Three years was a short time. In the dynasties of old, whenever a dynasty neared its end, the process from the first signs appearing, to chaos breaking out, to a new dynasty being established, often took a century to unfold.
And over that century, it was merely heroes and great men from every quarter taking turns upon the stage—once one side finished singing, another stepped up. For the common people, human life was cheaper than a dog's. In a single age of chaos, having the population of the realm halved was entirely commonplace.
Compared to a long century, three years truly passed like a white colt flashing through a crack.
Yet in these three years, the changes across the realm surpassed those of the past thirty years, three hundred years, even three thousand or thirty thousand years.
The Wu Kingdom, located in the Southern Wasteland, threw itself into construction. In the second year, it managed to develop the steam engine, greatly liberating manpower. As for how it had pulled that off, naturally, it relied on Daoist arts to cheat. Some of the precision components were things other Daoists simply could not hammer out by hand, so Zhao Cheng personally stepped in to manufacture the relevant parts before using machines to replicate more machines.
Then, in the third year, the first steam locomotive was built, and the first stretch of railway was laid—even if that railway was only three hundred meters long.
But the greatest changes were still in the New Kingdom's military. With the whole populace serving as soldiers, many talented people hidden among the common folk—people with extraordinary gifts for shooting—were discovered and enlisted.
The New Kingdom's Peace Camp was also renamed the Peace Army. All of them used rifles fitted with magazines, their numbers reaching a full ten