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Chapter 1448 Western Region Tower 2
"...Lead the way!" This time, Commander Pang's gaze truly wavered, and he involuntarily turned to glance at the boy standing to his side and behind him. After receiving a signal in his eyes, he took a deep breath, tried to calm himself, nodded with feigned composure, and squeezed out two words through gritted teeth.

A few minutes later, Commander Pang walked into the private room in the northeast corner of the third floor with his distinctive gait. As he entered, he greeted Manager Sun in a loud baritone voice, accompanied by a standardized, commercial laugh, as if he were seeing an old friend.

The boy who came with him also went in. The servant in blue who greeted him on the second floor went up to the third floor and stood at the top of the stairs, as if he were just greeting guests. But his eyes kept glancing at the private rooms diagonally opposite the corridor and at the movement of all the people in the vicinity.

"Director, why did you come in person!"

The moment the door to the private room closed, Pang Qianhu's smile and polite words came to an abrupt halt. He instantly shrank several inches, standing straight as a rod in the doorway, and whispered a question to the back of the middle-aged man standing at the door of the inner room.

"This isn't the place to talk, let's go to the kitchen!" The figure didn't turn around, but strode towards the inner room.

"Wait a moment... Clatter... Click... Chief, please!" Upon hearing this, Commander Pang quickly strode ahead of the man, his speed unaffected even by stepping on a wooden leg.

As they walked, they pulled out several brass keys from their coat pockets, rushed to the wooden carving backdrop on the north wall of the inner room, found the keyhole in a complex flower petal, inserted it, turned it a few times, and then pushed it open. A crack, just wide enough for one person to pass through, appeared in the wooden carving backdrop, and the middle-aged man led the way as they filed in.

As the crack in the wooden carving behind them closed, the three walked along the narrow passage, turning left and right for dozens of meters before opening another door. Then, the space opened up before them, revealing a large hall of about a hundred square meters where four young men, all dressed as servants in blue robes, were sitting.

However, what lay before them was not a dining table, nor tableware, but a wall covered in copper pipes. Each pipe protruded with a pointed tip, marked with a number. The number of private rooms on the three floors of the Western Regions Building was roughly the same, assuming at least two pipes per room.

In addition, the private rooms on the second floor and the guest rooms at the back also have separate secret rooms and copper pipe systems. There are people on duty 24 hours a day, and their only purpose is to listen in!

The Western Regions Building was nominally an enterprise established in the capital by the Western Regions Construction Corps and some local nobles through their connections with the army, and was managed by Commander Pang. In reality, it was an intelligence point of the General Staff's Statistics Department.

Using restaurants, brothels, and casinos to gather intelligence was Hong Tao's usual tactic. He began planning this at the beginning of the establishment of the Statistics Department, and it was further developed and expanded during Wang Datou's tenure, spreading throughout the country and overseas territories.

To be honest, the methods were indeed despicable, but the results were undeniably perfect. Many secrets that would be difficult to uncover through normal means could be obtained with ease here.

After the Statistics Department was transferred to the military, these facilities were not abandoned but were further developed and improved. In addition to continuing to serve the Statistics Department, they were also shared with the newly established Advisory Office.

Pang Taiping was naturally a member of the Statistics Department, but due to his late entry, his rank was not high; he was merely a field squad leader. Given the nature of his work, his immediate superiors were usually only centurions, and even centurions were extremely rare. The sudden arrival of Liu Yuan, the Director of the Statistics Department of the General Staff, today left him completely baffled. Liu Yuan was among the first batch of graduates of the Naval Affairs Department, ranking sixty-sixth in his family. In his short life, he rose from a beggar and thief on the streets to become the head of the Naval Affairs Department, the Navy Commander, the Army Commander, a confidential staff officer, and finally the highest intelligence chief of the Ming Dynasty's military. In just over thirty years, he experienced a life most people could not live several lifetimes of.

In terms of endurance, he once went several days without a proper meal, and being beaten and freezing was commonplace. In terms of danger, he once commanded a training ship that encountered a storm at sea, tossed about like a lump of coal for four days, one of the two masts broke, and for several days the sun and stars were not visible.

Driven solely by the will to survive, he aimed in one direction and miraculously found his way back. In the words of the then-naval commander Yuan Keli, this was a stroke of incredible luck and destiny; it was as if he had just made a brief appearance before the King of Hell, said hello, and slipped away.

In terms of enjoying life, he married a member of the royal family and had three sons and a daughter; if one were to trace his lineage back, he could be considered the current emperor's maternal uncle. In terms of achievements, during his eight years leading the Statistics Department, development was very stable, its reach extending throughout European countries, essentially completing the initial strategic layout.

If a person has experienced hardship, happiness, and even brushed with death, they will understand many things, such as reducing their demands for material wealth and power and instead pursuing greater spiritual achievements.

In this respect, Liu Yuan is becoming more and more like Emperor Jingyang. He doesn't care about eating, drinking, dressing, or showing off his official status. He has no ambition for wealth, power, or position. He focuses on his own little plot of land and works hard to fulfill the dream he set out for when he was in Haihusi.

Who is the most terrifying person? It's not the greedy, the power-hungry, or the reckless; the most terrifying person is the one who has dreams and firmly believes they can achieve them.

Such people are currently appearing in large numbers both inside and outside the Ming Dynasty court and throughout the army. The dreams they firmly believe in were all instilled in their minds during their youth by an old man who could control the lives and deaths of hundreds of millions of people, and the dreams are always beautiful until that old man shows his weakness.

The fact that the Deputy Chief of the General Staff suddenly ordered the Statistics Department to participate in the investigation of the Lanzhou Ordnance Factory explosion may not sound like a big deal, but it is of great significance.

As a military intelligence agency, the Statistics Department has strict limitations on its responsibilities and, in principle, cannot conduct internal intelligence gathering. However, there is an exception: in cases involving major military events, the Statistics Department can exercise investigative powers, but not the power to dispose of information.

Was the explosion at the Lanzhou arsenal a special case? This is where the emperor's cunning, or rather, his smooth political maneuvering, came in. Only he could determine when it counted and when it didn't.

In other words, on the surface, the Statistics Department was handed over to the military, but at crucial moments, they still had to listen to the emperor. Otherwise, they might violate the rules at any moment and lose their heads. It was impossible for them to go solo once they had grown up.

This time, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff obtained permission from the Emperor to conduct investigations within the territory, which opened a new door. Future similar cases can be handled according to precedent and will not be easily considered violations. This effectively relieves the Statistics Department of some of its constraints.

No one wants to work with their hands and feet tied, especially those with dreams. To prove just how capable the Statistics Department was under his leadership, Liu Yuan not only had to complete this task 100%, but also strive for perfection!
(End of this chapter)