Demon Capital, Imperial Palace, Imperial Study.
Cheng Yu looked at the list in his hand, a mocking smile curling his lips.
He had not expected so many of the Demon Race's foremost Great Clans to be so shortsighted.
On this latest list, all the Demon Race's top Great Clans had chosen to remain silent. Although he had expected this, Cheng Yu still felt that their leaders lacked a measure of resolve.
Cheng Yu had always worked to resolve the Demon Race's most fundamental problem: the severe fragmentation of regional power.
The Demon Race's system was called a feudal monarchy, but in truth, it more closely resembled a system of enfeoffment. Were it not for the factor of personal might, the Demon Race would probably have long since descended into chaos akin to the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.
The armed forces held by some regional factions of the Demon Race were scarcely inferior in number to those of the imperial court.
The Five Fiends, Nine-Tails, Chongming Bird, Kunpeng, Zhuyan, and others, for instance-these top Great Clans commanded no fewer lesser clans than those directly under the Demon Dynasty.
Both Shen Yu and Cheng Yu knew that the lesser clans mattered no less than the Great Clans. They were the bedrock of the Demon Race. One could also say that they were its common people, and for a vast nation, the people were the foundation of rule. History had proven one thing time and again: any ruler who underestimated the people would pay a terrible price.
Even now, after Cheng Yu had dismantled the Five Fiends, the work of absorbing their subordinate lesser clans remained unfinished. Cheng Yu even knew that, after the Five Fiends fell, some Great Clans had secretly taken in lesser clans that once belonged to them. Had