The tenth day of June.
With the constant exchanges of envoys and after a lot of communication, the kings of the Soviet Union and the Song Dynasty each led their carriages to the borders of the two countries. Outside a small city called Hongbi, they built an altar to worship the sky and declared an oath of alliance, which was the conclusion of the alliance. The covenant.
Subsequently, the two countries each withdrew the heavy troops stationed on the border, leaving only local prefecture and county soldiers to maintain public order and no longer be hostile to each other.
The Su State also sent 50,000 elite troops to officially enter the territory of the Song State. After joining the Song State's Divine Sword Army, the 70,000 elite troops went north and stationed themselves at Cangwu Mansion, the northern gateway of Yulin County.
The intention of the two countries is obvious, which is to unite to resist the heavy pressure of Chu State.
This is like a signal.
Following the joint military operations of the Soviet Union and Song Dynasty, the Nanhai Kingdom finally cheered up and spread Latins all over the country. They captured 50,000 strong men and drew out an army of 100,000 people in addition to the original 50,000 standing troops.
However, these 100,000 troops did not go northward. Like the Soviet Union and Song Dynasty, they wanted to defend the enemy from outside the country.
Instead, he directly stationed himself in the capital of Nanhai City, looking like he was determined to defend and refused to go out.
Next is Ning Guo.
After meeting several waves of envoys from the Nanhai Kingdom, Emperor Shen Qiu of the Ning Kingdom used the excuse that southern Xinjiang was unrest and night sickness was frequent and needed to be suppressed with force.
So the Emperor Jianwu announced that he would formally patrol the west, taking 50,000 imperial troops with him to Yuzhang in a mighty manner, preparing to review the soldiers and horses of the camps here, and use the fierce military power to shock the hearts of the rebellious people in the world.
Um.
No need to think too much about Xiaoxiao in Ning Guo's mouth, he is naturally talking about Chu State.
The purpose of Shen Qiu's western tour was also very clear, and he was targeting the Chu State.
Although the name is to review soldiers and horses.
But as we all know, when a large army goes out for an expedition, the general must count the troops and horses, inspect the soldiers, make sacrifices to heaven, and boost morale.
The emperor of Ning State ran to Yuzhang County, and maybe after reviewing it, he directly announced that he would personally take command, and then led an army of hundreds of thousands to the westward expedition.
This is very possible.
After all, with the arrival of Shen Qiu, 600,000 Ningguo troops had gathered at the border between Ning State and Chu State. In addition, including the emperor himself, there were also ten innate masters.
It can be said that in addition to the garrison troops and horses from local counties, there are also the northern border elites who defend the Liang Kingdom.
All the mobile forces that Ning State can mobilize have gathered on the border of Chu and Ning.
As long as the other side starts a war, it will be an overwhelming war against the Chu State, leaving no remaining strength.
Such an attitude has shown that Ning Guo is ready to go to war and start a war that will overwhelm the country.
With the successive mobilization of troops and horses from the Su, Song, Nanhai, and Ning states, 770,000 troops from various countries had gathered in the east and south directions of Chu State and on the borders.
Without exception, these soldiers and horses were all hostile to the Chu State and were vaguely united.
As long as Chu State dares to launch an attack on any party, the remaining three parties will not hesitate to pounce on Chu State from all sides.
This is like pulling one hair and moving the whole body, which is unavoidable.
It can be seen from this that as Chu State continues to expand in recent years, it has put great pressure on surrounding countries.
It can make natural enemies like Su and Song and world enemies like Su and Ning put aside their past grievances and unite together to deal with the same enemy.
Speaking of which, Lu Yuan is considered to be famous throughout history.
…
Countries united together and formed an alliance against Chu.
But the cloud of war did not ignite immediately.
The depressive atmosphere, in addition to continuing to envelope the entire Yangzhou, is still brewing.
Although the outside world has speculated and even made judgments, Chu State will march south.
But in fact, Lu Yuan was not too anxious about this battle.
The reason is also very simple.
The time was not yet ripe at this time, or in other words, he was not completely sure yet.
The so-called lack of confidence does not mean that he has no confidence that he can cope with the pressure of Ning Guo while sending troops to the south.
Although Ningguo is now powerful, it has fourteen innates and an army of 800,000.
Being able to do this is not enough to scare Lu Yuan.
Now Chu State also has ten innates, and its standing army has expanded to 670,000. In addition, there are Li Xiong and the 100,000 vassal state soldiers and horses he commanded.
This kind of strength is almost the same as that of Ningguo.
In a real fight, with the strength of Lu Yuan and the two clones, Chu State actually has an advantage over Ning State in terms of high-end combat power.
Supplemented by a standing army of equal size, Lu Yuan was fully confident that he could block Ning Guo's possible attack while marching south.
Therefore, Ning Guo has nothing to worry about.
What really frightened him was the Jiuzhou Immortal Sect headed by Ziyun Dao.
In today's world, Lu Yuan is already among the small group of people who stand at the top. From outsiders' perspective, they are Taoist-level figures.
But Taoist-level figures don't mean that they can sit back and relax completely.
On the Ningguo side, a figure of the same level is Taoist Master Ziyun.
At the same time, there are also many monks with magical powers in Ziyun Dao.
These people above are all strong enemies with enough strength to threaten Lu Yuan's safety.
Now Ziyundao is obviously in Ning Guo's camp. If Lu Yuan takes action against Ning Guo, or fights with Ning Guo, it is difficult to say whether these monks will directly intervene and help deal with him.
This situation is very likely to happen.
When Lu Yuan thought that he might have to deal with all the monks from an immortal sect, no matter how confident he was, Lu Yuan could not help but feel intimidated.
It is precisely because of this that even if the troops and horses of the Chu State are ready and the food and grass allocated are in place, a southern expedition can be launched at any time.
But with everything ready, he still did not order the attack.
Despite the disturbance from the outside world, all kinds of news spread all over the sky.
The Chu State remained motionless, but continued to gather troops, horses, food and grass, ready to attack at any time.
It has to be said that this posture makes outsiders a little puzzled.
This look of wanting to fight but not wanting to fight made countless people suspicious and confused about what Chu State wanted to do?
The state of Chu's hundreds of thousands of troops without attacking also made the surrounding countries deeply fearful. They were afraid that Chu was up to something else, and in order to protect themselves, they had to gather their armies.
Song, Su, Nanhai, Ning, Liang, Zhou, Dali, Nanzhao...
These countries that bordered Chu State and had conflicts or hatred with Chu State could not help but follow Chu State's move to gather heavy troops, and began to gather more or less troops.
The areas north and south of the Yangtze River have fallen into a strange arms race in disguise.
As soon as this kind of competition started, many people immediately complained.
It is not an easy matter to gather a large number of troops and lure them without attacking them.
To accomplish this, you need to gather a large number of elite soldiers who can be used at any time, as well as a larger number of civilians who can provide various assistance to the elite soldiers.
This alone means that countless manpower has been mobilized. And during the transfer period, the requisitioned people did not produce at all, but purely consumed materials.
This means that massive amounts of materials are being consumed pointlessly.
Just like the state of Chu.
According to what Lu Yuan knew, he mobilized 100,000 vassal troops and 60,000 imperial troops for the southern expedition. In addition, there were 250,000 civilians to transport food and serve these soldiers and horses.
The above totaled 410,000 people, all of whom were in their prime of life and had huge appetites. Adding in the consumption of some livestock, Chu State's daily food expenditure amounted to 10,000 shi of food.
Ten thousand shi of grain per day is equivalent to 300,000 shi per month and 3.6 million shi per year.
This is because the army cannot be stationed and there is no long-distance transportation of food.
If grain is transported hundreds or thousands of miles away, the grain consumption will be doubled, or even multiplied several times, reaching an unimaginable astronomical figure.
This is just pure food consumption.
Lu Yuan mobilized 250,000 civilian men for this battle, which meant that there were 250,000 young and strong men who were the main labor force in the local area.
In order to get enough of these people, Lu Yuan recruited almost all the young men from the six prefectures in the southern part of Dongting County.
Without these people participating in local production and management, it is almost conceivable that without the main productive forces, the food production and commercial activities of the six provinces in southern Dongting will be fatally affected.
This land of six prefectures has seen a sharp reduction in its tax burden this year and is even unable to make ends meet, so it will need central financial subsidies. It is a certainty.
It was a peaceful confrontation, but even before the war started, Chu State's various consumption was already so great.
The same should be true for other countries that were also affected and threatened by the Chu State and had to mobilize their armies to engage in a sit-down confrontation.
Chu State is home to two major grain-producing areas, Jianghan and Dongting, and the Xichuan Plain has been redeveloped after several years of immigration and reclamation, becoming another grain-producing area.
With three major grain-producing areas, as well as the 40 million shi of grain accumulated by the Chu State over the years, Lu Yuan asked himself whether he could sustain the grain consumption of millions of shi each year.
And with the capture of Hanzhong County, the acquisition of 1.6 million local household registrations, and the capture of 300,000 people from Longxi County at the beginning of this year, the total population of Chu State has officially exceeded the 10 million mark, reaching More than 10.7 million yuan.
In terms of population, it has officially reached the standard of a hegemonic country.
With such a large population, the loss of 250,000 people in the local area will not have much impact.
Therefore, if Chu State continues to maintain its current attrition strategy, there will be no problem at all. Even if it lasts for ten years, let alone a year and a half, there will be no problem.
But what Chu can do, other countries may not be able to do.
The Ning State in the east has been at peace for a long time in recent years and has accumulated a lot of wealth. It is also a hegemonic industry. It should not be a problem to compete with the Chu State.
But this is not necessarily true for Su and Song in the south.
The Soviet Union and the Song Dynasty were located in the southern wilderness. The country was already barren, with more mountains than plains, and they were always known for their poverty.
The Song Kingdom is a little better. In the area where the capital Songping is located, there is a Red River Plain, which is barely half a grain-producing land, but it is still not rich.
In the past few years, they followed the Chu State to attack the southwestern Yi, and each of them opened up a lot of territory and established counties.
Expanding territory is a good thing for a country.
It represents strong martial arts and can also increase strategic depth.
It's just that everything has two sides.
When the two countries opened up new territories, they naturally also shouldered the burden of developing new territories.
Thinking about it, Lu Yuan had carried out several million-scale resettlement projects in order to develop Dongting, Qianzhong, and Xichuan counties.
At its peak, the Chu State had to support the livelihood of more than two million immigrants, arrange for them to travel long distances, build houses in their new homes, invest in some farm tools and seeds for their initial production, and provide free food supplies for half a year or even a year. , and a three-year tax holiday.
In addition, heavy troops must be stationed in immigrant areas to clean up wild animals, bandits, local recalcitrant natives, and suppress immigrant unrest.
Which of the above is not extremely resource intensive?
In the most difficult times, in order to feed these immigrants, develop new territories, and maintain local garrisons, Chu State spent tens of millions of stones of food and an equal amount of silver every year.
In order to support these consumption, Lu Yuan invested all the production of the country's three counties and seventeen prefectures and more than six million people into this immigration project. In the end, he even had to rely on plundering outside to barely support it. Come down.
As a result, there is now a prosperous atmosphere of achieving hegemony after all the hardships.
But when Chu State had this foundation to support immigrants, where did the two small countries of Su and Song come from?
The people of Su State have always been in poverty due to frequent turmoil and wars, and have always been known for their poverty.
Nowadays, it has to bear the immigration of half a county and four prefectures, as well as support 50,000 soldiers and horses in the country, as well as a large number of dignitaries. It has already reached its limit.
The Song Dynasty was a little better. With the support of the Red River Plain, it could barely sustain the consumption of immigrants.
But in addition to immigration, the Song Dynasty also adopted a policy of strengthening the army.
For a small country with a population of two million to support a standing army of 150,000, it can be called a military force.
Various policies are simply a replica of the original Changsha Kingdom.
Lu Yuan knew how poor the treasury was when he was in Changsha Kingdom, to the extent that a mouse could starve to death.
In order to grow stronger, the Song Dynasty adopted the same policy, which rapidly increased its national power but also made the country impoverished.
Therefore, after playing the sit-down and confrontation game with Lu Yuan, these two countries soon ran out of treasury, lacked money and food, and became unsustainable.
In just two months, by the beginning of August, the 70,000-strong coalition army that had been temporarily cobbled together because of the alliance between the Soviet Union and Song Dynasty quickly began to fall apart due to lack of money and food.
If it were not an emergency, a batch of money and food allocated from the Nanhai Kingdom would have helped the two countries renew their blood.
I am afraid that the alliance between the two countries will officially collapse as a result, completely turning into a name and in name only.
But even so, Nanhai State's national power is limited and it is impossible to support the two countries endlessly.
After procrastinating for a long time, one day, due to lack of money and food, the Three Kingdoms had to withdraw their troops and give up the confrontation with Chu.
Although Ning Guo had learned the news, they knew that the situation of the coalition forces was not good.
But the two countries of Ningguo and Susong were thousands of miles apart, and there were many mountains in between.
In this case, even if Ningguo had enough food, it would cost a stifling amount to transport it to the Soviet Union and Song Dynasty.
Under long-distance transportation, it can supply 70,000 troops to the two countries, which is almost as much as supporting an army of 700,000.
Ning Guo couldn't bear such a huge expense.
Moreover, it is not worth it to spend so much money for such a few troops.
With so much money and food wasted, it would be better to recruit another 200,000 to 300,000 soldiers and horses in the country.
This can be regarded as strengthening one's own strength and spending money and food on one's own family.
Therefore, the Soviet Union and Song Dynasty, which were thousands of miles away, were beyond the reach of Ning State and could not help.
It's just the land of Lingnan, and the location is also very important.
Not only can it contain a large number of soldiers and horses of Chu State, but it can also hold Chu State back from another front.
Maintaining the existence of Su, Song, Nanhai and other countries can also cut off the Chu State's attempt to invade Lingnan and obtain the manpower and material resources here.
So there is no room for error here.
Under internal and external embarrassment, the four-nation coalition forces were unable to sit still and were wondering whether to launch an attack and start the war on their own.
Since the Chu State is not coming, I will go there myself.
Don’t you believe that if the four countries join forces and use millions of soldiers, they still can’t defeat Chu?
However, although this proposal has been put forward many times, in recent years, Chu's military power has become too strong, and Lu Yuan's record has been too impressive. Countries are afraid of him and Chu's strength, and they all hesitate and dare not take the initiative to attack.
The four countries all wanted other members to be the first to take action, so as to test the Chu State's details.
But everyone is making this kind of wishful thinking, and no one wants to suffer a loss.
With each other scheming, this plan can only exist on paper.
However, despite this, both the coalition and Lu Yuan knew very well.
This current state of confrontation cannot continue forever.
Before the coalition forces, or the Lingnan Three Kingdoms within the coalition forces, could no longer support, they would definitely launch an early attack on Chu State.
The Chu State's hope of winning this war by using its wealth to kill its opponents was ultimately just an extravagant hope.
Those enemies are not fools, and they cannot just sit back and wait for death, watching Chu defeat its allies one by one, grow stronger step by step, and then devour them all.
The only uncertain factor now is how long the Lingnan Three Kingdoms can last, or how long their patience lasts?
To this.
Lu Yuan estimated that with the financial resources of the Three Kingdoms, they might be able to survive for another two to three months at most, or even shorter.
Within a month or two, they will be unable to bear it anymore and launch an attack in advance.
On his side, he actually couldn't help it and wanted to launch a southern expedition.
Because as time passed, the four-nation alliance became more and more closely connected, and there was a faint tendency to form an alliance headed by Ning State to jointly target Chu State.
At the same time, the military strength within the four countries is also expanding rapidly. The longer time passes, the stronger these enemies will become.
Don't break their alliance in advance before they are fully integrated and their military strength reaches its limit, and take the lead in attacking and destroying several weak forces while they are weak.
Then when the alliance grows and Chu wants to attack them again, the price he needs to pay will be much higher than it is now.
Therefore, Lu Yuan also couldn't bear it any longer and wanted to take the lead in launching a war.
But as mentioned in the preface, the biggest variables in Jiuzhou are that the major immortal sects are still there, and Ziyang Dao is still there, so he can only resist the thought of launching troops under fear and continue to wait for the opportunity.
Fortunately, after waiting for two months, this opportunity finally came.
In August of the 10th year of Shenwu, two pieces of news reached Baling one after another.
The first is the Xueyuan side. Thanks to the benefits of the joint offensive this spring, the Xueyuan people sent envoys to invite the Chu State to attack the Zhou State together in the grain plundering battle this autumn.
Then there is Feishuang Dao.
Taoist master Mo Li led his disciples to Baling to bid farewell to Lu Yuan.
As time passed, the one-year period finally arrived.
These major immortal sects in Jiuzhou are actually preparing to go north to Beiming Youdu as promised to hold a major event that will lead to world-wide ascension.
