Time flew.

In a flash it was the blazing heat of summer.

Xuanwu City was running smoothly now.

They had planned to recruit forty thousand men. They'd only signed up twenty-some thousand so far, but after several months of training, all of them were ready for battle!

Half the White Mountain River's water had been brought in already, and it would probably reach Xuanwu City before winter.

But Ning Chen had a headache: it hadn't rained in two months, and the crops weren't growing well... If it didn't rain soon, this year's harvest might fail completely.

Ning Chen had already made preparations to bring in grain from the Wu Kingdom for relief.

Across the world, the situation was shifting fast.

Kang Luo and his men had broken through the Great Xuan's southern frontier and taken the Thirty-Mile Corridor.

His army was now bearing down on Yangzhou City.

Yangzhou City was Prince Xiang's fief. Of the previous generation of princes, some had died and the rest had grown old, and Prince Xiang was one of the few old princes still standing.

Back when Ning Chen raced to the capital to save the emperor, Yangzhou was the city whose wall he had climbed on three arrows.

So Yangzhou's walls weren't high. It was inside the passes, after all, and Yangzhou City had only thirty thousand defenders.

The new emperor was at his wits' end.

Still, Kang Luo's invasion wasn't all bad. At least the new emperor hadn't said a word lately about Prince Wu leading an army against the Gaoli Kingdom.

Any march on the Gaoli Kingdom had to go out through the southern frontier too.

Now that Kang Luo held the Thirty-Mile Corridor, any campaign against the Gaoli Kingdom would first have to smash the Nanyue army.

Kang Luo was even boasting that he'd fight his way to the Great Xuan's capital within three months.

The Great Xuan. The palace, the Hall of Cultivated Heart.

"Damn him! How dare he? This is too much. This is just too much..."

The new emperor's roars carried out of the Hall of Cultivated Heart.