To achieve immortality, I cultivate using Qi Luck

Chapter 1135: Chapter 458 Qingzhou Unified_2 Chapter 1135: Chapter 458 Qingzhou Unified_2 “`

Although Lu Yuan was confident that with his lifespan, spending a hundred years, he could slowly resolve such a hidden danger.

Yet at this point, at most it would take another year or two of effort and the loss of one to two million soldiers to completely solve the problem.

Why bother dragging things out into the future and adding worry to his long years?

Therefore, he was determined to deal with the four kingdoms of Yuzhou.

There was no room for discussion.

…

As time flew, another month passed in the blink of an eye.

By the end of September, the warfare in Qingzhou had gradually subsided and eventually ceased.

After retreating for over a month, the Xu Army in Wuyan City was left with only three hundred thousand soldiers by mid-September and could no longer maintain a stable defense.

The Chu Army broke through the opponent’s interception and directly seized the ports behind Wuyan City, completely cutting off the city’s retreat route.

In desperation, the defenders in the city made a counterattack; however, they were soundly defeated by the well-prepared Chu forces, and the Xu State Head Marshal, an Inborn Grandmaster, was slain on the spot by the Lu Yuan Avatar.

With their army disastrously defeated and their head marshal dead, the remaining two hundred thousand Xu soldiers were thrown into a panic.

At this point, Qingyangzi also led a large force to arrive, and as the Chu military presence increased, these Xu soldiers lost the will to resist and ultimately chose to open the city and surrender.

Source: .com, updated on ƝονǤօ.с0

Thus, Le’an Prefecture was pacified.

A few days after the capture of Wuyan City, good news came from Qingping County as well.

After retreating for more than a month and relocating a large number of civilians from the territory, the remaining soldiers of the Xu Army in Qingping County found themselves in the same plight as the forces in Wuyan City.

With tens of thousands left after the main force had gone, they were surrounded by Qingping Camp’s one million-strong Chu Army.

Stuck in their besieged city, they too chose to surrender.

Meanwhile, Shouzhang City in Dongping County, which had been surrounded by Chu troops all the while, held out for several months without seeing any reinforcements and ultimately chose to open its gates and surrender.

The three hundred thousand soldiers within the city, along with five Xu Country Innates, were smoothly incorporated into Chu State.

The ease of this transition was mainly due to the fact that among the five Xu Country Innates in the city, four were barbarians from Xuzhou.

These individuals had only pledged allegiance to Xu State the year before and were hardly considered core loyalists, so their level of devotion to Xu State was naturally not that high.

Moreover, most of the Xu Army soldiers in the city were from these barbarian tribes and were seen as irregular troops of little regard in Xu State.

Xu State also had little trust in these people.

Otherwise, it wouldn’t be that Shouzhang City had been surrounded for several months, and Xu State always subconsciously assumed that the defenders there had surrendered, never sending anyone to confirm the news.

There were no rescue efforts either.

At the core of this logic was a lack of trust in the barbarians, not believing they would fight to the death for Xu State.

After all, only a year earlier, Xu State and these barbarians had been killing each other for tens or hundreds of years.

How could such deep-seated enmity be so easily dissolved?

This ultimately benefited Chu State.

Suddenly having acquired three hundred thousand troops and five Innates, Lu Yuan’s strength under his command was further enriched, creating an even more overwhelming posture compared to the remaining countries in the Nine Provinces.

With Shouzhang City’s surrender, the last vestige of Xu Army’s power in Henan was eliminated, and Chu Army smoothly took control of Dongping County.

With this piece falling into place, Qingzhou was officially unified, completing the Northern Expedition objective.

In this conflict, not only did Chu Army capture Qingzhou, but they also eliminated nearly two million Xu troops and nineteen Inborn Grandmasters in six major battles including the battles of Xichang, Snake Hill, Wuyan, Leling, Shouzhang, and Qingping.

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Almost in one fell swoop, Chu State eradicated sixty percent of Xu State’s military potential.

Though Xu State, towards the latter part of the great war, had urgently evacuated almost one million civilians back to the heartland of Xuzhou in Hebei, along with roughly one and a half million troops,

even considering these figures, the total population of Xu State in Xuzhou was barely eleven million, barely maintaining the standard of a hegemony.

However, thanks to the large number of evacuated troops, the number of adult males in Xu State was still impressive and the population structure was reasonably maintained, signifying that the state’s vitality still existed.

If a war mobilization were to occur again, based on the standard of one man per household, Xu State could still raise another two million soldiers, along with the seventeen Inborn Grandmasters who had escaped back.

Xu State’s strength was still not to be underestimated.

Located to the north of the great river, it was considered a major threat to the heartland of Chu State.

Fortunately, after suffering a grievous defeat in Qingzhou, not only did Xu State lose the majority of its soldiers and civilians, but its homeland also expended a vast amount of manpower and material resources on several occasions to assist Qingzhou.

Having been in a state of war mobilization for the entire forty-third year of Shenwu, cultivation activities in Xu State were minimal.

The reason it had continued to sustain itself was the same as Chu State; it depended on the savings from previous years, barely managing to supply the army’s consumption.

But Chu State had recuperated for thirty years, and fighting to this point, it was also exhausted and had to reduce its troops, actively controlling the scale of war in order to save money and provisions.

Xu State, after years of war and desperate efforts the previous two years to transport money and provisions to assist Liang State,

coupled with its own turmoil this year, could no longer bear the strain, even with substantial initial resources.

Therefore, according to the intelligence sent by the Imperial City Office, after discussions and analyses with the domestic ministers, Lu Yuan had all but confirmed.

Basing on the standard that three years of cultivation yields one year of savings,

Xu State would need three years of time to accumulate a year’s worth of military provisions.

But Xu State had now relocated a large number of civilians from Henan, with a population exceeding one million people.

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