Kays Translations
Just another Isekai Lover~
Chapter 90: Digging up a prime minister
It’s no wonder Xu Ren was so shocked; everything was truly unexpected! At this moment, the Cai Kingdom should be in a state of panic, having suffered consecutive defeats and heavy losses. The Cai Kingdom is now extremely vulnerable. Fu Minghui doesn’t need much military wisdom; as long as he charges forward bravely, he will undoubtedly achieve an unimaginable victory.
One must remember that these thirty thousand soldiers are the Imperial Guard! Even though the Great Xia Kingdom has become corrupt, the Imperial Guard remains the Imperial Guard; the Emperor of the Great Xia Kingdom is not completely blind yet.
However, Xu Ren could not have anticipated such a result; such a crushing defeat, with barely one in ten surviving!
This disastrous defeat also disrupted many of Xu Ren’s plans; for example, the negotiations with the Cai Kingdom, the effort to secure enough political capital for Li Xian, and Li Xian’s commercial dumping plan!
The guard who delivered the message slowly recounted the events, as these matters were no longer secrets in the imperial capital and had long spread; only the specifics were not entirely clear.
The general situation was that the northern expedition needed to pass through the control zone of the Great Prince; the Great Prince, who is now the Crown Prince, wanted to win over Fu Minghui because his position was precarious. As a result, Fu Minghui directly rejected the Great Prince’s overtures. Fu Minghui is the chief guard by the Emperor’s side, arguably the most trusted person around the Emperor, and naturally cannot make arbitrary statements.
At first, the Great Prince did not express anything; Fu Minghui did not take it seriously either. According to the plan, they requisitioned twenty thousand servant soldiers and transportation from the Great Prince, enough to transport twenty thousand stones of grain north for the attack.
However, once they entered the territory of the Cai Kingdom, the situation was as Xu Ren had predicted—like a bolt from the blue; in just one day and one night, they covered five hundred miles, capturing a county each day, achieving brilliant results. However, when preparing breakfast the next day, Fu Minghui was dumbfounded!
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The servant soldiers requisitioned from the Great Prince had disappeared without a trace overnight; and the twenty thousand stones of grain turned out to be all “green food”—they had all gone moldy!
With an isolated army deep in enemy territory and without supplies, the outcome was obvious. Furthermore, the Cai Kingdom “unexpectedly” learned of this news, and naturally launched a desperate counterattack. Under these circumstances, Fu Minghui had no choice but to break through in a disheveled state.
Yet, the combat capability of the Imperial Guard is ultimately strong; even in such dire straits, more than twenty thousand soldiers managed to break through to the border of the Great Xia Kingdom. However, at that time, the border of the Great Xia Kingdom was unexpectedly closed! The border commander refused to open the gates, citing the reason that they could not allow the large army of the Cai Kingdom to enter the country.
Thus, beneath the defensive walls of the Great Xia Kingdom, Fu Minghui and the Imperial Guard were besieged by over one hundred thousand miscellaneous troops from the Cai Kingdom; ultimately, fewer than three thousand managed to climb the walls to escape. Twenty-seven thousand soldiers perished, yet the Cai Kingdom suffered nearly fifty thousand casualties!
But what’s most absurd and infuriating is that the twenty thousand servant soldiers sent out by the Great Prince also didn’t escape; they were all captured by the Cai Kingdom!
“Outrageous! Absolutely outrageous!” Beichen Yuqing was filled with rage.
Xu Ren dismissed the guards from the Li residence, slowly turned to look westward, towards the location of the capital of the Great Xia Kingdom, Wuyang City, and suddenly sighed, “The Great Xia Kingdom is finished! This battle has completely buried the decades of national fortune and breathing space that Li Yulong and the young master fought for the Great Xia Kingdom!”
Beichen Yuqing was still shaking with anger. “He is the Great Prince! How could he do this! With the country gone, he can only be a slave to the fallen state!”
Xu Ren was not angry; instead, he was seriously planning. Suddenly, Xu Ren even smiled, a somewhat cold smile. “Well then, I can finally act freely. Beichen, now you go do something. Let our people spread rumors in the Cai Kingdom, saying that the Prime Minister’s two defeats were because he accepted benefits from the Kong family, and ultimately, he was used by the Kong family.
The rumors don’t need to be too detailed; just a few sentences will do. Make sure to incite the families of the soldiers who suffered casualties.”
“Hey, I’ve been preparing to do this for a long time,” Beichen Yuqing immediately turned and left.
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Xu Ren continued to look at the western sky. After a long time, he finally decided to personally visit Qingyun Valley.
Li Xian was still in the research room, and the relevant personnel, upon hearing that there had been breakthroughs in the spirit stone research, were all excited and unable to contain themselves, engaging in lively discussions.
Hu Jun Cai, who was in charge of the Xuan Iron smelting, was the most proactive. “How much pressure do we need to compress spiritual energy into the spirit stones? We’ve measured that the atmospheric pressure here is about 100,000 pascals, equivalent to the pressure of a 10-meter-high water column.
Now, in the process of smelting Xuan Iron, we need to use about 100 times the atmospheric pressure. Should we try using the smelting equipment for Xuan Iron?”
“This method sounds good!” everyone immediately agreed.
“But how do we collect the spiritual energy? Relying solely on the little bit of spiritual energy gathered by the gathering array is really… useless!” someone raised an objection.
“We should come up with a machine that can collect and compress spiritual energy.” Everyone had been trained by Li Xian and now thought of inventing a machine first when faced with problems, rather than being at a loss.
“But what kind of machine?” The crowd was at a loss.
Li Xian chuckled; it was my turn now! “There’s a type of machine called a compressor. Using a compressor, we can compress gas into a liquid state. Right, with a compressor, we also need other pumps. The structures of these machines include axial flow, centrifugal, and piston types…
Oh, and a compressor can be slightly expanded into a centrifuge.
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That’s roughly the structure; you all study it.”
After Li Xian finished speaking, he clapped his hands and left, leaving in a very casual manner.
When Li Xian arrived at the office, Fang Shijing had also arrived; Li Xian immediately prepared to hold a small technical seminar. But when everyone gathered, Xu Ren rushed in, his expression serious. “Young master, things have changed! This is a letter from the master.”
Li Xian rarely saw Xu Ren looking so serious. He immediately opened the envelope and read through the letter at a glance.
“How is this possible! Sir, take a look,” Li Xian handed the letter to Xu Ren. The information from Li Yulong was even more detailed and involved many secrets. For example, the border commander was secretly a member of the Wang family! This meant that this defeat was not solely the responsibility of the Great Prince but rather a collective failure!
“Truly fascinating!” After reading the letter, Xu Ren’s expression was peculiar. The main reason for this defeat was not just the Great Prince’s fault; the real reason was that the struggle for the crown prince had reached a boiling point!
His Majesty the Emperor favored the young and beautiful Noble Consort Hua, and with the diviner Ge Zhengfeng saying that the crown prince did not have the Emperor’s fate, he intended to make his younger son the crown prince.
Naturally, the officials led by the Prime Minister disagreed, working hard to support the Great Prince. However, after this incident, the Great Prince was finished. Subsequently, the Prime Minister and others prepared, according to protocol, to support the Second Prince as the new crown prince.
Ironically, after Li Xian proposed the slogan of “enriching the nation through commerce,” the power of the merchants in the Great Xia Kingdom became unprecedentedly strong, and the Second Prince, who had merchant lineage, ended up overshadowing the Great Prince entirely.
Things were relatively calm among the common people, but the court was already in turmoil; all the struggles had surfaced, and it was clearly shaping up to be a bloody storm.
The Great Xia Kingdom was already on the brink of collapse, yet it was caught up in the struggle for the crown prince—this was the greatest political upheaval! No wonder Xu Ren would comment that it was “truly fascinating.”