TO ACHIEVE IMMORTALITY, I CULTIVATE USING QI LUCK

Chapter 923: Chapter 387: Establishing a City to Resist Liang, Swallowing Tibet and Abandoning the District – Part 3 Chapter 923: Chapter 387: Establishing a City to Resist Liang, Swallowing Tibet and Abandoning the District – Part 3 According to the report, which includes the newly merged Hegu County of the Nanzhao Country in the north and Jiuzhen County that separated out from Song Country, the population of each county in Chu State is as follows.

They are Dongting County with thirty-five million people, Xiangyang Prefecture with twenty million people, Xichuan Prefecture with twenty-seven million people, Hanzhong Prefecture with eighteen million people, Hegu County with ten million people, Yuzhang Prefecture with seventy million people, Qianzhong County with fifteen million people, Jian’an County with twenty-four million people, South Sea Prefecture with forty-three million people, Jiuzhen County with seventeen million people, Yulin County with six million three hundred thousand people, Tonghai County with one million seven hundred thousand people.

In total, there are one hundred and nine prefectures and counties in the twelve counties of the nation, adding up to a population of twenty-eight million seven hundred thousand people.

Hmm, that’s about three or four million more than what Lu Yuan had initially estimated.

Most importantly, after Chu State took control of Yuzhang, Jianan, and South Sea prefectures, a cleansing of the existing system of local gentry and landlords was conducted, uncovering quite a few households.

This resulted in the population of the three prefectures increasing by several, if not a hundred million people over what was on the original household registration.

Additionally, in the past two years, the Barbarians of the northwest have been sending the Zhou People, amounting to five or six hundred thousand, as well as two to three hundred thousand Barbarians, to Chu State in order to obtain grain.

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Due to the turmoil of war, about two or three hundred thousand people have crossed the mountain ridges from Zhou Country in the north to escape to Hanzhong Prefecture.

This has also added nearly a million to the population of Chu State.

All of these factors combined, have resulted in the population of Chu State reaching close to thirty million.

Thirty million people sounds like a lot.

But for Chu State, which now occupies over ninety percent of Yangzhou, it is still considered sparsely populated.

Not to mention, just take the recently acquired Tonghai and Yulin counties, each with only a population of tens and hundreds of thousands; outside the city walls, the fields are entirely desolate, and a thousand li without human habitation.

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In contrast to the population of these two counties, Chu State needs to maintain nearly three thousand officials there, as well as nearly fifty thousand local county soldiers.

Undoubtedly, for Chu State, these two counties are financially unviable, purely a loss-making venture.

And with a combined population of only eight hundred thousand, there really isn’t much necessity to maintain a county-level unit.

Therefore, after tallying the population of Tonghai and Yulin counties, Sun Siwen, the Prime Minister, immediately submitted a proposal to Lu Yuan, suggesting that the recently opened Tonghai County be abandoned and its population entirely relocated to Yulin County, to focus on developing this long-established major county of Lingnan.

He even suggested that if possible, Yulin County could also abandon the more mountainous half of its prefectures and counties, focusing on developing the coastal and more plain-rich prefectures and counties.

This would save expenses by consolidating prefectures and counties, concentrate resources, and prepare Chu State for its future northward advance into Central State.

After all, sooner or later, in a few decades or a hundred years, these provincial states in the southwest and Lingnan will definitely be abandoned.

The remote mountainous areas of Tonghai and Yulin counties, even if developed with great effort, simply cannot be retained.

Rather than that, it would be better to relocate the people to the easier-to-develop, resource-rich coastal plains, allowing the population to reproduce more effectively and produce more money and tribute through taxes.

The three thousand officials and fifty thousand local soldiers from the two counties can also be distributed to the recently expanded Hegu and Jiuzhen counties, saving the court from wasting more grain and money in selecting officials and recruiting soldiers.

There’s no denying that Sun Siwen’s memorial is indeed full of good advice and strategic planning.

Having read it, Lu Yuan indeed felt quite moved.

That region of southwest Lingnan really doesn’t necessitate further development.

Because when the poisonous fires beneath the extreme south reemerge in the future, the first area to suffer will certainly be the southwest and Lingnan; they will be the first to be destroyed.

By contrast, areas like Xichuan, Dongting, and Jiangdong might be delayed by a decade or two in facing disaster.

Just from this point of view, taking the limited manpower and material resources out to first manage a few regions is the most cost-effective thing to do.

Moreover, the supplies for the Northern Expedition in the future will mainly come from these regions.

It’s not feasible to transport supplies from Lingnan or the southwest over thousands of miles, across rough mountain roads and sea routes, to the Northern Expedition battlefield; that would be too slow and too wasteful.

So, Lu Yuan agrees with Sun Siwen’s proposal.

The reason he hasn’t shown his standpoint right now is not because he is reluctant to give up those pieces of land, but because he is wondering if it’s possible to take even bigger steps?

For instance, why not altogether abandon the recently obtained Jiuzhen County and group it with Tonghai and Yulin counties, outright discarding them.

Then, Chu State would relocate two and a half million people from these three counties to Xiangyang Prefecture in the north of the river to develop the fertile Jianghan Plains there and accumulate money, grain, and supplies for the future Northern Expedition.

Even the currently prosperous South Sea Prefecture could begin to gradually relocate its population to the Jianghan area in the north of the river to save the trouble of having to move them when disaster strikes in the future.

Now, when the population is small, moving the inhabitants is much more cost-effective than waiting until the population has grown to hundreds of millions before relocating.

The resistance and expenditure faced will also be considerably less.

However, abandoning four counties in the southwest and Lingnan in one go, which is almost equivalent to shrinking the territory of Chu State by a third, isn’t just an ugly loss of face to speak of.

Just losing so much territory would be enough to distress anyone due to the reduction in Qi Luck derived from it.

Previously, by swallowing up the three nations of Lingnan, Chu State’s Qi Luck increased by twenty percent, just enough to compensate for the loss of Spiritual Energy from losing Cave World.

Giving up the four counties now, although not much of a loss in terms of the population, would still have some impact on Qi Luck.

It might lead to a loss of one or even half a percent of Qi Luck.

So, giving up the south can be considered, but this reduction in Qi Luck cannot be allowed.

“It seems that this matter will have to fall to Jiangdong,” Lu Yuan muttered to himself, walking to one side, his gaze fixed on the map of Yangzhou fish on the wall, focusing on the two counties occupied by Ning Country in Jiangdong.

Ever since news spread in the past few months of Chu State breaking up the three nations of the southwest and Lingnan, annexing eight vassal countries at a breath, and taking their land.

Not only was there jubilation within Chu State, but the nations adjacent to Chu State’s borders also became anxious and wary in an instant.

Because everyone knows.

As Chu State step by step sorts out domestic affairs and resolves concerns, with the ability to integrate more force, the Chu army, settled within the country, will not just sit idly by but will turn its ambitions towards expansion.

And that first step in expansion is naturally the last un-subjugated nation of Yangzhou, the former master of Yangzhou, Ning Country, which occupies the two counties of Jiangdong.

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