Chapter 1044: Great Golden Millet Celestial
Why was that? Because the Nanjiang Pacification Army had suffered tremendous losses in the Battle of Nanjiang Royal Court. Intentionally or not, the interference of the Meng Clan remnants had indirectly bought the surviving tribes and forces of Nanjiang just enough time to save themselves from total annihilation.
After that, forces from all sides intervened to prevent Chu from effectively conquering Nanjiang. Combined with the fact that the One Hundred Thousand Mountains of Nanjiang was exceeding treacherous, Chu’s hope of suppressing and annihilating dwindled to almost zero, at least in the short term.
Long story short, Chu managed to deal the Nanjiang tribes a severe blow, but they ultimately failed to end the southern threat once and for all or master the One Hundred Thousand Mountains of Nanjiang.
Therefore, both the ancestral worship ceremony and the creation of a new prefecture were simply measures they were forced to adopt before they had already made all those bombastic statements earlier.
Not only that, on the day of the ancestral worship ceremony, several Nanjiang champions had slipped into the capital city and attempted to assassinate the Chu Emperor. Although the assassination attempt ultimately ended in failure, it inevitably cast a shadow over what was already an imperfect ceremony.
In conclusion, Chu’s attempt to rescue their reputation and grow their strength through the Nanjiang war had ultimately ended in failure.
If this was all Chu had suffered, it still would have been okay. However, the Heavens’ Eye was also heavily damaged and drained all because of the Chu Emperor’s whim. The loss of the Will of the Empire aside, the Strange Artifact could no longer supervise the realm or intimidate the evils. As a result, Stranger sightings and attacks had increase dramatically at those backwater places where the manpower was low, and the defenses were weak. Countless heretics and bad characters had also crawled out of their hidey-holes to throw the jianghu into chaos as well.
It signified the end of the peace and prosperity Chu had enjoyed up until this point.
Long story short, the order of the smaller settlements such as the villages and counties had decreased significantly. Only the big cities and important counties and commanderies remained unaffected.