The fifth day of the acclimatization period.
Jiang Ye opened his eyes, feeling reborn.
Ample physical strength surged through every inch of his muscles, and his breathing felt invigorating, as if he could climb Mount Everest barehanded upon waking.
Cen Yemeng was still fast asleep, wrapped in her quilt, her breathing even.
She might have been dreaming, her lips moving slightly, as if murmuring in her sleep, but without making a sound.
Jiang Ye tiptoed out of bed and went to the bathroom to wash up.
Just as he finished washing his face, his phone vibrated. Su Yueming had sent a message.
"Has the Commander woken up? Che Zhen submitted a report about the front-line defenders selling weapons to the Gante Army."
Jiang Ye was startled.
A long time ago, the Gante Army had launched continuous fierce attacks on military bases and achieved constant victories. At that time, Jiang Ye had judged that front-line defenders might be selling weapons to the Gante Army and ordered a thorough investigation.
After so long, the results were finally in.
His face still wet, Jiang Ye paid no mind, turned around, and walked out, heading straight for Su Yueming's room.
As he knocked, the door opened. Su Yueming, wearing a long robe and with messy hair, clearly had just woken up.
Jiang Ye entered and was shocked by the sight before him.
The room was filled with reams of white paper. Documents were pinned to the walls, spread on the tables, and covered the floor, all held together by paper clips, staples, and folders. Red and yellow strings crisscrossed the walls, resembling a crime scene analysis room in a detective drama.
"It's a bit messy. Commander, please sit anywhere. I'll make some tea. Would you like Silver Needle?" Su Yueming asked.
"Yes," Jiang Ye nodded.
Su Yueming stepped over piles of documents and went to make tea.
Jiang Ye walked around the room with his hands behind his back, observing the papers.
Although the entire room was as chaotic as a battlefield, it was actually orderly within the chaos. All the documents were categorized and clustered like animal herds. Each area of documents represented a plan in progress, such as economic reforms, educational popularization, diplomatic progress, battlefield intelligence, business analysis, urban construction, consumer prices, and so on.
Some were from two or three years ago but not yet completed, while others were from the past one or two weeks. The longer the plan, the thicker the files, like plants growing over time.
Su Yueming returned and handed Jiang Ye a cup of tea.
"Seeing your bedroom makes me feel guilty. I've created so much work for you," Jiang Ye joked.
"If there wasn't so much work, wouldn't I be unemployed?" Su Yueming chuckled.
"Why are all these documents spread out like this?" Jiang Ye asked. "Has it been like this for the past few days? It must be inconvenient for daily life."
"I'm used to it. Having them all laid out like this saves me an hour of searching for documents every day. I can just walk around and see what's left undone. If the documents were piled up, I wouldn't know what's inside," Su Yueming said. "My secretary team's rooms are also like this. They look messy, but we all know exactly where everything is, very clearly."
"Like a scholar remembering the approximate location of hundreds of books on a bookshelf?" Jiang Ye asked.
"Yes, something like that."
Su Yueming walked to the sofa, picked up a bound report, and handed it to Jiang Ye.
"Commander Che Zhen has only submitted the intelligence he has obtained so far. It hasn't formed a complete and organized document yet. He said he'd submit it for you to review first, and his adjutant will submit a more detailed one later," Su Yueming said.
Jiang Ye's expression turned serious. He sat on the sofa cushion and began to read intently.
The document was indeed messy, clearly submitted in haste due to the urgency of the matter. However, Jiang Ye, who read vast amounts of reports daily and processed information like a rushing river, had long developed his own method: grasping the overall situation first and then extracting points worth attention.
Soon, Jiang Ye had noted several important points in his mind.
First, there were two entry points for the investigation into the arms sales to the enemy: surrendering enemy soldiers and spies embedded within the Gante Army.
With the formation of the Tropical Cage, unrest had begun to spread within the Gante Army, especially among local armed forces closer to the temperate zones, who faced immense survival pressure. Once war broke out, Jiang Ye's army would quickly eliminate them, and the Gante Army would be unable to rescue them, or would simply not intervene due to internal conflicts.
Therefore, over the past month, local armed forces on the fringes of the tropics had begun to surrender sporadically.
Initially, it was just a few scattered Gante soldiers deserting their camps, crossing the vast wilderness, and walking towards Jiang Ye's controlled military bases with their hands raised, trembling with fear.
The first batch of surrendering Gante soldiers were unharmed and even treated well by Jiang Ye's army, provided with good food and drink.
As a result, the number of surrenders gradually increased. In many areas, entire platoons and companies began to surrender collectively. Last week, even an entire Gante brigade surrendered, setting a record for large-scale defections.
To prove their loyalty, the surrendering enemy soldiers, from officers to privates, vied to report Gante Army military secrets, including the details of purchasing Jiang Ye's army's weapons. Many officers were planners and participants in the arms purchase operations, and these individuals poured out their accounts in numerous reports.
As for the spies embedded within the Gante Army, their job was straightforward: to gather intelligence on the Gante Army.
A few spies had infiltrated the Gante Army and obtained information through word-of-mouth within the military.
Most spies disguised themselves as civilians and roamed the tropical regions, extracting intelligence from the local populace. When the Gante Army purchased weapons, they employed a large number of civilian laborers, and many locals were involved in the transportation of weapons.
Therefore, by cross-referencing information from both enemy and friendly channels, along with physical evidence, the accuracy and authenticity of this investigation could be basically confirmed.
Second, the majority of the weapon sales to the Gante Army occurred before Yu Xiangyang took command, and such sales had become very rare, almost nonexistent, since then.
At that time, Jiang Ye's regular army had hardly entered Wheeler Star for combat. Most of the forces were local warlord units that had been incorporated, responsible for defending military bases.
These local warlord units had uneven discipline and were suspicious of each other. Some even had Gante origins, meaning a large number of their soldiers had previously served in the Gante Army.
Therefore, in the face of profit, many small warlord units, lacking supervision and discipline, chose to sell the newly issued weapons to the Gante Army.
These sales often came with secret addendums: the Gante Army would purchase weapons from the defenders of one base, and in return, would not attack that specific base, but would only attack other bases.
Thus, these sales had two primary motivations: first, profit, and second, safety.
However, after Yu Xiangyang took command, he implemented rapid and forceful offensives. Many incorporated units, knowing they would have to fight the Gante Army, ceased weapon sales.
At the same time, Yu Xiangyang was well aware of the local garrisons' private weapon sales.
While engaged in military operations, Yu Xiangyang dispatched personnel to investigate the weapon quantities of various units and cross-reference them with Jiang Ye's army's inventory lists, uncovering many officers who had sold weapons to the enemy.
Yu Xiangyang ordered these officers to be publicly beheaded. The actual public beheadings involved 68 heads displayed in transparent boxes, which were circulated and exhibited among the various units under Yu Xiangyang's command, serving as a stark warning.