“But I don’t understand,” she said. “Why have the shamans disappeared? Wouldn’t the Red Emperor be all the more powerful for having shamans in his army?” “No. In fact, the opposite is true. The creation of an empire requires conformity and uniform obedience. It requires teachings that can be mass-produced across the entire country. The Militia is a bureaucratic entity that is purely interested in results. What I teach is impossible to duplicate to a class of fifty, much less a division of thousands. The Militia is composed almost entirely of people like Jun, who think that things matter only
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