But this fat piece of meat involved far too many parties, and far too many people had tasted its benefits.
The provincial governors of the Fifteen Northwestern Provinces, the Border Army's generals, the powerful figures of the Divine Capital, as well as the Blood God Sect, the Dugu Household, and merchant associations large and small throughout the Western Regions-all had taken a share of this vast web of interests.
Never mind that Tie Ming had brought only damaged military equipment; even if he delivered complete account books to the Immortal Dynasty, there might not actually be anyone willing to investigate the matter to the end.
Over the past fifteen years, the Northwestern Circuit had handed over 1.5 billion low-grade spirit stones to the Immortal Dynasty each year. That item alone had amounted to more than twenty billion.
Beyond that, the stipends, medicinal pills, and military equipment for over two million Border Army soldiers, the daily consumption of each province's city-protecting grand formations and spirit veins, the upkeep of tens of thousands of immortal officials at the Governor-General's Office, and the enormous expenditure required for the Western Regions Protectorate to maintain its various trade routes-which of these was not a bottomless pit devouring spirit stones?
Any ordinary Circuit-Surveying Governor in this position would probably have long since been crushed breathless by these expenses.
Yet Qing Chen had not only paid every tax assessment in full, but also provided the northwestern Border Army with more generous stipends and military equipment than before. He even had enough to spare to expand the Merit Vault and cultivate trusted followers.
He had also accumulated enough cultivation provisions to make even a Spirit Transformation Venerable green with envy.
What supported all of this was precisely those smuggling businesses.
Of course, little of the spirit stones that