Li Qin's gaze swept back and forth between Jiangnan and Taiyuan.
Finally, he said to his personal guards:
"Let's summon all the generals and staff currently in the capital for a meeting."
"yes."
Upon hearing Li Qin's order, countless personal guards immediately rode off at breakneck speed onto the roads of the capital.
Meanwhile, on the roads leading to the capital, countless surviving residents were cleaning up the ruins.
Remove the dilapidated mud wall.
Upon seeing Li Qin's personal guards, everyone immediately stood on both sides of the road to make way.
His eyes held a deep fear of Li Qin's army.
After all, Li Qin's attack on the capital resulted in a massive bloodbath.
The bodies haven't all been buried yet.
As Li Qin's orders were relayed to all parties.
Countless high-ranking generals and their staff in the capital gathered at Li Qin's residence.
At this point, everyone knew that the Forbidden City and the imperial court were actually just for show.
The true center of power in the capital is now located in Li Qin's residence.
After seeing that most of the generals and staff had arrived,
Li Qin explained to them the strategic goals of advancing westward and southward.
After Li Qin finished speaking, his chief aide immediately stood up and said:
"In my opinion, our next goal should be to head south."
We must march south and capture Nanjing as soon as possible, so as not to give them the opportunity to enthrone Zhu Jianshen in Nanjing and consolidate the power of the governors and generals who are resisting us from all over the country.
As long as we can take Nanjing, capture Zhu Jianshen, and eliminate their puppet regime in the south.
That way we would be the only legitimate dynasty.
In this way, even if they wanted to enthrone a new emperor, they wouldn't have anyone who could convince the people.
They might support one king, and I might support another. They might even start fighting amongst themselves in the south without us having to lift a finger.
Most importantly, Jiangnan is the richest region in the Wu Kingdom. As long as we take Jiangnan, we can open up the Grand Canal.
The wealth of Jiangnan will flow into our hands continuously, and we will no longer have to worry about the expenses of the army.
On the contrary, if we were to advance westward, let's not even talk about whether Jiang Xiangyang of Datong would obey our orders.
Even if we listen to what we hear, the place we'll be facing when we head west is Taiyuan, which may receive support from the Northwest.
The difficulty was far greater than heading south, and the costs were far greater. In addition, Taiyuan was far less prosperous than the Jiangnan region.
Even if we succeed, our gains will be minimal compared to those in Jiangnan.
You have to understand that our hundreds of thousands of troops consume an astronomical amount of food and military pay every day. We are now living off the capital we seized after taking the capital.
The income and expenditure are extremely unbalanced; once we take Jiangnan, this problem can be completely solved.
Immediately after he finished speaking, another aide stepped forward and said:
"I disagree with the view that Jiangnan is weak, while Yang Zhiyong of Taiyuan is relatively strong."
In particular, if he were to leverage the Yang family's influence in the Northwest, unite with Hong Chengchou of Shaanxi, and consolidate the influence of the Yang family in the Northwest, he could then integrate the four towns of the Northwest.
That would make it even more difficult to deal with.
As time went by, Yang Zhiyong grew stronger, while Jiangnan could not quickly train a strong army.
We should eliminate Yang Zhiyong before he gets too strong.
Li Qin looked at the advisor who had been brought up. According to his memory, his name should be Yi Ankang. He had given him some good advice before.
Upon hearing his words, Gu Deyuan immediately stood up to refute them:
"Integrating the four towns in the Northwest is possible, but very unlikely. Although the Yang family has considerable influence in the Northwest, some of their sons serve as officers in the military in various parts of the Northwest."
However, the governors of the four garrisons all held immense military power, so how could they be manipulated by them and thus become enemies of their superiors?
Their previous letters to their superiors showed a wavering attitude.
Moreover, Hong Chengchou, the governor of Shaanxi, was an extremely powerful man. How could he tolerate the existence of the Yang family, whose prestige was so great that they could threaten him, within his jurisdiction?
He had tolerated the Yang family before simply because of the imperial court's intimidation and because he didn't want to offend Yang Shizhong, the Grand Secretary.
Now that the imperial court has removed its constraints, no matter how prestigious the Yang family is, they are no match for Hong Chengchou, who holds military power in Shaanxi.
There are too many powerful figures with military authority in the Northwest, but there is only one position that can truly be in charge.
Most importantly, the four northwestern garrisons had so many soldiers and troops, and their provisions had to be allocated by the imperial court.
Now that the imperial court has no allocations, the barren frontier alone cannot sustain the expenses of those troops.
Therefore, I can assert that as long as we do not actively exert external pressure on them, they will be in a position of power.
As long as we move south to the Jiangnan region and make them feel that the external pressure has disappeared, they will start to make a mess of things on their own.
If we move westward, they will only reach a reconciliation or even truly unite under our pressure.
Conversely, if Zhu Jianshen of Jinling were to be enthroned as emperor, they would certainly acknowledge his status. With the mediation of the Jinling court, the conflict between them would likely be alleviated.
If we advance westward, they will face external pressure from us, and internally they will be subject to the intervention of the Nanjing court. Every step of our westward advance will be extremely difficult.
Most importantly, advancing westward to attack Shanxi, or even Shaanxi, would not only be more difficult, but also yield far less reward than attacking Henan or the Jiangnan region.
When it comes to taking power, we need to look not only at the military, but also at the finances.
Our army has now expanded to hundreds of thousands, and our finances are severely strained.
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