Wuzhou Prefecture was one of Great Zhou's premier prefectures in the west. Thanks to the Ancient Teleportation Array, it was exceedingly prosperous.
Merchant caravans outside Wuzhou City flowed day and night without cease, earning it the name of Great Zhou's city that never slept in the west.
This was considered Great Zhou's heartland. Although the human-devil front had fallen and the Devil Race had advanced from the three eastern fronts, this place remained wholly untouched.
This was a place so rich it dripped oil; even the soldiers guarding the city had faces shining with grease.
Their equipment looked incomparably fine, but they lacked the fierce edge of Great Zhou's hardened troops.
As usual, Wuzhou City's defending general, Lu Qi, stepped onto the city walls. His enormous belly obscured even his feet as he strolled along the walls like a king, inspecting his own territory.
Every time he passed a stretch of wall, a captain of the city guard would step forward and whisper in his ear. If Lu Qi was dissatisfied, he would nod, then continue onward.
Especially when passing the city gates, the smile on the local defending general's face grew even broader whenever the gate captains came up to whisper to him.
These city guard captains and gate captains were not reporting any unusual developments at all. Wuzhou City lay deep inland—where could a war possibly come from?
Each of these city guard captains and gate captains came forward only to ask defending general Lu Qi to pull strings for them.
In the brief span of half an hour, Lu Qi had already let twenty-one merchant caravans through, helping them evade more than a hundred thousand High-grade Spirit Stones in taxes.
Meanwhile, Lu Qi had received more than twenty thousand High-grade Spirit Stones in tribute from below.
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