Is that the kind of backing you or I can afford to cross? (Please subscribe and vote with monthly tickets)

The train continued north, crossing vast lands that had once been barren, capable of sustaining only a nomadic way of life.

Now, the steel rails ran like the empire's blood vessels, pumping new vitality into the Northern Region.

Increased productivity had brought prosperity, with goods, technology, and tourists pouring in from the Southland without end.

Even this once bitterly cold, harsh land had been developed into a series of famous tourist attractions, drawing countless sightseers eager for something unusual with its distinctive snowfields, frozen lakes, and seas of forest.

The scenery outside the window was already vastly different from the homeland Tuoba Anyu remembered.

Several days later, the train reached their destination: Cold Iron Pass, a major stronghold on the Northern Frontier.

Li Chen alerted no one. He and Tuoba Anyu quietly disembarked and checked into an ordinary inn.

Then he changed into the ordinary officer's uniform he had prepared in advance, took out an entirely unremarkable "letter of introduction" issued by the Ministry of War, and went to report to the garrison stationed at Cold Iron Pass.

To conceal his identity as thoroughly as possible and experience genuine military life, Li Chen had deliberately chosen a unit he had never dealt with directly: an ordinary garrison battalion stationed at Cold Iron Pass under the Fourth Army Group in the Northern Region.

Here, he would no longer be the Emperor of Heavenly Strategy, whose power held sway over the world, but merely a newly transferred, ordinary commandant named "Cheng Li."

Tuoba Anyu, meanwhile, would play the role of Li Chen's wife, named "Anyu."

No one knew that this graceful, alluring beauty had once been the exalted Empress Dowager of the Northern Court.

The chance to accompany Li Chen on an incognito inspection and enjoy this time alone with him had