Pan Long headed north. Though he did not deliberately use Lightness Skill, he strode along at a pace that ate up the miles.
By the time the new moon sank and the sky began to brighten, he had traveled more than two hundred li and left the Capital Region behind.
From here, the Great Xia capital floating in the sky was long out of sight. There were no particularly prosperous cities nearby, either. Villages followed one another, with an occasional town or two, none of them large.
This, too, was one of Great Xia's unspoken rules.
Central Province was roughly divided into two rings. The inner ring was the Capital Region, centered on the Divine Capital; the outer ring consisted of military towns centered on the four major strongholds.
Both rings prospered, but the land between them lagged behind. It was almost entirely farmland.
The arrangement ensured that no military force capable of threatening the Divine Capital could arise nearby. As for its effect on ordinary people—wasn't it enough that they had food and shelter?
It was precisely this structure, strong on the inside and outside but hollow in the middle, that had left local communities almost powerless to resist the Greenwood raids. Town after town had suffered severe destruction and heavy losses.
Afterward, senior Imperial Court officials had discussed what had gone wrong. They agreed that the towns between Central Province's two rings needed to develop, strengthening their ability to support the Divine Capital.
But saying it was one thing. Doing it was another.
Nearly three months had passed since the chaos of the Dragon Boat Festival, yet "developing all of Central Province" remained nothing but talk. They had not even produced a written plan.
In South Xia City, Pan Long had heard people mock the Imperial Court more