"Rumble!"
Violet-blue lightning tore across the cloud-choked sky, becoming the only splash of brightness between heaven and earth. Only then did the deafening thunder arrive.
"Crack."
Fierce winds swept up tree limbs as thick as bowls, and torrential rain poured down. The rivers of Jiujiang Kingdom instantly swelled, and its dirt roads became impassable mud everywhere.
Jiujiang Royal Palace.
Liu Qi watched the roaring downpour outside his window. His body felt somewhat unwell, and his spirits were low. Though he had been here for quite some time, he still found it somewhat hard to accept.
The present Jiujiang Kingdom was not the land of outstanding people and blessed terrain it would become in later ages, but a barbarian land rife with miasma. Though it had entered the sphere of All Xia as early as the time of the Chu State, and both the Qin Dynasty and Great Han had established governing institutions here, truth be told, judged purely by its population, it still could not be considered firmly inseparable territory of All Xia.
Jiujiang Kingdom had a great many mountainous regions, and large numbers of natives lived in the mountains.
Several hundred years earlier, the Chu State and Wu State had fought great battles here, frantically seizing people from the somewhat flatter areas to serve as cannon fodder. This had driven the barbarians into the mountains, where even now they did not know that the world outside already belonged to the Han Dynasty.
Although the Han Dynasty had established commanderies and counties here, it had mainly built a few large cities on the plains, with reclaimed farmland surrounding them. There were not even straight roads connecting the towns and cities of various sizes, and countless natives lived between the cities. This situation rather resembled the age of city-states several hundred