After assigning their respective tasks, everyone quickly took action.
The four kingdoms are approaching fiercely, and even the front lines of the Chu Kingdom may have already fought with the enemy.
The situation can be said to be extremely critical.
At this time, there is no time for procrastination.
So after receiving the order and taking the tiger talisman, Lan Cai'er took Han Hu and hurried to the front line of Lingling Mansion that day.
At the same time, orders from Baling also sent various messengers and spiritual eagles brought by Xueyuan to Qianzhong County and the three vassal countries in the southwest through different channels.
Sun Siwen also sat in Baling and began to follow Lu Yuan's orders to coordinate the overall situation, allocate materials and troops to all parties, and play a central role.
As for Lu Yuan, he led Concubine Ling and the 50,000 navy troops from Dongting Lake down by boat towards Jiangxia City on the border of Chuning.
Jiangxia City is the front line of the battlefield. The Chu State has stationed tens of thousands of forbidden troops to guard it all year round. At this time, the number has increased to 100,000 soldiers and horses. It is the first line of defense against the Ning State.
According to the news from the front line, the main vanguard army of Ning State led by Shen Qiu has actually arrived outside Jiangxia City.
Now Ning's army is building a camp outside the city, forging equipment, and preparing for the siege.
The two armies outside the cavalry began to fight on a small scale. Several battles involving more than a hundred people broke out, and the intensity was still rising rapidly.
At the front line, only Lu Yuan and a few disciples responsible for commanding various forbidden armies were guarding the front line.
Although these disciples are also among the direct descendants, their strength, ability, and experience are far behind those of Chu Wei, Li Liang, and others.
Not to mention, compared to those innate generals.
Lu Yuan was naturally worried about letting them guard the front line.
Therefore, after the meeting was over and the mobilization and task assignments were completed, he set off as soon as possible, leading the assembled navy to the front line.
Jiangxia City is close to the water, and can even be said to be a riverside city. There is a dock and a water village outside the city. The two are connected to the city and can be said to be part of the city.
If you want to defend this city, it is not enough to rely on the imperial army with only infantry and cavalry.
The navy also needs to be stationed in the water stronghold to help block the river and intercept the Ningguo navy in order to defend the city.
Therefore, in order to deal with the Ningguo navy, Lu Yuan gathered all the water forces in the country this time, gathering all 50,000 naval forces in order to protect the water passage.
Even just in case, he even called out Chu Wei, who was in seclusion and sprinting for Xiantian, intending to let this disciple who single-handedly created the Chu Navy to command and take charge of this battle.
As for whether this would slow down Chu Wei's progress in breaking through the innate world, Lu Yuan couldn't care less.
Without the navy to protect the river, the Ningren navy could go straight up the Shuo River, block the river, and isolate the north and south of the Yangtze River from Chu State.
They can even use the navy to deliver Ning's infantry and cavalry to various places along the Chu State's coast, go deep into Xichuan and Qianzhong counties, and attack the heart and rear of the Chu State.
One more Xiantian and one less Xiantian. Although it is important for both camps that have invested more than ten Xiantian, it does not affect the overall situation at all.
But if the navy is destroyed or severely damaged, this can affect the overall situation.
Which of the two is more important is naturally self-evident.
At most, during the days when Lu Yuan was with Chu Wei, he could fulfill his responsibilities as a teacher and teach him his innate skills, which could almost make up for the loss of his distracted navy.
…
On the broad river, thousands of large and small warships lined up in a long formation, cutting through the waves and moving towards the lower reaches of the river.
Lu Yuan stood at the bow of the ship, looking at the thick fog in the early morning, and felt a little gloomy for a while.
Jiangxia City is about two hundred miles away from Baling by water. If you go down with the wind like now, you can actually get there in half a day.
If nothing unexpected happens.
At about one or two o'clock in the afternoon, the navy army will arrive at Jiangxia City.
By then, with the addition of these 50,000 navy troops, the number of Jiangxia City's land and water troops will reach 150,000. Coupled with the innate combat power of himself and Ling Fei, it will be enough to make this city impregnable, and it will be difficult for others to overcome it. .
Just because Jiangxia City is stable, it doesn't mean that Dongting County is stable.
Jiangxia City, like the capital Baling City, belongs to Yueyang Prefecture. It is the easternmost waterfront city in the north of Dongting.
But no matter how far this majestic city radiates, it can only preserve an area near Yueyang Mansion, making it difficult to expand on a larger scale.
But the area bordering Dongting County and Ningguo has more than just one Yueyang Mansion.
To the south of Yueyang Prefecture is Changsha Prefecture, which is also a majestic city and the most important grain-producing area in the Dongting Plain. More than 30% of the grain in the county is produced here.
The importance of Changsha Mansion goes without saying.
To the south of Changsha Prefecture is Hengyang Prefecture.
This prefecture is also an important grain-producing area. Although it is not as good as Changsha Prefecture, it also produces about one and a half percent of the county's grain, which is equally important.
Further south from Hengyang Mansion is Luyang Mansion, the place where the Qixing Sect rebelled and half of Lu Yuan's founding base.
Although Hengyang Prefecture is not a major grain-producing area, like Changsha and Hengyang Prefecture, it borders Yuzhang County of Ningguo.
Through these bordering areas, the Ning Army of Yuzhang County can send out large armies at any time to attack the three prefectures.
Therefore, in order to prepare for the three prefectures adjacent to Yuzhang County, Lu Yuan stationed a forbidden army in Changsha and Hengyang respectively, and arranged the last mobile forbidden troops in these two places.
The last remaining Luyang Prefecture also stationed 10,000 county soldiers from Dongting and 6,000 prefecture and county soldiers drawn from various places here to take charge of defense.
But even so, with about 20,000 soldiers and horses in each mansion, and there is not even an innate master in charge, the defense is still too empty.
The situation was so empty that Ningguo only needed to deploy an innate master with fifty or sixty thousand soldiers and horses to break through the defense line of the first government and penetrate into the interior of Dongting County.
And with Ning Guo's strength, it is undoubtedly extremely simple and easy to mobilize such a partial army.
In other words, the entire Dongting County is actually in an extremely empty and dangerous situation.
Lu Yuan assigned four battlefields, including Xiangyang County, Nanhai Kingdom, and Su and Song Kingdoms. The personnel, soldiers and horses were all fully equipped and even luxurious.
In these three battlefields, Chu State almost reached an invincible position.
However, the basis for achieving this kind of invincible position is to sacrifice the defense of Dongting County and put the main battlefield where Lu Yuan is at a power disadvantage.
So looking at the overall situation, Chu State can be said to have great advantages everywhere else, and it can even be said that it has a sure chance of victory.
But only in Dongting County, Chu State is at a disadvantage and may even be defeated at any time.
Lu Yuan deeply understood this and eliminated the risks involved, so he felt deeply worried about it.
He is walking a tightrope now. If he is not careful, he will fall into the abyss, fall into the mud, and lose everything.
This is dangerous.
But if we don't do this, Dongting County may be able to stabilize, but in the other three battlefields, the situation will become unfavorable or be in a stalemate.
Once the stalemate comes to a standstill, the five countries including Chu and Ning will become a pure competition for wealth and resource consumption.
This war will be like the war between Xueyuan and Zhou State. It is purely about fighting, who has more people, who has more money, who has more food, and who can bear more deaths.
Although relying on his own strength and foundation, Lu Yuan believed that he would definitely win this competition.
But the time when this victory will come may be five or six years later, or ten years later.
And the land of Yangzhou will also become devastated and in a mess due to the war, and will no longer be prosperous.
In this case, even if he wins, as the winner, he will not get much benefit. It can only be said that both sides suffer.
Therefore, if we want to achieve enough victory and gain enough benefits, this war cannot last too long and cannot spread too much in scale.
It is best to determine the winner of both camps through a few decisive battles, defeat the enemy in a short period of time, and then seize all the results before the war spreads.
To achieve this goal, conventional methods will naturally not work, and some unconventional means can only be used.
For example.
Abandon and weaken the power of the main battlefield in Dongting County, and then strengthen the power of the other three partial battlefields.
This allows the other three battlefields to determine the winner as soon as possible for the own camp.
After defeating the local enemies and integrating local resources, we can then return to support the main battlefield.
Finally, all the forces were gathered to defeat the enemy that had been weakened three times in one fell swoop and win the battle.
The above are Lu Yuan's real purpose.
In order to achieve this goal, he must hold on to the weakened Dongting County until the other three battlefields return reinforcements to ensure that Dongting County will not be lost.
The competition is whether one's own partial army can defeat the enemy's partial army first, or whether the enemy's main force can defeat one's own main force first. It's all about speed.
It can be said that Lu Yuan is making a huge gamble.
But he gambled willingly.
Because of this bet, what is fought for is not only the ownership of Yangzhou, but also the right to survive in this apocalyptic world, and the hope of whether he can lead Jiuzhou through this disaster in the future.
For this ambitious goal, taking some risks at this time and taking such a gamble is nothing.
If you win, it means that you have your destiny and you are destined to become the master of this apocalypse in the future.
If he loses, it would be a good time to give up the idea of competing in the world as soon as possible and lead his family to find a place to hide for hundreds of years.
Wait until the world's supernatural beings are extinct, and then jump out in the post-apocalyptic world to rebuild the country and strive for hegemony.
In fact, upon closer inspection, the latter path is undoubtedly more comfortable and easier.
But Lu Yuan didn't dare to gamble.
I dare not bet on whether the remaining land in Zhongzhou will continue to survive as it was in ancient times after all four poles of the Nine Provinces are destroyed.
If not, then this world will undoubtedly come to an end and enter a state of collapse.
If Lu Yuan continues to stay in this world, it is equivalent to waiting for death slowly, and the final outcome will be to be destroyed together with this world.
This is not impossible.
So even though he didn't know whether this conjecture would come true, he didn't dare to gamble as long as there was a slight chance.
Therefore, for the sake of the future, we should unify Yangzhou as soon as possible, unify Jiuzhou as soon as possible, and then use the luck of the entire Jiuzhou to extract the last remaining spiritual energy deep in the sky for self-cultivation.
Gather the resources of a world to build up your own cultivation and reach the limit of your strength to cope with possible dangers in the future.
This is the driving force that drives Lu Yuan to continue fighting for hegemony and speed up the pace of unification.
"In the three prefectures of Changsha, Hengyang and Luyang, I have asked Brother Sun to summon 200,000 civilians from the country to garrison in these three places. Counting the original troops and horses, there are almost eighty or ninety thousand people in each prefecture. garrisoned.
Although there are still a few people and the quality is a bit poor, with the number of people here, even if they are facing an innate master and an army of 100,000, they can still last for a month or two.
With this time buffer, we can also calmly deploy troops and horses in the country and rush to support at any time. "
Lu Yuan looked at the ups and downs of the waves, thinking secretly in his heart, and couldn't help but sigh.
There is still too little power available in his hands.
Today, the Chu State has about 720,000 standing troops and horses in all departments.
The composition of these people and horses is roughly divided into six parts.
The first part is naturally the largest and most elite Forbidden Army.
Chu State now has twenty-five forbidden armies, totaling 500,000 soldiers and horses.
Among them, ten groups with 200,000 people are stationed in Dongting County, five groups with 100,000 people are stationed in Hanzhong County, four groups with 80,000 people are stationed in Xiangyang County, two groups with 40,000 people are stationed in Qianzhong County, and one group with 20,000 people is stationed in Xichuan County. county.
There are also three forbidden armies of 60,000 people, following Qingyunzi in his southern expedition to Nanhai Kingdom.
The above is the most important mobile force of the Chu State, and it is also the main force and belongs to the ranks of soldiers.
In addition, there are 10,000 county soldiers in each of the six counties of Chu State. They serve as the permanent garrison troops of the county and are responsible for suppressing internal rebellions and fending off foreign enemies.
Even when there is a shortage of soldiers and horses in other counties, they can temporarily dispatch county soldiers to help support.
Generally speaking, there is no difference between the county soldiers and the imperial army. The only difference is that the county soldiers are mainly responsible for the military affairs of a county and have a fixed defense area, which is equivalent to a local military district.
The Forbidden Army is a mobile force that often travels across the country.
Wherever it is needed, it will be transferred to where it is needed. It is equivalent to the Central Army.
But whether they are county soldiers or forbidden troops, they all belong to the combat soldier sequence. The difference in combat power is not too big and they belong to the same level.
The state of Chu has six counties and a total of 60,000 soldiers. This is the second strongest military force in the country.
In addition to county soldiers, there are also local soldiers and county soldiers.
According to the current regulations in Kyushu, under the central court, there are counties; under the counties, there are prefectures; under the prefectures, there are counties.
Among them, each county has different sizes, more or less prefectures, and different numbers.
There are as many as ten prefectures, such as the complete counties of Dongting and Xichuan, which are divided in this way.
The smaller one is like Xiangyang County, which was occupied by Chu, Zhou and Ning respectively, and was divided into three. Chu occupied four prefectures, and the other two countries each occupied three prefectures.
This is a division at the county level.
Under the county government, the divisions at the prefecture and county level are much more unified.
Basically, each prefecture controls ten counties. There will not be much difference in the number of counties. They are all based on this number.
Therefore, according to this prefecture and county plan, the number of prefecture and county soldiers is basically fixed.
Each prefecture can train a thousand soldiers, and each county can train a hundred county soldiers.
In this case, a prefecture-level unit, with all its troops added up, would have 1,000 prefecture soldiers and 1,000 county troops, totaling 2,000 troops.
These two thousand prefecture and county soldiers are real local soldiers and will basically not be mobilized outside. He is only responsible for local security and small-scale, low-intensity warfare such as the suppression of bandits.
In most major wars, such as national wars and foreign conquests, prefectural and county soldiers will not be used.
The specific reason is not that they don't want to use these soldiers and horses, but that the combat power of the prefecture and county soldiers is really far behind compared with the real soldiers.
Both are standing troops. The monthly military pay for prefecture and county soldiers is three taels of silver, while the monthly salary for combat troops is five taels.
During the New Year and festivals, soldiers from prefectures and counties can receive two festival rewards during the New Year's Day and the Dragon Boat Festival. On top of these two festival rewards, war soldiers have two additional rewards, the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Cold Food Festival.
Moreover, the rewards for county soldiers and those for war soldiers are also very different in terms of treatment and silver.
In extreme cases, the difference may be more than twice.
Therefore, in comparison, the annual income of an ordinary soldier may be more than twice that of a county soldier.
If they participate in the war and have a wartime allowance, Tibetan soldiers can also receive double pay, or one and a half pay, and the income gap with prefecture and county soldiers will be even greater.
Let’s take another example.
Soldiers in prefectures and counties are paid three taels of silver per month, and ordinary laborers in the city can earn two taels of silver if they work hard for a month. If you have some skills, such as being a chef, blacksmith, or carpenter, you can earn three or four taels of silver, not to mention it.
Even including the seasonal rewards, the annual income of a county soldier is just about the same as that of an ordinary cook, blacksmith, or carpenter, and only slightly better than the lowest-level labor boy.
Therefore, even if the wages of the soldiers in the prefecture and county can support the whole family, their lives will be miserable and they will not be very wealthy.
The soldier, on the other hand, can use the same resources to support his whole family on the basis of supporting himself.
With enough money, you can naturally eat and drink freely, practice martial arts, and even buy some medicinal herbs to nourish yourself. Life is not too beautiful.
Such a large income gap naturally resulted in a gap in combat effectiveness between prefectural and county soldiers and combat soldiers, forming two different levels of combat effectiveness between the two arms.
One can only suppress banditry and civil unrest internally and maintain law and order.
The other can compete with other countries externally and put down large-scale rebellions internally, fearing no one.
It is precisely because of these differences that, if not necessary, countries will not bring their prefecture and county soldiers to the frontline battlefields to participate in foreign conquests.
If you want cannon fodder, just recruit more cheap civilians.
If you want to break through the enemy's strength, the prefecture and county soldiers don't have the ability.
This state of neither improvement nor inferiority has also led to a consensus among various countries.
Prefecture and county soldiers are there to maintain local security, and they are not needed for other tasks.
Moreover, the prefecture and county soldiers were only slightly better than the civilian warriors in combat capability, which also made it difficult for them to shoulder heavy responsibilities and could not play a major role at all.
Chu State now has fifty prefectures, which means there are about 100,000 prefectural and county soldiers, which is the third part of the combat strength.
In addition, there are about 5,000 Jinwu guards in Baling, the capital of the country, who are responsible for public security in the city. There are also about five thousand palace guards responsible for the security of the royal city.
These two groups of soldiers and horses totaled 10,000 people, making them the weakest part of the army.
In addition to the above five sequences of the army, the rest is the 50,000 navy.
The above six parts of the sequence, the imperial army, the county soldiers, the prefectural soldiers, the Jinwu guards, the palace guards, and the navy, together constitute the military power of the Chu State, a total of 720,000 troops.
This seems like a lot, but the shelves of Chu Guopu are also big. If you spread them out and use them one by one, there won't be much left.
That's it.
The three remote battlefields were divided into points, one for local security, and one for border defense. In the end, only 210,000 horses fell into Lu Yuan's hands.
Facing the Ningguo army, which was twice the size of several other parties, it was really stretched thin and full of loopholes.
"It's not possible to just hold on for a while now, so we have to pay a little more."
Lu Yuan muttered to himself, and when he mentioned the word "final price", a trace of pain flashed in his eyes, clearly showing reluctance.
