A hard-fought battle had just come to an end. The soldiers on the western front were proudly clearing the battlefield, while the eastern rear was presenting an entirely different scene.
Central Horse State.
An unremarkable little mountain village, sparsely populated, with only a few elderly people and children in sight.
Like Heaven Capital, this place belonged to Boro territory. The only difference was that it lay on the borderlands, so it rarely appeared in the public eye.
Likewise, the people here knew very little about what was happening in the outside world.
While Heaven Capital's residents were busy preparing for the exams, and the residents of Fierce Horse City were debating whether to take a boat to Heaven Capital to sit the exams, the locals here did not even know what an exam was.
And that was not all.
Since this place was wedged between Mammoth State and Tiger State, with remnants of the Gray Wolf Army active in the area, there were effectively three warlord forces fighting independently. As a result, Abusake's authorities had extremely weak control over the region.
Apart from a few settlements with populations in the hundreds of thousands or millions, most mountain villages were effectively lawless territory. Even nobles who owned land had fled the famine.
Naturally, a poor place like this could not keep young people around.
Unless they had families and truly could not leave, most able-bodied young men either went to the cities to seek their fortunes or joined nearby warlords.
At least here, there was no way to survive by honestly farming the land. It was difficult enough for an entire family just to eat their fill.
An elderly man carrying a basket on his back had just finished working in the fields and was heading home when a polite young