TO ACHIEVE IMMORTALITY, I CULTIVATE USING QI LUCK

Chapter 1048: Chapter 429 Military Expedition Movement_2 Chapter 1048: Chapter 429 Military Expedition Movement_2 The Liang people’s resistance in the Liang army, however, was far more tenacious and fierce than that of the Zhao people.

Even now in its decline, the national power of Liang was still far stronger than that of Zhao State.

This tough nut to crack, Daliang, was far harder than Diqiu of the Eastern Province.

Unlike Zhao State’s struggle in isolation, Liang had the covert support of states like Xu State, Xu, Zheng Kingdom, and Jin Country behind it.

Among them, Xu State, as Chu forces steadily advanced and showed signs of breaching Daliang, even took the initiative to come forward and express overt support for Liang.

This support not only meant more financial and material aid but also included direct military assistance.

Thus, the cost Lu Yuan had to pay to take down Daliang would be far greater than what Huang Lin needed to conquer Diqiu.

The 1.7 million men had only managed to take the surrounding prefectures and counties, as well as the outer camps of Daliang.

After clearing these strongholds, the city of Daliang itself was an even tougher bone to chew,

As the former, and nominally still, prime imperial capital of the world, its city defenses were far more formidable than those of Mengshan Pass or Liang City.

The price Lu Yuan had to pay to capture it was also higher.

It was in early June that he finished clearing the outer camps around Daliang.

After sweeping the peripheries, he immediately launched an unrelenting assault on Daliang.

Then.

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After just ten short days, the Chu army suffered a staggering two hundred thousand casualties.

Even though most of these casualties were captured and defected soldiers, the loss of twenty thousand lives per day was still incredibly alarming.

Compared to the heavy losses of the Chu army, the defenders of the city, the Liang army, only suffered a minor fifty to sixty thousand casualties.

The casualties ratio between both sides almost reached a staggering five or six to one.

This was the price to be paid for a strong assault on a fortified city.

But the problem was, in order to conquer this city, Lu Yuan still had to bear these costs.

So, even knowing the shocking number of casualties, he had to grit his teeth and push through.

Throughout June, through to the current month of July, over a month’s time, the Chu army went through this intense level of siege warfare.

Previously, the clearing of the strongholds around Daliang was thought to be a rare sight of a bloody slaughterhouse, but only when the attack on Daliang itself began did everyone realize that what had come before was merely an appetizer.

After more than a month of fighting, the Chu army had poured in another seven hundred thousand lives.

The result was the elimination of half of the city’s defenders, tantamount to one hundred and fifty thousand Liang soldiers’ lives.

There were still one hundred and fifty thousand Liang soldiers left in Daliang, and although the city’s defenses were somewhat unstable due to the shortage of manpower,

Overall signs still showed that Daliang remained strong, and a breach seemed unlikely in the short term.

Yet, for the Chu army, in order to capture Liang and seize Daliang, they had already lost two and a half million lives.

Not one of the two million three hundred thousand Liang captives taken during the previous Northern Expedition survived; all were thrown into this brutal siege warfare.

Their own side even sacrificed an additional two hundred thousand lives of the Chu army.

Yet, even so, they still fell short of conquering Daliang by that final step.

And just that step, by conservative estimates, would require the sacrifice of another half a million lives.

Where would these half a million come from?

Now, beneath the walls of Daliang, including civilian workers, the direct Chu forces approximately amounted to two million troops.

In the Chu-occupied regions of Liang, about eight hundred thousand Chu soldiers also remained in garrison to maintain local stability.

So, Lu Yuan could afford the loss of these fifty thousand lives.

However, if one could avoid sacrificing one’s own men, it was naturally better to do so.

Therefore, for the upcoming siege of Daliang, he still upheld the idea of using captives as much as possible to minimize the losses of his own men.

But after the attrition from the battlefields of Liang and Eastern Provinces, and the consumption by the Yangxia Expeditionary Army in Yuzhou, the captured soldiers from Liang, Zhao, and Zheng Kingdoms had almost been depleted.

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The remaining Wei captives, though still present, were only about a million.

“I need at least five hundred thousand men on my side, which is the minimum requirement to ensure the conquest of Daliang,”

After recounting the number of captives in his mind, Lu Yuan replied to his avatar, Huang Lin, “So what I can give you is also only five hundred thousand men, no more.”

The final million Wei captives thus had their fates decided.

The forces in Liang and Eastern Province, the Central Expeditionary Army, and the Western Expeditionary Army, each split half a million men.

However, even after dividing this batch of cannon fodder, the Western Expeditionary Army’s force only increased to two and a half million men.

The gap with the Zhao forces was still more than one million one hundred thousand men.

Facing the Zhao people’s frenzied counterattack and such a large disparity in troops, the Western Expeditionary Army was still at significant risk of capsizing.

If they couldn’t withstand Zhao’s counteroffensive and lost Liang City, which had been hard-won, the joke would be on them.

How could they easily relinquish their hard-earned victories after paying such a heavy price?

Therefore, Lu Yuan thought for a moment and then contacted Qingyunzi.

Qingyunzi, leading the Heyang Expeditionary Army, was responsible for the battle zones in Wei’s Henan and Nanyang prefectures.

After being besieged for over a year, these Wei forces finally surrendered in May this year.

The Wei army captives and defectors were subsequently sent to the Eastern Province battlefield, and now this last group was quickly being deployed as cannon fodder.

Meanwhile, the victorious Heyang Expeditionary Army, after seizing the two prefectures, had entered a phase of adjustment and resting.

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