The Emperor's private study was a place of deep, profound silence. He sat not on a throne, but in a simple, unadorned chair, contemplating the flow of information that was the lifeblood of his Empire. The news that arrived today came through two distinct, secret channels, painting a complex and disturbing picture of the two men he trusted most.
The first was a coded dispatch, delivered by a secret courier who had traveled overland from the northern frontier, bypassing all official military channels. The courier, a man from one of Meng Tian's most loyal marine units, knew only that he carried a message of the highest importance from the Chief Strategist directly to the Son of Heaven. The message was Meng Tian's official, and deeply falsified, report of the "flawless" victory at the Klyuchi Pass bridge.
Qin Shi Huang unrolled the silk scroll. The report was a masterpiece of military prose. It detailed the complete and utter destruction of the objective, describing a perfectly executed surgical strike that had severed the Russian supply line without complication. It praised the courage of his men and credited the victory to the Emperor's own brilliant and unconventional strategic vision. Most remarkably, it listed the company's casualties as zero. A perfect, bloodless triumph.
On the surface, it was a stunning success, a powerful vindication of his controversial decision to "test" his general with an independent command. It was precisely the sort of report an Emperor longed to receive. But as he held the paper in his hand, Qin Shi Huang closed his eyes and extended his senses. He was not reading the words; he was trying to feel the intent of the man who had written them, a subtle act of psychometry, a whisper of his power across distance and time.
He could feel the same storm of conviction he had felt from Meng Tian in person, the deep, unwavering belief in the rightness of his own strategic path. It was a powerful, honest energy. But this time, it was overlaid with a thin, almost imperceptible veil of something else. A discordant note in the symphony. A subtle dissonance. It was the scent of deception.
The report felt true in its core belief, but fundamentally false in its details. It was an honorable lie, a deception crafted to achieve a greater strategic goal. The Emperor's suspicion of his general was not alleviated. It was sharpened to a fine, razor's point. Meng Tian was a peerless commander, a man of profound conviction, and a brilliant strategist. He was also, the Emperor now knew with absolute certainty, a magnificent liar.
He set the report aside just as his chief eunuch announced the arrival of Spymaster Shen Ke, who had requested an urgent, secret audience. The Spymaster entered, his face grim, his movements agitated. He carried the scent of a different kind of deceit.
"Your Majesty," Shen Ke began, his voice a low, urgent whisper. "We have a significant development regarding Minister Yuan. As you commanded, the Ministry of Finance, under the pretext of a market stabilization effort, froze several of his key assets two days ago."
"And his reaction?" the Emperor asked, his voice deceptively calm.
"It was… unexpected, Your Majesty. He did not protest through official channels. He did not use his considerable influence at court to have the order rescinded. By all outward appearances, he seems to have… accepted it. He has made no move."
The Emperor's eyes narrowed. That was not the reaction of a man whose ambitions had been checked. It was the reaction of a man who had other, hidden resources to draw upon.
"However," Shen Ke continued, his voice dropping even lower, "while the Minister himself has been quiet, my agents monitoring his industrial holdings have reported a new, highly irregular activity. In the past twenty-four hours, we have detected a significant, unaccounted-for diversion of raw materials—specifically high-grade coking coal and refined steel—from the imperial stockpiles at the Tianjin and Hanyang arsenals. The amounts are small, but the pattern is undeniable. The official ledgers are being falsified. It appears the Minister is creating a black budget for himself. He is stealing directly from the Empire."
Qin Shi Huang listened to this new piece of the puzzle, and his mind, in its paranoid and terrible brilliance, connected the two reports. He did not see them as separate events. He wove them together into a single, flawed, but perfectly logical narrative. He believed Yuan Shikai's new, treasonous activity was a direct reaction to the news of Meng Tian's stunning success, news that would have just reached him through his own network of spies.
'So, that is the game,' the Emperor thought, the pieces clicking into place in his mind. 'Meng Tian scores a magnificent, bloodless victory in the north, proving his value to the throne and the genius of his unconventional methods. Yuan Shikai, his own pet project with the Armored Legion now a public humiliation, sees his great rival's star rising while his own is in danger of falling. His assets are frozen, his influence at court is questioned. In his desperation, he resorts to crude theft. But to what end? To fund what? A private army? A rebellion?'
He believed his gambit had worked perfectly. He had rattled both cages, and one of the beasts had shown its true, treacherous nature. He did not know that Yuan's theft was not a reaction to Meng Tian's success, but a desperate move to fund a secret war in America. He did not know about Project Atlas, about Corporal Riley, about the fire burning in Pennsylvania. He saw only the internal court rivalry, the part of the puzzle he had been conditioned by a lifetime of intrigue to expect.
He had connected the dots, but he had drawn the wrong picture.
He turned his gaze to Shen Ke. He had the crime: theft of state property, a capital offense. He had the motive: jealousy of a rival and frustrated ambition. Now, he needed the final, undeniable proof of the ultimate treason.
"The snake has been flushed from its hole, Shen Ke," the Emperor said, his voice a low growl of immense, satisfied fury. "He is stealing from me to fund his private ambitions. Now we must discover the precise nature of those ambitions."
His eyes were like black stones. "Your new mission is no longer to simply watch Minister Yuan himself. That is a task for clerks. Your task is to find his army. He was building one in the open with his Armored Legion. I took that toy away from him. So, like a spoiled child, he is now building another in the shadows. I want you to tear his industrial empire apart from the inside. Find his secret training grounds. Find his hidden arsenals. Find the off-the-books soldiers on his payrolls."
He rose from his chair, a towering figure of righteous wrath. "Bring me his hidden army, Spymaster. Bring me the proof of his treasonous preparations. And you will bring me his head on a platter."
Shen Ke bowed low, his heart filled with a cold, clear purpose. The hunt was no longer a matter of subtle observation. It had become a direct pursuit.
The Emperor was left alone in his study. He was confident that he was finally closing the net on Yuan Shikai. He was unknowingly allowing himself to be completely distracted by the threat of a conventional military rebellion at home, a threat he understood and knew how to crush. He was utterly, completely blind to the far more insidious, unconventional war of terror that his minister was about to unleash upon the world. The ghost in his machine was leading him on a grand chase, while the real danger festered, unseen and far away.