From the twenty-fifth year of Shenwu, the golden age that had lasted for more than a decade seemed to be showing signs of trouble.
Firstly, there were incessant incursions from Barbarian tribes from the north and west into Hanzhong Prefecture.
To ensure the security of the borders, the court had no choice but to dispatch an army of two to three hundred thousand annually, to regularly sweep through the regions of Longxi and Helong, which bordered Hanzhong. Hundreds of thousands of troops and even greater numbers of migrating Barbarians nearly turned the entire Yong West into a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
Each year, millions of Barbarians were killed, but the court fared no better. Tens of thousands of soldiers died in the northwestern frontier over the years, with the injured surpassing one hundred thousand. The losses could only be described as devastating.
