((I spent about an hour typing up a really nice and long post. It got deleted. So if this is shorter than you'd like please have mercy.))

Within a half century of the foundation of the Reshi Dynasty the population had more than recovered from the Drastic Flood mere decades before. It is thought that around two hundred thousand died in the Drastic Flood, and that in the five decades after the waters retreated up to four hundred thousand people were born, conquered, or peacefully assimilated in the Reshi Dynasty under Saanbang. His success in turning the Aud-Rekit into an empire can be attributed somewhat to his competence as Emperor, somewhat to the fact he was completely willing to utilize intelligent peasants and nobles alike, but mostly to his willingness to immediately adopt and deploy new technologies. Bronze and the written "word" from the eastern Yang culture, along with domestic develops nuts such as surface irrigation and plows, gave the greatest contributions to Reshi recovery. In fact, only twenty years after he rose to power, Emperor Saanbang was in such a strong political and military positions that he was able to embark on the first coordinated conquests Rei had ever seen. Gathering an army of ten thousand men whose spearheads and axes "glistened with the light of the Sun", known to be using bronze weapons (this comparison of bronze to the Sun would continue for millennia, and is the reason that to this day the Reinese Emperor wears bronze ornaments and uses bronze parade weapons). These ten thousand men marched south into the lands occupied by the Guhuo tribes, and within the year the regions estimated fifty thousand people were under the Reshi yoke. According to The Book of Histories, laborers were drafted to construct roads and integrate the Guhuo people and settlements into the Reshi administration. Five years later Saanbang is said to have taken these same men and marched to the Fosho settlements along the Tsywena River and demanded their immediate surrender to him. They accepted and Saanbang took his army deeper into their territory. The Book of Histories* says not a single man was killed in the Surrender of the Fosho, but this is yet to be confirmed (and likely never will be) through archeological evidence. The point is, though, that an entire culture "peacefully" assimilated into the Reshi state. Perhaps they were mostly convinced to do so by the mass of experienced men Saanbang commanded, but one cannot help but think that the supposed prosperity of the Emperor's subjects played a role.

Map of the Conquest of the Guhuo (furthest south) and Surrender of the Fosho