Zhao Cheng's decision to deploy troops at this moment undoubtedly exceeded many people's expectations. The time had been too short—so short that his foundations had not yet fully taken root.
Indeed, many of the renowned rebel kings throughout history had risen faster than Zhao Cheng.
Those rebel kings often spent ten or twenty years building up their strength in one place, then swept across the realm within just a few short years.
Yet such a course did not fit Zhao Cheng's consistently steady, methodical style.
The fundamental reason lay in his attitude toward the great clans and powerful local families. Rebel kings of old always won popular support by winning over one faction while striking another. Once the realm was settled, even if those who had submitted to them wished to defect, it would already be too late.
Zhao Cheng's path, however, was to thoroughly break apart the great clans and powerful families.
This would naturally provoke a backlash from local forces. Though Zhao Cheng had completed the dispersal and relocation within a mere year, undercurrents still surged in places where the light did not reach.
Of course, discerning people across the realm could still see, even constrained by the limitations of their era, that although Zhao Cheng's move faced immense resistance, once accomplished, it could liberate the population to the greatest extent and channel it into the budding industrial construction.
Great Cang was doing the same thing because of this.
But Great Cang had a grave problem: throughout the realm, much of the population—the labor force—were private slaves of the local powerful families.
By breaking apart the power of those local great families, Zhao Cheng had directly solved that problem.
If he had two or three years for people's hearts to fully change, if the people of Qing Province