Damn it, I'm in the garbage book I wrote

Chapter 592 Still haven't reacted by now?
After all that commotion, the town has gradually calmed down.

But could Xia Lin make it feel secure? It had already lost fifty taels, and another loss would mean a hundred taels of silver. A man might not care about the money, but he still cared about his reputation, especially since his bettor was someone as historically significant as Xu Shiji.

Men are all competitive, aren't they?

"grown ups."

The woman kneeling before Xia Lin was none other than Hongxiu, the imposter posing as the romantic female spy. Standing beside her was Luo Shixin, armed with a steel gun.

That's right, Xia Lin brought Luo Shixin from the capital, along with more than three hundred special agents he had trained in recent days, including the famous courtesan Hongxiu from the capital.

However, Hongxiu wasn't captured; she was presented to Xia Lin by the Northern Dugu family. The beauty of power lies in its ability to make one's wishes come true. Xia Lin had only mentioned it briefly before, and when they met again, that alluring female agent was now kneeling before him.

"You must be tired from the journey." Xia Lin sat down. "I called you here today because I have a mission for you, you know? By the way, Hongxiu, stop kneeling and get up."

"Thank you, sir."

Hongxiu hurriedly stood up and stood respectfully beside Luo Shixin.

She dared not flirt now. Those people outside didn't know Xia Lin's identity, but she knew very well that with a single word from him, he could take the lives of an entire city, and history would only mention it briefly.

"Luo," Xia Lin gestured with her chin, "have you been causing Miss Hongxiu any trouble lately?"

"No, no..." Luo Shixin quickly waved his hand: "I did everything the commander-in-chief instructed. We did whatever Miss Hongxiu said."

Xia Lin nodded: "Yes, not bad. It's clear that Miss Hongxiu is a very capable and thoughtful person, very good."

"Thank you for your kind words, sir." Hongxiu quickly bowed, not even daring to raise her head. "Please do as you command, sir."

Xia Lin held a coin between his fingers, turning it back and forth. After thinking for a long time, he said, "Lingnan Road is now divided into three parts. Guangfu's influence is not that great. The remaining areas are controlled by various warlords. Furthermore, Jiaozhou has now fallen into the hands of the Tusi. This matter needs to be dealt with, but it cannot be done by force."

Xia Lin unfolded the map: "You two, come forward."

Luo Shixin and Hongxiu stepped forward, and Xia Lin pointed to his position: "We are currently in a strategic location at the crossroads of trade between Jiangnan Road and Guizhou, so I plan to use this as a starting point to find a way to take over Guizhou."

Hongxiu felt a chill run down her spine upon hearing the news. She glanced at Xia Lin with difficulty, and Xia Lin clearly noticed her expression.

"Don't worry, since I've called you here, I'm not worried about you leaking the secret." Xia Lin twirled his finger twice: "Once this news leaks out, no matter how it's leaked, the Northern Border Dugu family will be wiped out. I'm not joking, I can kill them all myself. I hope Miss Hongxiu will take care of herself."

Hongxiu immediately lowered her eyelids, unable to even muster the courage to look him in the eye, and could only say in a trembling voice, "I will follow your instructions, sir."

Xia Lin nodded: "You two, each take 120 men to Shian County in Guizhou and Maping County in Liuzhou. You don't need me to teach you the rest. I will cut off all official correspondence between this place and the outside world. You can do your job with confidence. The rest of the men will stay here. I have another important use for them."

At this moment, Hongxiu spoke up: "Lord Xia, Guiliu is surrounded by mountains and water, making it easy to defend and difficult to attack. Do you intend for the defenses here to fall without a fight?"

"Hmm." Xia Lin nodded, then pointed to the map and continued, "As for this bandit, you guys go outside and create momentum for him first. When the time is right, I will coordinate with him from the inside."

"Order!"

"Order!"

The two quickly left the house, and then Xia Lin entered a waiting mode, spending her days doing business, doing accounts, and having meals with Master Hu.

At this moment, Master Hu truly treated Xia Lin as one of his own. It was like when a fresh graduate from an Ivy League university suddenly appeared in a small state-owned factory in the county in the 1970s or 80s, where the illiteracy rate was about 40%. He treated Xia Lin like a precious gem, afraid of him melting in his mouth or touching him in his hands.

However, Master Hu's level and competence were simply too low, which meant that although he tried his best to appear respectable, his subordinates had already seen the sky for themselves.

Because many of them have never even left the county town in their entire lives, they think the world is the six counties of Guizhou. Now that Master Hu has acquired two of them, who in the world can rival Master Hu?
So many of them gradually became strange. Before long, these old ministers who had "served the emperor" had become incredibly arrogant. In addition, they kept flattering Master Hu. Although Master Hu said that he was nothing, he was actually quite arrogant. He didn't have much ambition at first, but now, with his subordinates' mindless flattery every day, Master Hu finally felt that he had made a decision and could compete with the heroes for the world.

So, after taking control of the two counties, Master Hu used to spend all his time chatting with Xia Lin about romance and pleasure, about brothels in the capital and prostitutes in Chang'an. But these days, he has started to discuss heroes with Xia Lin over wine.

However, Xia Lin felt it was somewhat absurd to discuss the state of the world with a bandit. Moreover, while this Master Hu was indeed a skilled bandit, he should probably give up on the idea of ​​conquering the world. To imagine conquering cities and seizing territory as bandits attacking mountain strongholds was simply out of his mind.

The key point is that his words conveyed a message that if he had the opportunity to become emperor in the future, Xia Lin would be his prime minister.

Xia Lin found these words cheesy. It was like having the ills of an imperial uncle without the life of one. If Xia Lin were to become prime minister, history books would surely laugh at him. Honestly, even if Xia Lin ascended the throne, history wouldn't write too badly of him. But if a bandit became prime minister, that would be disastrous; a thousand years later, the "ditch literature" (a genre of fictionalized accounts) would begin.

Titles like "Imperial Power in the Ditch" and "It's Over, Many Emperors Are Coveting My Ditch" are examples of this.

Of course, prejudice in people's hearts is a huge mountain. Xia Lin had to admit that he had prejudice against this bandit, but Master Hu really didn't have the qualifications to be an emperor.

After chatting for a few days, Xia Lin gradually began to avoid his visits. After all, not everyone could withstand questions like, "Brother Zhang, do you think you could take Chang'an if you had 10,000 elite troops?" And this was just Chang'an; the ambitions he revealed included, but were not limited to, Chang'an, Luoyang, Jingzhou, Longcheng, Jinling, Hongdu, Fuliang...

Anyway, he wanted to conquer all the vital points in the world with 10,000 men. No joke, unless there were a few Astartes among those 10,000 men or the Miao Tulou around you suddenly stood up during the battle, he wouldn't even dare to dream of doing such a large-scale operation. If he had mentioned 300,000 or 500,000 men, Xia Lin could have discussed tactics and strategies with him, but his vision was limited to 10,000 men at most.

However, although the public opinion was gradually building up, with rumors circulating that a man of destiny had emerged in Yao County, quite a few people came to join Master Hu.

Although most of these people who came to join him were soldiers arranged by Xia Lin, their numbers were clearly increasing. However, once the numbers increased, Hu Ye's lack of system management skills became apparent, and various problems began to arise. Every time a problem occurred, he would rush to Xia Lin's side: "Brother Zhang, go and take a look. The new local militia are fighting with the old brothers."

Xia Lin didn't even bother to lift his eyelids at this moment, but said while doing the accounting, "Branch, Brother Hu, slowly clear out those people who used to be bandits. They won't do it."

"But they are all brothers..."

"So we're dividing into local militia and public security forces. The brothers from before will be assigned to various places as guards, and the newcomers will be selected to form new local militia groups. In military strategy, quality is more important than quantity. Brother Hu is no longer a bandit, so he can't act like one anymore."

"Alright, alright, I'll take care of it. Brother Zhang, what will we do without you here..."

Master Hu obediently began to rectify military discipline. The former brothers were all separated, and the village militia camp was filled with newly recruited strong men. No one knew where these men came from, but they were all strong and full of energy. Master Hu had seen Wei Changsheng's Guangxi Army before, and when he first saw them, he was amazed and felt that there could be no more elite soldiers in the world.

But now he discovered that the local militia in his camp were even more energetic than the Guangxi Army, which greatly excited Master Hu, making him feel that his dream of conquering the world was just around the corner.

But now an even more difficult problem has arisen before him: a severe lack of equipment. He dares not compare himself to the Po Lu Army and the New Army of Jiangnan Circuit, but he can certainly compare himself to the Gui Army, right? They have leather armor and long swords, while he is just whining and making noise with wooden swords and straw mats all day long.

"Brother Zhang... your old brother has come to ask you for help again."

That day, Hu Ye shamelessly came to Xia Lin's place again. With a somewhat embarrassed smile, he said, "You guessed why your brother came here, right?"

Xia Lin chuckled and took out a slip of paper from the cabinet: "Here are 10,000 sets of light armor, 17,000 sets of bows and arrows and swords and spears, and 200,000 arrows."

Hearing this, Master Hu was stunned. He had only said that he would get a few hundred sets to tide him over, but now ten thousand sets of armor were coming up.

Who exactly is Brother Zhang?

“I am a member of the Dugu family.” Xia Lin said in a low voice, “The third time before, when I talked to Brother Hu about the aristocratic families, it was all about investment. Brother Hu has ambition, and my Dugu family will invest money in you, so Brother Hu, don’t panic.”

Upon hearing this, Master Hu was overwhelmed with excitement, and his breathing became heavy for a moment: "Brother, you mean... I've been chosen by the Dugu family? They want to promote me? The Dugu family, whose wealth rivals that of a nation, and whose emperors treat with deference?"

"Which other Dugu family member is there?"

Master Hu was overjoyed, and when he got back, he naturally bragged about it to his subordinates. As they talked, everyone chimed in with their own analysis, saying that three Zhuge Liangs are equal to one cobbler, which actually helped them connect Xia Lin's identity.

He was highly skilled in martial arts, young and wealthy, talented, and handsome—the very kind of person you'd only find in a classical novel. How could someone like that end up in this remote mountain village? It turned out that the Dugu family had sent someone to test Master Hu. Everyone says that powerful families choose the people they deem suitable to be emperors, and the Dugu family had come to test him personally—that was quite something.

Hu Ye's determination to become emperor grew stronger.

These equipment were already stockpiled around him; they were all the belongings of the soldiers who had joined Master Hu. They even had names on them. So, the weapons, armor, bows, and arrows were delivered to the local militia camp in about three days. These bastards were quite particular; they insisted on picking out their own original equipment.

And so, while Master Hu was dreaming that he was about to become emperor, or at the very least, the Prince of Zhennan, the local militia that should have belonged to him had already been successfully replaced by Xia Lin.

A mixed force of 10,000 men, comprised of both regular new troops and the defeated enemy forces...

The new version of "Broken Army" sounds pretty good.

Every day, Master Hu would happily watch them train, praising them endlessly. He also listened to Xia Lin's advice and greatly improved their food standards, clearly indicating that they were on the path to becoming an Imperial Guard.

But even the smartest person in the world probably couldn't have imagined that someone of Xia Lin's caliber would resort to such sophisticated trickery with a bandit...

Even if you put all of them together—Changsun Wuji, Du Ruhui, Fang Xuanling, Gao Shilian, Wei Xuancheng, Pei Xingjian, Wei Zheng, Xu Jingzong, and Ma Zhou—you would never have imagined that this was the path they would take.

It's roughly equivalent to Xia Lin deploying 30 Dongfeng-31 missiles to bomb Yang Junfeng. You might not know Yang Junfeng, because he's a friend of the author of this book.

But how to put it? If you think you can't surpass him in ability, then you can only accept his actions. After all, as long as you can borrow the east wind, Zhuge Liang can do anything, let alone set up an altar. He can even wear a lion head mask and jump on plum blossom stakes. That's his ability.

After the major reshuffle in the military camp, Hu Ye couldn't hold back any longer. Just like those StarCraft players who have unlimited resources, they eventually want to build up their forces and launch an attack after having two hundred units at full population.

But he was timid, so he tested the waters on his peers first. After asking Xia Lin and receiving a positive answer, he led the new Po Jun men to attack the surrounding bandit houses.

He dragged all 10,000 newly recruited soldiers out. The opposing village had as many as 1,000 or 2,000 people, and as few as 40 or 50. The 1,000 or 2,000 people put up some resistance, but the worst off were the few dozen people. When they woke up in the morning, they found that there were more than 10,000 people surrounding their misty mountain courtyard. The scene was even more despairing than being dragged to Silent Hill by Pyramid Head.

After a week of campaigning, Lord Hu had now proclaimed himself a great general, believing his soldiers to be invincible.

What? Wei Changsheng, the garrison commander of Guizhou? A mere junior officer dares to laugh at him?

However, the first thing Lord Hu did after he proclaimed himself Grand General was to select a concubine...

He even consulted Xia Lin's opinion when choosing a concubine, pointing to the girls below who were crying their eyes out and saying, "Brother, which one do you fancy? I'll give her to you!"

Xia Lin scratched his head and smiled contemptuously, "Brother Hu, have you forgotten your ambition to dominate the world? If so, I will return to report."

(End of this chapter)