Twenty Years of Change

Twenty years were enough for many things to happen. In Qiu Yan's awareness, he had merely been learning the course of the world, but for the world as a whole, it had been a heaven-and-earth upheaval...

The changes in the Land of the Divine Remains over these twenty years had two main sources. One of them had been created by Qiu Yan himself—

Bian Shu.

After leading the slaves out of the mines, Bian Shu had not fled aimlessly. Instead, he delivered a rousing speech that stirred everyone's spirits and twisted their resolve into a single rope, after which they began to act together.

Drawing on the slaves' numerical advantage and the tools he had secretly stashed away during five years in the mines, he organized a rudimentary army.

This army was inferior to the dynasty's soldiers in training, but relying on its numbers and prior arrangements, it could fight few against many, besiege one point to strike reinforcements, and thus buy enough time to flee.

Bian Shu had already made plans for this. At first, using his own advantages and the soldiers' unpreparedness, it had been easy to gain the upper hand militarily. But once time passed and too many small groups of soldiers were wiped out, it would naturally draw the dynasty's attention—

At the beginning, the dynasty's upper ranks would assume they were ordinary refugees. But if officials and soldiers kept falling at the hands of refugees, the nature of the matter would change. This had been mentioned before. The Land of the Divine Remains centered on the Source River basin, known as the Central Lands. Feudal lords stood in all four directions, nominally submitting to the central dynasty. However, this era had neither convenient transportation nor swift means of communication. Beyond the royal city lay wilderness.