Chapter 171: Chapter 131: Observing the Wind Direction_2

Translator: 549690339

With Lu Yuan’s current strength, along with the thousand elite soldiers he held, and even considering those tens of thousands of Village Braves.

With such strength, as long as he wanted, no Jianghu sect within Dongting could resist, except for the Poison Sect.

“I once thought about imitating Li Xiong and seizing control of the territory directly. Actually, I have the means to do so now.

But, attacking the Jianghu sects without reason doesn’t have a good foundation and can easily invite opposition and hidden dangers.

Maybe I should wait and see which Jianghu sects can’t sit still and join the rebellion with the Poison Sect.

At that time, I can use the support of the court, claiming righteousness and suppressing the rebellion. Then, I can claim both merits and seize those rebels at the same time.

Wouldn’t that be beautiful?”

Lu Yuan doesn’t think that those Jianghu sects are all honest and good-natured people.

In this chaotic world, there’s no shortage of ambitious individuals.

Even a prudent person like himself was tempted to imitate Li Xiong’s success.

As for those short-lived species with a lifespan of only a hundred years, their limited lives would make it even more so.

It is estimated that after a short while, when they see the decline of the court, there will be a proliferation of rebellion and fighting amongst the Prefectures and Counties.

At that time, these rebels would provide him the nourishment and stepping stones on the road to becoming an innate expert.

Having a rough assessment of the situation, Lu Yuan naturally executed his own plan.

To suppress those upcoming rebels, he must possess sufficient strength.

There are two types of strength.

One is personal strength, and the other is collective strength.

As for personal strength, Lu Yuan had almost reached his limit. Without the next method, he would not be able to progress much.

But the collective strength could be manipulated much more extensively.

Although the rules stipulated that a single Prefecture could only support a thousand soldiers, local governments couldn’t exceed that number, otherwise, it would be considered harboring rebellion.

Lu Yuan still planned to use the banner of Da Yue, and the current strength of the court was indeed quite strong. Naturally, he didn’t want to make mistakes on such principle issues, which could bring the court’s targeting.

So, he dared not expand his army.

However, the limit of one thousand soldiers only applied to the Fu City soldiers, not including the lower-level county soldiers.

Shaoyang Prefecture had ten counties, and each county had a quota of one hundred county soldiers.

Regardless of the county soldiers or Fu City soldiers, in essence, they were all regular soldiers, paid by the court. They were fundamentally different from the temporarily conscripted village braves.

So after consulting Cui Changqing, and with the approval of the Prefect, Lu Yuan ordered all the county soldiers from each county to gather at Fu City and prepare to participate in the rescue of Xinhua County.

Just wait for these county soldiers to arrive, along with the one thousand Fu City soldiers he had, the total force will be one thousand nine hundred elite.

By then, adding some skilled fighters from the villages to form a five thousand strong army would be entirely possible.

With such a large army and Lu Yuan, a first-class expert, as the backbone, even if an innate expert came, they might not necessarily be able to defeat them.

It was precisely because of this solid strength that he dared to go beyond the norm during these turbulent times.

The orders were passed down.

Because the Fu City officials supervised the order transmission, the prefectures and counties handled it with astonishing efficiency.

The order for the deployment of county soldiers and the selection of county elites was executed quite quickly.

In just five days, besides the besieged Xinhua County, the county soldiers and village braves from the other nine counties had gathered in Fu City.

However, after these people arrived, Lu Yuan discovered that the hundred county soldiers from the nine counties were not fully staffed.

In the slightly better counties, like Wugang County where he had once served, there were still about seventy or eighty able county soldiers. But in other more poorly equipped counties, there might be only twenty or thirty capable county soldiers.

In such a situation, the original nine hundred county soldiers had only five hundred in reality.

Moreover, among these five hundred people, more than two hundred were unqualified, and their martial arts skills were even worse than the temporarily conscripted village braves.

Seeing this, Lu Yuan was naturally furious.

He regarded these soldiers as his shield, relying on their numbers to resist and wear down the enemy in times of danger.

With the shield now showing flaws and potential problems with his life-saving measures, his anger was immense.

A furious commander naturally shook the entire army.

Lu Yuan directly ordered the dismissal and disbandment of all the unqualified county soldiers.

These soldiers, who only knew how to oppress the common people and retreated from danger, were useless to keep around and would only harm the army.

After removing these troublemakers, he ordered the selection of elite warriors from the conscripted village braves to fill the ranks of the county soldiers.

Surprisingly, this task proceeded quite smoothly.

Those chosen village braves had already practiced martial arts and were fierce individuals, including many mountain folk hunters who had experienced fighting.

Thus, selecting the elite from these people was not very difficult.

After selecting six hundred people or so, the nine hundred county soldiers were finally completed..