Far above the grand, treacherous political machinations of the Imperial Capital, within the luxurious, heavily shielded confines of the flying vessel, Alaric finalized his own, far more intimate and devastating strategies. He had observed General Bao successfully enforce the Emperor's absolute ceasefire, effectively driving a wedge of imperial steel between Long Chen and Qin Wu. Knowing that he could not immediately, quietly target those two exhausted protagonists amidst the heavy, suffocating scrutiny of the Imperial Vanguard and the Emperor's spies, Alaric shifted his focus entirely.
He had no exact idea what Emperor Huang Long held in store for those two battered warlords, but he had already laid the groundwork for future intelligence. He planned to have Lin Ruoli communicate using her encrypted artifacts with General Bao a few months later, utilizing her status as a 'concerned wife' to extract every detail of their situation from the general's own mouth.
