To achieve immortality, I cultivate using Qi Luck

Chapter 921: Chapter 387: Establishing a City to Resist Liang, Swallowing Tibet and Abandoning the District Chapter 921: Chapter 387: Establishing a City to Resist Liang, Swallowing Tibet and Abandoning the District “Chief Commander, Western Liang is indeed a great threat,”

As Huang Xin expressed his concerns about the Western Liang, a subordinate commander raised a question, “But now their nation has an army of three hundred thousand regulars, and another five hundred thousand fierce and robust citizens, amassing to a total force of no less than eight hundred thousand.

Just on this TaoShui front line alone, Western Liang has gathered an army of five hundred thousand, no fewer than our own forces.

Although the Great Chu soldiers are brave and good at fighting, those barbarians are truly unreliable.

Even though we have assembled four hundred thousand to assist, only about fifty to sixty thousand among them are fit for battle.

Therefore, the troops available to our army amount to only about one hundred fifty to one hundred sixty thousand.

Yet, the Western Liang has a force of five hundred thousand.

With such a huge disparity, it’s unlikely to be easy for our army to defeat the Western Liang on the battlefield.”

Following several years of grueling war with Zhou Country and last year’s devastating defeat at the hands of Western Liang, coupled with successive natural disasters, the strength of the barbarians has greatly diminished.

At their peak, they had a population of fifteen to sixteen million, but now only four to five million remain, less than a third of their past numbers.

And, at the height of the barbarian power, they had more than one hundred thousand regular knights, but now only fifty to sixty thousand remain.

In this expedition against the Western Liang barbarians, although they’ve mustered an army of four hundred thousand, aside from those fifty to sixty thousand regular knights, the remaining over three hundred thousand barbarian cavalry are merely herdsmen.

Nevertheless, after being tempered by years of warfare and the selection of the battlefield’s harsh conditions, most of the surviving barbarians are stalwart and not new to campaigning, with many possessing one or two skills.

However, the barbarians’ frequent grain shortages over the years and the torment of natural disasters cannot be ignored.

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You can’t expect people who are constantly hungry, cold, barely fed, inadequately clothed, and extremely weak and weary to have much fighting power.

That is the state of these barbarian herdsmen.

Basically, they go through the entire year in hunger, never having a full meal.

The increasingly colder weather has also led many herdsmen to suffer from serious frostbite, with fingers, toes, ears, and other limbs being frozen off upon waking, which is not uncommon.

Many barbarians have developed various degrees of disability due to the severe cold.

Plus, with the torment of hunger, many are so thin that they’re not far from becoming mere skin and bones.

An army composed of such herdsmen, no matter how ferocious or eagre to kill, has limited combat strength.

And when facing the even more ferocious and wolf-like Western Liang, the outcome is self-evident.

Therefore, the current state of the Chu State—barbarian United Army, when facing Western Liang, might appear to both have armies of five hundred thousand, but in reality, it’s one hundred thousand Chu soldiers combined with fifty thousand elite barbarians against Western Liang’s five hundred thousand.

The gap in strength between both sides is more than double, approaching thrice.

This fact is evident from how effortlessly three thousand Western Liang militia routed five thousand barbarian herdsmen just now.

Those barbarians are truly unreliable.”

“Haha, Western Liang, the nation of fierce wolves, is naturally tough to fight, but why would I confront them head-on?”

Hearing his subordinates’ concerns, Huang Xin burst into big laughter, “Now I’m leading an army of five hundred thousand, stationed here on the TaoShui Southern Line, while Western Liang lies north of TaoShui, with both armies separated by the river.

The TaoShui river forms a natural barrier, with rapid currents in spring, summer, and autumn, impossible to cross without boats and ships.

Only in winter does the river freeze over, allowing passage for men and horses.

But come winter, with the heavy snow and increasingly severe cold, even a hundred steps taken in the Field carry the risk of freezing to death.

In such weather, only by staying within the warmth of towns and houses, relying on burning charcoal for heat, can one survive.

How could those Western Liang bandits possibly fight a war in the dead of winter?

Thus, campaigning in winter is not feasible either.”

At this point, Huang Xin sneered, “So all we have to do is fortify the key river crossings when the river is navigable, extensively build fortresses and camps along the river, and construct strong cities at strategic points to serve as bases.

By erecting five or six cities along the line, and establishing over a hundred strongholds, we can block those Western Liang people north of the TaoShui.

And if we station our main forces in the Southern Line’s strong cities, wouldn’t Western Liang be compelled to do the same on the northern side of the river?

By occasionally dispatching troops across the river to raid and harass Western Liang’s territory, burning, killing, and plundering, and laying waste to their agriculture, we can exhaust the enemy internally.

In just a few years, Western Liang, burdened by excessive military demands, will be weary and plunged into famine and chaos, collapsing without a fight.

Moreover, this is also our opportunity to properly train the barbarians…”

Huang Xin glanced at the distant barbarians with a meaningful smile.

Although Western Liang has an army of eight hundred thousand fierce wolves, almost comparable to a typical militaristic nation, they also have a fatal flaw: too few people and too barren lands.

Western Liang claims to have lands encompassing three regions, but within these regions, a great expanse consists of grasslands, Gobi, and even deserts, not all suitable for agriculture.

Therefore, even with both farming and herding, these three regions could, at most, sustain around four million people.

Even now, after Western Liang has seized most of the Hexi Region, the amount of fertile land suitable for cultivation within the country has increased by more than half, potentially supporting an additional two million people.

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The pressure of the population should be greatly relieved.

But fertile land still requires people to farm it, right?

Yet now, as both sides are in the midst of a great war, this small country with only four million people has deployed an army of five hundred thousand to the TaoShui front line to fight against the Chu State barbarians.

Such immense warfare is nothing short of a disaster for a small country like Western Liang.