As news of what had happened in Far-Reaching City spread throughout the nation, Li Qingxian began building the New City.
Once the first lunar month had passed, plans for the New City were largely finalized, and the Ministry of Works and the Netherworld's Puppet Cultivators began construction.
To encompass both Heavenly God Hurling Mountain Park and Blade Saint Demon-Slaying Park, a satellite city connected to Far-Reaching City was built to its north.
As the news continued to spread, more and more practitioners of Literary Cultivation, Dao Cultivators, and Martial Cultivators arrived in Far-Reaching City.
Li Qingxian secretly sent people to investigate and discovered that some of them had not come for the sacred cultivation grounds at all. They had come for military merits.
The battle at Heaven God Hurling Mountain had yielded so many military merits that, aside from those traded to major powers and those belonging to Li Qingxian himself, many factions in Far-Reaching City had also received a share, with the Divine Bow Sect and the Green Mountain Gang gaining the most.
Two large military camps were being built on the eastern and western sides of Far-Reaching City.
One housed the Northern Mountain Army, transferred from Qing Prefecture. It did not answer to the River Guard Army, but was a second-line force under the Five Armies Commandery, chiefly responsible for protecting important cities behind the front. It numbered five thousand men.
The other housed the newly established Far-Reaching Army, a local Martial Forest Army raised by Far-Reaching City itself.
After the demon race invaded, it had become commonplace for northern cities to raise their own defense armies, but few received official designations from the court.
After Emperor Taining ascended the throne, there were even fewer.
The commanding general of the Far-Reaching Army was He Baishan, an old veteran