"Let's go!" Li Chang slightly nodded and walked slowly toward the city gate.
There were quite a few soldiers on duty at the city gate. Everyone entering and exiting the gate had to undergo strict inspection, but no matter how strict such inspections were, it was still very hard to stop spies from sneaking into the city. They could only prevent a large number of enemies from infiltrating.
Although Li Chang and his party came from elsewhere, they had the identity of the Yangtian Sect. The Yangtian Sect's face might not count for much in Baoning Prefecture, but the Taiping Army had no reason to stop them from entering the city.
This also showed the relationship between the jianghu forces and the rebel army. On the surface, those jianghu forces had countless tangled ties with the imperial court; many sects had even received imperial enfeoffment, and many sect masters drew salaries from the court. But the rebel army could not regard these sect forces as enemies. On the contrary, they had to win them over.
The reason was very simple. No one believed that sect forces were the imperial court's power. In everyone's eyes, sect forces were powers independent of the imperial court. Even though the court, because of the Martial Promotion Decree, had enfeoffed first-, second-, and third-class sects, still no one considered these sects as belonging to the imperial court.
The Yangtian Sect was a first-class sect enfeoffed by the imperial court. Du Qiandao also held an official rank of the third grade, and quite a few Yangtian Sect disciples even served in the Shangwu Division. Yet whether it was the imperial court or the Yangtian Sect itself, none of them regarded the Yangtian Sect as part of the court.
To put it simply, the relationship between the