Nie Huaisang considered it a good sign that Luo Qingyang did not return to report before they reached Dafan. If she returned it meant there was something she needed to report about. It would mean that Dafan had not been a safe place for her to remain. Nie Huaisang reminded himself of this as his anxiety continued to climb.

Luo Qingyang was easily the best scout they had. She was strong, skilled, observant, and she knew how to allow others to make assumptions about her. It was absurdly common for people to see Luo Qingyang as a girl, and immediately dismiss her as someone they didn't need to be concerned about. Nie Huaisang wasn't certain she would be good as a spy. He wasn't sure she could handle the prolonged durations of dishonesty, but he also found her preference for honesty and bluntness to be comfortably familiar.

If it wouldn't have caused political upheaval with the smaller sects, Nie Huaisang would have long since suggested that Nie Mingjue invite her to join the QingheNie sect. Her skills were wasted in her own sect, and her temperament would do well in the QingheNie sect. Da-ge was not the only one with a fierce temper, blunt tongue, and a rigid sense of justice. Luo Qingyang really would fit right in.

Ever since she came to Nie Mingjue in Langya Luo Qingyang had been reassigned. The WuzhaoLi sect continued to operate out of Langya to support the LanglingJin sect. Luo Qingyang had been assigned to work under the QingheNie contingent in order to make better use of her skills. This was unusual, but acceptable. There was a war going on and they all needed to work together if they wanted to win.

If they went that extra step of inviting her to the QingheNie sect things could quickly spiral out of control. The minor sects could take it as the major sects taking advantage of the war to poach disciples from them. It could create additional tension and mistrust between the smaller and larger sects. Which really was the last thing they needed when they were already engaged in a long drawn out war.

Nie Huaisang allowed his mind to pull apart the potential ramifications of such a decision. He was learning that it was better to give his mind something to focus on. Otherwise he would be thinking through the many possibilities of what could have happened to Nie Mingjue since his capture.

Nie Huaisang felt his mind zero in on a familiar bothersome feeling that emerged whenever he thought about his brother's capture. It was kind of like an itch. Something bothersome that wouldn't go away and seemed to take affront to being ignored. It would demand Nie Huaisang look closer into something until it was satisfied. Nie Huaisang used to enjoy indulging in the urge to pick apart a situation to figure out what was going on.

Then a war happened, and all he really wanted was for the war to end, and his friends and family to be alive. Nie Huaisang hadn't felt any particular urge to pick a situation apart in a while. Instead his brain was perfectly happy to busy itself with thinking up a thousand horrible scenarios that could result in the people he cared about dying. It was not an improvement in the least.

The familiar itch was back, pulling his thoughts towards Yangquan. The attack had been planned with information that Lan Xichen had received from one of his spies. Lan Xichen had never confirmed he had more than one, but Nie Huaisang had already determined there were two early on in the war. Back when Nie Huaisang still had the energy to regularly pull things apart just to satisfy the itch of his curiosity.

One of the spies had been spying from the very beginning of the war. They were able to pass information extremely quickly, and they had very detailed information about Yiling. At this point Nie Huaisang was confident that this first spy was either Wen Qionglin or Wen Qing. They had provided extremely detailed information about Dafan, with focuses similar to the information given regarding Yiling.

Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin were both from Dafan, and neither of them were cruel or mean spirited. Wen Qing might be a little scary sometimes, but it was the comforting older sibling type of scary, like Da-ge. Come to think of it, it might be more accurate to say that both of them were this first spy. The two were close, and from what Nie Huaisang could tell they did not keep secrets from one another. It was very likely they might both gather information and then one of them would send it.

Nie Huaisang was very interested in how they were sending the information, because sometimes they seemed to be receiving news of troop movements within hours of the troops departing from Qishan. Nie Huaisang had spent some time speculating on what they might be doing, but had so far come up with nothing concrete. Nie Huaisang was left to conclude that most likely it was some sort of secret technique or newly invented talisman.

Nie Huaisang gave it a seventy five percent chance that it was of Wei Wuxian's design. He had to allow for the possibility that it was a secret GusuLan sect technique that he simply had never had cause to see the evidence of before. All sects had their own secret techniques. Some were secret only in the sense that outsiders were not taught how to use them.

Some were also secret in the sense that the sect never revealed the technique's existence to outsiders. The second form was more rare and usually meant the technique was restricted to high level cultivators or members of the main clan. Lan Xichen was both a high level cultivator and was the sect leader. If anyone in his sect would know a secret technique for quickly passing information it would be him, but he would have had to expose the existence of the technique to Wen Qing or Wen Qionglin.

The opportunity would have been there when they studied at Cloud Recesses. Someone from the Lan Clan doing so without the pressure of a dangerous war seemed absurdly unlikely. Then again, Nie Huaisang had also heard gossip regarding the attack on Cloud Recesses. The recently improved wards. The talismans that the disciples had not been aware of that protected the structures from fire damage. The absurd amounts of items moved to a cave in the back mountains. So many that the elders of the GusuLan sect had questioned who moved them there and why.

So perhaps it was not such an absurd idea that Lan Xichen might have been informed by Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin back then about the coming war. Nie Huaisang did not quite like this theory. He had spent a lot of time with Wen Qionglin, and he felt he could confidently say that they were close. Nie Huaisang could not imagine Wen Qionglin imparting such a serious warning to Lan Xichen and then saying nothing to Nie Huaisang. The thought that Wen Qionglin might not have considered giving Nie Huaisang a similar warning, if he had the knowledge, stung a bit.

Nie Huaisang chased away the edge of melancholy and directed his thoughts back onto pulling apart the pieces of information he had. Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin were, without a doubt, the first spy. The type of information they passed on made sense with what they would have easy access to, and what they might stumble upon.

The second spy appeared later. Some months after the war started, different kinds of information began to come from Lan Xichen's 'spy'. This second spy routinely gave more detailed information about a variety of locations. No one location seemed to have more detail than another. Which meant they were useless in determining who the second spy was.

Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin had more information about Yiling and Dafan because they had been to both. Wen Qing had been temporarily in charge of the Yiling supervisory office. She would have had access to everything you could want to know about QishanWen activity in Yiling. Dafan was her and Wen Qionglin's home, enough said.

The second spy either deliberately obscured extra information about places they had been in order to conceal their identity. Or, the second spy had not been transferred to any of these locations and instead had reliable access to information on Wen Rouhan's war plans. This second spy also had a slower means of passing information. A more normal means of passing information.

The information about Yangquan had definitely come from this second spy. The details, the map, the information was all conveyed like someone speaking in a strategy meeting. Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin's information never sounded like that. Even when Lan Xichen was presenting it in a strategy meeting. Their information was a flood of facts being presented by someone who wasn't completely sure of which details mattered. The second spy conveyed their information like someone giving a formal report or proposal within a strategy meeting.

Nie Huaisang frowned. Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin had given bad information once, which wasn't really a surprise. The information in question had been hasty. They might have received bad information without being aware, or might have been fed bad information on purpose by someone looking for a spy.

The second spy gave Nie Huaisang more pause. The consistency of information they provided and level of detail was professional and methodical. For them to reliably get such valuable information spoke to them holding a position in Nightless City. If they were not a regular attendee of the QishanWen sect's war council, then they at least had ready access to the notes, maps, and reports that resulted from such meetings.

Nie Huaisang found himself skeptical about Yangquan being a mistake. Nie Mingjue was the spearhead of the Sunshot campaign and everyone knew it. Certainly it was an alliance with many leaders involved, but if you were forced to name a single person leading the campaign everyone would immediately name Chifeng-zun. Removing him would mark a major blow against the allied sects, and it had. Nie Huaisang was a wreck over his brother missing, but the blow Nie Mingjue's absence had on the ability of the allied sects to organize an offensive was devastating.

The information they received about Yangquan had been just as detailed and precise as any they had received in the past. Maybe even more detailed from what Nie Huaisang had put together. Nie Huaisang hadn't been in the meeting that preceded the battle in Yangquan. He was working with what he could construct after the fact.

Nie Huaisang could not deny that the second spy had provided valuable information in the past, and technically there was an alternative to sabotage. The second spy could have been fed bad information, the same as how Nie Huaisang believed Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin had received bad information regarding Langya. It was possible. It was even a sound strategy to make use of a spy in such a way once you identified them.

Nie Huaisang knew that this was a reasonable assumption, but he could not get himself to believe it. The information was so precise. It seemed much too elaborate to construct all of this information artificially just to fool one spy with it. What lengths would you have to go to to prevent such a meticulous spy from realizing it was false? How would you keep everyone else in the war room quiet about the charade? How would you discuss the real plan without them being suspicious about you excluding them from the meeting? Nie Huaisang could not help but believe that the second spy had given false information on purpose.

Something cold twisted in Nie Huaisang's gut. Something angry and dangerous seemed to stir inside of him and Nie Huaisang found himself a little afraid at that realization. Da-ge had always been the angry one. He was the one who would threaten violence, or jump to behead anyone who laid a hand on his family. Nie Huaisang had never been the violent or angry one.

Nie Huaisang had never thought of himself as someone capable of those things, but there was something stirring inside of him now. Something cold and foreign had taken root and Nie Huaisang was no longer just scared of what might have happened to his Da-ge. Now he was a little bit scared of himself. Scared of what he might do if they reached Dafan to find his Da-ge hadn't made it.

This cold angry part of him bristled at the thought and Nie Huaisang somehow knew that blood alone would not be payment enough for his Da-ge's life. Nie Huaisang was not certain what lengths he might go to to punish those responsible for his Da-ge's death. He was quite certain he didn't want to know that answer. Whatever it was, Nie Huaisang wasn't sure he would recognise himself after the fact.