Chronicles of Celestial Origins

"With so many people, it must be a big expense! Will the sect pay all the expenses?" Tang Ning asked

Du Yuankai smiled and said: "Expenses? These people are not disciples of our sect, so how can they pay disciples' salaries? Although our work sounds very mysterious, it is actually not that complicated. Junior Brother Tang might as well change his identity and eliminate the disciples of the sect. Xuanmen, Demonic Sect, Aristocratic Family, Chamber of Commerce and other forms of things regard themselves as businessmen.

"Businessman? How do you describe this? Please enlighten me, Senior Brother Du."

Du Yuankai said: "We treat intelligence work as a business. You are the shopkeeper, the sect is the owner, and these casual cultivators recruited are the clerks in your shop. And the insiders who provide you with information are your business partners. The intelligence information they have is a commodity."

"They hand you the goods, and you pay them money. They pay corresponding and reasonable remuneration according to the value of the goods. It's that simple. As long as you understand the subtle relationship between them, many things will become clear naturally."

After what he said, Tangning suddenly realized something. Although he is in charge of intelligence liaison work, he only sends and receives messages. He has no experience in governing and does not know much about it.

"What about the financial details?"

"The sect pays 30,000 spirit stones every year, which is allocated to the ministry and departments. It is distributed once every five years and is collected from the department's finance department at that time. This fund includes the salaries, rewards, losses, subsidies, etc. of all personnel in the entire organization. These It is all under the supervision of Daoist Brother Xu.”

"Including the spirit stones? Are they also handed over to her for management?"

Du Yuankai smiled and said: "How can this be done? Junior Brother Tang, there is one thing you must remember. You are the one in charge, and the core things must be in your own hands, whether it is intelligence information or financial and internal affairs."

"You can give them certain rights and let them share your work. For example, let Zheng Wei collect intelligence, give him some lists of not-so-important personnel, let Xu Wanqing manage the finances, and give her some spiritual stones, thirty thousand or five Wandu is OK.”

"But we can't entrust them all. After all, this is not a sect, and they are not disciples of the sect. They must be reused but also guarded against, and they must not be allowed to monopolize power."

"I arranged a sect disciple beside each of them to assist them in handling affairs and supervise them on the other hand."

"As for finances, you only need to master the spirit stones. Leave the rest of the trivial matters to Fellow Daoist Xu. She will report in detail how many spirit stones are paid every month."

"Thirty thousand spirit stones per year, more or less. If there are special circumstances, you can apply for subsidies from the sect. I won't go into details about the specific matters in this area. Xu Daoyou will assist you."

Tangning nodded: "I heard from Senior Brother Lu that you guys don't have a fixed place and always change places. Why is that?"

Du Yuankai said: "Of course for safety reasons, although this place is under the sect's sphere of influence, it is not within the sect after all. The tasks we perform are very confidential matters, and there is no guarantee that there will be no retaliation from the demon sect monks. Therefore, if there is any change, , I noticed something was wrong and quickly moved to another place.”

Tangning frowned and said, "There are so many people? How to ensure that the news will not be leaked."

Du Yuankai said: "So we must be very careful in selecting manpower to prevent the evil sect from lurking. There are thirty-six people in this department, including me, a total of nine disciples of the sect, and the other twenty-eight people are all carefully selected by me. Yes, it is certain that they have a deep hatred for the Demon Sect before recruiting them.”

"There is no way, such a big stall must have manpower to handle the affairs, otherwise a few people from the department cannot complete the task. In addition, we have also taken some corresponding measures in terms of confidentiality."

"Only a few people know our specific location, and these people send news on a regular basis. People in this station are not allowed to go out at will. Those who can go out are sect disciples. Others can only stay here and try to reduce the number of people. Opportunities for them to engage with the outside world.”

"It was better in the past few years. In recent years, the Demon Sect has gained momentum and we have moved more frequently."

As soon as he finished speaking, there was a knock on the door.

"Come in."

A man pushed the door open, bowed, and handed the note in his hand to Du Yuankai: "Uncle Master, this is the news just sent by Senior Zheng."

"Yes." Du Yuankai nodded slightly, took the clause, and the disciple consciously withdrew.

Du Yuankai glanced at it and handed it to Tang Ning. Tang Ning took it and took a look. She saw that one of the sheets was full of numerical codes, such as 1364, 2978, etc. It was so messy that she had no idea what it was written on.

The other one has clear fonts and reads: "Cod is sending a message. Corpse Puppet Sect is organizing breeding disciples to communicate and learn from each other with several other sects."

Cod is a code name, his original name is Zhang Zong, he is a Qi refining disciple of the South China branch of the Corpse Puppet Sect. Tangning had just seen the identities of all the people on the list, so she recognized them at a glance.

After the Demon Sect occupied the original territory of Xuanmen, it could be said that it worked hard to improve its governance, reduce taxes, encourage cultivating families to grow medicinal herbs, and also helped them start the industry of breeding spiritual beasts. After those low-level spiritual beasts matured, the Demon Sect helped them market them and sold them in large quantities to the cultivating families and chambers of commerce on the big islands.

These are low-level spiritual beasts, not worth mentioning in terms of combat effectiveness, but they are indispensable raw materials for making spiritual food.

As far as Tang Ning knew, tens of thousands of low-level spirit beasts were bred under the Corpse Puppet Sect in the western part of Chu State alone. Basically, all cultivation families, large and small, bred them. Large families had thousands of spirit beasts, and small families had hundreds. . The income effect is not bad, and this spiritual beast can be sold after a few years of breeding.

The selling price of each spirit beast reaches ten spirit stones. After excluding the cost, the profit of one spirit beast is about six or seven spirit stones. The Demon Sect only charges 20% of the profit. So far, the Corpse Puppet Sect has sold two batches of spirit beasts. , the total amount is about one hundred thousand, which means that the Demon Sect has collected hundreds of thousands of spirit stones in tax revenue in the past few years due to the income from spirit beasts.

Although there are not many spiritual stones, it can be seen that this is a promising industry. If it can be invested on a large scale, the results should be good.

Xingang is already lacking in resources, and now it is considered a good thing to find a new industry. The Demon Sect has contributed a lot in this process, and it is very busy.

Not only do they provide spiritual beast cubs to those cultivating families for free at their own risk, but they also provide them with specially trained breeding disciples, and help them find sales channels. After all, they only charge two-tenths of the tax.

To put it bluntly, this is all hard-earned money!

If you change to Xuanmen, you won't do this. It's better to collect 50% of the tax than nothing. This is why more and more practicing families want to leave the Xuanmen.

If it weren't for the long-standing reputation of Xuanmen and those cultivating families fearing the power of Xuanmen, the current situation would have been unimaginable.

Each sect of the Xingang Demon Sect breeds different spiritual animals. The Corpse Puppet Sect breeds black-toothed fish, the Blood Bone Sect breeds porcupines, the Netherworld Sect breeds moon rabbits, and the Crescent Sect breeds fire rats.

Now they are getting together again, and the breeding disciples are communicating with each other. They probably feel that the breeding industry has great prospects and want to expand its scale.

"The Demon Sect's spiritual beast breeding industry is getting bigger and bigger. It looks like they are preparing to do something big!" Du Yuankai said

"What is written on this piece of paper? It's messy and has no clue." Tangning asked, holding the piece of paper full of numerical codes in her left hand.

"This is the original text sent by Fellow Daoist Zheng. The one you hold in your right hand is the text deciphered and analyzed by the disciple."

"Decryption?" Tangning was slightly stunned. He had been in charge of intelligence liaison in the Intelligence Department for so many years, and he had never heard of the term "decryption and analysis". The information in the intelligence files submitted by the intelligence stations was always clear and unambiguous.

Du Yuankai explained: "The nature of our work is special, and the people we contact are all lurking personnel from various forces. It is inevitable that the intelligence information will be intercepted by others, so the information is encrypted and transmitted in cipher text."

"How to decipher these ciphertexts?"

"It's very simple." Du Yuankai flipped through his left hand, took out a thick book, and handed it to Tang Ning: "The secret text is in this book."

Tang Ning took the book and saw four big characters written on it, Xunyang Travels. He had never heard of this book, so he asked, "What kind of book is this?"

"A travel note written by a down-and-out scholar. The content is not worth mentioning. It is mainly used to set up secret texts."

Tangning flipped through it, but she had no clue what it had to do with the cipher text. She couldn't find any clues.

"It needs to be compared with the cipher text. You see, the cipher text above, one, three, six, four, refers to the 13th page of this book, the 6th line, the 4th word."

Tang Ning flipped through the book and looked for it as he said, and found that it was a cod character.

"Twenty-nine, seven, and eight are twenty-nine pages, seventh line, and eighth word."

Tang Ning turned it over and saw that it was the character for fish. She couldn't help but suddenly said, "So that's it."

"All words are converted into digital codes according to this rule. If there are words that are not in the book, it is okay to write them directly. Using cipher text to transmit intelligence information will not matter even if it is intercepted. It is impossible for people who do not know the details to decipher it. If the disciple leaks it, just change the book. This method is very convenient and has good confidentiality. It is very popular in our intelligence circle. "

"It is indeed convenient." Tangning nodded. With the monk's ability, it was easy to memorize the text in a book: "Is the information encryption method of the entire intelligence station the same as the cipher text in this book?"

"Only the news from Zheng Wei uses this encryption method. What we submit to the sect is another encryption method." Du Yuankai flipped his hand and took out another book called "The Return of the Wind and Snow" Book: "The secret text submitted to the sect refers to this book."

Tangning took the book and flipped through a few pages.

Du Yuankai said: "Just leave such trivial matters to the disciples below. You only need to know the secret text and refer to the book. Insignificant information like this is reported to the sect at the end of every month. Only important information needs to be reported immediately. ”

Tangning asked: "Is there a certain standard? How is it considered important information?"

"If it is more urgent, or if the incident has a major impact, it needs to be accompanied by an urgent file and submitted immediately. If we have to classify it according to a standard, generally speaking, anything involving the level of the Golden Core cultivator is considered important information."