No (Continued)

"Just a rest?"

"Yes, the Imperial Guard said they were just resting."

"I see."

After receiving Zuo Zheng's answer, Maria pondered for a moment and then shook her head slightly.

She didn't think Liu Ying had given up.

In fact, from their first meeting, Maria realized that the other woman was a very shrewd and calculating girl.

Giving up now is at most a helpless compromise with the situation.

She can't really give up...

"What's wrong?"

Zuo Zheng had no idea what Maria's silence meant; she simply tilted her head, looking puzzled.

But Maria shook her head and sighed.

"Nothing."

"Go tell the team to postpone the celebration until after the prisoners are escorted to Hundred Stoves."

"Yes."

At this point, Zuo Zheng was becoming increasingly adept at assisting Maria. He nodded, then turned and left.

Maria, however, simply sat quietly in the room with her eyes lowered...

The forces of the Shanhai Assembly cannot be eliminated so easily.

In fact, the so-called "Shanhai Assembly" are essentially individuals formed from humanity's awe and fear of the unknown.

Even if humanity could completely drive out the Great Beast, this fear would not disappear from people's hearts.

As long as there are humans, there will inevitably be fertile ground for fear to breed...

What Maria is doing now is merely eliminating the more obvious enemies for the time being.

As for what the future holds...

Nobody can say for sure.

Without wasting too much time, Maria soon returned to the Hundred Stoves once again.

Without the threat of internal enemies, the entire Great Yan returned to normalcy.

One month later.

The Great Wilderness City has been struck by a Catastrophes rarely seen in decades.

The ground cracked, and dust swept through the air.

In a short time, not only did the Great Wilderness City suffer a poor harvest, but it also suffered heavy casualties.

Even more outrageous, some rumors claimed that this was punishment for the Great Beast's Great Beast after the emperor attacked it.

For a time, countless citizens of the Great Yan Dynasty were filled with fear and unease.

Left with no other choice, the emperor had to ask Maria to go out again and lead the troops to inspect some unruly areas and suppress any dissent.

As for the devastated Great Wilderness City...

Because they were prepared in advance, the emperor immediately sent people to allocate funds for assistance when the famine broke out. Finally, after the national treasury was exhausted, the emperor ordered Zuo Zheng and others to investigate the remnants of the Shanhai Assembly. After confiscating the property of some key merchants and personnel, the emperor also allocated the wealth obtained to Great Wilderness City.

They managed to weather the most dangerous period and stabilize morale.

Three more months passed.

At this time, the Ursus Empire on the Northern Frontier finally took action.

As a nation founded purely on warfare, decades of peace have not brought it greater prosperity.

On the contrary, peace has led to a host of social problems.

To solve this problem, the current emperor of Ursus has not opted for painful reforms, but rather a superficial solution...

He declared war on the Great Yan.

The current Emperor of Great Yan was clearly prepared for this choice long ago.

One of the most important reasons why he doesn't have many troops available in Yan is that he realized long ago that the Ursus Empire in the north had a premeditated plan.

The famine in the Great Wilderness has now become their best opportunity.

In their minds, they should now be trapped in a food crisis.

But clearly, they underestimated the emperor who had been on the throne for less than three years.

Soon, the war with Ursus began.

The war did not last long.

In fact, even though the current Emperor of Great Yan has made ample preparations, the reality cannot be changed because of his thoughts.

The Ursus Empire had long harbored ambitions, and the Great Yan Empire had suffered from the Shanhai–Hundred Stoves Rebellion and the disaster of the Great Wilderness City, resulting in an extremely strong sense of emptiness within its ranks.

Originally, he could have used his influence to temporarily make people overlook this emptiness, thus buying time to gradually fill it.

However, the outbreak of the Ursus War brought this void to the forefront and caused it to expand rapidly.

After three months of holding out, the border defenses began to fall in parts of the frontier.

For a time, panic gripped the Great Yan Dynasty.

But it was also at this time that the first batch of cannons, warriors, and Imperial Guard from the Hundred Refining Bureau, who were truly ready for the battlefield, finally made their appearance.

These people and technologies were initially developed with the goal of defeating Great Beast.

Their strength is truly astonishing.

After joining the war, they took only a month to reclaim the lost territory and began a counterattack.

This caused some unrest in the Ursus region.

After a two-month stalemate, the Yan ultimately did not expand too much and began peace negotiations with the Ursus Empire.

Yan tacitly refrained from declaring this a premeditated war plot by Ursus, instead deliberately portraying it as a normal border skirmish between major powers. Ursus, in turn, wisely refrained from demanding the return of its original territory.

Both sides are keeping things hidden, waiting for something.

No one knows what the consequences of this bizarre situation will be.

Another matter began to brew within the Yan.

More precisely, it began to brew in the core internal area.

The first warriors to borrow the power of the Great Beast have appeared.

Thanks to the efforts of the Great Yan Inner Celestial Master, they finally glimpsed a unique relationship between Originium and the Great Beast.

Although they did not understand the specific meaning, they successfully grafted these connections onto human beings.

The first hybrid warrior has appeared.

The strength of each of them has undergone a tremendous change.

They are stronger, more patient, and even their Originium Arts have improved several times over... Although they were already elites among the Imperial Guard, now they can suppress an Imperial Guard squad without taking any damage.

Even with Wei Sanzheng personally leading the troops, he could only barely achieve an exchange ratio of about three to one.

This is still in the exercise phase.

In a life-or-death struggle, this proportion would likely be even higher.

It might even reach seven to one or eight to one!

Such strength is simply astonishing!

Maria, however, seemed rather uninterested in the news.

Upon learning of the soldiers' arrival, she immediately went to inspect and observe them.

And things turned out exactly as she had predicted.

These soldiers were already emanating an aura of disgust that she knew all too well.

But...

What she couldn't understand was that among these warriors, there were indeed some who didn't evoke any dislike in her.

According to Sui, this is a warrior she developed.

In a sense, these people are her alternate incarnations... or perhaps pseudo-relatives?

Maria wasn't sure what this issue was either.

But none of that matters anymore.

The appearance of this group of soldiers also signifies that the man's plan has begun to get on track...

Another year has passed.

This progressed alongside the frenzied research of countless celestial masters.

Finally, the third generation of Imperial Guard warriors, who could finally be considered ready for battle, appeared before them.

With the addition of those special technological armors to the formation of the team, these soldiers quickly gave their answer.

Three thousand Imperial Guard, three hundred specially made top-tier cannons, and Hundred Refining Bureau spent a great deal of manpower, material resources, and financial resources to tailor-make weapons and armor for each of them, in addition to countless tactical preparations and training.

Final...

They returned with a thousand men, almost all of their artillery pieces destroyed, and a huge pile of scrap metal...

Along with them came... the corpse of a Great Beast...

They... truly managed to hunt Great Beast with mortal bodies!

Such an effective victory would make even men lose their composure and feel so good that they would grant a general amnesty!

This left the other residents somewhat confused.

After all, while hunting Great Beast was something to be thankful for, hadn't it already happened before?

Even if there's going to be a celebration, shouldn't it have been the previous two?

Why is a general amnesty being granted only now?

But none of that matters anymore.

They didn't know the details, nor did they know that, for them, this was the first time in a true sense that humanity had defeated Great Beast...

But after the initial joy subsided, even stricter tax policies followed.

The Emperor of the Great Yan Dynasty began a large-scale purge of corrupt officials and scoundrels within the government, and also began a large-scale expansion of his forces.

Its harsh policies caused widespread suffering throughout the Yan...

Even so, the emperor of the Great Yan Dynasty was still not satisfied.

He began to amass wealth from various places and through various means, even directly selling back the territory that originally belonged to Ursus to Ursus in exchange for an astronomical sum of money.

After practically squeezing out the potential of Yan for the next three or four years.

After investing a fortune that could be described as astronomical.

Ten years after the first Great Beast hunt, the Great Yan finally assembled a fighting force of 30,000 men...

Equipped with weapons that have undergone countless iterations, they launched an unprecedented operation.

[Exorcise Evil, Eliminate Demons]

"That's really hard to imagine..."

Zuo Zheng slowly walked out from the army, looking around with a subtle expression.

She exhaled, her voice tinged with disbelief.

She has long lost her former gentleness; all that remains is a resolute determination.

Today, she is a "mature woman" in her thirties.