Nanzhong.
Jianning Commandery.
"General!!"
By the time Huo Yi jumped down from his fine steed, several rough-looking officers had already come forward to pay their respects.
This was Dianchi County in Jianning Commandery.
The county town was small, nestled among wooded mountains. Half of it was swallowed directly by the forest, so that even its walls were hidden from view.
The walls were rather low, too, and mostly built of wood. The gate stood desolate, with few people passing through and not a single carriage in sight.
The terrain here was truly difficult to traverse, almost like the uninhabited wilderness Deng Ai had crossed before. Carriages could not get through at all, and some places even required ropes to cross... Had Huo Yi not surrendered, Wei probably would have struggled to take this place even after capturing Chengdu.
Huo Yi led the men into the county town, the officers following behind him. Among them were both Han men and local tribesmen.
The so-called Haoshuai.
After arriving in Nanzhong, Huo Yi had demonstrated his extraordinary martial prowess, as well as his generous character.
He was different from the generals who had come before him. He would not deliberately drive the local tribesmen into rebellion for military merit, nor would he squeeze the local indigenous people to meet the Imperial Court's tax demands.
Huo Yi was a rather upright man. When Chengdu had repeatedly ordered him to levy taxes locally, he had stubbornly rebuffed those orders every time.
He believed that the people here were already utterly destitute. Years of frequent taxation had left them almost no way to survive. If they were still made to pay more, the only outcome would be rebellion throughout Nanzhong, and the cost of suppressing it would exceed whatever could be collected now!
Nor was Huo