You have truly caused me great suffering!

In the grand scheme of things, everyone occupies a different position, and people have different expectations of you.

A scholar who utters these words, desiring to live in seclusion on the outskirts of Jinling Prefecture, will receive blessings.

When an emperor utters such words, it can only elicit astonishment and disappointment.

But Wang Kai remained unmoved. "I was already disappointed in you long before you were disappointed in me."

Otherwise, I wouldn't have had this idea.

It's one thing to have this idea.

If he dares to say it so openly, then he truly has nothing on his mind.

There are quite a few rulers who come to Dajing to retire. If Wang Kai comes, he might be granted a noble title, or at least a duke.

Once Daejeong takes over Goryeo through other means, the standards will naturally be lowered.

With his hands behind his back, Wang Kai recalled his many visits to Da Jing, especially his experience of meeting the emperor, and felt even more at ease. There was no doubt that the emperor of Da Jing was a very kind person.

He is not someone to be feared.

Throughout history, the more powerful the emperor, the more authoritative he was.

Interacting with Emperor Jing, Chen Shao, is like basking in a spring breeze. You can clearly feel that he respects you greatly and will not suddenly embarrass you or take action against you.

The group, their hearts filled with discord, headed to the Honglu Temple in Jinling.

The situation in Goryeo had deteriorated to such an extent that the king was forced to flee to the suzerain state, and the country was on the verge of collapse.

Da Jing's attitude was ambiguous, and he was slow to offer any help.

The king, who was originally supposed to be stationed in Liaodong, went straight to Jinling, which dealt a huge blow to the morale of the Kaijing faction.

This is tantamount to the king having given up.

If he had come to Jinling, he could have cried day and night to gain the support of the Great Jing Dynasty, but instead he chose to give up.

The sky was overcast and gloomy, and sighs and lamentations filled the air.

The group arrived at the Honglu Temple Guesthouse, where officials from the Ministry of Rites of the Great Jing Dynasty received them with great care and in accordance with the established procedures.

After all, the last time, no one took charge of the Goryeo delegation, which led to the Ministry of Rites being held accountable.

They were also a little annoyed.

According to the regulations, you Koreans can come two or three times a year, with dozens of people each time.

But you all flocked to Jinling, even the emperor himself came, which suddenly gave the officials of the Ministry of Rites a lot more work.

They might say really nasty things behind someone's back, but you still have to treat them politely in person.

Apart from Chen Shao and a few ministers in the court, no one else really cared much about the situation in Goryeo.

After all, Goryeo was still too far away for the people of Daejeong.

The Youyan and Liaodong regions bordering them have not belonged to the Central Plains for two or three hundred years. In fact, since An Lushan's rebellion, that area has never been under the jurisdiction of the Central Plains dynasties.

The local people also had limited interaction with the Central Plains.

Not to mention Goryeo, which was further east.

Those who were granted fiefdoms in Liaodong attached great importance to Goryeo: firstly, they had large tracts of land and needed Goryeo people to come and help with farming and herding.

The Shiwei, Xi, and Bohai people were not suited to be tenant farmers at all, while the Goryeo laborers had already been tested and were very hardworking.

Secondly, they also need to trade with Goryeo. Although trade has not been completely interrupted due to the ongoing wars in Goryeo, the impact is still enormous.

These Dingnan Army troops, enfeoffed in Liaodong, were the most loyal and core Dingnan Army, and were the largest original shareholders of the Great Jing Dynasty.

Jin Ling's Yinzhou troops were originally split into two in Shuozhou. Fifty thousand of them followed Jin Ling to Yingzhou and later returned to Bianliang to participate in the military parade.

Then he was confined to the fertile lands of the Central Plains, including Jinghu, Jiangnan, and Henan.

The rest were led by Qu Duan and stationed in Hedong. When Zongwang and Zonghan joined forces to march south, Qu Duan led them from Jingxi West Road to Daming Prefecture.

Then they entered Shandong, attacked Guo Yaoshi by sea, stormed Huanglongfu, destroyed Wanyan Aguda's tomb, captured Shangjing, and finally destroyed the Jin dynasty in the Battle of Lulongling.

These people are truly eyeing us covetously.

Although they are now small-time estate owners, they do nothing but collect mountain products, resell them at a higher price to the Central Plains, and hunt tigers and bears in the mountains.

However, as long as the imperial court gives an order, this group of people can immediately organize a fairly elite cavalry, the kind that comes with its own warhorses and weapons.

Moreover, it is no exaggeration to say that even if the two groups of Goryeo were combined, they could not resist this group of veterans who had fought against the peak Jurchen for ten years.

Therefore, although their actions of taking advantage of the internal strife in Goryeo to undermine Goryeo's foundation and harbor Goryeo refugees were heinous,
Neither side of the Korean forces dared to interfere.

When the Goryeo people raised this question, Chen Shao said directly: "These are all veterans of the founding of the country, and I will give them some leeway."
-
Time flies, always passing by in the blink of an eye.

Chen Shao used to think that poets always sighed like this, as if they all cherished time.

But he later discovered that it was simply because these people had nothing better to do, while he, on the other hand, was so busy every day that he rarely noticed how quickly time passed.

Only when one occasionally and unintentionally notices the blooming and withering of flowers does one marvel at how quickly the seasons change.

The maple leaves in Baozhen Temple shimmered with a dark golden light in the setting sun, like grass seeds ripening and gradually turning yellow on a prairie. They fluttered down, their brilliant colors tinged with a sense of melancholy, for with each falling leaf, the weather would grow increasingly cool.

In the courtyard, the maids and servants gradually added more and more clothes, but some were still wearing only a single layer of clothing, following the principle of "dressing warmly in spring and lightly in autumn."

As autumn arrived, Chen Shao rested in the pavilion, with Madam Song accompanying him. She didn't speak, just sat beside Chen Shao, her face very rosy, clearly showing that she had plenty of energy.

Many maids gathered together, picking fruits and vegetables from the courtyard, enjoying themselves immensely.

Many of them came from Korea. After leaving their parents and homeland, they lived a relatively happy and leisurely life.

Many of these Goryeo girls were selected from a young age and raised in a concentrated manner, only taught to serve others.

So, those who are silly and don't understand anything, who only know how to obey their masters, are actually happier and don't even miss their parents.

Chen Shao sometimes felt that this was cruel, and sometimes he felt that it was a good thing.

If they were truly mentally mature and sound, they probably wouldn't be so happy at this moment, given the internal strife in Goryeo, with nine out of ten houses empty and the fighting extremely fierce.

Under the ravages of war, those who suffered the most casualties were not the wealthy and powerful families who launched the war.

They are ordinary people, their relatives.

For example, in the recent Battle of Hwanghae Province, the city was short of food because the Xijing army had been besieging it for a long time.

So the rebels drove all the old, weak, women and children out of the city, while the government troops indiscriminately slaughtered them, recording the heads as war merits.

In this battle alone, 50,000 civilians died.

The corpses of fifty thousand people piled up like a small mountain were a truly horrific sight. But from Chen Shao's perspective, fifty thousand was just a number, and not even a very large one.

Putting aside other matters, during the years that Tong Guan was in charge of the border regions, no fewer than 200,000 farmers in the five routes of Shaanxi died from overwork, starvation, or beatings at his behest.

That's how cruel war can be.

The powerful clans in Xijing, in a moment of impulsiveness, wanted to rebel, completely unaware of how terrible war is.

Moreover, once war breaks out, there will be irreconcilable contradictions between the two sides, and even if a compromise is reached, they will fight again sooner or later.

A group of young women picked several baskets of fruit. Chen Shao saw that they were pears. These pears didn't look very big, only about the size of a girl's fist, but they were very juicy and sweet when you took a bite.

They smiled and stepped forward, leaving a few for Chen Shao, while Song immediately got up to go wash.

Chen Shao watched her busy figure, his thoughts still on Goryeo, thousands of miles away, but that didn't stop him from appreciating her.

Although it was autumn, she wasn't wearing much—just a low-cut dress that accentuated her cleavage.

She has a petite frame but is not thin; she is rather plump.

Especially her round, soft buttocks under her skirt, which looked like millstones, looked like they were about to fall onto the grass when she squatted down.

As if sensing Chen Shao's gaze, she handed him the pear and whispered, "It's getting a bit cold, Your Majesty. Please go to bed. I will help you undress."

It was still afternoon, and the room was still brightly lit. It wouldn't be good to close the doors in broad daylight, but Baozhen Temple was known for its extravagance and leisure, so they didn't really care about that.

Chen Shao smiled and shook his head. "Tonight then."

Song was somewhat disappointed, but she didn't show it, secretly planning which undergarment to wear that evening.

Of the three women in Baozhen Temple, she was considered to have the strongest desires, but she was usually so dignified that it didn't seem so.

Once they actually got on the bed, Yi'an and Maode were often astonished.

Chen Shao declined because he had other things to do that afternoon, including seeing off a group of people who were about to leave the capital.

The Zhe clan has been back in the capital for almost a month and will soon be returning to Mayi, which is the newly established Luzon Prefecture of the Great Jing Dynasty.

Next, there's Jianyili to fight.
It should be noted that when this battle began, the enemies were Kagi-ri and Zhenla.

As a result, Mayi, Bagan, and Siam have all been destroyed, but Kham and Zhenla still exist.

Chen Shao hoped that they would take Jianyi Village in the next year and then continue their exploration of Southeast Asia.

Several young members of the Zhong clan will also be traveling with them this time.

After eating the pears, Chen Shao pinched Song Shi a few times and told her to prepare some hangover soup, as he would probably need to drink some this time.

Even though Chen Shao was surrounded by women who were all obedient to him after he became emperor, Shi Shi was still the most considerate. She always prepared a hangover soup for him when he was drunk.

Since there was no war in the northwest, the Zhe clan selected a group of soldiers skilled in archery and horsemanship from the original western army to form a new army, and also transferred 20,000 warhorses from the Yellow River bend region.

These soldiers were originally selected from the army, quite different from newly recruited soldiers. However, on the eve of the establishment of the Great Jing Dynasty, in order to ensure absolute stability, they were all dismissed.

Now that they have been transferred from the border troops of the Song Dynasty to the soldiers of the Great Jing Dynasty, many basic things no longer need to be practiced. They only need to practice marching and get to know their generals at all levels.

The Western Army consisted of seasoned veterans, and if the climate wasn't a factor, the southern wilderness was actually a good fit for them.

The Great Kingdom needs some people who know how to exploit others to squeeze the local natives and help them integrate into the new country as quickly as possible.

If the new army were composed of ordinary civilians, it probably wouldn't have this kind of ruthlessness.

These people are all seasoned veterans. Anyone who dares to play tricks on them will be dealt with in a few ways.

At this point in the battle in the southern wilderness, there have been no truly tough battles.

If we had to categorize it, we could say they were all counterinsurgency operations.

The 15,000 new armors of various specifications manufactured by the Engineering Institute are almost completed, a speed that has greatly surprised the Zhe family.

They are all experts; they know the value of this speed.
This means that Da Jing can organize and mobilize as many troops as it wants to recruit.

The imperial court had already prepared provisions and supplies. Before any changes were made, they had been planning and preparing, and the officials responsible for troop and grain transfers and coordination at all levels had already been decided.

Because of their good performance, the Zhe family was able to rebuild a new army. Compared to the four major families of the Western Army, they were able to stand out again through their own efforts.

The Zhong family remained the foremost military family in the Western Army, but they were so resilient that most of the male members of the family perished in battle.

The population has never been large.

The Liu family is now defunct in name only; Liu Guanglie has changed his name to Chen Guanglie.

The Yao family was wiped out after being killed in Longyou.

This was the last glorious moment for the Western Army; what was once the border between Song and Xia had now become completely inland.

The five routes in Shaanxi no longer need to fight any battles.

Today, the northwestern border of China extends to the Ili River Valley and Samarkand.

When Chen Shao arrived, Zhe Keqiu had already prepared a banquet, making it seem like a victory celebration even before the battle had begun.

Clearly, everyone was in high spirits, especially the group of military officers around Zhe Keqiu, who believed that this battle was a sure victory and that their chance to make meritorious contributions and be promoted had come again.

After so many years of decline, the Western Army is finally about to make a comeback. It really does take following the right people to succeed.

Look at our Emperor, and then look at Tong Guan.

Pooh!
The Zhe family has always been very strict in managing its affairs, which is why it has been able to produce talented people generation after generation without any break in the family line.

The mansion, which was usually quiet and orderly, became lively and bustling. The sounds of string and wind instruments and singing were mixed with loud shouts. Servants could be seen carrying delicacies and wine jars back and forth. In broad daylight, it was a scene of singing and dancing.

Chen Shao's arrival with his guards brought the atmosphere to a climax, and everyone stood up to bow to him.

Since he began cultivating the autonomy and initiative of the bureaucratic system, Chen Shao had not indulged in such unrestrained drinking for a long time. In addition, the banquet was attended by familiar faces, and in a good mood, he joined in the merriment. He sang the Song of the Great Wind while beating a drum, but unfortunately, he sang the wrong words in the middle and his tone was completely off. Some of the military men couldn't care less and couldn't help but laugh. Chen Shao didn't mind at all.

Chen Shao was originally from the Western Army, after all, the Shengjie Army was also a branch of the Western Army, and his military achievements were bought by Han Shizhong, and he made his contributions in the Song-Xia War.

Moreover, the Zhong family is the leader of the Western Army, and the current empress is the daughter of our Western Army.

Many of the Western Army soldiers considered His Majesty one of their own, but unfortunately, when the army marched out of Nuanquan Peak, the Western Army did not follow.

Chen Shao really enjoys drinking the wine nowadays; it's sweet and doesn't burn his throat.

However, he wasn't a good drinker. Although the alcohol content of the liquor shouldn't be high, he was already completely drunk by evening.

Zhong Shizhong and the others were also completely drunk and staggering. They would embark on their expedition the next day when the sun rose.

I'll definitely have to quit drinking then. (End of Chapter)