply with full strength—instantly snapping the man's neck with an audible crack.
Luo Yangming caught the suddenly limp corpse before it could fall noisily, gave it a gentle but purposeful push, and sent the dead body tumbling silently down the wall's sheer outer face into the darkness below, where it would lie undiscovered until morning at earliest.
Before dawn broke on April 13, an emergency intelligence analysis meeting convened in the spartan conference room at the First Mixed Brigade's forward headquarters on Changzhou Island, prompted urgently by the three critical messages just received from the agent using the codename "Lone Wolf" operating inside besieged Wuzhou.
Attendees at this highly restricted meeting included the four Elders currently positioned near Wuzhou—Zhu Mingxia serving as overall campaign commander, Zhu Quanxing as political officer, and Naval Intelligence Staff Officer Xu Ke—plus several carefully selected and absolutely trusted senior naturalized officers who'd proven their loyalty beyond question: Eighth Battalion Commander Yang Zeng, Siege Artillery Company Commander Zhang Dapao, and Pearl River Task Force Western Detachment Commander Schneider. Elder Zhu Mingxia formally chaired the sensitive meeting.
The first critical agenda item: systematically analyze the three pieces of urgent intelligence and assess their tactical implications. This analytical portion fell primarily to Xu Ke as the senior intelligence specialist present. Zhu Mingxia deliberately didn't intend to offer premature commentary; no one else in the room would venture opinions either at this stage—after all, apart from scattered operational briefings, Xu Ke remained the only person present who truly understood the full intelligence picture and context.
The pre-dawn atmosphere in the lamp-lit room was distinctly chilly, both literally and emotionally. Aside from the brass kettle sitting on the small coal stove, which had just finished boiling and was now hissing steam steadily, no one present seemed remotely inclined to speak first—including even Xu Ke himself, who was theoretically supposed to lead the first agenda item with his analysis. Zhu Mingxia understood the group dynamics perfectly: as the actual supreme field commander of the entire Wuzhou campaign and the designated meeting chair, he had to take responsibility for breaking the uncomfortable silence.
He glanced deliberately toward the youngest officer present. "Um, Xiao Zhang—would you mind pouring the tea for everyone?"
Zhang Dapao possessed the least seniority and rank of anyone present at this senior meeting. Though his dramatic nickname "Big Cannon" sounded genuinely intimidating to outsiders, he was quite probably the youngest of the eight people gathered in the room—genuinely hard to determine whether he or the baby-faced Ruan Xiaowu was actually younger. Undoubtedly, the colorful nickname "Dapao" was some Elder's playful whimsy—either the firearms expert Lin Shenhe or the artillery enthusiast Ying Yu had bestowed that memorable name on him during training. Zhang Dapao was widely recognized as an outstanding graduate of the prestigious Artillery NCO Academy, having risen meteorically from common artillery private all the way to company commander in just a few remarkable years, promoted through the ranks from private to full lieutenant. Quite promising indeed for further advancement.
"Right away, sir!" Zhang Dapao answered briskly with appropriate military crispness, then immediately turned to efficiently lift the heavy brass kettle and carefully pour hot water into everyone's waiting cups arranged on the plain wooden table. Loose tea leaves were already resting in the bottom of each cup; the boiling water set them swirling and churning, releasing their aroma.
"Everyone please have some tea first—help wake yourselves up properly," Zhu Mingxia said with deliberate casual friendliness, trying to ease the tension. "This particular batch is from the spoils we captured at the Governor-General's luxurious office in Zhaoqing. Haven't had proper time to share it with you all before now—it's probably some genuinely fine stuff that Xiong Wenchan had personally stashed away for himself and his favored guests."
The oppressive atmosphere in the small room seemed to ease somewhat at this humanizing gesture. Some officers picked up their cups immediately and sipped slowly, savoring the superior quality; others blew gently into their cups with pursed lips, patiently waiting for the scalding tea to cool just enough to gulp down properly.
"Staff Officer Xu—please have some tea to wet your throat, and then begin your intelligence report," Zhu Mingxia smoothly pivoted to business. Xu Ke obediently moistened his dry throat with a grateful sip of the excellent tea and commenced his professional briefing.
"After our agent Lone Wolf received our acknowledgment signal, he managed to transmit back three distinct pieces of critical intelligence despite the dangerous circumstances and primitive signaling method: first, 'A spy has defected to the Ming side'; second, 'If the Ming forces are defeated, they plan to burn the entire city'; third, 'Most government grain stores have already been shipped out of the city.'
"The first item remains somewhat frustratingly vague and incomplete: all we can confirm with reasonable certainty is that Governor Xiong Wenchan has somehow gained valuable assistance from a defector who possesses detailed familiarity with our army's characteristic tactical doctrines and operational patterns—otherwise our experienced agent Lone Wolf wouldn't have bothered to specifically and urgently emphasize the presence of a dangerous 'spy' worth warning us about.
"We can essentially rule out the disturbing possibility of one of our commissioned officers actually defecting to the Ming camp as highly unlikely. Our personnel record files are remarkably complete and well-maintained; all deceased officers have detailed casualty reports filed and verified, and the very few missing-in-action cases can generally be reasonably presumed dead with bodies simply unrecoverable from battlefield conditions. We maintain absolutely no official records whatsoever of any officers being captured alive or voluntarily defecting to enemy forces.
"Therefore, this mysterious spy is most likely either a common deserter who went AWOL from the ranks at some point during the campaign, or quite possibly an enemy infiltrator who had been deliberately embedded deep within our forces for some time waiting for opportunity. Critically, he cannot possibly be an ordinary civilian or a typical low-level naturalized cadre; anyone outside our formal Army and Navy command systems would possess very little practical knowledge of our actual tactical doctrines and operational procedures worth sharing."
The troubling implication hung in the air: if this traitor was merely a common deserter from the enlisted ranks, he would only be intimately familiar with basic squad and platoon-level tactics from his limited service; his practical understanding of company-level and higher operational planning wouldn't meaningfully exceed anyone else's superficial knowledge. Yet Lone Wolf's specific emphasis on warning about him seemed somewhat excessive unless there was more to the story.
"The second and third intelligence items can be analyzed together as part of a coherent enemy strategy. First and most obviously, they clearly indicate the Ming command possesses absolutely no genuine confidence of achieving victory in this upcoming battle." This brutally honest assessment drew scattered dark laughter around the cramped room. Zhu Mingxia coughed twice deliberately, signaling firmly for quiet and proper seriousness.
Xu Ke sipped his cooling tea again and continued his analysis: "Otherwise they wouldn't have bothered adopting such a spectacularly self-destructive backup contingency plan. Whether deliberately burning their own city or systematically shipping out the public grain reserves, the glaringly obvious strategic purpose is to make it functionally impossible for our victorious army to hold and administer Wuzhou after we inevitably take it, thereby forcing us to withdraw back downriver relatively quickly—so that Xiong Wenchan can then triumphantly claim a face-saving 'recovery of lost territory' and partially redeem his shattered reputation at court.
"What specific delusions Xiong Wenchan is entertaining in his desperate mind isn't ultimately our tactical concern. But his elaborate preparation to burn the city clearly indicates he fully intends to fight costly street battles, deliberately luring our main assault force deep into the urban interior before setting the entire trap ablaze—essentially a 'Burning of Xinye' classical stratagem adapted for urban warfare."
Tomorrow's update—Volume Seven, Guangzhou Governance, Section 301
(End of Chapter)