The northern territories had been spread too thin. In the end, Wang Xuan had never taken the military-state route.
Having come from the Rabbit household, the infrastructure-mad powerhouse, Wang Xuan was likewise an ardent supporter of infrastructure development.
As a result, after the already-wealthy Yuan Shao's territory was joined by Liu Bei's even wealthier forces, several years of explosive development had not only failed to support a prolonged war, but had left them stretched thin after just a few months of fighting.
And that was with the prerequisite of railways and waterways transporting provisions and supplies. Otherwise...
They would have had to stop after taking Guanzhong.
As for the wars during the following period, the money and provisions had in fact come entirely from the support of those "patriots who sacrificed their families for the nation" in Hanzhong and Yizhou.
Wang Xuan expressed his heartfelt gratitude for this, then sent their entire families on the journey west.
Without those local revenues, Wang Xuan would have obediently retreated long ago and continued burying himself in development.
"No, no money left?" Gan Ning stared at Wang Xuan, tongue-tied and utterly incredulous.
"Impossible!" Gan Ning shouted. "Leaving everything else aside, I hauled in seven cities on this trip alone. Who knows how much gold, silver, jewelry, and coin I looted. And then there's all of Jingzhou, not to mention Yizhou before that. I know that place—every last one of them was filthy rich!"
Everyone else looked at Wang Xuan in confusion as well.
"Do you think that as long as you have money in your hands, you can simply use it to produce supplies?" Wang Xuan sneered. "Do arrowheads not need to be forged? Do weapons and armor not get damaged? Do you think all those parts used to build camps were blown