In the eighth year of Daxing,
autumn.
It had been eight years since Emperor Yuanjing ascended the throne,
yet the state of the dynasty had shown not the slightest sign of recovery under Emperor Yuanjing's accession and tireless day-and-night diligence. Instead, it had accelerated all the way downhill.
Floods, droughts, and locust plagues came one after another. Soldiers, bandits, officials, and gentry ran rampant through the fields, while the common folk at the bottom could barely survive.
At the same time,
the various military governors were like ulcers clinging to the bone, intercepting tax revenues, privately expanding their armored forces, and brazenly digging at Great Yuan's foundations.
The fortunes of the entire Great Yuan Dynasty seemed to be plunging over a perilous cliff, showing ever clearer signs of collapse!
Especially in the third year of Daxing,
after the Moth Bandits launched their rebellion across the Nine Provinces and the imperial army suffered a crushing defeat under the pincer attack of Tianxia Pass and the Northern Meng army, the court's prestige was wiped out overnight!
Even though the Old Ancestor of the imperial clan, Liu Jinghong, one of the three Supreme Grandmasters publicly known to exist in the world, later personally emerged from seclusion, crossed thirty thousand li, slew eighteen Moth Bandit leaders including Niu Dali, who had been attacking Tong Pass, and single-handedly punched through the Moth Bandits' army of six hundred thousand.
He then headed north without stopping, pursuing the Northern Meng army that had swept away vast amounts of population and wealth from the three northern frontier provinces and was returning to the northern grasslands.
Again by himself, he killed seven high-ranking Northern Meng figures, including their State Preceptor Wushan'er and Marshal Batu Erduun. He charged back and forth through the Northern Meng army seven or eight times,