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But upon close inspection, no traces of Zhou People were found in the valley.

The land of this valley was still teeming with Barbarians, with no signs of Zhou People.

At that time, the lands of Xichuan were jointly controlled by Chu State, Xichuan, and Hanzhong. The primary focus of the Imperial City Bureau was on the other two countries, and only a few spies were sent to the valley, with not many people available.

So after conducting a brief search and confirming that the Zhou People were not involved here, they simply treated the Zhou People’s items appearing in the valley as things that had been transferred from Xichuan County, without looking into it further.

In the end, they just compiled the intelligence and sent it, as usual, to Lu Yuan.

At the time the intelligence arrived, he was busy managing the southwest and simply didn’t have time to deal with these minor matters.

Therefore, he only glanced over it once at that time, didn’t think much of it, and there was no follow-up.

But now, as Lu Yuan reviewed the map and looked at the overall situation of the world, the information that was initially ignored was suddenly linked together.

Perhaps the items from Zhou Country in the valley were not transmitted from Xichuan County. Those tribes of Barbarians in the valley could also have obtained these things from another channel, another route.

The Barbarians hiding in the mountains and snowy ridges might have a very secret and little-known trail connecting them with Zhou Country.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Investigate, send someone to investigate immediately. Dispatch your Imperial City Bureau’s little messengers and little spies to infiltrate these Barbarian tribes; you must find that secluded trail for me.”

Lu Yuan called for the commander of the External Bureau of the Imperial City and personally issued a death order.

Concerning the future deployment of troops to Zhou Country, if such a trail could be found, even if it could only transport ten to twenty thousand people, it would be a great thing for Chu State.

Ten to twenty thousand elite soldiers, at critical moments, might just be the force that could turn the tide of battle.

“Yes, I will dispatch the deputy commander to personally lead a team to find it.”

The commanding officer of the External Bureau of the Imperial City saw that the king attached great importance to this matter, immediately accepted the order solemnly and considered it the most important task of the year, planning to get it started immediately after returning.

After instructing the Imperial City Bureau to dispatch people to Snowfield Valley to find the potentially existing trail,

Lu Yuan thought for a while, then had someone bring Cui Changqing to ask about Chu State’s current reserves of food and fodder.

“Your Majesty, now that the wars in Chu State have ceased, there’s still quite a bit left from the twenty million stones of grain prepared last year without major army consumption. All over the place, there’s about seven million stones.”

Cui Changqing understood these administrative affairs well and answered truthfully now.

However, after finish speaking, as if guessing why Lu Yuan was asking this, he added, “But now, everyone is migrating, with a large number of garrisons in Xichuan and Qianzhong Counties, all of whom need the court to supply food.

To maintain the livelihood of these large armies and the populace, the court has to disburse at least two million stones of grain each month.

It’s April now, and all places in Great Chu have started sowing. By June, the summer grain can be harvested.

Therefore, within these three months, at least six million stones of grain have to be ensured to barely maintain the current situation.

If Your Majesty wants to use these reserves, the court can at most squeeze out one million stones of grain.”

Ten million stones of grain, if saved a bit, is roughly equivalent to the needs of one million people for a year.

In the past few years when Lu Yuan was campaigning against the southwestern Yi, although the Forbidden Army employed was always about one hundred thousand men.

But the actual number of soldiers used by Chu State on the southwestern battlefield far exceeds that.

In addition to the one hundred thousand Forbidden Army, there were thirty thousand county soldiers in Qianzhong County, hundreds of thousands of Yi captives, and hundreds of thousands of Chu immigrants who migrated there.

Together, these people amount to more than five hundred thousand.

Just to feed these many people, even with those immigrants offsetting with labor and captives helping transport food and fodder, Chu State still needed to allocate an additional two hundred thousand civilian workers for grain transportation.

The consumption of seven hundred thousand people plus the loss of grain on the way, not counting money, just in terms of food, a war of conquest would consume more than ten million stones a year.

If you consider that Lu Yuan once aided Kunhai Nation for some time and the hundreds of thousands of troops used in Xichuan County, at its peak, Chu Army’s consumption of food and fodder directly reached twenty million stones a year, which is the food needed by two million people for a year.

Feeding two million people for a year, for Chu State which had a population of only about six million at that time, is an almost suffocating figure.

One war emptied Chu State’s accumulation for the six years from Front Yue Hongdao’s eighth year to Shenwu’s fourth year.

In six years, the tens of millions of stones of grain that Chu State accumulated during its period of recuperation and the tens of millions of silver tales in the national treasury were almost all consumed.

If it weren’t for the fact that they made a comeback by robbing the southwestern Yi tribes afterwards, Chu State would probably have gone bankrupt long ago.

Even so,

By last year, which was the end of the war, Chu State still suffered severe effects from the war. Domestic grain prices rose by two thirds, causing serious damage to the people’s livelihood.

It was precisely seeing this that Lu Yuan later gave up Jianchuan Country and ceded such a large territory to Qiao Kangquan.