You're Here!
"Old Orange, are you sure you didn't see wrong?" Bitter Granny could hardly believe it. "How could Bastard Slope be connected to Heroes Mountain?"
Orange Garden Elder sighed. "I'm no good at fighting, but reading the soil is my craft. The earth does not lie. Some things may be unclear from a cubic yard or two of dirt, but hundreds of cubic yards tell the whole story.
"There is a road from Bastard Slope to Heroes Mountain. It was opened up in just the past few days, and quite a bit of soil was sucked into the road.
"Quite a bit of soil was also blown back out by the gale, so there can be no mistake.
"And the soil here told me something else. Bastard Slope may not have only fifty thousand people. It seems quite a few are buried beneath the dirt."
The Peddler rubbed his forehead and muttered, "Losses and gains, losses and gains..."
Others did not understand what he meant, but Li Banfeng did.
Sending Cui Tike to Chaoge City—had that been a loss, or a gain?
Cui Tike posed an enormous threat to Shang Country. When he reached Chaoge, he threw the city into chaos, creating favorable conditions for Li Banfeng's later surprise attack on the Bandit Suppression Camp. That meant the Peddler had made a huge profit.
Then Cui Tike had gone on a killing spree in Chaoge. Naturally, the Peddler had suffered no loss, while Qiao Yi had eliminated dissidents. That counted as a gain too.
Cui Tike massacred a city in Hao Province, Qiao Yi continued purging dissidents, and at the same time provided the Great Totem with a vast quantity of materials. That had to count as a huge gain for Qiao Yi.
With Cui Tike away and Sage