Compared with the long-term inefficient idling state of the civilian system, once Li Jiajun's war machine is activated, the efficiency is amazingly high.

From the General Staff Department to the specific combat units, every link is lubricated by military orders and continues to operate efficiently.

The 20,000 soldiers and horses of the headquarters led by Song Yunxiang, the general of the expedition to the west, due to the long distance and the serious shortage of ships of the naval division, could only take the land route, passing through Luoyang, Jingjing, passing through Jingzhaofu, and finally arriving at Fengxiang Mansion, which is now Baoji City.

The main problem of the Western Expedition was not that the two armies were fighting, but that there should be plenty of food and grass. Today, Li Zhongyi has just entered Kaifeng City, and the strategic transportation channel from the capital to the west is not only in disrepair, but also has a long distance, and it is difficult to undertake the task of transporting strategic grain.

Therefore, the task given to Song Yunxiang by Li Zhongyi is to defend and wait for change. After the main force of the army cleaned up the Khitans, the Northern Han, Li Chongjin, and Li Yun, they turned around and headed west to take the big granary of Bashu in one fell swoop.

Since the Qin Dynasty, the Bashu region has always been a strategic place to compete for the world. The Western Jin Dynasty was the first to destroy the Shu State, and then the army went down the river to destroy the Wu State.

From a strategic point of view, Li Zhongyi had the previous experience of unification, and if he wanted to take the Southern Tang Dynasty, he must first take Bashu, and then go straight down the river to take the anointed land south of the Yangtze River in one fell swoop.

Historically, the strategic policy set by Zhao Kuangyin, the Taizu of the Northern Song Dynasty, was to miss the strategic opportunity of the Khitan civil strife and delay the best time to recover the sixteen states of Yanyun, which is really lamentable!

Today's Li Zhongyi, because he has an epoch-making weapon of mass destruction such as bronze artillery, can calmly unify his homeland in China. Then, with the heavy national strength of crushing, he first recovered the Yanyun region, cut off the grain base of the Khitans, dragged them down, and finally completely destroyed them.

The Great Zhou, which did not unify the entire Central Plains, was only more than 40 million people at best. If, with the addition of the millions of people in Bashu, the millions of people in the Southern Tang Dynasty, and the millions of people in the hands of the warlords, there will be at least 55 million people in the unified Celestial Empire.

With a total population of more than 50 million, in addition to the old, young, sick and disabled, Li Zhongyi can raise at least 300,000 professional elite iron troops.

More importantly, due to his extraordinary insight spanning thousands of years, Li Zhongyi still has a new force in his hands that can greatly liberate the productive forces, that is, at least tens of millions of young women.

In this era, the method of calculating the population was always based on the number of male strong men, and the statistics were summarized.

According to Li Zhongyi's plan, women will be allowed to participate in the selection of special officials and settle down independently, so that they can not only engage in the administrative work of writing and painting in the yamen, but also freely cultivate their own land, and the human resources of the whole society will be exploded.

In contrast to the population concept of previous rulers, Li Zhongyi wanted the population to be as large as possible, and in his view, population was actually the most important strategic resource.

Many nations in history were once strong, but after the destruction of the country, the entire nation disappeared without a trace. The core factor is that the population of those ethnic groups is too small to withstand the baptism of historical turbulence.

It is much more convenient for Liu Heyang, the general of the expedition to the east, to dispatch his troops and horses, and after leaving the Bianhe River, he can go straight down to Yangzhou by boat. Yangzhou is Li Chongjin's territory, since Li Chongjin is going to die, he is worried about Li Zhongyi, who can't find an excuse to cut the domain, so he simply fulfills Li Chongjin, and it is imperative to fight and capture.

Li Zhongyi now has a total of nearly 170,000 soldiers and horses, which can be described as a veritable super warlord.

Song Yunxiang took 20,000 away, Liu Heyang took 30,000, Yang Lie divided 40,000, and more than 70,000 soldiers and horses remained in Kaifeng.

In fact, Li Zhongyi had already planned to divide his troops to control the entire territory of Dazhou, but he didn't find a good excuse for a while.

Now that Li Chongjin and Li Yun rebelled at the same time, this gave Li Zhongyi an excellent opportunity. If, at this time, Li Zhongyi does not take the opportunity to spread his military power, then he will be the big fool of Tianzi No. 1!

However, since entering Kaifeng City, on the surface, Li Zhongyi has only moved the political hall and transferred the real power of the center to the cabinet.

As a matter of fact, hundreds of cadets of the Military and Political Academy, as well as nearly 1,000 low-ranking officers who have been transferred to other posts, with the assistance of the garrison, have completely taken over the real power of each pavilion, each li, and each village.

This is the strategy of the countryside surrounding the city, the concrete embodiment of the Great Zhou!

In Li Zhongyi's dictionary, there has never been a so-called local rule that the imperial power does not go down to the county. During the period of imperial autocracy, it was precisely because of the great drawbacks of the imperial power that the county was not lower than that careerists from all walks of life could start from the countryside and then surround the city.

The control of power has always been a zero-sum game. If the imperial court eats one more bite, the gate valves, local tyrants and inferior gentry will definitely eat two less.

The basis of the commercial tax return system, in addition to the degree of logistics control of the imperial court, another necessary condition is actually the change of local merchants' property.

The entire Chinese nation, with a history of thousands of years, has been repeatedly subverted by successive dynasties. However, what has never changed is this: people's rich nostalgia plot!

When a merchant becomes rich, he must buy fertile land, buy land, and build a house; When officials retire, they must also return to their hometowns and buy land to build mansions for retirement.

The most surprising thing is that in the Celestial Empire, even the poorest poor ghost has a dream of owning his own property!

In addition, under the official-based system, the official's house is openly forbidden to do business. The officials can only rely on thousands of hectares of fertile land and land for running dead horses.

People at the time said that Yan Song was a big corrupt official, but in fact, Xu Jie, who succeeded the first assistant, had more than 100,000 hectares of fertile land near Songjiang Mansion in Shanghai.

The benefits of sticking a rod into the end are simply too many, to the point of countless.

First of all, the ability of the entire imperial court to mobilize substantially, or to mobilize, is several orders of magnitude of terror.

Secondly, the inventory of the taxable acres of the people has been a confused account for generations. When it comes to Li Zhongyi, the benefits of controlling the village are obvious: who is a big landlord, who is a middle peasant, and who is a retired corrupt official, it can be said at a glance!

In Kaifeng City, in fact, it is roughly similar to the way it is done in the countryside. The Lizheng in every square and every mile in the city was purged, and they were all replaced by the children of the Li family's army.

In addition, the above expenses must be exchanged for currency money. The banknotes that have always been handed over are all registered and encrypted banknotes, which greatly compresses the huge space for tax evasion and bribery.

Next, Li Zhongyi is working on the establishment of a police system directly under the imperial court. As long as the police power is under the direct control of the imperial court, the arrogance of the corrupt officials and corrupt officials in the local area will inevitably drop by more than ten times.