Dai Xiaoyao stayed in Greenwood Village for a few days. Having achieved the purpose of this probe, he returned to the Starfall Kingdom with Tang Shan.
The kings of the Southern Kingdoms did much the same, returning to their respective countries one after another.
Once they returned, rumors sprang up everywhere.
During the Ten Thousand Flowers Festival, many kings had visited the Heavenly Strategy Dynasty's Minister of War.
Naturally, they had wanted to purchase more equipment from the Heavenly Strategy Army to arm their own forces.
The Minister of War had received them all, of course. An old hand at officialdom, he excelled at this sort of thing.
During their visits, however, the various emperors had "inadvertently" glimpsed some intelligence concerning dealings between Li Chen, the Emperor of Heavenly Strategy, and Charles, the Emperor of Everlasting Day.
Specifically, it concerned intelligence exchanged between Li Chen and Charles regarding "military deployments."
The intelligence did not seem entirely reliable. They had only seen part of it, leaving them with a vague impression.
But that was precisely the Minister of War's scheme. That vague impression was exactly what he wanted.
If he had shown them detailed intelligence outright, they certainly would not have believed it. They might even have suspected that the Heavenly Strategy Dynasty was deliberately throwing up a smokescreen.
The more fragmentary it was, the more guesswork its vagueness required, the more curious they would become.
Once people grew curious, they had essentially taken the bait.
Next came the movements of the Heavenly Strategy Dynasty's Southern Army, which were equally baffling.
When Yun Xu, commander of the Southern Army, received Li Chen's orders, he was utterly bewildered at first. What did "coordinate with the Eternal Day Empire's military operations" mean?
*We could coordinate in a war? I'd fought for decades and