Chapter 175 Desiring to Mobilize Troops

On her second day at work, Lin Changning felt that the people around her were looking at her strangely.

They treated her as some kind of monster, being extremely respectful when she first approached, but as soon as she left, a group of people huddled together and whispered among themselves.

Lin Changning was somewhat confused when he arrived at the camp. After reporting for duty in the morning, he went to the drill ground.

These people are still too weak. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. She is considering whether to use modern training methods to improve the individual qualities of the soldiers.

As for the training programs, they are nothing more than long-distance training, frog jumps, cross-country running, and once the individual soldier's physical fitness is improved, the training should be easier.

A large portion of this group consisted of the sons of local gentry who did little farm work and were certainly not as physically fit as the soldiers who worked in the fields regularly.

She told her second brother Qi about her idea when she went back yesterday. He didn't react in any particular way, just told her to go ahead and do it.

As soon as we arrived at the drill ground, Old Zhang came running over, winking at us.

"I heard you cooked several human traffickers alive yesterday? Xiao Liu, you're the one!"

As he spoke, Old Zhang clasped his hands in a fist salute to Lin Changning.

Lin Changning was somewhat amused and exasperated: "That's not true. We just caught a few people, dismembered them, and handed them all over to the authorities."

Old Zhang looked around and leaned closer to Lin Changning: "It's all over the place yesterday. They said you caught a human trafficker at the market, smashed his teeth, crippled his limbs, and apparently boiled him in a pot afterward. I heard that a lot of unregistered people and illegal operators in Taiyuan fled overnight last night."

Lin Changning looked bewildered: "What does my arrest of human traffickers have to do with these unregistered individuals and illegal industries?"

Old Zhang shrugged: "He's probably scared of you."

Do you think a group of people involved in shady businesses and gray-area operations would be afraid of a mere thousand-person commander?

Lin Changning shook his head and sighed, "Let's start training today."

Old Zhang grunted in agreement, turned around and walked towards the line, where whispers could be faintly heard.

Lin Changning's voice stopped abruptly as he walked in front of the group, and even the soldiers in the front row stood up straighter.

"..."

Lin Changning looked up and ordered, "Circle the training ground 20 times."

Lu Shan straightened his back and shouted in a loud voice, "Yes, Commander!"

As he spoke, he began leading the team to run laps around the training ground.

After running only a few laps, a soldier came in, stood in front of Lin Changning, and clasped his hands in greeting: "Commander Lin, the commander is looking for you."

Lin Changning nodded to indicate that he understood, gave some instructions to Lao Zhang, and then got up and went to Qi Rong's camp.

Lifting the curtain and entering the room, Lin Changning saw Qi Rong dressed in casual clothes, writing and drawing something on the table. After bowing respectfully, Lin Changning curiously approached him.

Seeing the blueprints, he felt they looked familiar; they resembled the training equipment he had described to Qi Rong yesterday.

Qi Rong saw the visitor spread out the paper and said, "Last night, after hearing your description of those training materials, I tried to draw one myself. Take a look and see if it's like this?"

Lin Changning looked at the paper with its detailed depiction of a horizontal bar, parallel bars, climbing frame, and 200 meters of ground wire mesh, and silently began to stroke his chin.

Hey, you know what, it really does look alike.

Lin Changning took two pens from the table and added a few more strokes to the barbed wire and climbing frame, as well as a suspension bridge and a rock climbing structure, before handing them to Qi Rong.

"It's pretty much correct. It shouldn't be difficult for a carpenter to make this."

Qi Rong nodded: "The Prince's manufacturing bureau should be able to finish it within three days. We can install it and test it then."

He largely agreed with Xiao Liu's suggestions. He didn't understand the equipment at first, but after careful consideration, he found that it could indeed improve the physical fitness of some people.

Lin Changning was a little unsure, after all, some training methods used in modern times may not be applicable in this dynasty. Back in Daxing, the soldiers were all fat and strong, and these things were child's play for them.

However, he believes that with the current group, modern training methods will definitely play a role.

So yesterday we discussed with the content team whether to change the training method and see how it would affect this group of people.

She thought it would take some time to implement this, but she didn't expect that Brother Qi had taken it to heart and started drawing up plans today.

Since that's the case, let's start putting this group to a tougher challenge today. Lin Changning had a sly smile on his face as he thought about taking them out for a 10-kilometer cross-country run.

Suddenly remembering the news circulating today about unregistered residents and illegal businesses moving out, Lin Changning asked, "Second Brother, Old Zhang said today that because we arrested human traffickers yesterday, unregistered residents and illegal businesses left Taiyuan overnight. Is that true?"

Qi Rong raised his eyes, a smile playing on his lips: "The black market and unregistered residents have indeed moved away, but our arrest of the human traffickers yesterday was just a prelude."

The reason is actually because many of these illegal businesses and unregistered individuals are spies from outside. Yesterday, when we arrested human traffickers, my older brother raided several illegal operations and left no survivors.

The two events happened to coincide, causing other illegal businesses and undocumented immigrants to become extremely nervous, which is why they left the city overnight.

Lin Changning was utterly exasperated: "Look at what's going on outside! This morning, Old Zhang even asked me if I had cooked the human traffickers. Do I look that fierce?"

Qi Rong pondered for a moment, recalling how Xiao Liu had crippled someone's limbs and knocked out their teeth without batting an eye yesterday, and silently nodded: "Yes."

Lin Changning gritted his teeth: "Second brother?"

Qi Rong laughed for a while: "Alright, I'm not teasing you anymore. Focus on training your people recently, because we might not have peaceful days for a while."

Lin Changning raised an eyebrow, somewhat puzzled: "What do you mean?"

Qi Rong's smile faded: "Have you seen the recent battle reports from the imperial court?"

Lin Changning's eyes and brows clearly showed a hint of schadenfreude: "I saw it, they were defeated all the way through."

Qi Rong straightened his expression and said, "Recently, spies in the capital have sent word that the court intends to mobilize another 100,000 troops to join the main army in suppressing the rebels."

Lin Changning's gloating vanished as he frowned and voiced his guess: "Second Brother, do you mean... the imperial court is planning to draw 100,000 troops from the border regions and vassal kings???"

Qi Rong nodded: "There are already signs of this. Some people in the court have proposed to transfer troops from the territories of the vassal kings."

Lin Changning cursed the court inwardly for its shamelessness: "They won't provide grain, they won't provide military pay, and they still want to transfer troops from the vassal states. How can they be so shameless? Do you think the vassal states will agree to this?"

Qi Rong shook his head: "We still need to see. The vassal kings are naturally unwilling, but the one above is the emperor after all. Right now, we can only see how many will be transferred from each vassal king's territory."