In this battle, Great Qian's Yue Prefecture crushed Soul-Rending Mountain. The Demon Kingdom fell apart, and demon strongholds and native chieftains, large and small, were thrown into turmoil for tens of thousands of miles around.
Cultivators from Rivers and Lakes flocked there like hyenas fighting over food, joining the feast of carving up a kingdom's fortune, funds, provisions, and treasures.
Many among them had been hired or commissioned by the court to handle peripheral tasks. Great Qian could certainly have caught all the Demon Kingdom's demon cultivators in a single net, but from an economic standpoint, it simply was not worth it.
Sweeping up the demon cultivators remaining in the mountains ultimately had to be outsourced to the local Rivers and Lakes.
Nearly half a month after the great battle, carts and horses rumbled through Qian'gang Town, three thousand miles east of Soul-Rending Mountain, carrying vast quantities of money, provisions, and treasures packed into crates toward the prefectural offices.
This little mountain town was a frontline base built by civilian laborers whom Great Qian's authorities had forcibly conscripted under wartime orders. It remained under military jurisdiction, but with the situation now clear, it had also taken in many displaced people to clear land and build, preparing to become a cultivators' Market Ward.
After years of campaigning across the Mystic Continent, the Great Qian Dynasty had developed a mature model of expansion, typically using such cultivators' Market Wards as hubs whose influence spread across towns and fortified settlements for thousands of miles around.
The court intended to drive it like a nail into the Wilds, preparing to open up the mountain forests for ten thousand miles around while making full use of the forces of Rivers and Lakes.
Many ordinary people and rogue cultivators watched from the roadside. The former remained