Let Me Explain, Fairy

Chapter 1114: Chapter 697: Path of Dry Bones

The Xuanying Attic, tasked with escorting the Prime Minister’s Mansion heir back to the Imperial Capital, arrived at Zhenxi Prefecture City on the seventh day following the war. Alongside its arrival came a massive swarm of flying Demonic Beasts, carrying various disaster relief supplies on their backs.

The speed at which the Dayan Dynasty responds to disaster relief has always been a rather Schrodinger-like matter.

In some places that experienced calamities, the Imperial military’s Heavenly Soldiers and relief supplies could arrive the very next day.

But in other places, even after the disaster has passed, residents might wait forever without even seeing a single strand of supplies.

As for the victims who died in the calamities?

Nobody cared.

A mere group of sacrificial pawns in the ongoing struggles between the Imperial Court and the sects….

Theoretically speaking,

Even though Zhenxi Prefecture City’s surrounding areas are a strategic pass, they still fall into the latter category.

Because of the ambition of the Marquis of Zhenxi, Li Chaoxian.

From the moment Zhenxi Prefecture was established, Li Chaoxian had done everything possible to gradually extricate the territory from the Imperial Court’s economic control. From that moment onward, in the eyes of the Imperial Court, Zhenxi Prefecture became less of a border defense army and more like Li Chaoxian’s private soldiers.

No unified empire can tolerate an independent military district, yet the Dayan Dynasty somehow managed to endure it.

The primary reasons being:

One, Dayan is vast enough to accommodate the existence of a border warlord. Two, in that era, sects posed a greater threat compared to Zhenxi Prefecture, which seemed relatively trivial.

Although the Marquis of Zhenxi controlled military power, he did not extend his reach to taxation or local governance—or rather, he had attempted to do so, but the two prominent figures in the Imperial Court promptly severed his grasp.

Looking back now,

Without support from local governance and taxation, Zhenxi Prefecture’s fiscal structure would theoretically collapse under its scale. And yet, reality proved otherwise, likely due to sect infiltration originating from that very moment.

Xu Yuan could not judge whether his father’s approach was right or wrong.

Aspired power and grand ambitions are rights born to those capable.

Moreover,

His father had likely done things far more excessive than the Marquis of Zhenxi.

The distinction lies in the outcome of their positions on the board—one successfully breaking free to become a player, while the other failed and became a mere pawn between others’ fingers.