Chapter 1028 — Community
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
Luo Yan's bluntness surprised even Gao Yang. He glanced at the ruler of Typhon in astonishment and raised his eyebrows: "Then guess — why don't I do it?"
Luo Yan was silent for a moment before speaking in a low voice: "You cannot digest all of Typhon — this vast, densely populated land would only sink postwar Cecil into a mire. Beyond that, I cannot think of a better reason."
Gao Yang gave the other a long, deep look. He had to admit that Luo Yan was at least half right.
He had indeed considered letting this fire keep burning, even seizing the chance to march straight into Aldnan and merge the two human empires into one. It seemed a very attractive option, one that set the heart surging — but unfortunately, the logic of the real world was not so simple.
As Luo Yan said, Cecil could not digest all of Typhon — could not digest even a third of it. Typhon was not the wild, backward Southern Frontier, nor the blank slate that Ansell had been after its civil war; within its borders there were no "friends" like the ones in Victoria and Boyu who had been willing to bring an entire aristocratic system over in sincere submission. It was a modern empire that had already entered a period of great industrial development, with a clear and strict bureaucratic system and a populace beginning to be enlightened. That vast land held nearly a hundred million people, a stable ruling order, an independent and complete cultural system, and countless citizens and officials loyal to the Augustan royal house... This was an entirely different concept from Ansell in its day.
None of the above had changed much, even after this war.
On the other hand, Gao Yang was also keenly aware of Cecil's own situation: beneath the surface prosperity brought by advanced technology and transnational trade lurked a nation that had only just escaped the shadow of civil war, with many regions still straining every effort to recover and rebuild. The wounds left by the previous dynasty's civil war and the Calamity of the Gods had only just healed; the gaps in administrative officials and clerks across the nation had only barely been filled even now; the work of purging and rectifying the old nobility and the civil-war profiteers had still not ended; the last food crisis had only just been weathered safely; and the grain currently stored in the national treasury... was not even enough to sustain this war until autumn of this year.
If it truly came to fighting, given Typhon's present situation, the Cecil legions might indeed be able to fight their way to Aldnan — but it could only become a mire deep enough to drag all of Cecil down with it. The Typhonites would not be broken as easily as the Southern Frontier nobles and the nobles of the Holy Spirit Plains had been; sustained low-intensity conflict would likely drag on into next year or even the year after; no new ruling order could be established; the vast new population would far exceed the limits of what the Cecil Ministry of Administration could handle; prolonged expenditure beyond income would exhaust Cecil's thin reserves; and the supply shortages and worsening public order that followed would snowball beyond control.
In more than a dozen projections by the Consular Council, the Neural Network, Naritil, and others, the final conclusions were almost always the same: Typhon could not be fully occupied, nor fully assimilated. Cecil would ultimately withdraw from that mire, and apart from years of economic stagnation or even regression, the only gains for both nations would be hatred lasting some two or three generations, and the collapse of the Supreme Ministry of Administration's prestige.
If this war could have been postponed a few more years, perhaps things would be different — but the real world does not contain so many "ifs."
But this was only half the reason Gao Yang chose to stop this "fire" from spreading further.