Chapter 578: Chapter 272: Jianwu’s Confusion 2

Thus, throughout the entire nation, there are five provinces and forty-eight prefectures, totaling thirty-three million six hundred thousand households and one hundred seventy-five million four hundred thousand people.

Not only that.

The annual revenue at the end of this year has also been calculated.

In the whole of Jianwu Four Year, the five provinces of the country collected a total of five hundred and twelve million silver taels, and after all the expenses, there was still a surplus of ten million silver taels.

Moreover, according to the Household Department’s calculations, as the local governance improves further, in six years, the tax revenue will increase even more and eventually reach an annual income of seventy million taels.

With nearly twenty million people and seventy million silver taels in tax revenue, this gave Shen Qiu great confidence.

Because this meant he only had to follow the plan and continue to accumulate for six more years, and the country’s finances would reach the limit of seventy million.

By that time, with this money, Ning Country could fully support an eight hundred thousand strong army.

At that time, with this elite army, they could go up the Shuo River and march westward. And wouldn’t those Chu rebels and traitors surrender?

The bright and glorious future is about to come, with Da Ning flourishing and thriving under his control, and naturally, Shen Qiu’s heart is filled with joy.

“Hmph, that Chu traitor Lu Yuan, gathering a gang of rebels, and still thinking of defying Heaven’s decree, disrespecting the Heavenly Son and breaking away from my Ning Country’s domination.

Little does he know that in front of me, he is nothing more than a jumping clown, a futile attempt to stop a speeding cart.

Now not knowing how to rest and recuperate in times of respite, he still dares to lead a gang of wicked ministers and seize the southwestern Yi People.

But let him go.

Does he really think it’s that easy to defeat those Yi People?

Throughout the dynasties, didn’t they all want to develop the southwest?

Let those Yi People drag the treacherous rebels’ feet, drain their blood, exhaust their strength for my great Da Ning.

Now let them bounce around for a few years, let me personally muster the elite military forces after ten years of rest, and destroy the traitor Chu.

Cut off the traitorous king Lu Yuan’s head on the Yangtze River to deter the people of the world.”

Shen Qiu thought so, and the smile on his face grew thicker.

Of course, he also knew about Lu Yuan’s military campaign in the Southwest Yi this year.

But for this important matter, Shen Qiu was not in a hurry.

The development of the entire Yangzhou Jiangnan land has been dominated by the coastal aristocratic families for more than a thousand years.

But in these two thousand years, only nine prefectures were developed in Jiangnan by them.

Oh, no, perhaps one more, the newly conquered Jiuzhen Prefecture.

Two thousand years of time to develop nine prefectures, on average, it was also almost one prefecture every two hundred years.

The slow efficiency, of course, had its reasons.

Those Yi People might be easy to defeat.

After all, the Barbarians are ignorant and hardly different from savages. Their military strength, economy, and even political system are far inferior to the orthodox Jinling dynasty, making it easy to defeat them.

But while defeating the Barbarians is easy and annihilating their nation is easy, annihilating their race and culture is not.

The countries of those Barbarians more or less all have one or two inborn, even three or four Inborn Grandmasters.

The Barbarians also gather in the mountain ridges. And if they can’t defeat you, they retreat into the mountains, making them extremely difficult to eradicate.

So when you’ve defeated those Barbarians on the battlefield and taken their lands and cities,

You will have to face those Inborn Grandmasters who have infiltrated the mountains and lead the Mountain People in a continuous guerrilla battle.

They won’t face you head-on.

Today they attack your town, tomorrow they destroy your village. Today they kill dozens of your people, tomorrow they kill hundreds.

Constantly harassing, attacking year after year, it’s a never-ending bloodletting process for the countries trying to rule these newly occupied territories.

But those Inborn Grandmasters, unable to defeat you head-on but with familiar terrain and support from various Mountain People, can easily hide.

You simply cannot find the opportunity to encircle and kill them.

In the end, it’s a matter of waiting, wearing down the Barbarians’ Inborn Grandmasters until they die. Once they have no place to nourish and train their next generation of Inborn Grandmasters, the Barbarians naturally won’t be able to cause any more trouble.

Only in this way can a prefecture be effectively assimilated into the county.

The previous Jinling dynasties, backed by the whole dynasty, could naturally spend more than a hundred years slowly grinding out the Barbarians.

Even if they were constantly bleeding, they could quickly mobilize manpower and supplies from all the prefectures of the world to heal their wounds and recover their vitality.

But what is the current situation in Chu State?

Looking around, all they see are enemy countries.

What is Chu State’s national strength?

It is said to be a country of three prefectures, but in reality, it’s just two prefectures, and even those are sparsely populated small prefectures.

With such little strength, who gave him the courage and confidence to do the expansion that can only be done by a hegemonic ruler of a state?

Does he really think that everyone is like the Five Poisons Sect that sells women for glory, eagerly marrying their Inborn Grandmasters to Lu Yuan, allowing this kid to easily control Dongting Prefecture and eliminate the biggest hidden danger?

Or is it that everyone is like the cowardly rat, Li Xiong of the Western Qiang, fleeing at the slightest breeze, not knowing where they’ve run off to?

An ordinary Inborn Grandmaster, especially a foreign Inborn Grandmaster, is revered by the people in their race and enjoys a near-protector deity status.

You destroy their race, seize their land, and ruin their ancestral wealth; how generous and timid must one be to forgive such a thing?

If they don’t die fighting against you, it would be a travesty for an Inborn Grandmaster.

So for this Four-Nation War of Conquerors, Shen Qiu is not optimistic and does not think that Lu Yuan and the others can achieve much success.

Perhaps without external interference, relying on Chu State’s current national strength, forcing their way through a hundred years, they can take one or two prefectures in the hands of the Southwest Yi.