Xuanqing Guard

Chapter 242: Chapter 242: Vitality and Growth

The Snake Race, which according to the Jingjiu Dynasty was already exterminated, is actually alive and well—they’re even running smuggling operations on Jingjiu Dynasty’s territory.

The Long-toothed Elephant Race too, though not yet recovered to their peak strength of a hundred thousand, have managed to recuperate and are certainly not, as claimed in the realm, a race that’s been driven to extinction.

In fact, the entire Barbarian Territory is nothing like what’s described within the Dynasty, with tribes fighting daily and the land plunged into misery and chaos. On the contrary, except for the regions near the Bamboo Path, the interior has actually regained its former subsistence, and the infighting among tribes has rarely been seen since over a decade ago.

The reason lies in the alliance of highly reproductive tribes, led by the Wolf Race, who began suppressing wanton raids and gathering small tribes and clans from the southeast for protection. Gradually, they stabilized a large area toward the southeast within the tribal domains.

The Snake Race repeatedly used one phrase: "Chaos in the northwest, stability in the southeast."

Shen Hao’s heart skipped a beat when he read this.

To the Barbarians, their northwest border is the one adjoining the Jingjiu Dynasty—including the Ten Thousand Miles Bamboo Sea and the Bamboo Path—while the southeast lies deep within the heartland of the Barbarian Territory.

As Shen Hao knew, because the Barbarian lands lack Teleportation Arrays and are dependent solely on carriages and horses with no supply points, logistics would be unbearably burdensome. Thus, even slave merchant convoys only hunt within a thousand li south of the Bamboo Path; even when they go deeper, they rarely go beyond fifteen hundred li.

Slave merchant convoys were required to regularly report intelligence back from within the Barbarian Territory, mainly regarding the Barbarians’ current status. These reports appear in the official gazette every half year, with a low level of confidentiality, meaning the Xuanqing Guard can access them all.

But, as Shen Hao knew, the gazette always described the Barbarian situation as "destitute and struggling" or "chaotic and desolate." It never mentioned any recovery on their part.

Shen Hao did not believe that all slave merchant convoys would remain unanimously silent on Barbarian affairs. The only possibility was that the convoys’ operational scope was limited: they could only probe within a maximum radius of fifteen hundred li, where the Barbarians were indeed destitute and struggling.

However, the records showed that the most fertile land of the Barbarians lies in the northwest, while the southeast is relatively barren.

There’s no reason the fertile northwest should be impoverished, while the relatively barren southeast would be reviving, right? At least, not under normal circumstances.

There is only one possibility: what the merchant convoys see is a false front deliberately staged by the Barbarians. The sole purpose is to lull the Jingjiu Dynasty, and for this, they’re even willing to sacrifice part of their population and fertile lands.

Is this a losing bargain?

If things are truly as Shen Hao conjectured, then for the Barbarians, this is by no means a loss, but a blood-soaked windfall.

The three Snake folk went further: the Wolf Race has already raised their banner, restored their Frost Moon emblem, and begun forcibly absorbing over a dozen smaller clans. Now entrenched in Moon Worship Valley, their ranks have swelled to over four hundred thousand.

Under the Wolf Race’s influence, all the powerful clans—including the Snake Race—have settled in the southeastern region and started assimilating adjacent minor tribes, especially those skilled in cultivation.

Absorbing other tribes, expanding one’s clan, raising flags to restore ancestors’ glory—these customs are not about mere face to the Barbarians. It’s about establishing their prestige: with support from half the key clans, they can reestablish the Royal Court and restore the "Black Stone" name.

Just this intelligence alone is enough to confirm that the Barbarians are amassing strength. If the Wolf Race grows a bit more powerful, once they make a rallying call, it’s highly likely the Black Stone Royal Court will be restored.

By then, things will be very troublesome indeed.

Shen Hao had previously studied the history of the wars between the Jingjiu Dynasty and the Barbarians. Although the Jingjiu Dynasty won every time, the cost was always harrowing—the money and grain expended reached tens of millions, and even the least deadly war saw over three hundred and thirty thousand soldiers slain.

As the saying goes, warfare is never easy; for every ten thousand foes you kill, you lose eight thousand of your own.

What’s more, in every campaign against the Barbarians, whenever the Black Stone Royal Court was raised, their combat strength was overwhelming and fiercely formidable—they were never easy prey.

To be honest, Shen Hao had a premonition about some of these internal Barbarian developments even before now.

After all, the records of smuggling alone show a network running for five straight years. Vast quantities of controlled resources have flowed into Barbarian lands through the Bai River—a volume impossible for any "destitute and struggling" or "chaotic and desolate" region to afford. It must have been an integrated force that could pay such a price.

Since smuggling is motivated by huge profits, even a markup of twenty or thirty percent over market prices would never be enough to justify risking one’s neck smuggling controlled goods. Only multiple-fold profits can make them ignore the Jingjiu Dynasty’s harsh laws and punishments.

So think about it: with such vast amounts of goods entering for five years, how much silver and medicine must have flowed from the Barbarians into the pockets of those vermin?

Of course, the Jingjiu Dynasty’s plundering of the Barbarians has never ceased, mainly through the slave merchant convoys. Plundering population inflicts the gravest blow on any region. However, the problem was that the areas long raided by the convoys never touched the core; the core was kept out of reach by the Barbarians through their manipulation of distance.

The good news is, though the Wolf Race is now the strongest of all the clans, they haven’t yet consolidated full dominance. So even if they’ve restored their Frost Moon banner and emblem, they still can’t rebuild the Black Stone Royal Court any time soon.

No one knows how long this period will last—a year, maybe five?

But for now, Shen Hao has ample time. With this intelligence in hand, he can calmly draft a Copper Rod report to Jiang Cheng. And knowing Jiang Cheng, there’s no way the latter will sit idly by. By then, whatever revival schemes the Barbarians are plotting won’t be executed as easily as now.

Apart from Barbarian intelligence, there was also news regarding those Pseudo-Evil Cultivators that Shen Hao cared about—news that was contrary to his expectations. freewebnoveℓ.com

Shen Hao originally believed the connection between the Barbarians and the Evil Sect lay with these Pseudo-Evil Cultivators, created by the Evil Cultivators. Yet the truth was otherwise.

According to the three Snake Race members, the Pseudo-Evil were not ones they reached out to, nor did the other side seek them first. There was another group—a group who acted as intermediaries and facilitated the earliest rounds of resource smuggling. It was only after this group vanished that those Pseudo-Evil started negotiating directly with the Barbarian tribes for further smuggling operations.

At first, Shen Hao wondered whether these three Snake folk were deliberately misleading him, simply spouting nonsense—he had his men use severe measures for repeated confirmation. Only then was he forced to accept the existence of this earliest group of hidden intermediaries as claimed by the three Snake Race captives.