Ruler and ministers still worried over the nation's hardships; yet good news came too fast to take in

"What did you say? The White Lotus Sect's army sent into Shu has already been crushed by Minister Qiu?"

What lay before Li Kun and the others was still an account of what Qiu Yan had done in the Shu Region and the Marshlands.

This report also mentioned the White Lotus Sect's army marching into Shu and gave a detailed account of the four armies.

In truth, when the White Lotus Sect first raised its banners, news of its four armies had spread without legs. Even Southern Ridges scholars such as Cui Sujing had learned of them through various channels. Yet the court knew little more than they did, because nearly all of Southern Ridges, from top to bottom, had either joined the bandits or rebelled. It had then been fortified by the White Lotus Sect until it was as impregnable as a golden citadel, making infiltration exceedingly difficult.

Thus, detailed information on these armies had to come from places outside the Southern Ridges Circuit, and discrepancies in timing and sequence were unavoidable.

The "Northern Expedition" army, which directly threatened Jiangnan Circuit, the empire's major tax hub, naturally received special attention, and much of the intelligence on it was quite precise. The other three armies, on the other hand, marched mostly through desolate regions, so little news had come of them.

Yet compared with the two forces that had headed straight into the Marshlands and sailed upon the sea, intelligence on the White Lotus army entering Shu had been somewhat easier to gather. But by the time the court's spies obtained it, that White Lotus army had already vanished into ashes and smoke.

"Five thousand against sixty thousand. They broke them in a single night, captured thirty-two thousand prisoners, and the number of enemies slain has yet to be counted..."