Late Ming Dynasty: So what if Emperor Chongzhen was inactive?!

Chapter 290: Now you know what difficulty means, right?! (I let you investigate my accounts!)

After the fight, the two Caos warmly received Lu Xiang-sheng in Jinzhou and took him on a tour of the camp and to check the accounts. Unlike Zu Da-shou, they were upright and honest, with bright futures ahead of them. The emperor often thought of them, and they made a fortune from both the emperor's personal rewards and military merits.

Although Zhu Youjian didn't build a princess's residence for his sister, he still arranged a lavish dowry. While a ten-mile-long red procession would be too extravagant, several thousand taels of silver were certainly possible. With money and a promising future, the two had no reason to take any risks, so they weren't afraid of Lu Xiang-sheng investigating them at all.

Like a sedan chair carrying a person, after inspecting the Jinzhou defense zone, Lu Xiang-sheng also praised the two Caos. Before coming, Lu Xiang-sheng had prepared for the worst: he felt that Yuan Ke-li was old and had limited energy, so he was definitely not able to be thorough in everything and could easily be deceived by the generals under his command;

The corruption, collusion with the Jurchens, and the raising of bandits to enhance their own power in Liaodong were already a semi-open secret in the Ming Dynasty. It was probably unknown to the emperor, and even street vendors could gossip about it. With Lord Li in the past and Marshal Mao in the future, Liaodong was a place where the waters ran deep!
But based on his current inspection, the situation in Liaodong is surprisingly good: the troop strength and material reserves in various places are basically in line with the accounts.
This year, the Liaoxi Army issued military pay to 83,756 people. He actually counted more than 82,200 soldiers. This number should be reduced by those who died or returned home on leave. The only unlucky ones he caught were a dozen or so junior officers who were actually receiving pay without working. There was no case of the commander-in-chief taking the lead in receiving pay without working.
Of the 80,000 men in Liaoxi, about 30,000 were elite field troops, and the number of cavalry had exceeded 10,000. In contrast, during the Tianqi era, the entire Liaoxi region could not muster even 6,000 cavalry.

The recent situation in western Liaoning delighted Lu Xiang-sheng and filled him with confidence for his next actions. After clearing western Liaoning, Lu Xiang-sheng made an extremely bold decision: he would lead a small number of elite cavalry directly from western Liaoning to southern Liaoning!
Lu Xiang-sheng was a pragmatist. He believed that knowledge gained from books was ultimately superficial and that the words of others were not to be trusted. He only believed what he saw.
Therefore, he spent more than a month traveling to every stronghold and military camp in western Liaoning to find out the situation of his own side; and he risked crossing the lower reaches of the Liao River plain to enter the enemy-controlled area in order to understand the situation of the enemy-occupied area. This is called knowing yourself and your enemy, and you will never be defeated.

Fortunately, the journey was uneventful; they didn't even catch a glimpse of the Jurchens. Upon arriving at the former site of Xipingbao, all they found were ashes and grass, a testament to recent footsteps.
Lu Xiang-sheng climbed the ruins of Xiping Fort and, under the setting sun, looked out over the Liao River. He couldn't help but exclaim: "The scenery here is infinitely beautiful. It is located at the strategic point of western Liaoning and controls the passage between the mountains and the sea and Guangning. Its location is excellent for three reasons, all of which meet the military principles of 'danger, importance, and convenience.' It is truly a good place to garrison a city!"

However, winter was approaching, and he would have to wait until the spring to rebuild Xiping Fort; all he could do now was prepare his weapons and wait for dawn. Because Lu Xiang-sheng had been delayed on his journey, by the time he arrived in southern Liaoning, Mao Wen-long had already received Old Yuan's letter and learned about the events that had occurred in Shanhaiguan, Ningyuan, and other places.

When Lu Xiang-sheng tried to use the same trick again and challenge Mao Wen-long to a fight, Mao Wen-long simply cheated and refused to fight. He said that as long as he didn't fight, he wouldn't lose! Seeing that no matter what kind of rhetoric he used, Mao Wen-long wouldn't take the bait, Lu Xiang-sheng had no choice but to give up. As the Liaodong military commissioner, he couldn't very well forcibly grab his subordinate commander-in-chief and beat him up, could he?

Civil officials are noble, but the nobility are no less so; in terms of rank, Mao Wenlong is a first-rank military officer! Mao Wenlong's Dongjiang Town has many problems: he claimed to have 110,000 troops, but in reality, he only had more than 10,000 soldiers left; later, Yuan Keli checked his accounts and found that the number of troops had been reduced to 30,000, but now he sees that there are no 30,000 soldiers at all, not even 10,000!

Mao Wenlong's old camp on Pi Island was reduced to less than four thousand men, with newly recruited ragtag troops making up more than half of them. However, faced with Lu Xiang-sheng's questioning, Mao Wenlong remained stubbornly unyielding, refusing to back down, change his ways, or offer any explanation! Lu Xiang-sheng felt a terrible headache coming on. He felt he had been tricked by his senior; how had he spoiled Mao Wenlong?!

Lu Xiang-sheng felt an itch to shoot Mao Wenlong to death; this guy thinks he can do whatever he wants just because he has military merits to protect him!

However, Liaonan did not actually only have a few thousand troops. If that were the case, Liaonan would have been defeated by the Jurchens long ago. Lu Xiang-sheng counted that Liaonan had 50,000 troops, but only more than 10,000 were elite troops in the field. However, they only received the salary of 30,000 troops from the imperial court, and most of them only received food but not money.
He discovered that in southern Liaoning, silver did not circulate much; a small amount of copper coins were in circulation, and most transactions were completed using the most primitive form of barter.

Large numbers of Han and Korean people could only survive by relying on soup kitchens and work relief programs. No matter how they operated, it could not change the fact that hundreds of thousands of people needed to be supported by the imperial court. This even made him feel a little scared: Liaonan was a complete mess!
He learned from the local people that there was a bumper harvest in southern Liaoning this year. If there had been no war, southern Liaoning should have been able to achieve basic self-sufficiency this year. But reality has no "what ifs".
The 50,000 people in southern Liaoning are mainly divided into three parts: one part is Dongjiang Town under Mao Wenke. They were originally stationed on the east coast of southern Liaoning, but when the war broke out, they left their post and ran to the west coast. Now they are homeless and pitiful.

Haizhou City has been reborn from the ashes and has now formed a semi-independent state similar to that of Mao Wenlong. The Earl of Haicheng also serves as the Commander-in-Chief of Haizhou. The army is mainly composed of several thousand surrendered Mongol soldiers, plus the original and later transferred soldiers, totaling about 10,000 troops.
The remaining 30,000 men had no clear command. During wartime, they were usually under the command of Mao Wenlong, but because the quality of the soldiers was too poor, Mao Wenlong rarely used them. They were generally responsible for tasks such as defending the city, maintaining order, and farming.

Lu Xiang-sheng felt that his senior was really outrageous. He hadn't even set up his own battalion, so how could he command such a large group of people?! Lu Xiang-sheng tried to tell himself to stay calm and not panic, and that he would be fine once his elite troops from Hebei were transferred over, but he still found it hard to keep his composure!

Seeing that Lu Xiang-sheng, the newly appointed Liaodong military commissioner, looked like he was on the verge of collapse, Mao Wenlong laughed gleefully and ordered Lu Xiang-sheng to check his accounts. Now he knew what trouble was!

(End of this chapter)