Start with a red name

Since the other party has chosen to continue to "hide," Geng Xuan is happy to "turn a blind eye."

Moreover, now is certainly not a good time to confront this "spy".

For the "Black Wind Army," the most crucial hurdle has been overcome.

But for him, things were just beginning.

At this moment, the victorious army was escorting a large number of prisoners back home.

Because of the abundance of spoils, the first batch of soldiers quickly drove thousands of carts back towards the battlefield after returning.

Before long, these trucks, which had been empty when they left, were now fully loaded with spoils of war and returned.

The spoils of war mainly consisted of three items: armor, the dead Xuanyou horse, and various weapons, and there were a great many of them.

Complete sets of armor, intact, damaged, stripped from living and dead people, and picked up from the ground... totaling nearly 100,000 sets.

More than 100,000 weapons of various kinds.

Geng Xuan's gaze swept over the carts laden with armor and weapons, finally settling on the cart carrying the corpse of the Xuan You horse.

Because of their enormous size and weight, a single cart could only fit two horse carcasses.

Liu Mu, who was leading the team back, noticed that his gaze was fixed on the horse carcasses and explained:

"According to the on-site count, nearly 60,000 Xuanyou horses died for various reasons, and it will take several trips to transport them all back."

"Approximately 40,000 horses were captured alive..."

At this point, he shook his head and sighed with regret.

"So many people died, it's such a pity... I was hoping to expand the cavalry to 100,000 after this battle!"

Geng Xuan didn't feel any regret; he was already very satisfied with the results so far.

He even felt that, given the current needs and the gains from this operation, the Xuanyou Light Cavalry was already large enough.

Although, the combination of Xuanyou Light Cavalry and Xuanyou Iron Cavalry would make them a force capable of dominating the world.

But he is not like Dong Guan, and he does not pursue unrestrained growth.

Maintaining such a mysterious cavalry force would be extremely costly in terms of food consumption.

Through his conversations with Song Mingzhu, Tie Lang, and others, Geng Xuan discovered a terrifying truth.

Before Dong Guan unified the Xuan and You states, there were dozens of large and small forces in the two states, which rose and fell and changed at any time.

At that time, the two states of Xuanyou were far more chaotic than they had been during the decades that Dong Guan had been in charge of them.

The battles and killings between different forces are happening all the time.

However, at that time, the population of the two states exceeded fifty million.

After Dong Guan unified the two states and ended the chaos, the population of the two states should have increased, but in reality, the population of the two states has been declining.

Now, it has plummeted to less than 40 million.

The total population decreased by more than ten million.

Dong Guan's rule was indeed cruel, and he frequently killed people.

However, the shortfall of over ten million was not due to Dong Guan's massacre, but rather to the appearance of the Xuan You Horse.

The amount of food consumed to feed one Xuanyou horse can feed dozens of sand people.

For every additional Xuanyou horse, dozens fewer people from the sand tribe will live.

If the number of Xuanyou horses increases by 100,000, the number of Shamin will decrease by several million.

Through in-depth investigation, including all the foals and stallions in those horse farms, it was found that before he suddenly stirred up such a huge wave, the number of Xuanyou horses in Dong Guan's hands was close to 300,000.

In a sense, the more than ten million people who were lost were all eaten by these Xuan You horses.

After understanding the horrific truth behind the "horses eating people," Geng Xuan was not enthusiastic about maintaining an excessively large Xuanyou horse team.

Now, with nearly 60,000 Xuanyou horses dead from javelins or enemy cavalry counterattacks, Geng Xuan felt no regret, but rather a strange sense of relief. It was as if an invisible burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

Moreover, these nearly 60,000 Xuanyou horses can provide the "Black Wind Army" with more than one million shi of horse meat. Because the "Black Wind Army" has added a lot of troops and Xuanyou horses, it can temporarily cover up its huge shortage of food.

—The Xuanyou horse does not eat horse meat, but it can continue to solve the problem by "exchanging meat for grain" and does not need to leech off the locals.

……

After the victorious army escorted the prisoners back one after another, Geng Xuan began to process them according to procedure.

The first step is recruitment.

We absorb what we can absorb, and we dispose of what we cannot absorb directly.

This battle completely shattered the morale of these prisoners.

For this reason, the recruitment process became exceptionally smooth.

It was even smoother and easier than when they first recruited the bandit group.

Of the total of 39,000 prisoners, more than 38,000 eventually became new members of the "Black Wind Army".

Fewer than a thousand people were eliminated.

The conversion rate exceeds 98%.

That's a record-breaking achievement.

However, even so, the scene was still quite horrifying when more than 800 "stubborn elements" were dealt with in one go.

Just as more than eight hundred heads were separated from their bodies and tumbled and rolled on the ground by the surge of hot blood, the two unusual red names reappeared in Geng Xuan's field of vision.

Geng Xuan didn't pay much attention to this, only glancing at it casually before continuing with his own arrangements.

Go ahead and watch it if you want.

Since the other party wasn't going to jump out on their own initiative, Geng Xuan didn't bother to poke them.

If you don't want to come out, then don't come out.

It's not too late to deal with this after I've finished dealing with the important matters.

Now, Geng Xuan has two basic judgments about this "uninvited guest".

This seemingly legitimate and open "watcher" is very likely an existence that has surpassed the Five Realms of Perfection.

This is what people refer to as innate great power.

Furthermore, this "innate great power" is most likely unrelated to Dong Guan.

At least, they weren't there to stand up for him.

Having made these two rough judgments, Geng Xuan finally put his slightly anxious heart back down.

He did not let the other party's appearance disrupt his rhythm of action.

After deducting the nearly 9,000 casualties of the "Black Wind Army," and with the conclusion of this recruitment, our forces have increased by more than 38,000.

Including their original size, and regardless of quality, the total strength of the "Black Wind Army" has exceeded 200,000.

Moreover, not only has the scale increased dramatically, but the quality is also very high.

Leaving aside those with combat strength above the Marrow Refinement level, the number of new recruits is extremely small, and they rely almost entirely on "self-reliance".

The vast majority are concentrated in the two core levels of bone refining and blood refining.

From then on, the Blood Refining Realm had a population of 38,000.

The number of people in the Bone Refining Realm also reached over 29,000.

After this battle, there were no further developments, and the situation between the enemy and ourselves was completely reversed.

Whether in terms of total available forces, elite core troops, or the number of Xuan You horses, the "Black Wind Army" completely overwhelmed Dong Guan's faction. (End of Chapter)