A thousand-year-old family begins with one fighting against ten thousand.

After moving out of the palace, Cao Kang finally breathed a sigh of relief.

At least now he can finally guarantee his own safety.

Here, all the guards and servants were his confidants, and everyone who purchased food and cooked it underwent thorough screening.

The eunuch faction suddenly realized that the emperor was no longer under their control, and even though they controlled the palace, it was of no use.

A palace without an emperor is just a few buildings and does not represent the center of power in the world.

Cao Kang bypassed the eunuch faction and faced the court officials directly.

As the legitimate emperor of the Great Qian Dynasty, once he came into contact with the court officials, he quickly won over those with clean backgrounds, and even those ministers with powerful families behind them bowed down to him.

This is the power of orthodoxy.

With the help of court officials, Cao Kang successively eliminated the eunuch group that had controlled the government for several reigns and the maternal relatives group of previous reigns, thus completely taking control of the government.

He then spent another five years winning some and fighting others, using his superb political skills to take control of the entire country.

After things stabilized domestically, he turned his attention abroad.

After Emperor Qianxuan established his rule over the country, he called on all the princes and kings to sign a covenant, promising that anyone who dared to start a war would be punished by all under heaven.

Because of the constraints of this alliance, during the reign of Emperor Yuan after Emperor Qianxuan, the various countries were relatively stable and were all working hard to develop their own countries, strengthen their national power, and prepare for war.

By the time of Emperor Huai, the government had been corrupt for many years, and the power of the Great Qian Dynasty had been weakened again and again. Although it still had the power to deter the world, the vassal kings were already restless.

The first to take action was Tuzhou, which was inhabited by the earliest vassal kings of Chinese civilization. Most of them were established by the royal family and meritorious families of the Han Dynasty. According to etiquette and law, they were not the court officials of the Great Qian Dynasty.

After so many years of development, their country has long reached a limit. It is surrounded by various countries, and apart from war and expansion, it can only wait to weaken.

They channeled vast amounts of gold and silver into the powerful eunuch faction in the court, in exchange for a promise that the court would not send troops against them should there be a suitable reason.

A merchant from the State of Zhongshan was murdered in the State of Xiao. The envoy sent by the State of Zhongshan to negotiate also disappeared without a trace. This envoy was a son of the current Prince Jing of Zhongshan.

When the garrison of Zhongshan went to investigate, a bloody conflict broke out between them and the garrison of Xiao.

Prince Jing of Zhongshan was furious. He immediately sent a warrant for the attack to the Daqian court and announced to all sides that the Xiao Kingdom had killed his people and his beloved son. He declared that even the Yellow River could not wash away this hatred. He raised an army of 50,000 to attack the Xiao Kingdom.

Xiao State naturally refused to accept the blame, claiming that they did not kill the merchant, nor did they kill the prince of Zhongshan State. They argued that this was Zhongshan State's pretext for starting a war, violating the alliance signed during the reign of Emperor Qianxuan, and formally declared war on Zhongshan State.

King Xiao Yan of Xiao Kingdom ordered General Xiao Xuan to lead 50,000 troops to keep the enemy out of the country's borders.

Xiao Xuan fought bravely and killed the general leading the army of Zhongshan Kingdom on the battlefield.

Taking advantage of the enemy's declining morale, our side's morale soared, and we decisively defeated the Zhongshan army, recovered the territory occupied by Zhongshan, and even invaded Zhongshan territory.

In less than three months, Xiao Xuan occupied the capital of Zhongshan and destroyed its ancestral temples.

It was announced that the State of Zhongshan had been formally incorporated into the territory of the State of Xiao.

All the members of the royal family of Zhongshan were respectfully sent back to Daqian.

Everyone watching this war secretly cursed Prince Jing of Zhongshan as a fool and a good-for-nothing. Nobody was stupid; everyone could see that this was originally a lavish feast prepared by Prince Jing of Zhongshan for himself.

As a result, because he was too useless, he was overthrown by the very dishes he had prepared, and handed over his ancestral legacy to others for nothing.

Prince Jing of Zhongshan's actions also stirred up thoughts in many people's minds: if Zhongshan Kingdom could do it, why couldn't they?

Citizens of various countries went missing in other countries, and some kings even came up with new ideas to launch wars on the grounds of disrespect by the enemy's envoys.

The entire Tuzhou was engulfed in war. The various states in Tuzhou were the oldest feudal states, and having reached their peak of development, they had long been prepared for war.

Once Pandora's box was opened, it began to expand unchecked.

The Great Qian Empire is currently embroiled in a conflict between the forces of the imperial relatives and the eunuchs, and is unable to attend to this matter. It can only watch helplessly as the Tuzhou is engulfed in war.

Whether it was the war between the vassal states or the struggle between the power of the maternal relatives and the power of the eunuchs, none of them ended in a short time. During the reign of Emperor Huai, dozens of wars broke out in Tuzhou, and half of the dozens of vassal states in Tuzhou were destroyed.

Almost all nations expanded their power by at least half, while simultaneously guarding against new neighbors and quietly absorbing the occupied territories.

Other states also experienced varying degrees of war, but none were as intense as those in Tuzhou.

The other states were occupied for a relatively short time and were not fully Sinicized. Each state was relatively restrained and focused on cultivating its own territory.

When Emperor An ascended the throne, he secretly supported the eunuchs in eliminating the power of the imperial relatives, and used the eunuchs to control the court. At the same time, he plundered the wealth of the people to squander.

Knowledgeable people in the court reported to Emperor An the harm that the wars between the overseas vassal states were causing to the central government. Emperor An originally intended to send troops to intervene, but the eunuchs who had accepted enough bribes from the vassal kings intervened and stopped him.

They had an extremely accurate grasp of the mind of an emperor like Emperor An, and directly ordered people to calculate the money and grain needed for the expedition and the subsequent compensation to be distributed.

Upon seeing such an astronomical sum, Emperor An shook his head vigorously and directly refused to send troops to intervene.

No matter how fiercely they fight, they can never compare to the Central Empire. So why bother?

Even the once-powerful Parthian and Roman Empires were destroyed under the iron heel of the central empire.

The closure of overseas countries is a trivial matter and not worth worrying about.

After figuring out Emperor An's thoughts, the overseas countries began their celebrations.

Even the Mu and Huo states, which were the last to be recovered, had been completely Sinicized after generations of governance, with everyone speaking Chinese and writing Chinese characters.

The newest generation of children all consider themselves Chinese, to be natives, and the history of the past often only exists in the words of their parents.

Even their parents had never seen them; they only heard about them from their grandparents.

Apart from the Roman Empire, other places did not have a long enough cultural heritage to be easily Sinicized.

Once the territory is stabilized, the next step is expansion.

Whoever expands first has the advantage. Territory and population represent national strength. A weak national strength means it will be eliminated in the future.

Everyone wants to be the one who wins in the end; no one wants to be the one who gets wiped out.

If you don't want to be wiped out, the only way is to win and expand!