The Rise of History’s Most Powerful Empire

After three years of development, Zhong Yu's own strength has also grown extremely fast. Although it fell behind Daming on the whole, it is not far behind.

First of all, the army of Yuguo has been streamlined and trained, and some old and weak people as well as those who were originally from the Ming Dynasty were eliminated from it, so that the combat effectiveness of the entire army has been refined and cohesive, and it has the appearance of some elite soldiers.

Then continue to recruit new troops, select excellent soldiers from all over the country for training, and then enrich them to each army, greatly expanding the number of troops in the empire.

And in these three years, through plundering and conquering in the heavens and worlds, Zhong Yu gained another batch of troops.

Up to now, after three years of accumulated training, Zhong Yu has formed an army with a size of about 1.5 million, which is exactly the same as the total number of troops in the Ming Dynasty, and is comparable.

As for the combat power, the two sides are about the same, and there is not much difference between them.

Even because Yuguo is on the defensive side, it has a certain geographical advantage, and the Ming Dynasty only sent 500,000 troops to the Southern Expedition, not too many and not too few.

Since Yuguo is fighting in the local area, in the face of Ming's attack, in addition to dividing about 300,000 troops to guard against the attack of South Korea and Wei. There are basically no enemies on the other borders to defend, the only enemy is the Ming Dynasty, so Yuguo can draw more troops to defend against the Ming Dynasty's attack.

When the news of the Southern Expedition of the Ming Dynasty came, Zhong Yu started the military mobilization of the whole country.

300,000 frontier troops were left to guard against Korea and Wei, and another 200,000 were left to guard the place. The remaining one million troops were led by Zhong Yu himself and rushed to the border of the Ming Dynasty, intending to defend the enemy from outside the country.

The enemy came very quickly, and when Zhong Yu had just set up the defense lines in various places, 100,000 pioneers of Ming Dynasty had already rushed to the front line, and started a small-scale confrontation with Zhong Yu's army.

These small-scale confrontations are nothing, and the impact on the outcome of the entire battle is too insignificant, basically negligible.

Even if Zhong Yu's 300,000 frontline troops were defeated, or Daming's 100,000 forwards were defeated, it would be nothing to each of them.

Why did the Ming Dynasty dare to attack the Yu Kingdom with a mere 500,000 troops, which has a population of one million and also has a geographical and defensive advantage, and it seems that it is not worried about its own defeat.

It is because whether it is the Ming Dynasty or the Yu Kingdom, they all understand very well that the key to the victory of this war is not the soldiers at the bottom, but the game between the high-level combat power of the two sides.

Although the soldiers at the bottom are important, they are the foundation of a country's rule that cannot be ignored. But the main function is only to suppress local law and order and maintain the tax collection of the empire.

It is extremely easy to recruit soldiers like this. As long as there are enough resources, the Ming Dynasty can pull up an army of tens of millions in no time, and its combat effectiveness is not much worse than that of conventional troops.

In the same way, what the Ming Dynasty can do, there is finally no reason why it can't do it. It can be seen from the more than 400,000 troops of the Ming Dynasty that he dismissed and repatriated before, as well as the old and weak Yu Kingdom.

These people are basically at the third level of strength, and their strength is not weak. A considerable number of them are veterans who have fought many battles.

So whether it is Daming or Zhong Yu, they don't care about these cannon fodder, the army that can be pulled up at any time.

The real reason why it is impossible for them to expand their army is that they cannot supply enough money and food.

As the respective forwards of the two sides engaged, the battle became more and more intense, and battles occurred all over the front line at any time. There is a local battle with more than a thousand people every day, and even a battle with a scale of 10,000 people is fought every few days. The battle situation can be described as anxious.

The anxiety of this kind of war did not slowly ease over time, but became hotter with the arrival of the main forces of the respective armies in the rear.

Especially the arrival of the main force of the Ming Dynasty. Because it was the attacking side, the Ming Dynasty's offensive was extremely fierce. It didn't care about the heavy casualties of the soldiers at the bottom, and it didn't care about the number of enemies in its own army. It kept urging the soldiers to attack and attack again.

It seems that the army of the Ming Dynasty has only one voice, and that is to defeat the enemy at all costs.

The supervision of these high-level military officers still has some effect.

Although the soldiers at the bottom had great grievances in their hearts, their grievances disappeared when their respective officers supported the attack, and many even took the lead in the charge.

What's more, whenever a soldier tries to escape from the battlefield and retreat to a safe place behind.

Behind them, the supervisory team composed entirely of those officers told them directly with bloody examples that deserters have no future and hope, and will only lose their lives in vain.

To be able to serve as an officer in an army, what I mean here is to command soldiers with more than a thousand people, and at least have a fifth-level strength. Some of the more elite troops, their thousands of generals are all in the middle or even late stage of the fifth level, and they are extremely powerful among the same level.

As for generals at the level of 10,000 generals, some ordinary armies have generals at the peak of the fifth rank, while the elite ones are led by the strong of the sixth rank.

Now the Ming Dynasty has a full army of 500,000, among which there are quite a few elites, about 100,000, which means that there are about ten sixth-tier generals in the Ming army.

Together with some other generals, this time Daming's expeditionary army has 15 sixth-rank troops, two lieutenants at the beginning of the seventh rank, and a coach at the end of the seventh rank. The luxurious lineup of the Southern Expedition Army.

However, although Da Ming's lineup is luxurious, the imperial army on the opposite side is not at all inferior.

It has the confidence to unify all sects in the country, plus some of its own training and absorption of some wandering people. Three years have passed, and Zhong Yu already has 83 sixth-level masters, plus he has three seventh-level recruits, his strength is even worse than that of Daming's master level.

If it weren't for the lack of an eighth-level powerhouse, Zhong Yu would have led an army to attack the Ming Dynasty, completely replacing this decadent dynasty.

This time, in order to defend against Ming's aggression, Zhong Yu brought 40 sixth ranks, and he had two seventh ranks, leaving only one seventh rank strong to sit in the imperial capital and support the rear.

This kind of strength is naturally more than enough to deal with the Ming Dynasty army on the opposite side. Since the news of Ming Dynasty Nanjing came, Zhong Yu didn't pay attention to these troops at all.

He has this self-confidence, relying on his formidable strength, employing a pile of people can also face the Ming Dynasty army on the opposite side.

What really worried him was, after defeating these Ming troops, if the founding ancestor of the Ming Dynasty personally took action, how would he deal with it?