To achieve immortality, I cultivate using Qi Luck

Chapter 1140: Chapter 460 Zone Adjustment Chapter 1140: Chapter 460 Zone Adjustment Having dealt with the reorganization of the army and the matters of the Northern Border,

time had already reached the eleventh month of winter.

By this time, there wasn’t much time left until the new year.

Similarly, throughout Chu State, with the end of the year approaching, everyone started to become busy.

The common folk were busy earning more money in order to buy enough new year goods for the winter to have a good celebration.

The civilians from regions just recovering from war took this rare opportunity to sort out their meagre remaining possessions, calculating how to survive the cold winter.

The officials in the government were also busy tallying up the year’s achievements and losses, preparing for the year-end assessment and evaluation.

Lu Yuan was also sorting out the accounts of the year along with a host of ministers, yet he could not help but take time to look at the report from southern Yangzhou.

Or rather, it was a migration plan for the coming year, as well as a letter for help.

Having dispatched five hundred thousand troops and five Inborn reinforcements this year, and having all the remaining Inborn from Feishuang Tao and Purple Cloud Dao take action, the pressure had been somewhat alleviated.

However, the situation on the home front over there was still far from optimistic.

The area that needed to be defended in Yangzhou was simply too big, too broad, too long.

For example,

Yangzhou has three defense zones.

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One is the East Sea maritime border, covering the coastal regions of Guangling, Linhai, and Jianan counties, with a coastline that stretches over ten thousand miles.

Another is the Lingnan War Zone, encompassing Southsea, Yulin, and Jiuzhen counties, also spanning ten thousand miles and requiring an unknown number of soldiers to cover some areas.

The last one is the Southwest War Zone, which is even larger, with a total area that includes seven or eight counties, amounting to half a state’s territory.

All three defense zones are so vast that they are practically limitless.

In Central State, this would be roughly equivalent to Lu Yuan’s first Northern Expedition when he opened up new battlefields within Guannei, Heyang, Eastern County, Liang County, the central part of Qingzhou, and the Yuzhou battlefield all at once.

Only by adding up these six battlefields does the scale match the ongoing war in Yangzhou.

Of course,

Chu State is not like the countries of Central State, and the sea raiders and barbarians to the south are not Chu State.

The strengths of both sides in Yangzhou, compared to those Lu Yuan faced during the Northern Expedition, have been correspondingly weakened, so the scale of the war is not as large.

After two reinforcements led by Lu Yuan, the number of troops in Chu State’s main territory had increased to two and a half million.

In terms of Inborn Grandmasters, Yangzhou’s two major Daoist sects provided eight Inborn, and Lu Yuan dispatched five Inborn back.

Taking into account the original twenty-one Inborn, the number of Inborn in Yangzhou’s main territory of Chu State had reached a scale of thirty-four.

Meanwhile, the invading sea raiders and barbarians into Yangzhou currently numbered around five to six million, with approximately thirty to forty Inborn Grandmasters among them.

Nor had either side deployed their full strength yet, so the extent of the war had not reached a fever pitch.

However, the Southern Polar Poisonous Fire was rapidly closing in.

At the southernmost tip of Jiuzhen county in Yangzhou, traces of the poisonous fires were already visible.

The sea raiders and barbarians blocked even further south by Chu State need not be mentioned, as they were already adjacent to the fire, facing the threat of death at any moment.

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In such circumstances, these migrating barbarians were naturally pushed to desperation.

According to intelligence sent back by Lu Yuan’s avatar that had returned to the main territory of Yangzhou,

since the second half of the year, the number of sea raiders and barbarians invading from the south had been gradually increasing.

The growth rate was nearly fifty thousand people per month.

In just this short half a year, the number of barbarian troops in the Southwest and Lingnan had swollen from the original three million to the current excess of six million, nearly doubling.

Beyond that,

though aided by Chu State’s tight defenses and rapid support from the rear, so far, none of the cities and towns in Southwest and Lingnan had fallen.

However, in the Lingnan Region, especially in the area of Jiuzhen county, there were already a large number of prefectures and counties abandoned by Chu State, now occupied by those migrating barbarians.

These immigrants from the south immediately settled on the land out of Chu State’s control, starting their own production on the spot.

Even though there were troops stationed in Chu State’s strongholds within Jiuzhen county, they could only manage self-defense against the barbarian migration tide numbering in the millions.

So much so that Chu State’s strongholds in Jiuzhen county were now encompassed by vast numbers of invading barbarian troops and were blocked within their walls, unable to even exit through the city gates.

Not only in Jiuzhen county,

In other areas of Lingnan and even in some regions of the Southwest, a large number of barbarians had infiltrated, settling in various areas abandoned by Chu State.

As for how many prefectures and counties have been settled by barbarians, the Chu armies on both sides were unclear.

There were simply too many barbarians.

The Chu armies in Southwest Lingnan could only control the areas near the cities they occupied, with a radiating range of merely one or two prefectures at most.

Beyond a distance of one or two prefectures, they would be outside the sight and safety of Chu State’s control, completely beyond their grasp.

And given the fact that in Southwest and Lingnan regions, there were at most only two strongholds per county, the coverage area of each county was at most three or four prefectures.

Which means, within these two regions, Chu’s army could only guarantee the safety of three to four prefectures within a county; the remaining areas were out of control.

Once areas were out of control, given the current situation, they were essentially conceded to be under barbarian control.

Thus, in a single county of the Southern Border, the present situation was that Chu State controlled one-third of the territory, while sea raiders and barbarians controlled two-thirds.

The gap between the strengths of both sides had become significantly pronounced.

What was more worrisome was,