The world had a way of changing that laid bare its absurdity.
Mr. Tao Ju—the Resistance Army's new figurehead, East 824 District's temporary Executive Officer, and a puppet leader—kept crying, "So you had no contingency plan at all!" as the situation headed toward "total collapse." Meanwhile, beyond his reach, upheavals came one after another.
Chaotic times never lacked opportunists, especially when victory looked certain. General Kang Heng, a younger cousin of the former Executive Officer Kang Xingquan, found his pretext. He declared Tao Ju the culprit behind Kang Xingquan's murder, vowed to avenge his cousin and restore order to the Twelve Great Districts, then marched east to seize territory once ruled by Wu Xiude.
East 824 District was in no shape to resist. Its front lines collapsed, border troops defected in droves, and they threw in their lot with the new Executive Officer Kang... Come to think of it, losing everything but the Central Urban Area and a little surrounding territory had lifted an enormous burden. At least Tao Ju no longer woke each day worrying about how to feed millions of starving civilians.
Tao Ju thought things were finally looking up!
Then General Kang Heng—the newly minted Executive Officer Kang—suddenly dropped dead.
An assassin of terrifying strength struck amid an army of thousands, smashing the Twelve Great Districts' rising star's head like an overripe watermelon and killing several senior figures for good measure. Factions across the region immediately began accusing one another. Colonel Tang Yu, an old enemy of Tang Li's, and others raised their banners, shedding their roles as military commanders to become Grassroots Warlords. Executive Officer Kang's forces, too, descended into chaos and paralysis.
Seeing this, Executive Officer Peng's faction in the south—once one of three powers dividing the Twelve Great Districts with Wu and Kang, and