Chapter 177: The first battle of the new year, the doubts in my heart are solved
In the fourth year of Chongzhen, on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, at 3:30 pm.

In the large square in front of the military hall, various colored battle flags fluttered in the wind, making whirring sounds.

“Dong dong…”

Dozens of war drums were beaten loudly by dozens of strong soldiers.

In the huge central square with a radius of about three hundred feet, the Five Divine Beasts Legion of the Renaissance Army, which has expanded to 20,000 people, is standing in line solemnly, waiting for orders, riding on spirit beast war horses.

Yesterday morning, at the Spring Festival meeting held by the military, Hongmei proposed that generals at all levels discuss and feel that the current battalion-level organization is no longer suitable for the rapidly growing Fuxing Army.

Therefore, starting from today, the Five Divine Beasts War Barracks was officially renamed the Five Divine Beasts Legion.

Under each legion, three major camps were set up.

The three major camps are now just a framework, and the staffing is far from full.

The planned number of combat soldiers in each battalion will be 3,000 combat soldiers and 1,500 logistics soldiers when fully staffed.

Because there are not enough warriors and soldiers at present, we have to temporarily build the framework, and then gradually fill the number of soldiers in each camp through repeated warrior training and selection in the future.

After the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the third round of expansion offensive of the Fuxing Army was launched. After clearing out all the Tatar tribes on both sides of the Jialu River’s thousands of miles of river section outside the Great Wall, at least hundreds of thousands of Han slaves could be rescued.

After being verified and screened by the Military Intelligence Department, these people will participate in a new round of combat soldier selection and should be able to fill the personnel vacancies in each battalion.

At that time, each legion of divine beasts had the ability to fight independently.

If the Five Divine Beasts Corps is to be formally organized, it will have to wait until a few more Qi Refining Realm generals emerge in the Renaissance Army.

Only the five divine beast legions of the Renaissance Army can independently unleash the true power of the military killing array, and can be said to be on the right track and have the ability to carry out long-range raids.

Today is the day when the army sets out to start the final battle of the second round of war.

The soldiers are about to face a real battle, in which their apparent strength is almost evenly matched with that of the enemy.

The first battle of the new year was fought by half of the existing Renaissance Army soldiers, a total of 10,000 warriors and soldiers, who boarded all their own treasure ships and fought straight to the source of the Jialu River, a journey of more than 7,000 miles.

This time the army’s long-distance raid was a life-and-death battle against the ground-walking dragon crocodile clan in the Daling Lake at the source of the Jialu River.

The Military Intelligence Department has already found out that there are about 350 ground dragon crocodiles in total.

Among them, there are thirteen level four monsters. The strongest demon king is at the late stage of level four monster, and there are two at the middle stage of level four monster. The remaining ten level four earth dragon crocodiles are all at the early stage of level four monster.

On the surface, the number of powerful people on the other side far exceeds that of the Renaissance Army.

But their weakness is also very obvious: they can’t form a formation to kill the enemy and are like a group of scattered sand.

The Fuxing Army is different. Not only does it have proficient basic military formations, it also has a killer military killing formation.

With the magical attack of the formation emitted by the military killing formation, any Qi Refining Realm warrior who leads two thousand elite soldiers to form a formation can confront a master in the early fifth level of martial arts head-on.

If there were 10,000 elite soldiers, led by a master in the Qi Refining Realm, forming a military killing formation to meet the enemy, even Cao Bianjiao, the current number one master in the world, would be defeated or even flee in panic if he fought alone!
Otherwise, he would most likely be killed by the concentrated fire attack from the military killing array!

The military killing formation is the most powerful killer weapon of mankind in this world. It is also a weapon to intimidate those lone masters, and it is the strongest means for mankind to deal with all kinds of demons and monsters.

In this long-range assault, although the enemy’s high-level forces were far superior to those of the Renaissance Army, it was the Renaissance Army that actually had a certain advantage.

For example, Shi An, a talented master who was one of the remnants of the Jiehu, was suddenly attacked by Li Dingguo with the help of the military killing formation, and he didn’t even have the strength to fight back.

He didn’t even have a chance to display his powerful fighting ability before he was instantly killed by Li Dingguo!

But no matter what, the first battle of the new year was the first evenly matched battle that the Renaissance Army had encountered since its establishment.

In order to get a good start in the new year and to obtain the first real base of the Renaissance Army, the intelligence department began to work non-stop on the first day of the new year to ensure that the intelligence collected was correct.

Wei Jinfan has ordered a team of elite soldiers from the Military Intelligence Department to ride on three-tailed iron-backed demon wolves and go to the interior of the country to collect some young spirit pigeons at all costs. This is to solve the urgent problem of the Renaissance Army: to facilitate the timely acquisition of intelligence and greatly improve the efficiency of obtaining real-time military information.

Perhaps it was because his luck was not good enough. Li Dingguo had destroyed so many hostile forces so far, but he had not been able to obtain even one spiritual beast or bird suitable for training.

As for some monsters and birds, it is not difficult to capture them, but the monsters in this magical world seem to be subject to some kind of restrictions and it is impossible for them to submit to humans!
Li Dingguo tried several times without giving up, but to no avail.

In front of any demon beast, including a fledgling, his top-level spirit beast affinity talent seemed to have lost all effect.

There is only one word difference between spiritual beasts and demon beasts, but there is a world of difference between them.

The spiritual eagles and eagles used by the large Tartar tribes outside the Great Wall for communication are extremely rare spiritual beasts, not demon beasts.

This is also the most helpless and speechless thing for Li Dingguo recently.

It was not until now that he finally understood that the group of three-tailed iron-backed demon wolves he had tamed were definitely spiritual beasts rather than demon beasts, which was why they could be subdued so easily.

Not only in the Eastern Territory, all birds, beasts and various aquatic animals living in water are divided into two types: demon beasts and spiritual beasts.

The same goes for the various magical beasts in the West, which are also divided into two types: spirit beasts and demon beasts.

Li Dingguo now speculates that no monster can be subdued by himself.

Only spiritual beasts will do, and they must be ownerless.

This solved the biggest confusion that had been bothering Li Dingguo for some time. He finally figured out his spirit beast affinity talent, its specific actual situation and its scope of effect.

On his gold finger panel, it clearly states that it is a talent for affinity with spirit beasts, not a talent for affinity with demon beasts or monsters. How could it be wrong?

I used to think too much and was never satisfied.

“set off!”

Seeing that the soldiers had all arrived and were ready to go, Li Dingguo, standing on a high platform near the military headquarters in the large square, looked around with a sharp gaze, waved his hand, and gave the order to go to the expedition without saying a word.

The battle plan had already been distributed to the commanders of each legion last night, and they were responsible for conveying it.

The logistics department was busy most of the night last night and completed loading all the logistical supplies needed for this expedition.

In this vast world, most of the large rivers within the territory of the Ming Dynasty, about 100,000 miles northward, have wide water surfaces, high waves and fast-flowing water.

In winter and spring, ice only forms in the shallow water areas near the river, and the ice and snow cannot reach the deep water areas where the river flows rapidly.

Even in the harsh winter, treasure ships can still travel normally in these vast rivers, but they just have to pay attention to the floating ice on the riverside.

This type of floating ice will not cause any safety problems for the treasure ship protected by magic array.

Following Li Dingguo’s order, half of the soldiers from the main combat corps who were lined up on the spot and waiting for orders, whose turn it was, rode on their spirit beasts and war horses and marched in an orderly manner towards the bluestone wharf that had been built less than a month ago, under the command of generals at all levels.

The remaining half of the warriors from various legions who were responsible for staying behind stayed where they were, watching their comrades go off, with some envy in their eyes.

But there is no way. This is the Renaissance Army strictly implementing the tactical arrangement of rotation warfare, and obeying orders is what they should do.

Since the navy now had enough treasure ships, all 10,000 troops had boarded the ships in less than half an hour.

These large treasure ships then left the dock one after another under the control of naval officers and boatmen.

All these treasure ships left the big dock and arrived at the deep water area. They quickly formed into three columns and began to gradually accelerate, going upstream and heading north.

Their speed was getting faster and faster, and they were getting farther and farther away, and soon they disappeared on the seemingly endless river in the distance…

(End of this chapter)