The chess game starts again
As soon as the captain of the guards finished speaking, the last bit of warmth left in the celebration banquet seemed to be drained away in an instant, and the air suddenly became icy cold.
Ding Wei was startled. The accident in the temple at this critical moment was definitely not accidental.
However, what she cared about more at the moment was another seemingly unrelated matter.
Her gaze passed over the captain of the guards' nervous face and fell back on the huge military map in front of her, on which the movements of the Hittite and Egyptian armies were marked in red and blue.
The joy of victory was like a sandstorm in Thebes, blinding everyone's eyes, but Ding Wei's intuition was giving her a crazy warning.
The retreat route of the defeated Hittite army was marked on the map as an almost straight diagonal line, which accurately avoided all Egyptian border fortresses and pointed directly to an oasis deep in the Syrian desert.
How can this be called a defeated army?
It was clearly a well-trained strategic shift!
She sent people to urgently check the trading records and beacon logs of the caravans around Kadesh, and a more terrifying guess formed in her mind - the defeated army did not burn a single village or rob a single granary along the way, and even the water sources along the way were protected intact.
A defeated army behaves like bandits; this is an eternal law.
The Hittites' abnormal behavior only shows one thing: their main force is still there, and they are using the "defeat" of a small force as a cover to carry out a planned retreat and rest in order to make a comeback!
Ding Wei immediately rushed into the palace with the map and files to meet Ramses, who was still immersed in the afterglow of victory.
"Your Majesty, this is not a victory, it's just a pause in the war!" Her voice was cold and firm, like a basin of ice water poured on the Pharaoh's fiery head.
Ramses was not a mediocre ruler. As he looked at the doubts pointed out by Ding Wei, the smile on his face gradually froze.
He believed in Ding Wei's judgment. However, when he raised his doubts at the court meeting, he encountered unprecedented opposition.
Officials led by the high priest and several veteran nobles all made suggestions, believing that the princess was worrying too much.
Continuing to send more troops after winning the battle was tantamount to declaring that Pharaoh had made a wrong decision and was an insult to the merits of the soldiers on the front line.
"The great pharaoh has defeated the main force of the Hittites. What Thebes needs is celebration and peace, not endless fighting." The nobles' words sounded sincere, but in fact they were defending their upcoming post-war interests.
It was hopeless to send troops by force. Ding Wei knew very well that it was not wise to confront the entire aristocracy head-on.
She changed her strategy that night and proposed to Ramses to start with domestic affairs.
"Now that the war is over, post-war reconstruction cannot be delayed. I request that Your Majesty order the immediate restoration of the border grain route from the Nile Delta to Kadesh, and strengthen inspections of all inbound and outbound caravans to prevent the infiltration of Hittite spies."
The proposal was reasonable and the nobles could not find any reason to refute it.
Taking advantage of the righteous cause of "post-war reconstruction", Ding Wei pushed for the establishment of a new position - "Border Inspector".
She cleverly avoided the veteran generals who commanded large armies and recommended a group of young generals who had made their mark in the war and were loyal to the Pharaoh to take up the position.
The official duties of these patrol officers were to count supplies and repair roads, but Ding Wei secretly taught them a set of scouting methods from later generations: intelligence was transmitted in segments to prevent one person from knowing the overall situation; secret graphic symbols were set up along the way to transmit simple messages; and sentries were rotated regularly to disrupt the enemy's infiltration rhythm.
An intelligence network with food routes as its veins and caravans as its flesh and blood was quietly spread across the border of the empire without the nobles noticing.
Ramses looked at the list of inspectors and the procedures for their secret communication handed over by Ding Wei, and a hint of approval flashed in his deep eyes.
He said nothing, but just acquiesced to it all.
He knew that his princess was building a second Great Wall for Egypt in her own way.
At the same time, Anubis, who was trapped in the deepest part of the temple dungeon, was not as isolated from the world as the outside world imagined.
Although he was chained, he still had a place in the complex forces within the temple.
A trusted priest took the opportunity of delivering food to secretly convey to him the news that the Hittites had not really been defeated.
After Anubis heard this, a look of morbid ecstasy appeared on his withered face.
He suppressed his laughter, his shoulders shaking violently, and ordered hoarsely, "Go, spread the word among the people. Tell them that Pharaoh, in order to satisfy his personal vanity, has disregarded the lives of his people and is bent on warmongering. A new war will soon come to Egypt because of his warmongering!"
Soon, an undercurrent of unrest began to surge in the streets and alleys of Thebes.
People began to whisper and complain that the war that had just ended had caused a sharp decline in the number of males in their families, and if another war broke out, how would they survive?
Rumors spread like a plague, pointing the finger at the palace.
Ding Wei was keenly aware of this trend, and she did not choose to forcefully refute the rumor, as that would only make the situation worse.
She met with Ramses again and proposed to hold a grand "post-war thanksgiving ceremony".
On the day of the ceremony, Ding Wei dressed in plain clothes and went up to the altar in person.
She did not preach the achievements of the Pharaoh, but used the most plain language to tell the stories of the frontline soldiers to the thousands of people in the square.
How they held their ground in the desperate situation of lack of water and food, how they used their flesh and blood to block the chariots for their comrades behind them, and how they entrusted the letters written to their families to their comrades before they died.
A sad atmosphere enveloped the entire square, and countless people shed tears.
At the end of the speech, Ding Wei ordered people to bring up several boxes of piled-up military pay books and set them on fire in public.
"From today on, all wartime conscriptions will be returned to the warehouse! Pharaoh and the gods will remember the sacrifice of every hero and protect their families!" The raging flames devoured the account books and ignited the suppressed emotions in the hearts of the people.
The cheers and voices of gratitude merged into a torrent, instantly destroying the foundation of the rumors.
Behind the tall columns, Princess Hathor watched all this silently, with turbulent waves in her heart.
She once thought that everything Ding Wei did was just to compete for her brother's favor, a more sophisticated way of fighting in the palace.
But only at this moment did she understand that what this woman from another world saw was never the small harem, but the vast territory of Egypt.
That night, Hathor summoned Ding Wei privately for the first time.
"I misunderstood you in the past."
Her words were a little stiff, but they revealed an unprecedented sincerity.
"I used to think you were fighting for your brother's favor, but now I understand that you are fighting for the stability of this country."
Ding Wei smiled indifferently, the moonlight reflected in her clear eyes, like flowing gold fragments.
"Princess, if I was just trying to win your favor, I should have learned how to be submissive and to flatter you. But I'm not here to please anyone. I'm here to protect you."
Hathor was silent for a long time, then finally nodded heavily, as if he had made up his mind. "From now on, if you need me, you don't have to wait for me to speak."
After receiving Hathor's promise, Ding Wei felt relieved.
However, late that night, she was awakened by a nightmare again.
In her dream, she saw the legendary Queen Nefertiti again.
The queen stood on the top of an endless sand dune, golden sand slipped silently from her fingers and drifted away in the wind.
"The sands flow, the shadows stalk." The queen's voice was ethereal and ethereal. "Beware... of who's behind you."
Ding Wei sat up suddenly, her clothes soaked with cold sweat.
The person behind you?
She pondered every detail of the dream, and a terrible thought flashed through her mind like lightning - Anubis's trusted priest's position in the temple was the "Oracle" who was responsible for recording the dreams of the pharaoh and royal family members and interpreting them!
A person who specializes in dream interpretation seems particularly suspicious after she had a warning dream.
She immediately called her trusted guard and, without making any announcement, had him secretly change the patrol list of the temple dungeon for the next week.
At the same time, she asked the guards to evenly sprinkle a layer of fine white ash that was extremely difficult to detect with the naked eye near a hidden ventilation hole in the dungeon.
The next morning, the guards reported back that there was indeed a series of extremely light footprints left on the fine ash, left by someone entering and exiting.
Ding Wei sneered in her heart, the fish is finally taking the bait.
She remained calm and took advantage of the situation, forging a "Hittite Secret Treaty" written in Hittite cuneiform.
The content of the secret agreement was enough to drive any Egyptian crazy - Anubis promised that if the Hittites helped him seize the throne, he would divide Lower Egypt to the Hittites, and he would be on equal footing with the Hittite king and become the "co-ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt."
That evening, this "secret agreement" that could overthrow the entire dynasty was "accidentally left behind" in the corner of the corridor outside the dungeon.
Sure enough, a priest in charge of cleaning took advantage of the cover of night and, during the interval between patrolling guards changing shifts, stealthily picked up the secret agreement and put it into his sleeve.
He didn't know that while the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind it.
The elite imperial guards that Ding Wei had already deployed followed like a shadow, followed the clues, and within an hour, they captured the priest and two other accomplices.
The criminal was caught red-handed, and the evidence is irrefutable.
When the forged secret agreement and the three traitorous priests were brought before Ramses, the young Pharaoh trembled with rage. He kicked over the golden table in front of him and said in a voice so cold it seemed to freeze: "How dare you rekindle the embers while they're still burning?!"
The interrogation continued all night long. Under torture, the three priests quickly confessed all the inside stories, and everything pointed to Anubis in the dungeon.
However, when Ding Wei got the interrogation record, she keenly discovered a detail that was overlooked by the angry Ramses - the most critical oracle did not appear in the confession of his accomplices from beginning to end.
It was as if the whole thing had nothing to do with him.
Ding Wei tapped the table lightly with her fingertips, and a deeper question came to her mind.
Is Anubis really capable of planning all this in the heavily guarded temple dungeon?
Or is he just a pawn pushed to the front?
And behind Panebus, the oracle who calmly wanders outside the storm, is there a dark force that is even older and more deeply rooted than that of the former high priest Anubis, a dark force that even the pharaoh has not noticed?
The shadow of the temple was much deeper than she had imagined.
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