The golden month of October, a season of harvest, painted the outskirts of Yunjing City in hues of gold. Over these past years, His Majesty the Ruler had diligently invested in water conservancy, vigorously promoted agriculture, and abolished numerous miscellaneous taxes, allowing the common people's lives to flourish increasingly. Indeed, as farmers reaped their yields, not a single one was without a broad smile or a heart brimming with joy...
Yet, a stark contrast existed between the burgeoning prosperity of the Shu Yun Kingdom and the increasingly burdensome taxation imposed by the mightiest entity, the Tianyuan Empire. Compounding this hardship were rampant official corruption and the incessant rise of bandits, rendering the lives of the populace progressively worse day by day. Many border dwellers were driven by desperation to flee the Tianyuan Empire, seeking refuge in the surrounding smaller nations. For every soul who arrived in the Shu Yun Kingdom, Luo Xiaofeng had dispatched men to settle them appropriately...
As a result, the population of the Shu Yun Kingdom grew at an astonishing rate. In just a few more years, it was poised to surpass the ten-million mark. While this number paled in comparison to the five or six hundred million inhabitants of the Tianyuan Empire, it represented a monumental breakthrough nonetheless, wouldn't you agree?
Most critically, the Tianyuan Empire had plunged into utter chaos: the Emperor had met a mysterious end, the Crown Prince had vanished without a trace, and the Empire's most influential figure, Prince Xuanyuan Xiaozhan, was currently entangled with the Tuoba clan of the northern steppes in Storm City...
It was widely known that the Xuanyuan family was hailed as the foremost lineage in the realm. Over the three centuries of their flourishing lineage, the imperial family's populace numbered at least over a million, with the direct bloodlines alone accounting for tens of thousands...
Such a terrifying population count made it impossible for everyone to remain utterly unified. The late Emperor, known for his sagacity, had dispatched several of his full-blooded brothers to guard the relatively wealthy Four Southern Prefectures. The northwestern Ling Prefecture was entrusted to his paternal uncle, Xuanyuan Xiaozhan. This God of War of the Xuanyuan Empire had held the northwest frontier since the age of twenty, becoming a veritable guardian deity of the Tianyuan Empire...
As for the remaining prefectures—Qing, Xue, and Lei—they were governed by three half-brothers. Excluding these eight princes, the Xuanyuan family still maintained nearly a hundred other princes residing in the capital, Tianzhou. All of them were the current Emperor's full siblings, and to suggest that not a single one harbored secret dissent was simply impossible...
The recent demise of the Emperor and the disappearance of the Crown Prince were events sufficient to direct suspicion toward these idle princes, particularly the four guarding the Southern Four Prefectures. Almost immediately upon receiving the news, they led their personal guards toward Tianzhou...
Being born of the same mother as the Emperor, their fraternal bond was naturally far stronger than with other clan members. With the Emperor now murdered, they could not afford to delay their response...
Of course, these princes had also engaged in considerable exploitation of the populace over the years. Had it not been for the imposition of overwhelming martial force, rebellion might have erupted in the Tianyuan Empire much sooner...
And then, just as the four princes were en route to Tianzhou, the Tian River—the largest river traversing the Four Great Prefectures—experienced a flood of a magnitude rarely seen in a century...
Suddenly, countless lives were lost along both banks. The local governments, stripped of their guiding authority, found themselves utterly incapable of managing the crisis. The populace, starving and cold, devolved into unruly elements, resorting to disruption merely to survive...
Initially, it began with some desperate citizens robbing the extremely wealthy out of sheer life-or-death necessity. Instead of alleviating the situation, the government met this with violent suppression, which in turn ignited widespread public outrage...
Furthermore, deprived of the most elite soldiers who usually served the princes, the commoners erupted like an unstoppable flood. Resistance grew increasingly fierce, and suppression grew crueler. Finally, an uprising erupted at a location called Lingshan, situated at the border between Yun Prefecture and Yan Prefecture...
This event, historically known as the Lingshan Uprising, served as a mere spark igniting the explosive barrel hidden within the Tianyuan Empire, blossoming in four corners of the south...
With uprisings flaring everywhere, within half a month, the rebel forces had spread across the entire Southern Four Prefectures, with even small pockets of insurrection appearing in the northern Xue Prefecture...
Chaos descended upon the realm...
By the time the four princes arrived in the capital and grasped the situation, the largest rebel army already numbered over one hundred thousand, led by a young man named Huangfu Buyue...
This particular rebel force proudly called itself the Dragon Army...
Beyond this massive contingent, hundreds of smaller and larger rebel groups had sprung up, plunging the entire south into turmoil...
Fortunately, at this critical juncture, Xuanyuan Xiaozhan, the foremost God of War of the Tianyuan Empire, secretly returned to the capital. With his supreme authority, he temporarily quelled the unrest in the capital and swiftly installed the eight-year-old Imperial Grandson, Xuanyuan Ling, onto the throne. The former Empress was elevated to Empress Dowager, and the Crown Princess, never having become Empress, was now the Empress Dowager, both ruling from behind the curtain...
He even harshly berated the four princes in front of the court's senior officials, physically kicking all four out of the capital and commanding them to lead their personal troops immediately to their respective prefectures to suppress the uprisings...
Faced with Xuanyuan Xiaozhan's supreme authority, no one in the Tianyuan Empire dared to utter a word of protest, not even those princes who had been secretly plotting their moves...
Undoubtedly, had Xuanyuan Xiaozhan maintained his position in the capital, the ensuing turmoil might have been averted. However, at this very moment, the Mengtu Empire to the northwest, ignoring the impending harsh winter, launched wave after wave of attacks against Storm City. Caught between the still-nascent but rapidly expanding rebel armies and the widely feared Tuoba clan—who had stood against the Xuanyuan family for three centuries—Xuanyuan Xiaozhan was compelled to return once more to Storm City to repel the Mengtu invasion...
Yet, he ultimately underestimated the strength of the insurgents. Xuanyuan Yun, the Prince who guarded Yun Prefecture, was ambushed by Huangfu Buyue’s army of one hundred thousand en route back to his domain, suffering catastrophic losses...
Xuanyuan Yun himself, despite possessing the formidable power of the Grandmaster realm, was slain amidst the fierce melee...
Meanwhile, Zhenhai Wang Xuanyuan Hai, guarding Hai Prefecture, managed to return safely to Miaocheng in Hai Prefecture. However, he was poisoned by his most beloved concubine. Subsequent investigation revealed that the concubine was actually a native of Dongyi—an island nation southeast of the Tianyuan Empire, comparable in size to the Shu Yun Kingdom, and a vassal state to the Empire. However, the Dongyi people were known for their inherent cruelty and fierce temperament, earning them the collective moniker of "Wicked People" from both the Shu Yun Kingdom and the Tianyuan Empire...
On the very day of Xuanyuan Hai’s death, a Dongyi army of one hundred thousand landed at Xiakou, Hai Prefecture’s largest port...
The Hai Prefecture army was fully occupied suppressing the rebel forces; who among them could possibly stand against this inherently barbaric Dongyi army?
The chaos in the south intensified, with even a minor state like Dongyi attempting to carve out a piece of the spoils—and this was before even considering the Shu Yun Kingdom...
It was at this precise juncture that Luo Xiaofeng, the Ruler of the Shu Yun Kingdom, made a decision that would alter the course of history...
He ordered the Seventh Young Master, Luo Xiaoyuan, to proceed to Hu Kingdom and continue the offensive alongside Xiao Geng, with the absolute command to completely conquer Hu Kingdom before the year’s end...
Even if it meant slaughtering every Hu person, the land of Hu Kingdom must be seized.