He changed tack, looking at the civil official with a smile. "But what Lord Zhang just said was slander against this old man. As military advisers, how could handling a little paperwork count as a burden?"
"The reason I was so eager to find General Lei a clerk for his tent was to avoid any appearance of impropriety. After all, I came from His Highness Ao Han's staff. There are certain matters it would still be inconvenient for me to handle."
At his words, both General Lei and the official surnamed Zhang shifted their expressions. They cupped their hands in unison. "Not at all, not at all. What could there possibly be in this army that would be inconvenient for Lord Ao?"
Those few exchanges were enough for Cui Jiuyang to understand.
Ao Dongping served directly under Ao Han. Though he was supposedly here as a military adviser recruiting new troops, he was actually an army inspector sent down from above.
General Lei was one of Ao Han's subordinate commanders, but their relationship was probably unremarkable. Otherwise, Ao Dongping would not have spelled things out so bluntly.
As for the man surnamed Zhang, he was probably the army's actual strategist here, someone close to General Lei.
Chapter 345: Battle formation
The paperwork Ao Dongping had handled every day before this had actually been more like a form of... unobtrusive surveillance.
His Highness Ao Han did not seem to place much trust in this General Lei of humble origins.
They had already spent two months here, yet had only scraped together a scattering of recruits, fewer than a thousand in total.
With so few soldiers and pitifully simple military affairs, that surveillance had come to seem increasingly pointless.
So Ao Dongping was happy to slack off, finding himself a clever little