Western Continent, within the borders of the Great Flame Dynasty.
The Blood Qin Empire's army had already driven more than three thousand li into Great Flame territory. Hundreds of cities had fallen to the Blood Qin Empire, and over a hundred million citizens of the Great Flame Dynasty had been gathered into Blood Qin's embrace. Going by Ying Zheng's usual methods, these Great Flame citizens had already been organized into logistics troops, with the entire population mobilized for predatory resource extraction.
Mountain range after mountain range had been stripped bare, vein after mineral vein dug clean. All wealth within the cities had been gathered by the Blood Qin Empire's army, turned into military supplies, and distributed under a unified system. Every grain of food was accounted for down to a speck of flour, rationed daily according to headcount, type of work, age, gender, and other factors.
Plundering the Western Continent's resources to sustain the campaigns of the Blood Qin Empire's vast legions—Ying Zheng had brought the essence of sustaining war through war to its utmost extreme.
Blood Lion City. This had once been a major stronghold of the Caesar Empire, ruled by the Blood Lion Duke Family, with the two neighboring provinces also under its jurisdiction. This militarized city had once been a famed mighty fortress across the Western Continent, while the Blood Lion Duke Family's private knight order had been renowned as an elite force of the Caesar Empire.
But today, Blood Lion City trembled beneath the bombardment of countless round stone shells. Spherical stone projectiles over three meters in diameter came whistling in from thousands of meters away, hurled by gigantic catapults. They slammed heavily into the already crumbling city walls. Every impact was like a small earthquake; every strike shattered great swathes of bricks and rubble; every