After the blacksmith Wang finished speaking, he introduced Wu Yi, who had come down from the ship, to Di Lu.

As a descendant of the nobles of the Wu State, Wu Yi often defended the interests of the Wu people when he was an official in the Yue Kingdom before, and he had a very high prestige among the Wu people. When Song and Chu fought together against the Yue Kingdom, and when the Yue Kingdom was destroyed, the Wu people quickly united to Wu Yi's side and became one of the three major forces in the Wu and Yue regions.

If it weren't for the Song army led by Dai Yan at that time to disperse Wu Yi's forces with a thunderous force, the Wu people might have been able to revive the Wu Kingdom!

And it was the war that made Wu Yi realize the gap between the Wu people and the advanced civilizations of the Central Plains such as the Song Kingdom, and also made him give up his dream of being like a frog at the bottom of a well. When it comes to martial arts, the Wu people are not inferior to the Song people, but when it comes to fighting, the Wu people are not the opponents of the Song army at all!

Even if the Wu people were to unite in his hands again and revive the Wu State, he would not have the confidence to defeat the Song State and defeat the one who defeated him! And a weak country can't protect its own people, and there will never be any change in the status quo of the Wu people!

Therefore, when Dai Yan later recruited Wu Yi to Taoqiu to help Taoqiu train sailors, Wu Yi agreed without hesitation. He hoped to see the advantages of an advanced civilization like the Song Kingdom, and then improve the survival status of the Wu people.

The facts did not disappoint Wu Yi, when he first arrived in Taoqiu, Taoqiu was already a commercial center and the most prosperous city in the world. Such a place, not to mention Wu Land, is the entire south, and there is no city that can be compared with it!

When he thought that Taoqiu, as a commercial city, its prosperity was already at its peak and could not be surpassed, Taoqiu Jun, who defeated him back then, let him know that he was too uninformed! Within a few years, the entire Taoqiu rose rapidly, throwing the Taoqiu he saw when he first arrived in the Song Kingdom into the distance at an unparalleled speed, and making the entire city look new!

Subsequently, the master of Taoqiu quickly defeated Pengcheng and Suiyang and unified the Song State by virtue of a mere city and a remote fief, and then he defeated the powerful Chu State and exempted the Chu State from interfering in the Song State! And what made Wu Yi most excited was that after the Taoqiu Department took charge of the Song Kingdom, the Song Kingdom began to develop rapidly like a horse!

Water conservancy, waterways, and shipping were built everywhere throughout the country, bringing the entire Song Kingdom closely connected. The excellent agricultural tools produced from Taoqiu began to enter the hands of all the farmers in the Song Kingdom.

Driven by developed agriculture, the grain output of the entire Song Kingdom hit new highs year after year. As a high-ranking general of the Song army, Wu Yi clearly knew how huge the grain production of the Song State was. And behind this huge grain production, the Song State eliminated hunger at the national level, so that all subjects could have enough to eat!

You know, in today's world, it is not easy to make a country achieve food and clothing! As an insightful person, Wu Yi certainly knows the current situation of various countries today: the rich have no place to stand, and the poor have no place to stand! In some countries, even if they just proposed to have enough food for their soldiers when they were conscripted, countless people rushed to join the army!

At that time, he thought that it would be great if the people of Wu could live like the Song people today!

And before this southern expedition to Chu, the lord to whom he was loyal also summoned him and explained to him his optimism about the Wu people and his regret for the death of the Wu State that year. His lord even solemnly promised him that as long as the Song State could take the land of Wu, he would definitely make the now poor Wu people as rich as the Song people!

Wu Yi immediately believed this statement! After all, the entire Song Kingdom, under the governance of this person, has undergone earth-shaking changes!

It is precisely by believing Dai Yan's words that Wu Yi has a strong hope in his heart. He looked forward to the Song army's conquest of Jiangnan more than anyone else, and eagerly looked forward to the victory of the Song army, in his opinion, the sooner the Song army rescued the Wu people from the rule of the Chu people, the Wu people would be able to suffer less!

Stepping on Wu Land again, looking at the poor fishermen in front of him who had been tanned by the sun and had been torn by the sea breeze, and who were a little restrained and uneasy in front of him, Wu Yi's eyes seemed to be shining and said to Di Lu: "Go and tell the villagers, the good days of our Wu people are coming!" ”

In a small village around Nanwu City, Wu Yi looked at the heroes of Wu Land that Di Lu had brought from the surrounding area, and explained to them one by one the policies of the Song State towards the Wu people.

"Now that our army is about to attack Jiangnan, any Wu people who can gather a certain number of troops, our army will grant them a certain official position and give them commensurate treatment. If ten young men can be summoned to fight, our army will award the leader to the chief; Those who are able to gather a hundred men will be awarded to the centurion by our army; What if we can gather a hundred or a thousand people, and our army gives you the position of brigade commander? ”

Listening to Wu Yi's introduction, these people were all excited. They were natives in the first place, so they were naturally able to gather enough neighbors to fight. During this time, as long as you can gather enough people, you will be able to get paid, and how good it is!

Of course, the official positions given to the Wu people by recruitment during the war were actually two systems with the official system of the Song army, and they were not permanent official positions like the Song army. After the end of the war against the state of Chu, most of these official positions would be abolished. However, even so, those who recruited soldiers were able to make a small fortune in the months of the war through the recruited soldiers!

As for how to attract the Wu people to stand on the side of the Song State, the Song Army Staff had made a plan long before the Song army attacked Chu. The biggest advantage of the Song State today is that the country is rich, the treasury is full, and simply put, there is a lot of money! As long as you give enough money and recruit the Wu people as mercenaries, you will definitely be able to gather enough Wu soldiers!

For this reason, the General Staff Department even made a special application to the Ministry of War, and applied for more than 60 million yuan from the war bonds sold as the "united front" expenses of Wu Yi and others against the Wu people in Jiangnan.

Although Song Guo has money, he will not spend money at will. Of the money that the Song State took out, the cost of recruiting Wu soldiers accounted for only a very small part of it, and the more part, the Song Army still followed the practice of the Qi State Skilled Fighters and used it as a reward!

The reward of the Song army is clear and real, whether it is the Wu people or the Song people, it is the same: for every person who kills the Chu army, the reward is two gold!

In the case that the Song army is generally wealthy, such a price code is actually not too attractive. What the soldiers of the Song Army valued was actually the promotion of official positions and titles in addition to rewards!

However, as soon as such a price was announced, the heroes who were recruited near Nanwu City began to get excited one by one! Wu Di is generally poor, and the money of two gold is enough for them to buy dozens of concubines in Wu Di, how can this not make them desperate!

Therefore, when the heroes of Wu Di originally thought that during the war, they would just rely on recruiting soldiers to defraud some recruitment fees from the Song people, they also began to change their concepts. If you can kill 100 Chu soldiers in the war, wouldn't you be directly rich?

As for Wu Yi's suggestion that those who have made outstanding contributions can be awarded official positions and titles in the Song Kingdom, it is not very attractive to the Wu people. After all, they are not Song people now, and they don't know the current titles and official positions of the Song Kingdom, these unfamiliar things are of course not as exciting as the money in front of them!

Therefore, when Wu Yi only stayed in the vicinity of Nanwu City for three days, he gathered an army of nearly 3,000 people under the fanatical enthusiasm of the Wu people to join the army! These soldiers, all of them are sturdy adults.

Wu Yi then distributed recruitment fees to these selected soldiers, and issued each soldier with a standard iron sword. With the bravery of the Wu people themselves and the sophisticated weapons of the Song army, these soldiers were soon able to form combat effectiveness, and Wu Yi's activities in Wu Land also began to have protective power.

And Fang Yi had enough soldiers to protect, he immediately left a small city like Nanwu and headed towards Wu City, the core area of Wu Land.

Wu City, located on the east bank of Taihu Lake, was built by Wu Zixu, the then prime minister of Wu State, when Wu Wang Lu was alive. In the early days of its establishment, it was called "the big city of Lulu" by Wu Zixu. After the fall of the Wu Kingdom, this place was called Wu City by the Yue Kingdom. In the mouth of the people of Wuyue, this huge and strong city is called "Gusu".

There is Taihu Lake in the west of Wucheng, and a fertile plain in the east, the land of fish and rice, which can not only defend against the enemy in the west, but also have a stable rear, which is the leading city in the south of the Yangtze River! When this city was built, the biggest enemy of Wu was the Chu State, and it did not take into account the threat of the Southern Yue State to the Wu State, so there was no special defense facility for the south, which led to the later Wu State being destroyed by the sneak attack of the Yue State.

Now that the Chu State has destroyed the Yue, the control of the core area of the Yue State is actually insufficient, and Wucheng and Jinling have become the two main cities in the south of the Yangtze River. This city is guarded by the elite soldiers of the Chu army, and it is the real rear of Yunyang, which is now facing Guangling across the river!

For such a city, even if Wu Yi had a high prestige in the hearts of the Wu people, he did not dare to enter Wu City openly, and only dared to act cautiously around it.