Time passed very quickly. In the blink of an eye, three years had passed since Zhong Yu unified the domestic forces, completely brought all the sectarian forces under his command, and completed the true centralization of monarchy.
In the past three years, many things have happened in various parts of the world, but generally they have been relatively stable, and nothing has happened that shocked other countries.
However, the whole world is still too far for Zhong Yu. He only cares about the Ming Dynasty and the situation in the countries surrounding the Ming Dynasty.
After three years of recuperation, the originally somewhat mediocre Emperor Ming worked hard to rectify some corrupt officials in the country. Although the problem was not fundamentally solved, it also made these corrupt officials look much better when they were corrupt. They were not as corrupt as before. So cruel.
And because facing the crisis of national subjugation, the Ming Emperor became ruthless and took out a large amount of money and food from his private treasury to train an army of 300,000 people.
This army is well-equipped, well-trained, and relatively strong. They have all reached the peak of the third level of cultivation. There are even 50,000 people who are already at the fourth level.
The equipment is incredibly powerful and fully reflects the Ming Dynasty's heritage as an empire.
You must know that Zhong Yu plundered all the heavens and worlds, and plundered countless resources before he could barely form a 15,000-strong army of mystic masters.
Even after suppressing the sect, collecting capable disciples from the sect, and absorbing a group of wandering strong men, they could only organize a world army of 40,000 people.
These are the teams that Zhong Yu reluctantly pulled out at the expense of his speed in conquering all the worlds and at the risk of being attacked by sects around the empire.
It can be seen that the Ming Dynasty, a mere terminal empire with less than half of its territory before the war, was able to easily recruit a new world army of 50,000 people, and its strength suddenly reached the level that Zhong Yu had painstakingly built.
And even this is not the entire strength of the Ming Dynasty. In addition to the 300,000 new troops, the Ming Dynasty also has an old army with a scale of 1.2 million, including many of the fourth level.
All in all, there are about 100,000.
From this, we can see the gap between Yuguo, an emerging country on this continent, and the established empires in the world.
This is just the Ming Dynasty that is coming to an end. If it were replaced by other empires such as Jin, Korea, and Wei, which had not experienced internal strife, encountered external disasters, and suffered great losses in strength, their strength would probably be even more terrifying.
After three years of rectification of the civil service, the public voice of the Ming Dynasty has recovered a lot, and the people's lives have become easier. They are no longer as complaining as before, and may rebel at any time.
And because of the emperor's cruelty, he donated his inner treasury. In addition, the princes, nobles, local gentry and officials who had just been closely related to the Ming Dynasty donated money one after another, adding some surplus to the Ming Dynasty's treasury, which had been completely exhausted, and had this small reserve of money and food.
Coupled with the completion of the training of 300,000 new troops, it gave the emperor and his ministers a great sense of security and confidence.
Therefore, the Ming Emperor, who felt that his strength was almost restored and had some spare power to restore the lost territory, made up his mind to go to war.
Moreover, the target of the war was not the Jin Empire, which was just around the corner, nor the imperial kingdom established by Zhong Yu, a rebel who was considered a soft persimmon by the Ming Dynasty.
Except for the fact that the north is close to the Jin Dynasty, the 500,000 border troops in the remaining two provinces are immobile. In addition, the 300,000 border troops in the west need to defend the enemy and cannot be moved lightly.
The remaining 400,000 old troops, excluding 100,000 forbidden troops, will stay in the imperial capital, and 100,000 troops will stay in the local area to maintain basic public order. The remaining 200,000 troops were all mobilized, and with a little training, they formed a 500,000-strong southern expedition army with 300,000 new troops. The target is Jiangdu City, which is located in the six southern provinces and is the imperial capital of the Imperial Kingdom.
When the news of the Ming Dynasty's rebellion in the south came, the entire Ming Dynasty region was shaken, and they all discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the two armies, the outcome, and what impact the war would have on the people everywhere.
What the local wealthy families are concerned about is whether they will choose to surrender after the Ming Dynasty army comes, or wait and see
As for helping Yu Guo resist the Ming Dynasty's attack, it was just a joke. Even Zhong Yu didn't dare to think so.
Zhong Yu ruled this land for only 45 years, which was very short. Compared with the thousands of years of rule of the Ming Dynasty, his influence on the local area was negligible.
What's more, everyone with a clear eye can see that the Ming Dynasty has an absolutely overwhelming advantage over this newly established imperial kingdom.
Not only does it have quantitative and qualitative advantages in the lower-level troops, but it also does not lag behind in terms of high-level combat capabilities.
The most important thing is that the Ming Dynasty has an eighth-level master sitting in charge, but the opposite Yuguo does not.
This is the most important thing.
Unless Yuguo also has an eighth-level person, no matter how much he says, it is just nonsense. As long as the eighth-level powerhouses of the Ming Dynasty take action, all the resistance of Yuguo will be in vain. This is because absolute quality overwhelms quantity.
All of a sudden, all the forces in Yuguo made frequent moves and began to communicate with each other, trying to find a way out for themselves.
However, they still dare not make big moves. After all, with the threat of Zhong Yu's previous annihilation of those sects, these forces do not dare to act rashly. They were afraid that before the Ming Dynasty came, they would be eliminated by Zhong Yu as an internal danger. At that time, it would be too late to cry.
In fact, the Ming Dynasty's invasion, or counter-rebellion, had been anticipated by everyone in the country. Now when things really happened, although there was a certain amount of fear, there was no panic overall.
Just think about it. For today's Ming Dynasty, whether it is the Jin Dynasty in the north, which has further strengthened due to the annexation of the five provinces of the Ming Dynasty, or other surrounding empires that have not lost much strength and ensured the basic strength of the dynasty.
Under the circumstances where the eighth-level powerhouses have agreed with each other not to interfere in the military politics of other countries at will, the current broken Ming Empire cannot be moved by the military power of each country alone.
So after thinking about it, whether it was for its own interests or to maintain the orthodoxy of the dynasty, the Ming Dynasty would definitely take action against the weak and rebel country.
However, no matter how powerful Ming Dynasty was, Zhong Yu, who had an extraordinary background and was extremely confident in himself, could not just surrender and let Ming Dynasty slaughter him.
In order to deal with the Ming Dynasty's attacking army, they finally began to mobilize domestic troops and actively prepared to fight.
And they constantly ordered officials from all over the country to guard the generals, to maintain local stability during wartime, to ensure that local people could live a normal life, and to prevent powerful sects from causing trouble and secretly colluding with the Ming Dynasty.
(End of chapter)