After seeing through the reality of the Zhou Kingdom, Lu Yuan's fear of this great Northern Empire was greatly reduced.
After all, the situation is clear.
Zhou Guo did not receive the full support of Yu Chan Dao. Now his potential has been tapped to the limit.
There are ten innate men and 1.3 million standing soldiers. The above is the entire strength of the Zhou Kingdom.
Even if I dig further later, I won't be able to unearth much power.
What's even worse is that Zhou Guo's current wealth is still being rapidly consumed.
On the western front of the Zhou Kingdom, in the Helong County, every spring and autumn, wars with hundreds of thousands of Tibetan people would break out.
Although relying on their own strength, the Zhou people were able to defeat the Fan people many times and win.
But even if we win every time, how can there be no death in a war?
At the end of each battle, the Zhou Kingdom would lose tens of thousands, or even more than 100,000 soldiers and horses.
Adding up these losses, Zhou had lost more than 300,000 soldiers in Helong in the nearly six years of fighting with the Tibetan people.
The above number is just the number of deaths.
More than the number of deaths, there were as many as 500,000 disabled people.
Even though the majority of these casualties were temporarily recruited local warriors, there were still as many as two to three hundred thousand elite soldiers among them.
The sudden loss of 200,000 to 300,000 elite soldiers, more than 500,000 young and strong warriors, and more than 800,000 casualties were an unbearable loss even for the Zhou Kingdom.
You must know that after the Zhou Kingdom lost Hanzhong County, the current total population of the country is only about 17 million.
Eight hundred thousand people are already equivalent to one-twentieth of the opponent's population, and they are also the most elite young people among the population.
Having lost so many elite people one after another, not only is it about the same as the Zhao State after fighting the Changping War, but it is also almost the same as the Qin State after fighting the Changping War.
During the Northern Expedition of Yue State, Lu Yuan and other coalition forces annihilated more than 200,000 soldiers and horses of Zhou State in one battle, which greatly discouraged Zhou State and made him dare not look south again.
In the end, it took more than ten years of cultivation before he recovered.
Now the Zhou Kingdom has lost more than 300,000 elite soldiers, and the remaining young men also number more than 500,000. The casualties have far exceeded that of the Northern Expedition.
Such a huge loss would not mean that the country's destiny would be lost in the first battle, but it would still be a serious loss of vitality. Without more than ten or twenty years of training, it would definitely be impossible to breathe.
But is there still time for Zhou Guo to cultivate?
At this time, the Tibetan people received help from the Chu State. This spring's invasion of Helong County was much larger than in previous years, with more than 700,000 troops dispatched.
Behind the Zhou people, there were also Chu troops who penetrated directly into the heart and carried out destruction.
Conservative estimate.
Even if the Zhou Kingdom could win this battle and push back the Tibetan people and the Chu Kingdom, its own losses would eventually be estimated to exceed one hundred thousand, which was another bloodletting.
Every attack on the two counties of Helong was a loss of vitality for the Zhou Kingdom and its own weakness.
Faced with such a dilemma, Zhou State could not give up the two counties of Helong.
Because if these two counties are lost, Guannei County, where the capital is located, will no longer have a barrier, and the most elite and core territory in the country will face direct threats from the Tibetan people.
By then, the Tibetan people will have gained the land of Helong and their strength will become stronger, and it will be even more difficult for the Zhou people to deal with it.
This is a step back, step by step, and ultimately a dead end with no way out.
Therefore, no matter how difficult the battle in Helong was, the opponent could not give in, because if he backed down, Zhou would be almost half-stepped into the coffin.
But with such a strong hold, although Zhou Guo maintained the situation, he was constantly bleeding and losing his own vitality.
Originally, relying on Zhou's great family and business, he was confident that he could kill those Tibetan people even if he continued to let blood.
But at this time, Chu State suddenly intervened and got involved in this chaos. Then the general trend, which had been gradually becoming clear, suddenly became complicated and unpredictable.
Zhou Guo's must-win situation has become unpredictable, adding countless variables.
Even more disadvantageous is.
In addition to the Helong War, in the past two years, the Wei State in the north seemed to have suddenly intensified the border conflict with Zhou State in Shuofang County due to the cold wave.
Although there were conflicts between the two countries in Shuofang County in the past, the conflicts were only maintained on a scale of tens of thousands of people, and there was basically no tendency to expand.
But since the year before last, the number of soldiers and horses that Wei invaded Shuofang County suddenly increased a lot.
The two countries often see wars involving tens of thousands of people here. Even last autumn, a war involving 100,000 people broke out.
One hundred thousand soldiers and horses, this is equivalent to a national war for a hegemonic country.
That is to say.
In Shuofang County, the State of Wei officially entered into a national war-level war with the State of Zhou.
Although this national war did not last long, it ended in just one or two months, and it did not break out again later.
But the impact of this battle is far-reaching.
Because this means that after several years of adjustments, Wei State is officially ready to gather the strength of the whole country and start its journey south.
The national war last year was just a pre-dinner snack, a little test.
Once the Zhou Kingdom's reality is clear, the enemy will head south brazenly and set off a massive southern expedition.
This is not alarmist.
The geographical location of Wei State determines that the other party will make this inevitable choice.
The large state occupied by the Wei State was Yanzhou, one of the nine states, and one of the three states and three regions that were officially destined to be covered by Arctic ice and snow.
The Antarctic poisonous fire that Yangzhou, where Lu Yuan is located, will face may not break out until the Arctic cold wave completely arrives and the north-south imbalance occurs. There will be a buffer of hundreds of years in the middle.
But the Arctic cold wave that Yanzhou is facing is now erupting.
It is estimated that part of the three northernmost outer regions has been designated as the eternal ice realm, and has completely become an extinct realm for all living beings.
For Lu Yuan, disaster is in the future.
But for the creatures in the three states and three regions in the north, the disaster is now and happening.
Especially for the three people from the outside world, the cold wave has descended on the land where they live. These people either died in the ice and snow, or they have already begun to migrate with difficulty, heading south.
On the Wei side, although Lu Yuan could not reach out so far for the time being, he did not know much about the situation in the country.
But based on the available information, he could still estimate that the other party should have begun to welcome the first wave of disaster victims from outside the country, just like Zhou State.
It is estimated that the border counties in the north of Wei State, like the Helong County of Zhou State, have begun to face waves of cold waves.
The outer territory bordering Wei State is the northern grassland.
Most of the human races living in this outer domain are nomadic tribes.
Although the population of those nomadic tribes is not large, the combined number of hundreds of thousands of miles of grassland is estimated to have a population of tens of millions.
Tens of millions of herdsmen migrated south, and the herdsmen's cavalry alone could number millions.
The mighty cavalry marched south. Even though most of them were herdsmen with average combat power, the combined force could give Wei a good meal.
Although with the power of Wei State, it will definitely be able to stop this migration of herdsmen in the end, and wipe out or integrate all these southern tribesmen.
But Yanzhou, where Wei State is located, is also in the extreme area of cold wave release.
Now it is the herdsmen on the grasslands who are suffering, driven by the cold wave and forced to migrate south.
After the entire grassland turned into snow, the next one to suffer would be Wei.
In as early as 20 to 30 years, or as slowly as in 50 or 60 years, the cold wave will approach the Yanzhou area.
Once the cold wave comes to Yanzhou, within the same twenty or thirty years, the entire Yanzhou will follow the steps of the grassland and gradually transform into a country of ice.
In other words, there is not much time left for Wei now.
Maybe in twenty or thirty years, maybe in fifty or sixty years, the cold wave is coming.
Within these days, the Wei State must make changes and lead the people of the country to break through to the south and seize a piece of living land.
This time is very tight.
Wei did not have much time to hesitate and prepare, and had to make a choice immediately.
It seems now.
The other party's choice is already obvious, that is to continue heading south. Defeat his old rival Zhou State and seize the opponent's territory so that Wei State can stay safe from the cold wave.
The national war that broke out last year was a harbinger of Wei's breakthrough and migration to the south.
As a hegemonic country that also dominates a state, a national war involving a mere 100,000 people is just an appetizer.
After the pre-meal snacks are finished, the big meal will soon be served.
At that time, tens of millions of Wei soldiers, and even those grassland tribesmen, will turn into a torrent from the north, rushing towards Zhou State in wave after wave. They will not stop until they completely defeat the opponent and occupy the opponent's land. .
But by that time, the Zhou Kingdom fell.
The next target for these remnants of the cold wave in the north may be the Kingdom of Chu.
If that day comes, Chu State may have to fight them a few times before it can defend its territory.
Therefore, Lu Yuan actually did not have any malicious intentions towards Zhou State.
If there is a need in the future, perhaps we can also support the other party and use Zhou State as the northern barrier of Chu State to block the threat of cold wave immigrants from the north.
The likes and dislikes of relations between countries are never fixed.
Only interests and situations are the guides for making choices.
Lu Yuan has been deeply aware of this and is familiar with it during his years as king.
Of course, all of the above are just speculation.
There has not yet been a war between Zhou and Wei. At most, there are only some small country wars.
Whether that will turn out to be the case remains to be seen.
But even so, the war has reached the Shuofang front on the scale of a small country's war, and the Zhou people are losing tens of thousands of soldiers and horses every year.
The two counties of Heyang in the east were better off. The scale of the war between Zhou and Liang was not large, and there were even very few frictions and conflicts.
Although the two countries have stationed heavy troops on the border, they are very restrained and have no intention of expanding the war. They still maintain a certain degree of rationality.
But even so, in the two battlefields of the Western Front and the Northern Front alone, the number of Zhou's soldiers who were killed or injured each year was more than 200,000, and the scale was still gradually expanding.
According to this trend, if the two-front battlefield continues for ten years, Zhou Guoguang's casualties on the battlefield will exceed two to three million.
Such a number is basically equivalent to all the men in Zhou Kingdom dying on the battlefield.
It can be seen from this that how bad the situation faced by Zhou State, which faced two waves of migration from the north and the west at the same time, was.
It's no wonder that Yuchandao is not optimistic about the other party at all even though he is in the Zhou Kingdom and refuses to make a heavy investment.
This is simply because the international situation faced by Zhou State is actually the worst in the world.
There are the Wei State and the grassland herders in the north, the Xiliang and Xueyuan people in the west, the Qingzhou overlord Liang State in the east, and the newly rising Chu State in the south.
The four enemies above are all capable of dispatching millions of troops, and no one of them is at a disadvantage compared to the Zhou Kingdom.
At this time, Zhou State was one against four, facing four opponents of the same level with the power of one country. No matter how you looked at it, the future was bleak and worrying.
Anyone who has the slightest sense in Yuchan Taoism and has the slightest hope for the future cannot pin the rise and fall of his own Taoism on the State of Zhou.
Now, to be able to support a divine general who protects the Dharma of Zhou State is because of the friendship between his fellow countrymen, and he is extremely benevolent and righteous.
In the eyes of the wise people in the world, the Zhou Kingdom has already been eliminated from the future competition for hegemony in Zhongzhou.
Even the defeat of this hegemonic country may be within these twenty years.
At this time, it seems that martial arts are brilliant, but everything is just a reflection of the light. When the last trace of vitality is exhausted, it will be the fall of the Yongzhou overlord.
This is destiny and cannot be reversed by human power.
Lu Yuan saw through this hint of destiny, so after exposing the reality of Zhou State, he sent a message to Huang Xuan, asking him not to go too far into Longxi, and after plundering some people, he could withdraw to Hanzhong.
The Kingdom of Zhou was destined to be defeated.
Faced with the situation of being besieged from all sides, no matter how unwilling the opponent is, it will be difficult to reverse the situation.
But for Chu State, Zhou State's premature defeat was not a good thing.
If the Zhou Kingdom were to perish, the greatest possibility would be that one country would be divided into six parts.
That is, the Fan people and the Xiliang Kingdom captured the two counties of Helong, the Wei Kingdom captured the Shuofang and Guannei counties of the Zhou Kingdom, the Zhao Kingdom captured part of the Henan County, the Liang Kingdom captured part of the Henan County and Nanyang County, and the Chu Kingdom captured the Zhou Kingdom. The three prefectures of Xiangyang County controlled by the state.
The above divisions of territory are all based on speculations about the distance between Zhou State and other countries, connected by mountains and rivers.
From this speculation, it can be seen that the State of Zhou was destroyed, and among the six powers, the State of Chu could gain the least benefit.
For the current state of Chu, the land of three mere prefectures is better than nothing and does not make much sense.
On the contrary, the other several states, after seizing the territory of the Zhou State, their strength has expanded, and they pose a far greater threat to the Chu State than the Zhou State.
Liang Guo captured the two counties of Zhongzhou occupied by Zhou State, which will further complete the puzzle of Zhongzhou's territory and strengthen its strength. In the future, it will be even more difficult for Chu State to conquer Zhongzhou during the Northern Expedition.
The Wei State has seized the core of the Zhou State, which will directly suppress the Hanzhong and Xiangyang counties of the Chu State, and directly pose a huge threat to the defense pressure on the northern border of the Chu State.
There may be no peace in the entire Northern Territory from now on.
The Tibetan people captured the two counties of Helong and temporarily had a place to live. From now on, their dependence on the Chu State will be greatly eased.
In the future, if Chu wants to manipulate the other party, it will not be as easy as now.
Even after these Tibetan people have a firm foothold in the Helong land, they may still go to Longwang Shu, thinking of breaking into Hanzhong County and Xichuan County, and seizing these territories to expand their own living space.
The only one that did not pose a threat to the Chu State was the Zhao State far away in Jizhou.
However, Zhao and Chu are too far apart, and it takes months and a half to contact each other at a time. There are also various countries in the middle that are blocking each other. Even if Chu wants to join forces with each other, the efficiency is too low.
Therefore, to sum up carefully, for the Chu State, it would be more beneficial for the Chu State to maintain the existence of the Yongzhou overlord if the Zhou State were to perish.
At least.
The Zhou Kingdom cannot be destroyed until Lu Yuan unifies Yangzhou, integrates the land south of the Yangtze River, and has the strength to make the Northern Expedition.
So now, it is okay to bleed Zhou Guo and let the Yongzhou overlord gradually weaken, while Chu State lies on its wounds to absorb nutrients and strengthen itself step by step.
When it finally grows up and has enough strength, it will work with the surrounding ferocious beasts to carve up this weak giant and grab the most delicious pieces of fat from the giant's body.
Before achieving this goal, the Zhou State cannot be destroyed. If necessary, the Chu State can even help the other party to make this northern barrier last longer.
So adhering to this idea, Lu Yuan also made appropriate adjustments to his strategy against Zhou.
Think of it as a barrier, mainly weak, and you can also support a little or two when necessary.
This will be the strategy for Zhou in the future.
…
May 13th, the 10th year of Shenwu.
The elite troops from the northern border of Zhou State arrived in the hinterland of Longxi County, and the vanguard fought against the Chu army that invaded this area.
The two armies fought hard. The Zhou army had many soldiers, but the Chu army was defeated. It was difficult to defeat the large number and could not help but retreat.
Then Huang Xuan followed Lu Yuan's strategy and took advantage of the defeat to withdraw his troops hundreds of miles away, losing most of the many prefectures and counties in Longxi he had previously occupied.
Then he sent envoys to the Tibetan people to inform the Zhou people of the arrival of reinforcements and that the Chu State was preparing to withdraw.
Then, without waiting for the Fan people to respond and giving up many of the occupied territories, Huang Xuan led his troops to fight with the Zhou reinforcements, repelling them and curbing the Zhou people's arrogance.
Finally free, Chu Jun took the last group of Zhou people who had been trapped and retreated back to Hanzhong County along the Yangguan Trail.
At this point, the Chu army's battle out of Longxi finally came to an end with Chu bringing 300,000 Longxi people back to Hanzhong.
Not long after the Chu army retreated, the Tibetan people were still unwilling to give up the great results they had achieved.
After He Basheng finally gathered the reinforcements, he seized the opportunity and spread the flames of revenge on these Tibetan people.
In several consecutive battles, more than 200,000 Tibetan soldiers and horses were annihilated one after another, and these Tibetan bandits were severely damaged.
However, despite heavy losses, during this spring raid, the Tibetan people also gained millions of stones of grain from the Zhou people.
After these foods were transported back to the tribes, minus the number of people who died in the battle, it was enough for many tribes in the snowy fields to breathe a sigh of relief, and the famine was greatly alleviated.
This summer, fewer people will die.
It was at this time.
As the Helong War came to an end, and when the Chu army returned to Hanzhong with the Zhou people, Lu Yuan also took advantage of the situation and issued an edict to move the 300,000 Zhou people who had escaped to Xichuan to enrich the local population.
At the same time, the three Northern Expedition forbidden troops stationed in Hanzhong for half a year were also commanded by Qing Yunzi and officially returned to Beijing.
Now the war in the north is over, Hanzhong is stable, and the threat from Zhou has been lifted.
As for the Ning Kingdom to the east, Lu Yuan also personally led troops and horses to defend it. There were ten forbidden troops from Dongting County, 50,000 naval troops, as well as local soldiers from various prefectures and counties, and nearly 300,000 standing troops, which was enough to protect them.
Now we just have to wait for Qing Yunzi to return with the 60,000 troops from the Northern Expedition, and the 100,000 princes' troops led by Li Xiong to arrive in Dongting. Based on these 160,000 troops, we can take advantage of the situation to form the Southern Expedition Army.
Waiting until autumn at most, Chu State can launch a southern expedition and unify Lingnan.
