As Chen Chuan pondered, the airship gradually climbed into the high sky.
The last ray of sunset faded, and the heavens turned deep blue. The thin air of the plateau made the sparse stars seem especially sharp and bright.
On the ground, guiding lights for the airship had already lit up, stretching all the way into Great Shun territory.
Nearly all the major public facilities outside Central City of the Khanate of Rur had been built by Great Shun state-owned enterprises, though most of their users were also personnel from Great Shun.
The Khanate of Rur itself was not necessarily at a disadvantage. In this day and age, for a small country to depend entirely on a great power was not necessarily a bad thing. Regional alliances, on the other hand, merely clung together for warmth. Not only was their internal strife severe, but they also had to endure suppression and attacks from great powers, even technological blockades. Their lives might not be any easier.
When facing external threats, small countries did not need to consider too much. They only needed to follow in the footsteps of a great power. Even if a World Ring node came under attack, the great power would be responsible for resisting it. So long as the great power was not especially harsh, the upper echelons of some small countries could actually live quite comfortably in such an environment.
Yet Chen Chuan couldn't help thinking that, if the different circumstances of breaking through limits recorded by the Celestial Mystery Sect were compared to the nations of today, the parallels were unexpectedly fitting.
Small countries possessed no autonomy at all, and their survival depended entirely on the moods of great powers. Medium-sized regional states appeared to have autonomy, but in truth they too survived in the