Road of Dry Bones

The Mystic Eagle Pavilion that had come to escort the Prime Minister's Estate's heir back to the capital arrived at Western Pacification Prefecture City on the seventh day after the war. Accompanying it was a vast swarm of flying demonic beasts laden with all manner of disaster-relief supplies.

The Great Yan Dynasty's speed in responding to disasters had always been a rather Schrödinger-like affair.

When disaster struck certain places, the Dynasty's heavenly soldiers and relief supplies could arrive on the scene the very next day.

But in other places, even after the disaster had passed, one might not see so much as a single strand of fur.

And as for the disaster victims who died there?

No one cared in the slightest.

They were merely sacrifices in the struggle between the imperial court and the sects.

And theoretically speaking, although the lands around Western Pacification Prefecture City were a strategic frontier pass, they still fell into the latter category.

Because of Marquis of Western Pacification Li Chaoxian's ambitions.

From the very beginning of establishing Western Pacification Prefecture, he had done everything possible to gradually break free of the court's economic restraints. From that moment onward, in the court's eyes, Western Pacification Prefecture had already transformed from a frontier army driving out foreign invaders into the Marquis of Western Pacification's private troops.

The independence of a military district was something no centralized dynasty could tolerate, yet the Great Yan court had endured it.

First, Great Yan was large enough to accommodate a border warlord. Second, compared to the sects of that era, Western Pacification Prefecture was merely a drop in the bucket.

Though the Marquis of Western Pacification controlled the military, he had not extended his hand into taxation and civil administration. Or rather, he had tried, but the hand he