The Office of the Supreme Overseer of Imperial War Preparedness was the new, thrumming heart of the Qing Empire. It was a place of frantic, ordered chaos, a whirlwind of maps, telegraphs, and harried aides rushing through with urgent dispatches. And at its center, like a calm and calculating spider in the middle of a vast web, sat Yuan Shikai.
He was in his element. This was power, true power, not just of industry, but of the state itself. He barked an order, and a thousand tons of steel were diverted from a civilian project to reinforce the northern railway. He made a quiet phone call, and a fleet of grain barges on the Yangtze changed course, their cargo now destined for the army in Manchuria. He was solving logistical nightmares that had plagued the dynasty for decades, and he was doing it with a ruthless efficiency that was both terrifying and undeniably effective. He felt more secure, more powerful, more indispensable than ever before. He had weathered the quiet storm of the Emperor's suspicion and emerged not just unscathed, but stronger. The promotion, he now believed, was not a test. It was a tacit admission by the Emperor that he, Yuan Shikai, was simply too valuable to be discarded.
So, when his chief aide announced the arrival of Spymaster Shen Ke, Yuan felt a flicker of annoyance, but no real alarm. He assumed it was a professional courtesy call, or perhaps the Spymaster was here to grovel for resources for some pet project.
"Send him in," Yuan said, leaning back in his grand, leather-upholstered chair.
Shen Ke entered the office alone. He moved with his usual unobtrusive grace, a man who seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. He was a shadow in this bright, bustling office of power. Yuan greeted him with a polite but dismissive smile, gesturing to a chair opposite his grand desk.
"Spymaster," Yuan began, his tone magnanimous. "To what do I owe the pleasure? If you are here about funding for your new listening posts, I'm afraid the army's budget takes precedence…"
Shen Ke did not respond. He did not sit. He simply walked to the desk and, without a word, placed a single, thin file on the vast, polished surface. It was a simple, unmarked folder, yet it seemed to radiate a profound and dangerous gravity.
Yuan's smile faltered. His eyes narrowed. He looked from Shen Ke's impassive face down to the file. He slowly reached out and opened it.
The file contained just three items.
The first was a photograph, grainy but clear, taken from a high window by a discreet agent. It was the face of a Westerner, a man with the quiet intensity and hard eyes of a professional soldier. It was Corporal Riley.
The second was a sheaf of papers: translated transcripts of American newspaper articles from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the New York Herald, detailing the catastrophic "Appalachian Fire," with expert analysis attributing the blast to a sophisticated, military-grade explosive unknown to Western authorities.
The third and final item was a single sheet of paper, a verbatim, signed confession. Yuan's eyes scanned the text, his blood running cold as he read the words of the captured fixer, Wu. The confession explicitly detailed Wu's dealings with a quiet American "soldier" who paid him for a demolition job. It named the American as Corporal Riley. And it stated, without any ambiguity, that Riley answered to an aide in the Ministry of Industry, a man known to be Minister Yuan's right hand.
A profound, suffocating silence filled the magnificent office. The frantic energy of the empire's war effort seemed to halt at the door. In this quiet room, a different, far more lethal battle was being fought. This was the moment of unmasking. The carefully constructed walls of Yuan's secret world had just been breached. He knew, with the sickening certainty of a checkmated king, that Shen Ke knew everything.
Shen Ke did not speak. He simply stood there, a patient, silent specter, his eyes watching Yuan's face, waiting for his move, waiting for the first crack in the facade.
Yuan Shikai was a man who had built an empire on his unshakable composure. For a long, terrible moment, he felt it begin to crumble. He could feel a tremor in his hands, a frantic pounding in his chest. He was exposed. He was ruined.
But then, the instinct for survival, the ruthless, predatory core of his being, took over. He did not break. He did not confess. He did not even deny. He took a long, slow breath, forcing the panic down, caging it. He slowly, deliberately, closed the file. He straightened the three papers inside, his movements calm and precise. He then pushed the file back across the polished expanse of the desk.
He looked up and met Shen Ke's gaze directly. And then he unleashed the most brilliant, audacious lie of his life.
"This is excellent work, Spymaster," Yuan said, his voice regaining its full, confident timbre. There was no tremor, no fear. Only the cool assessment of a fellow statesman. "Truly excellent. You have uncovered a dangerous and deeply insidious American plot to destabilize the war effort."
Shen Ke remained silent, his expression unchanging.
"It is obvious what has happened here," Yuan continued, warming to his performance, his mind now racing, building the lie into a fortress. "This Corporal Riley is clearly a double agent, a provocateur sent by Roosevelt. His mission was to commit an act of terror in his own country and then, through this captured fool of a fixer, to plant evidence framing me, the man responsible for the Emperor's entire war machine. The goal? To sow discord, to make the Emperor doubt his most loyal servants, to cripple our northern campaign before it even begins."
He gave Shen Ke a collegial smile, a look between two powerful men of the world who understood such games. "It was a clever plan. But not clever enough to fool you. You have my full gratitude, Spymaster, for exposing this traitor before he could do more damage. You have done the Empire a great service."
He had masterfully, breathtakingly, twisted the accusation on its head. He had taken Shen Ke's proof of his treason and reframed it as proof of American treachery. He was daring Shen Ke to call his bluff, knowing that a direct accusation against the newly appointed, "indispensable" Supreme Overseer was a political risk of monumental proportions. It would be his word against Shen Ke's, a battle of titans before the Dragon Throne.
Shen Ke listened to the masterful performance without a flicker of expression. He knew it was a lie. Yuan knew that he knew. But the lie had been told. The battle lines had been drawn.
Shen Ke simply picked up the file from the desk. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible bow, an ambiguous gesture that could have been respect or a profound, silent warning.
And then he turned and walked out of the office, leaving Yuan Shikai alone in his web. The two most powerful ministers in the Empire were now locked in a cold, undeclared war. Yuan, his heart now pounding with the adrenaline of his near-escape, knew he had been discovered. And he knew that Shen Ke's next move would be to find the final, irrefutable proof: Corporal Riley himself.
Yuan strode to his window, looking down at the bustling city. His mind was already working, planning. He had to get to Riley first. He had to eliminate the last living witness. The quiet summons was over. A desperate, frantic race had just begun.