Chapter 346: The tacit understanding between officials and thieves, fighting against the world's number one general
"You Shilu."
Suidezhou City is now the temporary headquarters of the Fuxing Army within the Great Wall.
In the meeting hall of the City Lord's Mansion, which had been newly renovated by a large number of craftsmen, Hongmei said to You Shilu, "Your application to leave the city has been approved by the commander-in-chief."
"Since you have a brother serving as a general in Ning Town, our Military Intelligence Department has strictly blocked any news about your You Family Army, and the outside world does not know that you have joined our Fuxing Army."
"We spread the rumor that all the soldiers of your You Family Army died in battle for their country, so your brother You Shiwei's You Family members were not blamed by the court."
"The commander-in-chief has approved your request to leave the country and take charge of the Dongtao Plain. He has also issued an order to form a main battle corps with the 20,000 soldiers of your You Family Army as the main body."
"This army is called the Taotie Army, and the size of its combat troops is also 90,000."
"Our military will reorganize the organization of the Taotie Corps and appoint some of the recently emerged Qi Refining Realm geniuses to serve as officers at all levels of the Taotie Corps."
"In our Renaissance Army, we do not allow the emergence of private armies that fight on their own. I hope you can understand."
"The 70,000 warrior recruits are already waiting for orders in the military camp near the base camp outside the Great Wall. You can take the 20,000 You family soldiers who have completed the training and go north on a large fleet this afternoon to the military headquarters at the base camp to receive the 70,000 warrior recruits."
"There are countless large and small Tartar tribes around the Dongtao Plain where our Fuxing Army is entrenched. There are enough for you to use the training method of fighting instead of training to train the Taotie Corps that you are forming into an elite cavalry army that has experienced hundreds of battles."
"In the large new recruit camp directly under the headquarters, 180,000 spiritual beasts and horses, as well as 90,000 sets of spiritual weapons and magic tools are ready. You can just go and receive them."
Hongmei's tone became solemn when she said this. "You Shilu, please remember firmly from now on that the military rules and discipline of our Fuxing Army are very strict. Anyone who breaks the law will be targeted by the omnipresent Ministry of Internal Affairs personnel, and then they will be dealt with strictly according to the rules without any mercy."
"The lightest punishment would be expulsion from the army, and in more serious cases, even death and extermination of the clan!"
"You must remember the military rules and regulations firmly and never slack off or violate them at any time!"
"No one can escape the pursuit of the fifth and fourth level spirit beasts and birds led by the military intelligence and internal affairs personnel after committing a crime. You must always warn your soldiers not to rely on luck at any time, otherwise you will regret it!"
"Although the rules of our Renaissance Army are very strict, the welfare benefits are also unique in the world today. No other force can compare with it."
"Things like withholding military pay will never happen in our Renaissance Army. Anyone who has such a tendency will have grass growing high on his grave."
Half a month ago, General Hongmei You Shilu did not want to participate in the civil war and insisted on applying to go out to kill the Tartars. He sent a letter to Li Dingguo via a spirit pigeon to ask for instructions. Yesterday, he received Li Dingguo's reply and instructions to form a Taotie Legion.
This morning, she called You Shilu, who was getting anxious, and announced the military's order to him.
Hongmei then pointed to a large wooden box placed nearby and said to You Shilu, "This large wooden box contains ten acquired middle-grade large spiritual peaches. It is a special reward from the commander-in-chief for you."
"You must know the reputation of the acquired spiritual fruit. It is not enough to describe it as priceless."
"The commander-in-chief has obtained quite a few of these acquired middle-grade spiritual peaches that can only be produced once every ten years. From now on, as long as the soldiers have enough military merit, they can go to the military supply warehouse at the logistics headquarters to exchange them."
"I estimate that with your current level 5 peak early stage cultivation, if you eat a postnatal mid-grade large spiritual peach, it will be enough to improve your aptitude and talent, and you should be able to successfully break through to the mid-level 5."
"These spiritual peaches are now your personal property. You can distribute them as you wish."
"If you don't have any requests, take this box of acquired spiritual peaches back and prepare to send troops to settle down."
"In the afternoon, lead your 20,000 soldiers to the big dock outside the city on time, and then board the fleet that will pick you up and set off directly out of the city."
Hongmei had long guessed that You Shilu would be highly valued by Li Dingguo.
However, it was somewhat beyond Hongmei's expectations that he was directly appointed as the commander of a main combat corps.
In any case, with the newly formed Taotie Legion led by You Shilu guarding the Dongtao Plain, their own worries can basically be eliminated.
You Shilu was both civil and military, and was very good at commanding operations, even better than Cao Yongxiang.
He will also have dozens of very good and talented generals under his command, all of whom are good at marching and fighting. As long as there are enough military pay and supplies, he can easily build an elite cavalry army.
This is also the reason why Li Dingguo values him so much.
In order to further strengthen the fighting capacity of the Taotie Legion, Li Dingguo even personally rewarded You Shilu with ten acquired medium-grade large spiritual peaches. It can be said that he had done his utmost to be kind and righteous.
"A medium-grade spiritual peach?"
"Such precious treasures, the commander-in-chief rewarded me with ten at once?"
As soon as Hongmei finished speaking, even You Shilu, who had seen a lot of the world, was stunned on the spot!
Even after he left the City Lord's Mansion carrying the large wooden box in a daze, he was still in a daze.
During the months of training in the recruit camp, he had become accustomed to the extremely generous military pay and benefits of the Renaissance Army, but he had never heard that there were such precious acquired spiritual fruits hidden in the Renaissance Army.
"This great commander has an unfathomable background!"
It was not until he returned to the large study at home and sat down that he opened the large wooden box and checked the ten acquired medium-grade large spiritual peaches inside. He was in a daze for a while and uttered these words of sigh.
If I were a little more selfish and spent a few months to eat these ten acquired medium-grade large spiritual peaches, I would conservatively be able to break through to the late fifth level. Even my aptitude and talent would be greatly improved, and it would not be impossible for me to break through to the sixth level in the future.
As he was about to lead his army out of the border, You Shilu did not have time to think so much. He called a few family generals to arrange people to pack up, and then went to the military camp to order his 20,000 soldiers to make preparations to go out of the border and settle down this morning, and then set off at noon.
"Ha ha……"
"I will soon have 90,000 elite cavalry soldiers under my command. You Tartars outside the Great Wall will be in trouble!"
After being idle for so long, You Shilu has been eager for a fight. This time, he was valued by the commander-in-chief and was directly appointed as the commander of a main combat corps. It can be said that it is a new beginning for an old tree, and he can finally make a big move outside the Great Wall.
……
The Luoshui River originates in the northwest of Qin and flows towards the southeast.
Like the Fenshui River that runs through most of Jin Province, the Luoshui River is also the longest inland river in Qin.
Today, a large number of Fuxing Army and government army soldiers have gathered in various towns on both sides of the long Luoshui River, and the two sides are facing each other across the Luoshui River.
What's weird is that in the past month, neither side has launched any offensive, and they are just staring at each other across the Luo River!
The soldiers of the Fuxing Army received orders from the military headquarters that as long as the government troops did not attack, they should ignore them.
Early winter has arrived, and the first round of offensive by the Renaissance Army has come to an end. The order issued by the military is to firmly hold the existing territory and completely eliminate all unstable factors in the country.
This includes a large number of local tyrants, gangs, brothels, gambling houses, etc. that have not been cleared out in time, and they must all be wiped out!
The busiest departments now are, of course, the Ministry of Military Intelligence and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which have been greatly expanded.
The three-tailed iron-backed demon wolves had multiplied to tens of thousands, and more than 90% of them were deployed to the interior of the country to cooperate with the soldiers of the Military Intelligence Department and the Ministry of Internal Affairs to begin a large-scale dragnet investigation of all occupied areas.
On average, more than 10,000 spies and informants from various forces are searched out, interrogated and cleared out every day!
The number of people from gangs, gambling houses, brothels and other dark forces who are cleared out every day exceeds 100,000!
This major cleanup operation will need to last more than half a year.
It is conceivable how many unstable factors are hidden in the occupied areas today.
The government troops who set up camp on the other side of Luoshui River were preparing to hibernate.
After they took the initiative to test the Fuxing Army on the other side several times, they suffered a lot of losses. Seeing that the other side had no intention of crossing the river to attack, they all breathed a sigh of relief and simply stayed put.
Anyway, the Governor-General of the Three Borders, Hong Chengchou, did not formally issue an order to attack, and the supplies and food provided to their officers and soldiers were sufficient without any shortage, which made the officers and soldiers very satisfied.
They even wished that this confrontation with the Restoration Army would continue forever.
For most of the officers and soldiers, this kind of life without worries about food and clothing was something they had never experienced before.
What is Hong Chengchou busy with?
Of course, he was recruiting and training a large number of soldiers.
Now that he had sufficient money, food and supplies provided by those aristocratic families, he immediately ordered the commander of his personal guard, Hong Yuanfeng, to recruit a million young and strong men from the public.
After half a month of training and selecting new warriors, he recruited 200,000 qualified warriors into his own personal guard.
The reason why these one million young and strong people have such a high chance of passing the training and selection of warrior recruits is that they have already gone through strict screening and then entered the Royal Guard Battalion to participate in the selection of new recruits.
The rapid rise of the Fuxing Army was a great wake-up call to Hong Chengchou.
After witnessing the power of the Fuxing Army recently, he finally realized that the Ming Dynasty had weakened to such an extent!
If I don’t find a way to save myself, I and the Hong family will probably end up dead or wiped out in the future.
He took advantage of this great opportunity to obtain a vast amount of training resources, and was able to expand his personal guard camp. Adding 200,000 personal guards was already the limit of his ability.
If we recruit more people, not only will we be unable to afford the huge amount of money and materials consumed over the years, but we will also not be able to explain to the imperial court.
If his political enemies report him as having his own army, it would be very detrimental to his future plans.
The reason why Hong Chengchou was not in a hurry to launch an attack on the Fuxing Army was because what he thought in his mind was the same as what Li Dingguo had guessed, that is, he wanted those aristocratic families to continue to bleed heavily to help him train these 200,000 personal guards.
Hong Chengchou ordered Hong Yuanfeng to form an expanded army of guards. In addition to the 30,000 veterans, the newly recruited 200,000 soldiers would take at least three months to officially form the army.
Hong Chengchou has made up his mind that as long as the court does not push him too hard this year, he will find an excuse to get away with it, keep his troops in place, and concentrate on training an elite Qin army.
As long as he controls a powerful personal guard, who among the officers and soldiers under him would dare not disobey his orders?
Those who disobey discipline will be killed as a warning to others.
In fact, Hong Chengchou was worrying too much.
Those government troops drawn from various places became more honest than the other as long as they had sufficient money, food and supplies.
Hong Chengchou was expanding the army and training soldiers, so why wouldn't they know how to do it?
In the past, they had no money, no food, and no resources, but now Hong Chengchou provides them with enough. If they still don’t know how to ask for more money, food and supplies from this generous and magnanimous Governor of the Three Borders, they would be fools.
Fortunately, Hong Chengchou really has no shortage of these military supplies now. Although he will not meet every request, he will distribute them in full.
These officers and generals of the government army quickly replenished the troops that were previously short of manpower due to the lack of salaries, and they began large-scale military training operations.
The military intelligence department of the Fuxing Army is now omnipresent in the face of the major moves by the government troops. Of course, they will investigate it in a timely manner and report it to the military headquarters.
However, Li Dingguo had anticipated this and signaled the Fuxing Army soldiers to let it go.
He was very clear that the final preparations for a new round of invasion by the Later Jin Tartars had already begun.
Once the Later Jin Tartars’ million-strong army entered the pass, Hong Chengchou, the governor-general of the three borders, would definitely be urgently summoned to lead his troops back to the capital to provide support.
Hong Chengchou was not an ordinary commander-in-chief of the three armies. As long as he had enough troops and sufficient combat effectiveness, he would definitely dare to launch an offensive against the Tartars.
Fame and fortune were Hong Chengchou's lifelong pursuits, and he would never miss any opportunity.
The stronger the troops under his command are now, the greater the threat they will pose to the Later Jin Tartars in a few months, and the more casualties they will inflict on the Tartars.
With the tacit understanding between the Fuxing Army and the government army, the two armies were able to live in peace on a battle line that stretched for more than 100,000 miles, which was an extremely rare scene.
But no matter what, since Hong Chengchou's army was dispatched, the offensive of the Fuxing Army was immediately stopped, which made the major forces in the three northwestern provinces breathe a sigh of relief.
Those aristocratic families, wealthy merchants and serious businessmen were so delighted that they almost responded to every request of the messengers sent by Hong Chengchou.
Seeing the hope of annihilating Li Dingguo and the Fuxing Army, they would naturally spare no effort to support Hong Chengchou.
This made Hong Chengchou secretly smile while he sent out more messengers to ask various major forces to give him more support, which greatly accelerated the training process.
……
On the river more than ten miles in front of the Yumen Ferry Wharf, two large fleets were confronting each other. The soldiers on both sides were watching Li Dingguo and Cao Bianjiao fighting on the river.
All I saw were two figures on the river, fighting back and forth.
What was very strange was that neither Li Dingguo nor Cao Bianjiao summoned out their own innate magical weapons to fight each other. Both sides held top-grade spiritual weapons, spears, and fought from the river surface into the air, and then fell from the air to the river surface to continue fighting!
Not only did Li Dingguo's top-level spear skills reach the level of returning to nature, but Cao Bianjiao's top-level spear skills also reached the level of returning to nature.
Both of them are gifted with top-level natural supernatural powers, and their cultivation levels are not much different.
Although Cao Bianjiao's cultivation level was slightly higher than Li Dingguo's, the combat effectiveness increase brought by Li Dingguo's primary five-element spirit body completely offset this slight difference in cultivation level.
Except for not using their own magical weapons to fight, the two of them have used almost all the means they have.
The sonic attack activated by Li Dingguo's innate Dharma form, the Xuanhuang Chaos Bell, had no effect on Cao Bianjiao, who possessed his innate divine artifact, the Wuliang Tower, so he simply did not use it.
Seeing that Li Dingguo did not use his martial arts form, Cao Bianjiao did not summon his own natal form either.
Because his natal artifact, the Wuliang Tower, gave Cao Bianjiao endless life essence, he had endless physical strength.
If it weren't for the fact that it takes a process for the life essence to transform into the power of qi and blood, and then transform the power of qi and blood into his own internal energy, Cao Bianjiao wouldn't even have exhausted his own internal energy.
Unfortunately, this transformation process is far slower than the rate at which the body's internal energy is consumed during battle, which prevents Cao Bianjiao from using unlimited amounts of internal energy to launch killing moves.
Because of this, Li Dingguo was able to hold on and fight the opponent on equal terms.
"Oh!"
"happy!"
Cao Bianjiao and Li Dingguo fought hard, and both of them were thrown back more than ten feet, standing opposite each other on the river surface. Cao Bianjiao shouted with great excitement, and shouted to Li Dingguo, "That's it for today, we'll fight again tomorrow!"
"I finally met an opponent of equal strength. Li Dingguo, remember to come out and fight me tomorrow morning. I'm going to have a good time this time!"
Cao Bianjiao was a martial arts fanatic and had no ill feelings towards the Fuxing Army.
The Fuxing Army is completely different from other rebel armies. It only kills corrupt officials and unkind rich people, and will never harm ordinary people.
In the areas occupied by the Renaissance Army, all the people can easily have food and clothing as long as they participate in labor.
The deeds of the Fuxing Army had long been heard by interested people in the three northwestern provinces. As a lieutenant general now, Cao Bianjiao would naturally know it very well.
If he could have killed Li Dingguo in a frontal battle, Cao Bianjiao would not have held back, but unfortunately he couldn't do it.
Before meeting and fighting with Li Dingguo, he could never have imagined that Li Dingguo, a young prodigy who was about to turn fourteen, could actually fight him on equal terms.
So far, Li Dingguo is the first human master who has fought with Cao Bianjiao without a clear winner.
Cao Bianjiao had never fought with Lu Xiangsheng, Oboi and Manggurtai. Li Dingguo was the first strong opponent Cao Bianjiao encountered.
Cao Bianjiao knew that under normal circumstances, he could not defeat Li Dingguo, and the two sides would only end in a draw.
If he rashly used his natal artifact, he would reveal that he had a natal artifact on him. Besides, Li Dingguo was not without his own natal artifact.
Under the passive magical power enhancement of his natal artifact, the Wuliang Tower, Cao Bianjiao has never exposed his natal artifact to outsiders.
He is not stupid, so he is naturally aware of the serious implications involved.
In the past, even if he did not use his own divine weapon to fight the enemy, he had never encountered a genius-level warrior who could be on par with him.
Any enemy he fought against was no match for him before, and there was no need for him to use his life-defining magical weapon to kill the enemy.
As a fifth-level peak practitioner, he is certainly not a fool.
His natal artifact was too precious. Before he broke through to the sixth-level strongman, once it was exposed, even Cao Bianjiao would find it difficult to keep it.
The Cao family army’s combat effectiveness is good, but it is not as good as any of the top forces.
If the royal family knew about this and directly issued an edict asking you for it, would you give it to them or not?
And there are all those big forces, including the kings of the demons and monsters, who doesn't want to have a life-originated magical weapon on him?
In this big world, most human masters who possess their own divine weapons will not expose their divine weapons in public.
Including Huang Taiji of the Later Jin Tartar, they all regarded their own natal magic weapon as their biggest trump card and would not use it in public unless they were in a life-and-death crisis.
All the enemies who had seen Li Dingguo and Wan'er's innate divine weapons were killed by the two.
Even the soldiers of the Restoration Army only thought that their commander-in-chief Li Dingguo had a few innate magical weapons, but they were not aware that Li Dingguo possessed three innate magical weapons.
In this magical world, there are many practitioners who possess their own magical weapons. As long as they don't tell others, it is easy to confuse people.
Although it is impossible to fool the evil genius who has his own divine weapon.
They won’t tell anyone, so just keep it to yourself.
If there is an opportunity, they will naturally grab it through various methods.
(End of this chapter)
