The great war raged on, and all of Europe had been sucked into its churning vortex.
Though every nation possessed vast stockpiles of supplies, those stockpiles were being devoured at an equally vast rate every single day. Ships came laden from the overseas colonies, cargo after cargo, only to be consumed in the blink of an eye.
It was like two men locked in a brawl — both full of fire and fury at the start, each desperate to fell the other with a single blow. But when that killing blow never came, as time wore on and their strength bled away, both men began to falter.
This meant the intensity of the war was actually diminishing, yet neither side could bring it to a full stop. Unable to destroy the enemy, each had to guard against a counterattack; wanting to rest, each feared the other would seize the moment — and so neither could rest.
A negotiated peace was now all but impossible. There was nothing left but attrition — grinding, relentless attrition — until one side crumbled and collapsed under its own weight. Even the best outcome of any peace talks would be nothing more than a piece of paper, a paper that could be torn up at any moment without consequence.
If the parties negotiated at the United Nations, under the witness of many nations and Longcheng's supervision, there might be some slim possibility of it holding. But that was precisely what Longcheng did not wish to see.
If they didn't crack each other's skulls open, how was Longcheng supposed to stir the pot? And if their power wasn't worn down, how was Longcheng to maintain world peace — to spread love and hope?
Because of the unrelenting war, every nation was forced to squeeze its colonies ever harder. Resentment accumulated across the colonial world, building and building until it finally boiled over into open resistance.
The men who governed these territories were not pure-blooded Englishmen or Germans or Frenchmen. Many were the descendants of the original colonists — born in the colonies, some three, four, even five generations removed. They had been born there, rooted there; in every real sense, they were of those lands. And now the distant homelands of their ancestors were bleeding those very lands dry. How could they be content with that?
In the past, there had been no choice — the mother countries were simply too powerful. But now, hadn't the moment finally arrived?
South America, the continent farthest from Europe, was the first to erupt. North America remained comparatively quiet, but one colonial territory after another across South America began to voice its grievances. First came the reduction of resource shipments, then a complete cutoff, and in some places the banners were already flying: *We are independent — we will no longer accept oppression!*
This left every European power more overwhelmed than before. They wanted to send troops to crush the uprisings, but the will was there and the means were not.
Longcheng had noticed something: lurking behind all of this, there appeared to be an American hand at work.
America was already extraordinarily blessed by geography. The territory it occupied was only a portion of North America. If it were to bring all of North and South America under its control, then bluntly speaking, it would control a quarter of the entire world.
That, Longcheng would not permit.
And so the Four Great Dynasties moved.
They dispatched a vanguard force of five hundred thousand troops from their overseas legions and sent them south — toward South America.
The message was clear: *Since you can no longer hold your colonies, we'll hold them for you.*
The Four Dynasties maintained a combined overseas force of two million men. To keep their existing territories in hand required at least one million. This first deployment drew down five hundred thousand, with another five hundred thousand to follow — and that was the absolute limit.
Accordingly, each dynasty mobilized again at home, preparing to raise an additional one million troops. The new forces would be sent directly to South America to bring the breakaway territories back under control.
The European powers cursed and raged, yet could do nothing. They could only watch helplessly while denouncing the Four Dynasties' shameful conduct in session after session at the United Nations assembly in Guangxin City.
For the moment, they were genuinely powerless. Every last ounce of strength they possessed — all one hundred percent of it — was needed at home. They dared not siphon off even a fraction to reinforce colonial control. To do so might tip the balance just enough to lose the war, and then everything would be gone.
*Once we win, none of this will matter. What we've lost, we'll take back whenever we please. Those four mongrels will be howling for mercy. And that hungry wolf, America, skulking around and stealing the meat right out of our larder — he'll get his too. Just let me finish what's in front of me, and I'll deal with them one by one.*
That, of course, was what they told themselves in the privacy of their own minds. Whether it would ever come to pass — whether it even could — was quite another question.
---
Somewhere in South America, in a region that had once been a British colony — though it was no longer. The people here had risen up for independence.
The ringleaders were descendants of Englishmen who had arrived eighty years ago. They had joined forces with the local tribal chieftains, seized the governor sent from Britain, and hanged him.
Ruthless, the British descendants. Ruthless, the native tribesmen.
But they had not enjoyed their prize for long.
Barely six months after declaring independence, everything reverted — worse than before, in fact. Their leaders had become prisoners.
Now, these descendants of Englishmen and a number of local chieftains sat locked inside a prison encircled by five-meter concrete walls. They had glimpsed the light of dawn, only to be cast back into darkness.
*Damn this world.*
Right outside those walls lay a brisk and bustling new town.
Each morning, when the early light crept through the prison windows and fell across the bunks, the guards roused the half-English inmates and the native chiefs from their sleep.
"Good Lord," one prisoner exclaimed, "I am an Englishman. I am a nobleman — a minor one, perhaps, but a nobleman nonetheless. You have no right to treat me this way!"
"You really ought to let a man sleep until mid-morning at the very least!"
These words were spoken in Mandarin by the linguistically gifted minor English nobleman, addressed to the Song Dynasty overseer watching him as he washed up at the communal basin.
The overseer spread his hands. "What can I say? We're not the British Empire. A nobleman means nothing to us here. Besides, we're just working for Longcheng."
"Speaking of which — are you a man of Song, or a man of Longcheng? What exactly are you?"
"Doesn't much matter either way," the overseer said with a shrug. "We draw Longcheng's wages and do Longcheng's work. Put in a few good years and you can earn a Longcheng residency card."
He paused. "Oh — once you're done washing up, head over to the warden's office. There's something going on."
"The warden's office?" The English nobleman's eyes lit up at once.