When Grand General of Cavalry Ye Zhen struck all the way to the fallen Human-Demon Defense Line, reclaimed the former Human-Demon Battlefield Grand Governor's Mansion that had been occupied by the Devil Race for years, and was about to march into the Devil Race's heartland, the news that reached Luoyi left the city and its surroundings in an uproar.
At first, very few believed it.
Even among the court's high ministers, apart from those newly empowered rising elites, the rest of Luoyi's nobility were using every possible channel to inquire after the latest battle reports.
If this news was true, it would not only mark Great Zhou's first counteroffensive in nearly a hundred thousand years, but would also trigger a chain of political repercussions in Luoyi.
Political repercussions tied to the interests of every noble house—there was no way they could ignore them.
Unfortunately, the various government offices of Luoyi were no longer the leaky establishments they had once been, drafty from every direction.
In just over a year, through the various methods of Ji Ao, the New Monarch—Founding Ancestor Ji Bang—they had been forged into something as watertight as an iron barrel.
Naturally, it could not be absolute.
But even when occasional leaks occurred, the information circulated only among a few people with special connections. The old situation, where military intelligence had just arrived and already spread throughout Luoyi while the Emperor himself remained unaware, had vanished.
As for the Heavenly Patrol Division and the Secret Directorate, that was even less possible.
Those two offices had now become synonymous with terror.
So long as they found someone reaching in—whether from outside to inside, or inside to outside—they would seize one and crush one beneath their feet, no matter who it was.
They truly were as watertight as iron barrels.