Chapter 524: The speed of development is astonishing. This is a fight to the death with me!

Chapter 524: The speed of development is astonishing. This is a fight to the death with me!

Xiang Yu, who was originally in Longxi, succeeded in seizing Beidi and part of Shangjun after a hard battle. After that, he did not rush to continue the war, but took a wise move - recuperation and recruiting soldiers. During this period, Fan Zeng, his chief strategist, assisted him with strategies, which made the Chu army gradually recover and regain vitality.

As time went by, the Chu army not only expanded rapidly, growing to more than 50,000 people, but also strengthened military training. The soldiers were all in high spirits and high morale, ready to go to battle at the command. The various forces in the troubled times naturally dared not take it lightly, especially Gaoyao, who needed to remain vigilant and pay attention at all times.

It must be said that in this era of frequent wars and disputes among princes, Xiang Yu did show extraordinary personal charm. He was brave and fearless, and his lofty sentiments attracted many brave men with lofty ambitions and aspirations to join his army. There were many of them, and they were impressed by Xiang Yu's heroism and were willing to follow him and fight for him. This kind of personal charm undoubtedly became a powerful trump card in Xiang Yu's hand, and it was also one of the factors that other princes and Gao Yao had to face and fear.

In addition to Xiang Yu, there is another person who also makes the princes and even Gao Yao feel quite headache and fearful, that is Liu Bang who proclaimed himself the King of Han. However, only Gao Yao knows best that the so-called "Liu Bang" in front of him is not the real Liu Bang himself, but a substitute carefully arranged and created by the mysterious Yi Xiaochuan.

However, this still surprised Gao Yao. It had been nearly two years since the defeat of the imperial army. The mysterious Yi Xiaochuan had won over many people, many of whom were the followers of Liu Bang in history.

In Sishui County, the mysterious Yi Xiaochuan gathered all the available troops and abundant money and food in one place. In this short period of time, he showed amazing fighting power and strategic wisdom, and conquered the three important counties of Julu, Hengshan and Shanggu with thundering momentum. Not only that, they also eliminated several princes during the war and ruthlessly annexed all the accumulated resources of these princes.

In addition, they successfully recruited many soldiers who originally belonged to the Northern Army. With the continuous influx of soldiers, the speed of its military expansion far exceeded people's expectations. Today, this army has occupied a vast area of ​​up to three and a half counties, and has more than 100,000 soldiers under its command. What's more worth mentioning is that there are many experienced elite soldiers among these more than 100,000 troops.

According to the confidential information obtained from Gao Yao, the mysterious Yi Xiaochuan is making every effort to stockpile war horses. He seems to have a more far-reaching plot, and has secretly started a series of transactions with the Xiongnu. It is understood that in order to exchange for a considerable number of excellent war horses, Yi Xiaochuan is unscrupulous, in addition to using women and children as bargaining chips, he even uses precious smelting technology to exchange with the Xiongnu. It is not difficult to see from the current situation that the mysterious Yi Xiaochuan is obviously interested in building a large and powerful cavalry unit.

Moreover, the number of cavalry is truly a jaw-dropping, extremely exaggerated astronomical figure! After a long period of accumulation, its scale has exceeded 50,000.

Although the system helped and granted a large number of warhorse resources for breeding, it had to be admitted that the Southern Territory was located in the south after all, and compared with the vast northern grasslands, there was a clear gap in both the quantity and quality of warhorses. Here, even if more energy and resources were invested in breeding, it would be difficult to compare with the excellent warhorses bred by the unique conditions of the northern grasslands.

This is also the key reason why Gaoyao has been unable to expand its cavalry on a large scale for a long time. As of now, all the cavalry in the entire southern border combined are only just over 50,000. What's worse is that with the gradual increase in population fertility, the number of purebred horses is constantly decreasing, and the rate of slaughter is greatly reduced.

This situation is undoubtedly a natural disadvantage. Even if Gao Yao has a system reward, it is still a drop in the bucket and there is really no way to save the situation. Even if these war horses are protected with more perfect measures, they will still inevitably suffer losses. Especially when a war breaks out, the loss rate of war horses soars.

At first glance, the cavalry of nearly 50,000 people seemed majestic and powerful. Gao Yao knew very well that it was impossible for him to concentrate such a large cavalry force in one place for battle. Instead, he had to flexibly deploy them according to the actual situation. Only in this way could he give full play to the maximum combat effectiveness of this cavalry force and defeat the enemy on the battlefield.

After careful consideration, Gao Yao finally roughly guessed the mysterious Yi Xiaochuan's wishful thinking. Although he knew how to make black powder, in the current era of lack of various advanced equipment and tools, if he wanted to successfully make black powder for practical use with his own hands, it would undoubtedly take a long time.

If things were really so easy, Gao Yao would probably have been eager to start large-scale production and use as soon as he obtained the formula for making black gunpowder.

Obviously, the mysterious Yi Xiaochuan also keenly saw this thorny problem. So he immediately changed his strategy and took a different approach, turning his attention to the cavalry and determined to fully explore and give full play to its potential huge advantages. Due to the uniqueness of the region, Yi Xiaochuan was able to continuously recruit, train and stockpile a considerable number of elite cavalry.

It is true that cavalry has its own inevitable shortcomings and disadvantages in attacking cities and occupying land. However, their advantages are also not to be underestimated and are extremely significant. Especially in the vast open field battlefield, as long as there is no special terrain environment that has a strong inhibitory effect on the combat capability of cavalry, a team of 10,000 well-trained cavalry, under the command of an excellent general who is both wise and brave and has good command, can face off head-on without fear even when facing an infantry corps twice its size, and show a powerful combat effectiveness.

The advantage of cavalry itself lies in its absolutely undoubted strong position in the era of cold weapons. Mysterious Yi Xiaochuan knew that it would be difficult to catch up with Gao Yao in the research and advancement of black gunpowder, so he chose this method. Once they clash again, mysterious Yi Xiaochuan can take advantage of the powerful advantage of cavalry and directly occupy the absolute initiative on the field battlefield.