Along the entire border, people, vehicles, and martial artists moved in unusually dense streams. Everywhere carried an air of abnormality and deliberate lockdown.
Such a massive disturbance naturally could not possibly be concealed completely.
The Wei Kingdom's spies and informants stationed along the border had long lurked at the frontier between Zhao and Wei, tasked specifically with investigating unusual activity on the Zhao Kingdom's border.
They, too, had picked up on all the abnormal signs.
No hunting in the wilderness, commoners barred from the mountains, mountain ranges sealed off by heavy troops, surging traffic, martial artists gathering in droves, mountain roads blocked...
Fragment after fragment of information piled up, each corroborating the others. All pointed to something major happening there.
After the news reached the Wei Kingdom, it immediately dispatched more spies to move covertly, investigate, follow trails, probe the restricted areas, interrogate border merchants, and piece together movements back and forth.
They even deployed many exotic beasts and demonic beasts to investigate. More varied and comprehensive clues were gathered bit by bit, narrowed down, and pinned into place.
Every suspicious detail began to converge on a single location.
Finally, the Wei Kingdom's covert agents confirmed it beyond doubt-the deep mountain range that the Zhao Kingdom had secretly sealed off with heavy troops and seized with all its might was not an ordinary border defense position at all. It concealed an enormous secret gold mine!
The Wei Kingdom's spies even managed to uncover most of the details concerning the mine's approximate reserves.
The news raced back to the Wei Kingdom, carried by riders urging their horses onward all the way from the Zhao-Wei border to the royal court.
The Wei Kingdom's Imperial City.
Within the Purple Gold Hall, the atmosphere was solemn and imposing, its gold-and-jade pillars and beams reflecting