Within the Tianjin Warlord's designated encampment in Tiger Family Village stood a courtyard built of gray brick. Though hastily arranged, it was laid out with strict precision.
Beyond its walls, armed Tianjin elite soldiers stood guard every five paces and kept watch every ten. They loomed like iron towers, blocking every curious gaze from outside.
In the main hall deep within the courtyard, the silence was almost suffocating.
Files, secret reports, and official documents lay piled like teetering hills across a heavy red sandalwood desk.
Zhang Yunshang sat in a broad Grand Tutor Chair. A snow-white fox-fur cloak hung casually over its back, and a plain jade hairpin held up her dark hair without a single unnecessary ornament.
She had not gone to watch the First Realm's final match, the one everyone had been waiting for.
It was not that she did not want to. She simply could not get away.
The lives and livelihoods of everyone in Riverside, and even in several nearby prefectures struck by the Ghost Calamity, rested on her shoulders. So did the allocation of supplies and the negotiation of interests among the various factions.
There was no room for carelessness, nor for the slightest lapse.
This was the final arrangement reached in the negotiations between Lu Changsheng and the Tianjin Warlord.
Lu Changsheng wanted standing in the martial world and a say in the Spirit Ruins Blessed Land. The Tianjin Warlord—or rather, Marshal Zhang, who held Tianjin—wanted absolute official control over this land.
All military and political authority in Riverside and several surrounding areas had been handed to a young woman to manage as her proving ground.
Across the entire Great Xin Dynasty, perhaps no one but Marshal Zhang could have shown such boldness.
More importantly, Zhang Yunshang had shouldered the burden and handled it