Two weeks later, Yuan Long summoned her again—this time to an abandoned mill outside town.
He wore plain clothes once more, but this time he was accompanied by two men: one an herbalist, the other… a spy.
"This is Chen," Yuan Long said, indicating the younger man. "He will be our intermediary. You can trust him."
"And the next task?"
"The Zhu family isn't our only concern," Yuan Long said. "There's a new player—the Wang family."
"My stepmother's relatives."
"They're planning something significant," Chen added. "To seize control of the iron mines in the western mountains."
"But the iron mines belong to the Crown," Xian Ling said.
"In theory," Yuan Long replied. "But in times of chaos, whoever controls resources controls power."
Xian Ling grasped the scale of the game.
This was about rebellion.
That night, while preparing a secret report on the Wang family's movements, she heard a faint sound outside her room.
She opened the door cautiously. Yuan Yuan stood there, trembling, her face pale.
"What happened?"
"The new servant… the one who arrived last week… I saw him sneaking into the Baron's study."
"And what did he do?"
"He took papers… and replaced them with others."
Forgery. Or theft.
"Did you see his face?"
"Yes. And he was carrying… a dagger."
He wasn't an ordinary servant.
He was an agent.
Xian Ling realized then that even her own home was no longer safe.
But the information was valuable.
If they were altering her father's documents, it meant they were preparing to destroy him—legally.