614 Military Martial Arts Competition (1/2)

Intel, diplomacy, and education; these three areas alone easily used up 3.5 million gold.

Apart from this, Ouyang Shuo would keep 2.5 million gold for his own use. As for the remaining one million, he would throw the sum into the military expansion.

Firstly, they would build the 5th division of the Guards Legion to complete the Guards Legion.

The Guards Legion 5th division would be elite cavalry from the three legion corps. It would also be the 3rd Cavalry Division in the Guards Legion.

Originally, Ouyang Shuo had other ideas regarding this division. However, since Huo Qubing was proficient in cavalry warfare, Ouyang Shuo could only increase the cavalry set up in the legion.

Secondly, they would expand the city protection division to a city protection legion.

The city protection division already had two divisions under it, so they would just merge the Lianzhou, Xunzhou and Zhen An Garrison Divisions into this city protection legion.

With that, the city protection division directly reached full capacity.

As for the Garrison Divisions, the reserve squad members would temporality replace it.

The General of this legion would be Er'Lai.

Er'Lai’s promotion meant that this city protection division would completely break away from the brand of a local force people. Ouyang Shuo's goal was to turn this city protection legion into the 2nd Guards Legion.

Hence, Ouyang Shuo needed to send them out for training.

Based on the military agreement he had with Wufu, this completed city protection legion would teleport over to Stone City to aid in the expansion of Stone City for half a year.

During that period, the Guards Legion would handle Shanhai City’s defences.

The agreement clearly stated the roles and responsibilities of each party.

Shanhai City would take charge of their salary, while Stone City would bear the teleportation fees and logistics. As such, the city protection legion would receive the needed training, while Stone City would gain a helping hand; it was a win-win situation.

Ouyang Shuo’s move was naturally to impede the expansion of Handan City in the north region of Jingdou. Stone City was an extremely important chess piece in his entire strategy, so he could not allow Di Chen to remove it.

This deployment of the city protection legion could be called the opening of a new form of cooperation within the Shanhai Alliance. Consequently, Shanhai City slowly changed from an alliance leader in name to the alliance leader of a common military alliance.

Shanhai City providing military cover for its allies would become something extremely common in the future.

Now, aside from the economic field, Shanhai City had also started to play the role of an actual alliance leader in military terms; a true big brother.

Thirdly, they needed to build the 3rd legion of the Tiger Legion.

With the Zhenhai City Garrison Division acting as the foundation, along with the Qiongzhou, Leizhou, Zhaoqing, and Wuzhou Garrison Divisions, they would build up a complete war fighting legion.

With that, the eight Garrison Divisions in the territory were all removed from their duties and would need reconstruction. As a result, Ouyang Shuo had also removed some of the problems of the Garrison Divisions like local interests.

Furthermore, elite Garrison Division major generals such as Zhao Yan, Hu Yibiao, Su Wang, and Song Wu could use this chance to return to battle.

Zhenhai City, Qiongzhou Prefecture, Leizhou Prefecture, and Zhaoqing Prefecture all belonged to the Lingnan Warzone, which was under the command of the Tiger Legion. Hence, this new legion was placed under their control.

The base of the legion was chosen to be Zhenhai City.

Ouyang Shuo's goal was naturally to strengthen this area and defend the bridge. If not, what if the Lingnan City-State started something while he was away? He would not be able to help.

After this expansion, Zhenhai City would possess a war fighting legion and a complete Jiaozhou Squadron. Even if the Lingnan City-State went all out against them, they could hold on until reinforcements arrived.

Fan Lihua would take the role of general of the 3rd legion of the Tiger Legion Corps.

After this promotion, Fan Lihua had once again broken a record, becoming the first woman in the territory, and probably even China, to become a legion general.

Of course, just expanding two legions would not cost a million. More than half was spent on the expansion of the three squadrons.

The families of the thousands of talents that Zheng He had recruited also needed to survive, so just the settling down fees was an enormous sum.

Amongst this sum, it did not account for resources such as weapons and warships. If not, based on the current Shanhai City military standards, a million was definitely far from enough.

……

The Lord continued to blatantly expand his army, while resting his forces in his territory and taking no military action.

It seemed contradictory, but it was actually in the same vein.

After a few combo punches, the logic his commands contained gave the many officials in the city much to ponder about.

Of the 2.5 million that Ouyang Shuo kept, he took out five hundred thousand once more to purchase item for trading on their voyage such as porcelain and tea leaves.

If this went well, the profits of this batch would double, helping to make up for the costs of this voyage. Needless to say, at the same time, they could bring back a massive batch of the other country's products and earn plenty.

It was similar to when Zheng He headed down the pacific in history. However, they were more practical this time and did not empty their coffers.