Vientiane Throne of Civilization

Chapter 1653 Internal Adjustments
By the time the next message reached Da Zhou, it was already late summer.

Looking at the latest report that Shi Lei had sent back, Zhou Xu was indeed a little surprised.

[World Fragments. It's been a long time since I've encountered one.]

The emergence of fragments in the world means that new lands will be pieced together, but it often comes with risks.

Thinking about this gave Zhou Xu a headache.

There's no peace and quiet here.

However, there's no need to be too anxious right now.

The world fragments don't move that fast. Their Great Zhou has experience confirming world fragments multiple times. According to Shi Lei's initial observation, it would take at least three years to piece the world fragments together.

At the same time, even after being pieced together, war may not necessarily break out. The other side may just be a piece of land with no power to develop.

Even if they do, they can first try to coexist peacefully with each other; war is not the only option.

Of course, we still need to remain vigilant.

Take the lizardmen, for example. Before the two world fragments were even pieced together, they were able to construct an energy channel to reach this world ahead of time.

This case has been documented, and Shi Lei certainly knows it. He would never make such a basic mistake, so there's no need to worry.

The next key point is the area connecting to the void; they will definitely deploy heavy troops to guard it.

In fact, Shi Lei also mentioned this point in his report.

The problem now is where to draw these troops.

By swallowing up the Saint Laurent Empire, the Great Zhou's territory on the continent almost doubled, which puts immense pressure on its defenses.

Especially in the Saint Laurent Empire, such a large increase in territory will definitely require a large number of troops to be stationed there.

Zhou Xu had actually been pondering this question for a long time.

After all, as the emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty, he couldn't wait until the problem was already in front of him before starting to think of a solution; by then, it would be too late.
At this point, Zhou Xu undoubtedly already had a general idea.

The key lies in the plains fortress.

As a fortress, Plains Keep was not geographically advantageous. With the enemy already occupying Bronzeforest, the fortress had no further value in continuing to exist.

The plains fortress is to be abolished! This is something Zhou Xu had already planned for.

Of course, this does not mean that all existing buildings must be demolished.

Zhou Xu planned to renovate the original Plains Fortress into a small town, serving as a transit point between the New North District and Copperfortress.

In the past two years, the population of Xinbei District has reached saturation and is even starting to feel crowded. Adding a small town can alleviate a lot of the population pressure.

As the city develops and expands, we can simply merge that small town into it, making it a district of Yuancheng.

Under this premise, Copperforest Castle was transformed into a fortress of their Great Zhou.

However, this is no longer a border fortress; they have now occupied large swathes of the Saint Laurent Empire's territory outside.

Given this premise, and considering the geographical advantages of Bronzeforest—it's inherently easy to defend and difficult to attack—and the large concentration of dwarves there, Zhou Xu could easily take advantage of the situation and hand over the garrison duties of Bronzeforest to the dwarves led by Vol'jin.

Even the troop strength doesn't need to be too large. Simply deploying a thousand troops to defend against an attack by four or five thousand regular troops is basically a piece of cake.

Furthermore, if this deployment consists of a thousand boar riders, the advantage would be even greater.

In this way, the New North Army, led by Shi Lei, can completely shift its position and officially move into the Saint Laurent region.

However, considering that many cities in the Saint Laurent region also need to be garrisoned, and that the border adjacent to the Void needs to be heavily guarded, the original New North Army's forces are really not enough.

Knowing this, Zhou Xu had already written an order to Li Ce, instructing Li Ce to allocate some troops from the Northeast Army to assist Shi Lei in garrisoning the Saint Laurent region.

In addition, conscription is still indispensable.

Zhou Xu had anticipated this move long before Saint Laurent's side withdrew to regroup, and the conscription order had already been issued.

At this point, they had already completed basic recruit training. The next step was to send them directly to Shi Lei's command so that Shi Lei could train them.

Of course, the large-scale recruitment of new soldiers will definitely have an impact on the labor force within their Great Zhou.

However, in the previous battle outside Yuancheng, they had already captured nearly 20,000 prisoners of war, replenishing a large wave of cheap labor. In subsequent battles, the number of prisoners of war increased again.

Simply put, it meant making prisoners of war do manual labor, while making loyal citizens of the Great Zhou serve as soldiers, thus creating a job transfer.

Currently, the impact of the arrangement of cheap labor and the mobilization of a large number of troops is within their control.

During this process, along with the complete annexation of the Saint Laurent Empire, the total population of their Great Zhou Dynasty experienced a surge, reaching 3.6 million! This directly broke the 3 million mark and exceeded it by a large margin!

It's worth mentioning here that nearly 100,000 dwarves have been included in this count.

Even so, the Saint Laurent Empire brought them over two million new people.

According to the intelligence provided by Shi Lei, the population of the Saint Laurent Empire had been declining in its early years due to the long war with the Greenskins.

For the first two years after the war ended, the total population was in a state of negative growth, and it was only in these two years that it turned from negative to positive.

But precisely because of this, the population of the Saint Laurent Empire, which is over two million, is actually inflated, with a large number of children under ten years old, and even a large number of infants.

In other words, the actual labor force that these two million people can form is not proportional to this number.

This situation is quite similar to the current situation of their Great Zhou, and it can be considered as expected by Zhou Xu.

Even so, the total number of new residents far exceeded the number of old residents, and Zhou Xu was under considerable psychological pressure in the face of this situation.

The gap between the old and new populations is so vast that once these two groups collide, their original national cultures and social structures will inevitably suffer a huge impact.

However, just like the issue of stationing troops, the total population of the Saint Laurent Empire would definitely exceed that of their Great Zhou, a fact that Zhou Xu could not possibly have failed to anticipate.

Therefore, he had undoubtedly been thinking of ways to deal with this situation for a long time.

The best and most effective solution right now is undoubtedly isolation!
Zhou Xu referred to the Saint Laurent region and their original territory of the Great Zhou as the New Region and the Old Region, respectively. He planned to prevent the full integration of the populations of the two regions, and even to isolate the two regions to prevent large-scale contact between them!

(End of this chapter)