Although National Upheaval was Lord Wenchao's work, it had never been popular.
The Reform it imagined felt too remote from the lives of Great Xia's people. More to the point, they could not fathom a country that ruled vast lands and a huge population yet was routed by a mere detachment from an enemy hundreds of thousands of miles away, losing its armor and helmets and even ceding territory to beg for mercy.
Even in the Warring States era, the lords of the Nine Provinces had never suffered at the hands of those "foreign kingdoms." As for Great Xia, that went without saying. The Northlands and the Southern Sea had both been won blade by blade, spear by spear.
Not bullying anyone else is already an act of great mercy and kindness. Someone bullying us?
Sorry, I just can't relate...
The social conflicts imagined in the book did seem plausible to Pan Long. In National Upheaval, the Great Qing strictly limited the spread of martial arts. Commoners knew only crude techniques, and most martial artists could not even touch the threshold of the Innate Realm. Only with permission from the Imperial Court or a great clan could someone train in more advanced arts and use that strength to rise above others.
The foreign kingdoms that invaded the Great Qing, meanwhile, provided martial-arts education to everyone. Even the deepest and most exquisite arts were open to all. Each year, their governments assessed everyone's cultivation and granted additional rights according to their level.
So although those kingdoms had smaller populations, they had many powerful martial artists. In a detachment of just three thousand, even the auxiliary soldiers who handled odd jobs had cultivation approaching the Innate Realm. The elite troops were True Person Grandmasters to a man, and even those who had