White Tiger Hall Master Qin Yushang (Two Updates, Please Vote for Monthly Tickets)

Time flowed like water, always slipping quietly away before anyone noticed.

In the blink of an eye, two years had passed. During those two years, Qingzhou had come increasingly under the influence of Ghost Ridge Palace.

With the puppet industry spearheaded by Ghost Ridge Palace, Qingzhou's once-chaotic order was steadily improving, and the common people were living and working in peace.

One righteous sect after another was forced to submit to Ghost Ridge Palace's military might. Yet as time passed, they gradually sensed the benefits of cooperating with Ghost Ridge Palace and instead began taking the initiative.

Unlike Qingzhou's stability, the Great Li Dynasty had suffered several large-scale disturbances over the past two years.

First, the Northern Divine Eagle Empire had driven its herds south, repeatedly raiding the border. War had swept across Jinzhou and Lianzhou, swallowing up spirit veins, blessed lands, and other resource-producing regions, while its horses trampled thousands of miles of fertile soil.

Countless commoners had been abducted and slaughtered. It was truly a scene of white bones exposed in the wilderness, with not a single rooster crowing for a thousand miles.

In the west, the kingdoms of the Western Regions had Mahayana Buddhism proclaiming the profundity of the Buddhist teachings, attempting to deliver all people from suffering.

In the east, the Overseas Immortal Sects had likewise crossed the sea on Dharma vessels, traversing the heavens. Under the banner of "using the Dao to make friends," they had overpowered many of the Great Li Dynasty's younger-generation experts.

That was not even counting the disasters within the Great Li Dynasty itself. Natural calamities and man-made misfortunes, exorbitant levies, floods and droughts, and the land annexation carried out by powerful landlords had reduced countless commoners to refugees, forcing them to wander homeless.

These disaster-stricken commoners either fled their homes