East China Sea Direction:

The state of Qi will use force to support the unification of the Ryukyu Islands by the Ryukyu king.

At this time, the Ryukyus, the so-called Three Mountains Kingdom, each country was only five or six thousand strong men, and there was no standing army at all, all the troops were non-professional soldiers who were soldiers and people, and their combat effectiveness was pitiful.

The General Staff of the Qi Army believed that in the case of a field battle, a hundred new troops would be enough to annihilate any country in the Three Mountains.

Of course, Xu Shiyang didn't plan to let the Qi army bleed on that small island, he just planned to send dozens of military advisers to help Ryukyu rearmament.

According to the requirements of the Ministry of War, the Ryukyu Kingdom needs to form a standing army under the direct command of the advisors of the Qi State, with a tentative number of 500 soldiers, military salaries and rations are provided by the Ryukyu Kingdom, and weapons are the responsibility of the Qi State.

According to the Qi-Liu agreement, after the unification of the Ryukyus, all prisoners of war were the spoils of the Qi state, and the Ryukyu Kingdom could only obtain land resources.

And these lands can't be cultivated casually - the Ryukyuan people have just left the tribal era, and the cultivation technology is frighteningly low, so agriculture must also be guided by the Qi country.

In order to control the needs of the Ryukyus, the Qi State will not allow the Ryukyus to grow grain on a large scale, and their land will be used to grow sugar cane to extract sugar, and the grain will be provided by the Qi State.

The Ryukyus province is relatively southern, and the sun is abundant, which is very suitable for growing sugar cane.

Moreover, in this era, the price of sugar was very high, and the income of the Ryukyuan people from growing sugar cane was much stronger than that from growing rice.

It's just that the food is completely dependent on the Qi State, and if the Qi State wants to punish the Ryukyus one day, it doesn't need to send troops, and it directly doesn't give them food, which is enough to starve everyone to death.

This meant that Ryukyu would become a link in Qi's economic chain, and for Xu Shiyang, it was a good social experiment that, if successful, he intended to use this means of economic control elsewhere.

……

From the Ryukyus to the south, it has already entered the waters controlled by the Li family.

In these places, the Qi Provincial fleet usually passed through as harmlessly as possible (unless it took the initiative to attack without opening its eyes), but Xu Shiyang has always been thinking about Taiwan Island, and it is not okay to continue harmlessly.

Therefore, in the next stage, the Qi State intends to negotiate with the Li family in Shuangyu to prepare a joint attack on the former pirate cabinets entrenched in Penghu, and then use Penghu as a base to jointly develop Taiwan Island.

Of course, Taiwan Island is a huge area, and this is not a small island that can be occupied in a day and controlled by a few hundred soldiers like Jeju and Tsushima.

Pioneering this sprawling island will take decades, if not centuries, of perseverance – attracting immigrants from the south of the Yangtze River, clearing land, removing indigenous people, and fighting diseases are all work that requires patience and dedication.

Now it's just time to start laying it out.

……

On land, the King of Qi personally met with Wang Qinian, the master of the horse thieves, in Quancheng, and this half-merchant and half-bandit riding master officially surrendered to the Qi State.

He brought 500 Han and Mongolian cavalry to the Qi State, more than 30 commercial offices on the way from the Qi-controlled area to the grassland, and nearly 15,000 people who were protected by the horse thieves.

In addition, Wang Qinian captured 5,000 horses and 1,000 camels to the King of Qi at one time!

So the king of Qi canonized Wang Qinian as Zhenwubo - this is the first high-level nobleman in Qi, but in fact, the nobles of Qi are only titles and honors, and have no privileges.

It's just that the existence of Wang Qinian has become the first armed force of Qi that is not under the jurisdiction of Xu Shiyang, the secretary of the Ministry of War, for the time being - he is now directly under the King of Qi himself.

Moreover, Wang Qinian has his own financial resources, which is actually equivalent to a semi-warlord who is subordinate to the Qi State.

However, Wang Qinian's existence is, first, to contact the Han army who surrendered to the Mughure Tartars, and set an example for them, so that they can understand that taking refuge in the Qi State is a better way out than taking refuge in the Tatars; Second, it can directly deter the flank of the Mugyus, and when necessary, it can directly attack the grasslands from the mountainous areas where the Mughurs are defenseless; The third is to continue to maintain trade between Qi and Mongolia and provide valuable war horses for Qi and Mongolia.

Therefore, Wang Qinian's special status was acquiesced in by Xu Shiyang.

But Wang Qinian had to make more contributions, and Xu Shiyang proposed to Wang Qinian that he take out all his property and set up a business specializing in border trade (Wang Qinian directly named the business name "Shangma Thief", and he seemed to care about the word thief and was even a little proud).

All the salaries and rations of Zhen Wubo's troops were provided by the Shangma Thief Company, but the business of this business was subject to the guidance of the Ministry of Households, and the taxes were paid on time and the accounts were audited at any time.

This is also a kind of layout, aimed at the Mugwu people, the party members, the Han army, and Wang Qinian.

……

At the same time that Qi State is spending a lot of energy on all sides, the most important strategic direction at present, Liaonan, is not idle.

Entering the harvest season at the end of August, the Qi army launched an autumn offensive against the Jurchen Tartars on time.

It was only because of the existence of the scorched earth belt that the scale of the Qi army's offensive appeared to be relatively small, and it was only dispatched after waiting for the Muguls to take the lead in launching an attack to plunder the Liaozhong Plain.

In the middle of August of the fourth year of Longdao, 60,000 cavalry under the command of Menggu Gulhan Zamuhe entered the Liaozhong Plain and launched a large-scale raid against Liaoshen.

Ten days after their appearance, the Qi army on the eastern front dispatched from Phoenix City very tacitly, and the troops began to attack Lianshanguan and Xiuyan area in two ways.

In addition, the cavalry of the Qi army set out from Gaizhou, with a company as a unit, equipped with one person and two horses, one horse with people and one horse with supplies, and forcibly crossed the scorched land belt to deter Haizhou.

All of a sudden, the entire Liaozhong Plain was full of smoke, and the Jurchen defenders from all walks of life were staggering, and their fatigue was fully displayed, as if they did not need to sell the main force of the Qi army, and now the Dajin Kingdom could no longer support it.

However, this is only an illusion.

After half a year of rest, the three Jurchen princes were ready to deal with this kind of joint attack by Qi Meng.

What is particularly relieving is that the scorched earth belt in the southern direction of Liaoning has already played a role, and the Qi army has very few troops to reach Haizhou through the scorched earth, and there are no headache cannons, so Haizhou is standing still, only a few peripheral villages have been breached, and the harvest work in other villages has been forced to stop.

The damage, though large, was not fatal.

The same is true on the eastern front, the Qi army has very few troops starting from the first line of Phoenix City, and the two roads are only 1,000 people up and down, and these two places are mountain and forest roads, and the Qi army can only attack step by step in the mountain road with the defenders of the Jin State.

Maybe even Shanguan and Xiuyan will fall, but until then, they will definitely be able to buy enough time for the main forces in Liaozhong.

What's more, even if these two areas are occupied, the two Qi armies will not have sufficient supplies to continue the offensive - for them, the supply lines are too long.

In this case, the Jin army was actually able to concentrate its main force as much as possible and specifically deal with the Muguls who came to take advantage of the fire to rob.