The Mind of the Hunter

The command yurt of the Dragon's Claw Division was an oasis of quiet focus in the midst of the chaos sweeping the northern plains. The air inside was cool and still, smelling faintly of leather, horse, and the clean smoke from a small charcoal brazier. There were no stacks of administrative paperwork here, only maps and intelligence summaries. General Meng Tian stood before a large table where the transcripts of Altan's "ghost messages" were laid out like pieces of a complex puzzle. He studied them with the silent, unwavering intensity of a scholar examining ancient, cryptic texts.

His second-in-command, the formidable General Dai, shifted his weight impatiently. He was a warrior of the old school, a man who believed that problems were best solved with a decisive cavalry charge. This waiting, this analysis, grated on his very nature.

"Sir, with all due respect, this is absurd," Dai said, his voice a low, frustrated rumble. "While we sit here reading these riddles, General Yuan is burning half of Mongolia and calling it progress. These are the pranks of a child, designed to irritate, nothing more. We have a new report from our agent in the Wolf's Jaw Pass. He believes he has located a camp where a woman matching Altan's description has been seen in the company of a foreign man. We should strike now, hard and fast, before they can slip away again."

Meng Tian held up a hand for silence, his eyes never leaving the papers before him. "A prank, General Dai, does not cause three senior Qing officers to request transfers due to 'nervous exhaustion' in a single week. A prank does not lead to a paranoid Colonel Liang publicly executing two of his own trusted aides for 'espionage' without a shred of evidence. No, General. This is not a prank. This is a weapon. And it is proving to be more effective than any rifle."

Shen Ke, the spymaster, who had been quietly observing from a corner of the yurt, stepped forward. "I agree," he said, his voice a dry whisper. "The psychological impact is significant. But the message to Colonel Liang is the key. The details of his corruption—the specific amount, the location in Tianjin—were known only to a handful of people within the military bureaucracy there. This information did not come from a Mongol source. Of that, I am certain."

"Exactly," Meng Tian said, looking up from the transcripts, his eyes alight with intellectual fire. "So, the question becomes, how did she get it? The Russian agent? Unlikely. He is a political exile, not a master spy with contacts deep inside our quartermaster corps. A traitor in Yuan's command? Possible, but the information is too old. It predates this campaign by years. It required access to sealed archives."

He began to pace the confines of the yurt, his long strides measured and deliberate. His mind was working, sifting through possibilities, connecting disparate pieces of information into a coherent whole.

"Think," he said, more to himself than to the others. "What is the one thing all of these messages have in common, from the first to the last? They are designed to create maximum psychological distress with minimum physical effort. They attack morale, they dissolve trust, and they erode sanity. This is not the tactic of a warrior seeking to win a battle. It is the tactic of…"

"...a political agitator," Shen Ke finished the thought. "Like our Russian, Dmitri Volkov. In St. Petersburg, before he was exiled, he was part of a revolutionary cell. They used anonymous pamphlets, blackmail, and whispered rumors to undermine the Tsar's authority and create paranoia among his officials. This is his playbook."

"Precisely," Meng Tian affirmed, stopping his pacing. "The Russian provides the methodology. He taught her the power of psychological warfare. But the content? The secret about Liang's corruption? She had to get that from somewhere else. It implies another source. A third party. A source with access deep inside our own government."

This realization hung in the air, a chilling and deeply unsettling possibility. A traitor at the highest levels was a far more dangerous threat than a band of Mongol rebels.

"A deeper conspiracy?" General Dai asked, his hand instinctively going to his sword hilt. "A traitor in Beijing feeding her information?"

"Perhaps," Meng Tian conceded. "Or perhaps she is simply more resourceful than we ever imagined. She is not just reacting to Yuan's brutality. She is studying it, analyzing it, and turning it back on him in a more sophisticated form. She has learned our language. She has learned our codes. She has learned our internal weaknesses." He tapped one of the transcripts. "She knows which officers are corrupt, which are superstitious, which are prone to panic. She is not just fighting an army; she is fighting the individual men who lead it."

He picked up the transcript of the very first message Altan had sent: DO YOU HEAR THE GHOSTS OF THE TERGIN?

"This," he said, holding it up, "is not just a threat. It is a statement of identity. It is brilliant propaganda. She is positioning herself not as a warrior or a clan leader, but as the embodiment of the land's vengeance. A spirit. A ghost come to punish the wicked. To the Mongols, a people who live and breathe their myths, this is an incredibly powerful idea. It will inspire them and rally them to her cause. And it will terrify our more superstitious soldiers, men from rural villages who believe in ghosts more than they believe in General Yuan."

"So what is our move, General?" Dai pressed, his desire for action overriding his patience. "How do we fight a ghost?"

"We do not," Meng Tian answered firmly. "That is the trap she has set for us. She wants us to react. She wants us to chase her phantoms across the steppe while she consolidates her position. She wants us to become as paranoid and reactive as Colonel Liang. We will not give her that satisfaction."

He turned back to the map of the Wolf's Jaw Pass. "We continue with our original plan. Every move she makes only confirms my initial assessment of her mind. She believes she is invisible, a whisper on the wind. This newfound success will make her arrogant. She will believe she is untouchable in her mountain fortress. She will continue to gather her strength, build her network of informants, and play her clever mind games. And our agent, the disgraced 'Han trader' Lieutenant Fang, will be waiting for her, patiently offering the one thing her network cannot provide: medicine."

He looked at his two commanders, his face set with a grim resolve. "She thinks she is the scorpion, stinging at will. But she is walking into the serpent's nest. Let her play her games. Let her haunt the telegraph wires. It will only serve to keep her in one place, focused on her psychological war, while our physical snare tightens around her, silently and without her knowledge."

Meng Tian had refused to be drawn into Altan's psychological game. Instead, he had used her own tactics to gain a crucial insight into her strategic mind, recognizing the hybrid nature of her methods and the dangerous ego that was growing behind them. He saw her strengths, but he also saw the potential for hubris they would create, and it was that hubris he now planned to exploit with cold, calculated patience.