Baili Wuji divided the quota of soldiers of the Imperial Forest Army out of the two branches of the Ming Kingdom, completely independent, and came under his own direct jurisdiction, and stipulated that the number of soldiers of the Royal Forest Army was floating, from 40,000 to 100,000.

This is so that in the future, the military students from the two schools of the Ming Kingdom will definitely be able to enter the appropriate position, so as to encourage the students of the world to enter the military science without worries, and continuously replenish fresh blood for the Ming army.

At the same time, Baili Wuji strongly stipulated the retirement age of the three branches of the Ming army. The retirement age for soldiers below the rank of lieutenant is: thirty-two years for border guards; The New Army is thirty years old; The Guards were twenty-six years old. The retirement age of officers above the rank of lieutenant is: 42 years old for border guards; The Forces nouvelles were forty years old; The Guards were thirty-six years old; The commander and above are unified to 50 years old.

In this way, the age group of Ming soldiers has always been maintained at the age of 30, which plays an important role in ensuring the combat effectiveness of the Ming army.

And after the systematic study of the academy and the retirement of the grass-roots command officers with actual combat experience, it has also provided a large number of candidates for the military aircraft staff officers that Baili Wuji has always wanted to form, and more importantly, the retirement of these grass-roots officers and soldiers has accumulated a strong reserve strength for the Ming State.

When the time comes, these registered soldiers can be re-organized with a single call-up order, and quickly build up their fighting power, without the need for retraining like a recruit.

It is generally impossible for the Imperial Forest Army to go to the battlefield, as the cradle of training officers of the Ming Army, so the retirement age is set relatively early, which also creates the conditions for the continuous influx of fresh blood in the academy.

After doing this, Baili Wuji began to plan to dump a large number of handicrafts and iron products of the Ming Kingdom to Goryeo, Dongying, Tubo, and Liao. Especially luxury goods.

After the war in the Ming Kingdom in the past few years, the annual pig iron output has increased several times, and it has exceeded 30 million catties last year.

Iron production is high. A series of iron farming tools were produced, which not only liberated the labor force of the peasants, but also increased the yield.

As a result, a large number of peasants got up from the land and entered various handicraft workshops, and the silk production of the Shan Ming Kingdom had also quadrupled, which led to an oversupply in the country and a large number of commodities were backlogged. influenced the development of the handicraft industry.

As a result, it became a very urgent matter to find a dumping area for Ming goods. In recent years, the wars of the Ming Kingdom have opened the door to various countries for dumping.

Goryeo and Dongying were already vassals of the Ming Kingdom, so naturally they could not refuse the dumping of the Ming Kingdom, but the acceptance power of the two countries has been almost consumed in the past few years, which has caused the popularity of the goods to decline. As a result, price margins began to decline.

But Tibet is different from Liao. The wars of the past few years have made it impossible for the Ming State to trade with the two countries, which are equivalent to uncultivated virgin land. Now the Liao State has signed a peace treaty with the Ming State, free trade is one of them, the fiasco of Tubo through the west of Chengdu Prefecture, has long lost the will to invade the east, in recent years also sent envoys to communicate and negotiate, although the level of the envoy is not high. But there is also a willingness to reconcile.

As a result, Baili Wuji specially ordered the establishment of the Ming State Department of Commerce. Specializing in the organization of goods from all over the Ming Kingdom, exporting to various countries and importing various raw materials required for production to various countries, in order to ensure its safety, Baili Wuji is equipped with a 10,000-person escort team, named "Trade Guard", which does not belong to the Ming army, but is directly under the jurisdiction of the Ming Dynasty in the imperial court, and its personnel are not borne by the government, but by the Department of Commerce from the protected caravan at a total price of 10% of the extraction, distribution.

Since then, all the Ming caravans have come and gone between the countries to trade, and they have rarely heard of the looting, so the Ming merchants gradually tasted the sweetness, and the total price of 10% is really negligible for the profits of cross-border trade. The fruit of this is the rapid development of commerce and trade in the Ming Kingdom, and the Commerce Department even opened branches to various provinces and states, and the number of trade guards once reached 40,000, which made Baili Wuji feel that "the temperature is too high", and specially issued a decree to limit the number of trade guards to no more than 20,000 people.

Just when the national strength of the Ming State began to enter a state of rapid recovery, the court of the Zhou State was struggling with that "plank".

After Wang Pu interrogated a large number of soldiers of the forbidden army, he already had enough evidence, and this evidence pointed to only one person - Zhao Kuangyin. But Zhang Yongde was really wronged.

Wang Pu was extremely reluctant to directly stab Chai Rong with this result, his personal relationship with Zhao Kuangyin was also very good, and at the same time, Wang Pu also thought that he knew Zhao Kuangyin, and he thought that Zhao Kuangyin could not really have the intention of plotting chaos. But after all, Wang Pu did not dare to risk the disapproval of the world to see Zhao Kuangyin privately, and privately conspired against the suspect as a messenger, which can kill Wang Pu.

Wang Pu could only take a delay, delaying for reasons such as unclear circumstances and insufficient evidence, until it was impossible to delay any longer, and the time had already reached early December.

Chai Rong's arrow wound has healed, but his body has not regained his strength because of this, on the contrary, there is a problem with his physical condition, and sometimes when he holds a cup, he will tremble violently and be unstable.

This made Chai Rong's temper extremely irritable, Chai Rong wanted to revolt A year before Guo Wei died, there was a similar situation, but Guo Wei was fifty years old when he died, and he was only thirty-eight years old this year, could he also die early?

Chai Rong was very scared because of this, his thirty years of bold words were still echoing in his ears, and he had not achieved his ambition, so he was going to let go? Chai Rong was unwilling, he was afraid of dying on the one hand, and on the other hand, he was even more afraid of the future of Zhou Guojiang and Sheji after his death.

In order to send troops to the Northern Expedition as soon as possible, he set a deadline for Wang Pu, and he must have a clear account of the case before the end of the year.

The half-month time limit has arrived in a blink of an eye.

On December 27, the fifth year of Zhou Xiande (958), the Kaifeng Mansion in Kyoto, the Zhou State, the subjects were already preparing for the New Year, and the officials of the Zhou State were no longer in the court.

These days, Chai Rong's health has been good and bad, and the court meeting has been changed to once every two or three days.

The Spring Festival is approaching, and the officials who should be jubilant are no longer counting on a peaceful year, and their only hope is that the turmoil caused by a "plank" will pass as soon as possible.

The four prime ministers of the Zhou State, Fan Zhen, Li Gu, Wang Pu, and Wei Renpu, had begged Chai Rong to put the matter on hold a few days ago, but Chai Rong refused, and the four had no choice but to force Wang Pu to close the case as soon as possible.

Wang Pu was like being put on a fire, constantly roasting.

Wang Pu can't and doesn't dare to go to Zhao Kuangyin in private, and he doesn't want to tell Chai Rong the truth and cause chaos, Wang Pu still hopes that after Chai Rong's body recovers, he can return to the time when he was open-minded and put the matter away. (To be continued......)