In this world, Chengfu was a famed city of antiquity.
According to the official histories Zhang Xing had read, there had been at least six large-scale battles of Chengfu in the eight thousand years of written records.
For instance, in the Biography of the Heroine Li Yue, the early border of the so-called Eastern Chu had lain near here, giving rise to an exceptionally bloody battle in the Ancestral Emperor's eastern campaigns.
Then again, Zhang Xing had just returned from Jiangdong, and among the succession of regimes from Southern Tang to Southern Chen, founded as the Eight Great Families of Jiangdong rose together, several northern expeditions seemed to have exhausted their strength upon reaching Chengfu.
As the saying went, read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles. Now that Zhang Xing had ridden here himself, how could he fail to understand that this place had earned its fame for a reason?
Leaving everything else aside and speaking only of geography, Chengfu County's seat stood beside the Wo River, another major tributary of the Huai River. The Wo ran almost parallel to the Huan River, but here at Chengfu, it abruptly veered west rather than penetrating farther into the Central Plains. Over by the Huan River, Mount Ji and Mount Dang suddenly hemmed it in as well... it was entirely fair to say that this place was the very tip of the Huai River's reach toward the Central Plains.
Any farther on, relying on the Huai River's capacity to deploy men and transport supplies to exert military and political influence would have meant reaching far beyond its strength...
Chengfu marked a clear dividing line between the heartland where contenders hunted the stag of dominion over the Central Plains, and the Huai River basin, which had to be defended if one