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When I found Evergreen, he froze for a while, clearly not expecting me to find him so early.

With how intelligent he is, he instantly discovered the problem in the first moment of meeting me.

In the beginning, the discussion was quite unfavorable to me. Evergreen straightforwardly told me that he already wasn’t young and that he was unwilling to do such a hidden job. Regardless of how I persuaded him, his argument was:

“I, Evergreen, keep my promises. If you want my life, fine, take it. I don’t have anything in this world that I’m attached to. If I die, I die. But if you want me to sacrifice my life working for you, then I’m sorry, you’re not qualified.”

Quite the hard nut to crack.

But it’s impossible for a person living in this world to have no earnest hope.

Perhaps experiencing a lot of things will make a person become numb to it all, but it doesn’t represent that the person’s desires have been wiped out.

No matter how I attempted to convince him, Evergreen persisted in being unwilling to cooperate until I suddenly asked:

“What if I told you that I can help you rehabilitate your former boss’ unjustly sullied reputation?”

Evergreen squinted his eyes, causing the knife wound on his left eye to become especially conspicuous. He went silent for a moment, then held his hands together and asked me:

“You have this ability?”

I replied with a slight chuckle:

“You’ve been in West-Resisting City the entire time, so you should be more than clear about West-Resisting City’s development rate.”

Evergreen sneered:

“That’s because Moon and Bai Huang have skill, otherwise how would you be able to drift along up to date? You should thank them for not abandoning you when you were at your worst. But now, it seems that you don’t have any intention to repent at all and are even serving as the City Lord sloppily. What kind of future will such a city have?”

I didn’t argue with him and instead waved my hand:

“Evergreen. Are you here to get information or get a hold of internal affairs?”

Evergreen went silent.

I remarked:

“Perhaps for Moon, whether or not I’m capable directly influences West-Resisting City’s development. But I think that for people like you, isn’t a City Lord like me the best option? At the very least, I won’t unjustly blame the people below me because I never had a good reputation in the first place, so it doesn’t matter to me if my name is to be blackened a bit more.”

Evergreen’s eyebrows wrinkled and he sized me up and down with a knife-like gaze.

After a short period of time, Evergreen nodded:

“Fine. But don’t let those two little brothers of mine know about this. They were originally homeless people in West-Resisting City, good people with an innocent background. They are……different from us.”

Evergreen agreeing to my recruitment, in my opinion, isn’t something strange. Only when you are alone will you truly be carefree; in contrast, Evergreen has two little brothers under him. According to Evergreen’s temper, it’s impossible for those two people to always follow him to bear hardships. Accepting my offer of amnesty signifies that he’s changed from being a mouse that hides himself everywhere to a harmless ordinary person. Living the life of a person licking blood off of a knife might not be easy, but it’s better than wandering outside through cold and frosty days.

After momentarily reaching an agreement, Evergreen first gave me a rough overview of his situation:

“I was dispatched to this city more than 10 years ago. Cangzhou Territory and Yunyang Territory are bitter enemies, you should be clear on this point. West-Resisting City is the west-most part of Yunyang Territory and is right next to the Demon Race; if this city falls, the Demon Race will very likely penetrate deeply into Yunyang’s flank. This is something that the Overlord of Cangzhou is very willing to see. Therefore, he sent me and two other people to West-Resisting City with an order to secretly destroy West-Resisting City’s defenses. But because confronting your own race with the help of the Demon Race is a contemptible behavior, this matter had to be kept absolutely secret.”

“My direct superior at the time was codenamed ‘Wind’. As one of the four higher ups of Cangzhou’s Secret Division, he took orders directly from the Overlord of Cangzhou. But in that year, I still hadn’t found an opportunity to make a move and this matter was already exposed by someone. Later, I guessed that it was most likely one of the remaining three higher ups deliberately backstab, otherwise it would be impossible for such a secret document to be divulged to outsiders.”

Having spoken up to this point, the expression in Evergreen’s eyes clearly changed.

He clenched his teeth with a face full of anger. I can understand his feelings since, after all, being backstabbed by someone is never something to be happy about.

Evergreen sighed and continued:

“You should also be able to see that. Even though his prestige hasn’t been as good as the years past, the King is still around and has the authority to boss people around. In these past years, the thing he’s done the most is integrate the power of the thirty-six Overlords to resist the invasion of outside forces. The Demon Race in the West, the Giant Race in the North, the Deep Sea Race in the South, the Dragon Race in the East; there isn’t a side that doesn’t cause trouble. This has also shaped a mainstream trend in recent years; that is, it’s fine to have internal strife, but as part of the Human Race, we cannot be perfunctory when it comes to confronting foreign races. The Overlord of Cangzhou drawing support from the Demon Race to take care of Yunyang Territory was considered vile behavior at the time, so he needed someone to be the scapegoat. Because there were three of us who came to West-Resisting City, including me, and our direct superior was Mister Wind, all of the blame in that year was thrown to Mister Wind.”

“He was undoubtedly a very good person. He treated us very well. It’s said that when he was sent to die, he calmly went to the execution grounds without even a word of complaint. Even when he was faced with the scolding of people as far as his eyes could see, he merely smiled and his head rolled to the ground. If I were the Overlord of Cangzhou, I would have found myself a seam to slip into out of shame.”

I asked:

“You said that three people came to West-Resisting City; what about the other two?”

Evergreen replied:

“Died. I personally buried their bodies in uncultivated lands. After Mister Wind died, Cangzhou sent over several assassins to kill the three of us in order to leave no evidence behind. Out of the three of us, one died to an assassin while the other worried himself to sickness and died soon after. Only I survived by faking my death, but from that point on, I had no choice but to roam around outside and dared not to mention the past. If I said even a phrase, I might have died a dubious death.”

Evergreen squinted and finally said:

“If not for being at the end of one’s rope, who would be willing to enter a Secret Division? In my opinion, people have emotions and to make such people with emotions stay in one place to act as an insider for many years, it’s hard to guarantee that they won’t think some straying thoughts. Only if they’re able to wipe out a person’s emotions and make him a fundamentally cold-blooded person, otherwise no one can guarantee that their chess piece will not cease to feel a sense of loyalty.”

For some unknown reason, these words from Evergreen made me first think of that assassin called Shiloh and those pair of dead eyes.

I told Evergreen about my current thoughts, my idea of using him and Shiloh as the pillar to establish a Secret Division Organization. But this required him to first fish out some information about Shiloh.

Evergreen thought for a while before he replied:

“That little girl is very cautious. Even if we’ve saved her life, she won’t agree to say much. It’s impossible to obtain all the information that you’re asking for, you can only ask one. Otherwise, she will definitely become vigilant.”

I said:

“Then just ask her about why she left a note in my City Lord’s mansion before trying to set the grain and fodder on fire.”