The brothers of the Beiping Army, who were thousands of miles away, could all know that Chai Rong's physical condition had improved in the Imperial Palace of Kaifeng City, and the courtiers of the Later Zhou Dynasty, who were close to him, could naturally also learn the news - even those courtiers who did not have any secret channels could also see it through the gradual increase in the number of times Chai Rong went to court. As a result, as expected by the traversers, such as Zhao Kuangyin, Zhang Yongde, and other various shili in the Later Zhou Dynasty immediately stopped all kinds of activities related to the usurpation of the throne and the seizure of power, and they all died down and hibernated, so as not to be seen by Chai Tianzi, who had recovered a lot of body, was getting better and better, and had the potential to regain the wisdom and martial demeanor of the past.

Of course, the return of dormancy does not mean that Zhao, Zhang and others in the later Zhou Dynasty have given up their ambition to sit in that position. After all, the article on the surface cannot be done, but the small actions in the secret have never been interrupted. It's just that different shili have different ways of making small moves because of their different strengths and advantages.

Among them, Zhao Kuangyin because his main shili is in the court and in the forbidden army, so he waited for more than a month and nearly two months ago to set off north, at this time Xu Xinsheng and Zhao Anyi rushed back to report the news from the Beiping army, and at the same time, he also secretly stepped up the co-optation and infiltration of the ministers of the DPRK and the forbidden army officers and generals at all levels, in order to gather more liliang around him, so as to provide more guarantees for his future achievements.

Zhang Yongde's main shili is outside the capital, in the local Jiedu envoys, assassins, and in the underground liliang of "Feiyantang", so while strengthening the ties with those local allies, he does not need to be like Zhao Kuangyin, who can only passively analyze the ambiguous and indiscernible relevant news brought back by his subordinates from the brothers of the Beiping Army, but take the initiative to attack, and dispatch troops again in early February of the lunar calendar, and select more than 30 spies from the main hall of "Feiyantang". Divided into several routes to go north, to support Zhang Yan, who suffered heavy losses in the process of entering the Beiping Army, and can only find out the internal information of the Beiping Army through Fan Wucheng, who was dragged into the water by him, and cannot rely on his own people to get first-hand information -- although Fan Wucheng's status is fully qualified and has the opportunity to come into contact with many confidential information and materials within the "Qingyuan" brothers of the Beiping Army, it is impossible for Zhang Yongde to fully trust such a person who has no choice but to serve himself because he has been caught, not to mention complete dependence. Therefore, even if he needed to take a big risk to go north, Zhang Yongde still did not hesitate to invest a large number of people there again.

From the bottom of my heart, Zhang Yan, who was in the Beiping Army and had suffered a big loss in the process of going north, did not approve of Zhang Yongde's decision. Although she is now limited in manpower, the work of rebuilding the Beiping (Youzhou) branch of "Feiyan Hall" is progressing very slowly. Moreover, at the beginning of her arrival in the Beiping Army, she also wrote a letter asking her father-in-law to send more manpower for her own use. However, as he stayed in the Beiping Army for longer and longer, through exchanges and contacts with all parties in Luxian County, he gradually gained some understanding of the situation of the secret spy organization under the command of the Beiping Army, and Zhang Yan became more and more jealous of this peer and opponent's secret spy organization. She was very worried that the second group of people who were about to go north would "die before they got out of the army" like when she led the team to the north, and most of them had been lost before she even saw the appearance of Beiping City. What's more, such a large-scale activity will inevitably attract the attention of the Beiping Army's Jiedu Prefecture, which will tighten the already very strict monitoring of the Beiping Army's prefectures and counties, making it even more difficult for them to carry out their already difficult work.

It's a pity that as a subordinate and righteous daughter, Zhang Yan has long developed absolute obedience to her father's orders. Although he did not agree with his father-in-law's arrangement, he did not dare to refute and disobey in the slightest - not to mention that he had made such a request to his father-in-law at the beginning, and it would be a slap in the face to disagree at this time. What Zhang Yan can do now is to do her best to provide as many experiences and lessons as she can imagine for those colleagues who are about to go north, in exchange for the blood and lives of her colleagues in the above team, hoping that the new colleagues can be safer and smoother than when she went north.

As the saying goes, "Wishes are beautiful, reality is cruel", although Zhang Yan sent many lessons and sincere advice to his colleagues in the capital through secret letters, but those who had not directly dealt with "Dark Feather" before, had no personal experience of the other party's strength, and had always thought that "Feiyan Tang" was the world's number one spy organization, and he was the world's highest secret agent-at least the vast majority of them--did not realize how terrible his opponent was this time. Instead, he attributed the losses of the previous group of spies to the lack of ability and experience of those colleagues, but forgot how he was defeated by these colleagues when he selected the members of the north, and lost the opportunity to go north. He also forgot the experience of the annihilation of the Youzhou branch of the "Feiyan Hall" at the beginning, and the large-scale confrontation that the opponent provoked in order to distract his own attention in the entire Houzhou territory, which caused great losses to his own side. As a result, in the face of the "Dark Feather" who was still on high alert, and in the face of the opponent who had already extended his tentacles to the main hall of the "Feiyan Hall", the end of these "Feiyan Hall" spies was already doomed at the beginning of the departure.

Although the spies of "Dark Feather" in the main hall of "Feiyan Hall" could not obtain the exact number, list, and route of the people who went north this time due to their low status, they could judge through various news and signs that "Feiyan Hall" was about to carry out a major operation, and its target was likely to be directed at the Beiping Army. With the news from inside the "Feiyan Tang" main hall, under the arrangement of the Internal Affairs Department of the Ministry of Intelligence, and with the vigorous cooperation of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Ministry of Intelligence, as soon as the second group of spies of the "Feiyan Tang" who went north left Kaifeng City, they were unknowingly visited and tested by the "Dark Feather" who was bent on discovering their whereabouts in the Zhou Prefecture Branch in the Later Zhou Dynasty, so that a small group of people had already been identified by the spies of the "Dark Feather" Lanzhou Branch before they crossed the Yellow River. When they entered the territory of the Beiping Army, there were more squads whose identities were exposed.

In the end, this group of spies divided into five groups with a total of 34 people was able to evade the heavy monitoring and interrogation of "Dark Feather" and successfully entered Huairou City in Shunzhou -- for security reasons, Zhang Yan set up the place where he connected with the second group of spies in Huairou City instead of Lu County, where he lived -- and Liu Jingming and others sent by Zhang Yan to meet them there were only six people from Group C. Moreover, this is also due to the fact that Shi Ran, who often goes to Beiping City, got in touch with them in time before Group C entered Beiping City, and handed them several copies of the "temporary residence permits" that Zhang Yan had asked for from Fan Wucheng in advance, so that they successfully passed the inspection of the "chengguan team" in Beiping City, walked through the city smoothly, and arrived safely in Huairou City -- you must know that the proportion of "dark feather" spies in the "chengguan team" in Beiping City is quite large. Without these genuine "temporary residence permits", it would be difficult to say whether these people in Group C would be able to get through the test as before in the face of those shrewd and capable agents from the "Dark Feather" Internal Headquarters (Internal Affairs Department of the Ministry of Intelligence).

The huge losses of the second group of spies going north made Zhang Yongde have to face the reality, re-examine this mysterious spy organization of the Beiping Army, and admit that the other party is indeed a very strong opponent of himself. Therefore, on the one hand, Zhang Yongde accepted Zhang Yan's suggestion in the subsequent secret letter, and changed the large-scale centralized dispatch of personnel to the north, changing it to a small group and multiple routes, and adopting a method similar to "ant moving" to replenish personnel for the Beiping Army in a very decentralized form. On the other hand, Zhang Yongde also secretly ordered Zhang Yan to make good use of Fan Wucheng, the chess piece that he placed inside the opponent's core. It is necessary not only to find out as much internal confidential information about the Beiping Army as possible through it, but also to use it to develop more downlines within the "Qingyuan" brothers of the Beiping Army. In this way, we can not only get more information, but also broaden the sources of information and prevent Fan Wucheng from being deceived and perfunctory.

For this order of her father-in-law, Zhang Yan is one hundred in agreement. So, on the second day after receiving the secret order, on the 25th day of the second month of the lunar calendar, Zhang Yan ordered Shi Ran to go to Beiping City to connect with Fan Wucheng and convey to the other party the latest instructions from the commander-in-chief behind the "Feiyan Hall".