Just as when Ye Yu had still been the Crown Prince and implemented Cage Governance.
It was meant to create divisions among the common people themselves, elevate the status of scholars, and make those scholars believe themselves nobler than ordinary people.
That way, they would look down on one another, fall into internal strife, and shift their focus elsewhere.
Great Flame's situation had quickly stabilized in precisely this way.
Ye Yu had even heard that an imperial dynasty in Azure Prefecture had defeated another dynasty without shedding a drop of blood, using an even simpler and cruder method.
They had used various means and propaganda to make the women of that dynasty see themselves as noble, believing men were born to serve them.
This method looked foolish, and it seemed impossible that it could succeed, yet in the end, it did.
The women of that dynasty began to disdain the men of their own realm and started making all kinds of unreasonable demands.
Then, through every possible means, they were constantly told that those demands were not unreasonable at all.
Gradually, after more than a decade, that dynasty's population plummeted drastically. Its young and able-bodied workforce gradually failed to keep pace with the changes, its ability to resist foreign enemies was greatly weakened, and in the end, it was destroyed just like that.
Only after the dynasty had fallen did those women, who had once thought themselves lofty and above all others, learn how cruel reality was. But by then, it was already too late.
As the first batch of cultivators sent to scout headed deeper inside, Ye Yu and Zou Yitian casually found a place to settle down. There would be a period of safety ahead.
Until all those Rogue Cultivators had been used up.
Even the normally talkative