The heavy snows of winter gradually melted away beneath the warm, driving rains of spring, swelling the rivers and canals of the Celestial Dragon Empire as a new year dawned across the continent.
Over the three months of spring that followed the quiet annexation of the Ling Ancient Clan, Alaric did not launch a single military battle, yet the invisible noose he had slipped around the neck of Emperor Huang Long's regime tightened with suffocating force.
War, above all else, was a matter of grain, spirit stones, and medicinal pills.
And by the third month of spring, through the seamless coordination of Guildmaster Lin Ruoli's Jade Serpent Guild, Chief Auctioneer Ya Su's Gilded Lotus Auction House, Ling Ying's newly integrated Ling Clan southern trade caravans, and the Wartime Logistics Directorate headed by Cui Yulan and Yan Ruyu, Alaric effectively controlled the economic bloodstream of more than half the empire.
