A Pawn's Passage

The Morgan Brotherhood could not place agents directly at the Patriarch’s side, but hierarchies extended layer by layer downward. Those close to the Patriarch had their own subordinates and attendants, and as one followed these layers down, the Brotherhood only needed to gather intelligence from the middle and lower ranks. Combined with the fact that the Patriarch was not leaving St. York secretly nor keeping his movements hidden, Sadie could roughly infer the Patriarch’s itinerary.

This was how intelligence gathering worked. Penetrating deep into the enemy’s core to steal critical information happened only in rare cases. Most of the time, it resembled assembling a puzzle—collecting scattered fragments, piecing them together to reconstruct a rough outline, and then making inferences and guesses.

The Morgan Brotherhood excelled at this method. They did not sneak into the Patriarch’s secretary’s office to obtain his schedule. Instead, they gathered numerous seemingly irrelevant bits of information, such as the kitchen canceling a planned dinner, servants temporarily adjusting their shift rotations, or the coachman having been unusually idle lately. These pieces of intelligence were not difficult to obtain and often did not even require direct sources. For example, shift changes must be communicated to family members, so the Brotherhood might have learned of it from a child. By compiling all these fragments, they ultimately arrived at a vague but useful inference.

This was precisely why Jade Capital was a city of Daoists, Xuan City was practically a city of high-ranking Daoists, and the innermost Purple Mansion consisted of elites and was more strictly guarded. The Daoist residents of Xuan City and Purple Mansion were rotated only every few months to prevent such occurrences. Even if a leak did happen, it was easy to investigate and pinpoint the source.

The Holy Seat was much the same. It was a city of clergy. However, St. York was more like Jinling Prefecture or Lion City, lacking such conditions, so information inevitably spread everywhere.

After receiving this intelligence, Qi Xuansu immediately contacted Lu Yujue and asked him to relay the message to the fellow members of the Western Daoist Order. Since the Western Daoist Order did not possess the Beichen Hall’s special token, an intermediary was required to pass along the information.

Although Qi Xuansu did not wish to escalate the situation, the Western Daoist Order had begun to act. He could only consider matters from their perspective and could not undermine them at this point. He hoped that even if they intended to take action, they would wait until the Patriarch had left the New Continent, lest they crash headlong into him and suffer heavy casualties.

Lu Yujue acted swiftly without any delay and soon replied, “Chief Deputy, Sage Huangfu asked me to convey his thanks for the information you provided.”

Qi Xuansu responded, “We’re a family, so there’s no need for such formalities.”

......

“We are indeed one family. But we still eat from separate bowls. Since Chief Deputy Qi has shown his goodwill, I will remember this favor,” Huangfu Ji said, ending his conversation with Lu Yujue.

Thousands of kilometers away, at the Western Daoist Order’s temporary encampment, its members had already begun packing up, preparing to depart.