Late September, Carnford Territory.
The sunlight of golden September was like molten gold leaf, generously scattering over every corner of Carnford Territory, dyeing this land—tempered by the fires of war and now bursting with astonishing vitality—in warm, abundant colors.
With Carnford's main city as the core, the vast region radiating outward presented a scene of order and teeming life.
The lands once left desolate by war were now covered by field after field of neatly planned farmland, paths crisscrossing like a woven grid.
Heavy ears of wheat stirred golden waves in the breeze, while plump bean pods promised the hope of a bountiful harvest.
At the edges of the fields, the farmers were busy making their final preparations before harvest, their faces bright with smiles woven from sweat and anticipation.
Around the main city and the various strategic locations, more than twenty fully equipped, well-defended Tunbao stood scattered like solid foundations beneath a sky full of stars.
These Tunbao were no longer the crude encampments hastily thrown together in the early days, but permanent settlements uniformly planned by the internal affairs chief, Edgar, and built according to standardized blueprints.
Inside the forts, there were not only sturdy barracks of stone-and-timber construction for garrison-farming soldiers and immigrant families, but also granaries, armories, wells, and even basic schools and clinics.
Like powerful hearts, these Tunbao expanded the effective control radius of Carnford's core region several times over, while providing the territory with a stable population base and strategic depth. In total, they housed more than thirty thousand core residents, forming the firmest cornerstone of Carnford's rule.
On the newly opened lands of the Southwest Peninsula, although development had begun only recently, the pace of construction was just as astonishing.
Relying on the coastline and rivers, three large Tunbao had already begun to