Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Chapter 1210 – Africa Warzone
Great Xia stopped their expeditions, but no one was happy about it.
Everyone knew that once Great Xia digested the newly added two million troops, they would strike out aggressively and start the war to unify China.
Just thinking about this sent a chill down one’s spine.
As time went on and the 10th month arrived, Ouyang Shuo entered a busy state.
After taking down a vast amount of land, accepting two million troops, and obtaining the loyalty of many officials, how to play out this big chess game was his biggest problem.
Over a successive few days, Ouyang Shuo either gathered up the Cabinet to discuss matters or went to either the Grand Council or the Privy Court to have meetings. Apart from that, he had meetings with ministers alone and was really busy.
On the 10th month, 5th day, things were finally showing signs of being settled.
The first thing that Ouyang Shuo arranged was the civil servants. Although three dynasties had submitted to Great Xia, they were only three provinces, so they were easy to arrange.
Xiong Ba was removed from his role in the Administrative Mentor Court and was officially appointed as the Minnan Provincial Governor.
Minnan Province was next to Jiangnan Province, and Ouyang Shuo placed him there to monitor whether he would try to influence Jiangnan in the dark after everything settled down.
This was Ouyang Shuo’s test for him.
The original Minnan Provincial Governor Xun Yu would join the Administrative Mentor Court as a Chief Secretary. Along with him was Shu Han minister Fa Zheng, but he was only appointed as a secretary.
The Administrative Mentor Court has such a stellar formation. Now, it was a little overpowered. Apart from head secretary Zhang Liang, there was chief secretaries Jia Xu, Pang Tong, and Xun Yu as well as secretaries Chen Gong, Jushou, and Fa Zheng.
Apart from Zhang Liang, they were all top strategists from the Three Kingdoms era.
Ouyang Shuo was already thinking about how to truly work the Administrative Mentor Court to not let some of them have nothing to do.
The role of Jiangnan Provincial Governor was taken by Gao Ying. The other Sui Dynasty minister Su Wei was appointed in Hedong Province where Great Jin had been located.
The two pillars of Great Sui were given high appointments.
Zhufu Yan was removed from his appointment as Zhongyuan Provincial Governor and moved to Wannan. Feng Qiuhuang would take over his role.
The situation in Zhongyuan Province has basically stabilized. Along with the Imperial Court taking down Wannan Province, the Zhongyuan Province had established connection with the Imperial Court.
Zhufu Yan was a minister of Great Han, and it was not appropriate for him to remain in Zhongyuan.
Feng Qiuhuang’s appointment there showed the high hopes Ouyang Shuo had for her. Zhongyuan Province was the central pillar of the mid plains, and if she ran it well, she would gain a lot of credit.
Apart from the Provincial Governor appointments, the other officials were handled by the Cabinet. The rule was that the Han, Jin, Sui, and Shu officials, including those from Jiangnan Province, could only be appointed in provinces other than their own.
This was a complicated process that would take several months.
After settling the Provincial Governors, Ouyang Shuo temporarily placed down the civil servant matters and focused on the biggest and largest military reorganization in Great Xia history.
The vast things it involved was hard to keep track of.
Just dealing with the 2.29 million troops needed a lot of effort.
They had captured 120 thousand Han troops during the Battle of Luoyang. As Wei Qing had killed himself, there were no great generals obtained.
During the Battle of Qing, they captured 320 thousand troops. Similarly, there were no exceptional generals.
During the battle at Jiangnan border, they captured 350 thousand Ming troops and obtained God General Xu Da, Emperor Rank general Chang Yuchun as well as King Rank generals Feng Sheng and Deng Yu.
After Great Ming was destroyed, Xu Da and the others stopped resisting and surrendered to Great Xia.
With Jiangnan Province submitting, they obtained 300 thousand King legion corps troops and God General Wuqi.
With Great Jin submitting, they obtained a total of 340 thousand troops from the Guards and blazing legion corps, obtaining Guo Ziyi, Meng Tian, Ran Min, Wang He, and Zhou Bo.
With Great Sui submitting, they obtained 500 thousand Great Sui Guards, obtaining Yang Su, Han Qinhu, Yu Juluo, Yu Wenshu, and He Ruobi.
With the Shu Han dynasty submitting, they obtained 360 thousand Shu Han Guards, obtaining Huang Zhong, Zhao Yun, and Jiang Wei.
Naturally, they could not keep all of such a large scale army, so a portion had to be removed. If not, even with the finances of Great Xia, they would not have the ability to maintain such huge military expenditure.
Furthermore, out of the 2.29 million troops, just the imperial city guards occupied 1.615 million of them for a total of 72%. It covered Han, Qing, Ming, Sui, and Shu, these five countries, and they needed to be disarmed.
With the current size of Great Xia, reorganizing the military was not a simple problem; it was not a numbers game. They had to consider the future strategy of the dynasty.
They needed to confirm the direction in which the dynasty would expand toward and what enemies they were going to face before they could settle on an reorganization plan.
All in all, it was led by the needs of the dynasty.
As for what enemies Great Xia had, pretty much everyone was their enemy. In Asia alone, there was the Mongol Empire and the Romanov Empire north, Persia Empire west, further west was Arab Empire, southwest was Peacock and Gupta Dynasty, and Southeast Asia had Java.
From a global perspective, it was even more bustling.
Apart from the Indian Empire, there was the Maple Dynasty, Dawson Dynasty, and Mayan Dynasty in America, House of Tudor, Spain Dynasty, Gaule Dynasty, Ottoman Dynasty, and Caesar Dynasty in Europe, Egypt and Bantu Dynasty in Africa; their enemies covered the entire world map.
If all these dynasties merged together, even three Great Xias would be wiped out by them.
Moreover, Ouyang Shuo was not a person who would be happy with the status quo. His head was harder than steel, and he was determined to smash the cake of Silver Hand and Azure Badge to reestablish world order on Planet Hope.
One could imagine that the game would be even more exciting in the future.
With so many enemies, it was naturally impossible to destroy them one by one. Ouyang Shuo wanted to destroy the two organizations and not all the members in the organization.
Accepting Xiong Ba’s family was due to such considerations.
Ouyang Shuo settled on three breakthrough points. One was Peacock Dynasty and Gupta Dynasty. Considering the presence of the Ashoka Dynasty, this was the most difficult one.
Second was the Persian Empire.
If they could take it down, they would be able to threaten the Arab Empire toward the west, Caesar Dynasty north west, and the Romanov Dynasty south west.
Thirdly would be Africa.
In the next one to two years the Africa Continent would be the focus of the entire world and the frontlines of Great Xia’s battle against Silver Hand and Azure Badge.
Of these three points, Africa needed to be strengthened the most.
Great Xia only had the West Africa and East Africa legion corps in the North Africa Protector House. Not to mention the future Battle of Africa, they could not even take down East Africa.
East Africa had a total of 13 countries, occupying 12% of Africa. The region had over 10 million players.
If Great Xia wanted to take down East Africa, they would have to use close to a million troops. For this, the first step of the military reorganization targeted Africa.
Ouyang Shuo decided to establish the 4th warzone – the Africa Warzone. Additionally, they would form the Africa Warzone headquarters to be in charge of Africa war matters. The first target would be to take down East Africa within a year.
For this, the Imperial Court decided to add two legion corps in the Africa warzone – Wolf and North Africa legion corps. The Wolf Legion Corps was a proper warfighting legion corps while the North Africa legion corps was a Border Defense legion corps.
Along with Great Xia’s territory increasing, Ouyang Shuo had to break the military title ruling, adding the wolf after the dragon, tiger, eagle, leopard, and bear.
For this, Ouyang Shuo decided to remove the Household Legion Corps for two reasons.
First, the Household Legion Corps was planned to be the first pure firearm legion corps, but since Gaia had greatly increased the combat strength of soldiers, firearms and cold weapons coexisting became the norm in the army.
As such, a pure firearm legion corps seemed really weak and useless.
Secondly, when they designed the Household Legion Corps, it was to strengthen the troops under his direct command in case they were weaker internally compared to externally.
However, as Great Xia’s territory expanded, the scale of the army, especially the border defense troops, swiftly expanded. No matter how Ouyang Shuo added troops to his direct command, he would not be able to prevent the continual of this situation.
The only way would be to reasonably restrict the warzones.
Moreover, as the territory size increased, the Guards Legion Corps would be like firefighters teleporting here and there. This would use up a lot of finances and efforts and was not a good choice.
Rather than that, why not strengthen the constructions of war zones and defend each strategic direction? That would reduce the need for the Guards Legion Corps to save the day and would give the war zones a long term plan.
Due to that, Ouyang Shuo decided to cancel the Household Legion Corps.
Anyways, before this, the only legion in the legion corps was split up into the various warfighting legion corps. Cancelling the legion corps title was only a systematic approach that did not bring any losses.
Along with the Household Legion Corps being removed, Zuo Zongtang, Zeng Guofan, and Oda Nobunaga were freed up for reorganization.
Ouyang Shuo selected Meng Tian to be the marshal of the Wolf Legion Corps.
As Meng Tian, Shi Dakai, and Di Qing were not top fighting generals, Ouyang Shuo selected Ming Dynasty general Chang Yuchun as the North Africa legion corps marshal to complement them.
Zhao Yun and Aida Nobunaga were arranged into the Wolf Legion Corps while He Ruobi and Wang He entered the North Africa legion corps.
With that, the Africa Warzone had Chang Yuchun, Oda Nobunaga, and Shi Dakai who were familiar with firearms. Such an arrangement was due to the future global war prediction.
The European and America dynasties were well versed in firearms so the Africa Warzone could not be at a deficit right at the start.
As the Africa Warzone was far from the pillar of the dynasty, many strategies needed the headquarters to decide on their own. Hence, Ouyang Shuo decided to give them a warzone commander and advisor.
The warzone commander would not take the role of the marshal of the legion corps while the Advisor would be a full time advisor.
The Africa Warzone Advisor was the Administrative Mentor Court Chief Secretary and top grade strategist Pang Tong. However, the choice of warzone commander surprised everyone.
