Empire Conquest
Chapter 208 - 204: The Real Opponent

Chapter 208: Chapter 204: The Real Opponent

"We should be focusing on something that is not about a specific person."

Li Qing, although having drunk quite a bit, said this with the demeanor and composure of someone who was not drunk at all; perhaps he really hadn’t drunk too much.

Bai Zhizhan immediately turned his attention, while Li Yunxiang put on an attentive look as if ready to listen intently.

Initially, they had been somewhat skeptical about Li Qing’s true identity, but several rounds of drinking had given Bai Zhizhan and Li Yunxiang a clearer picture.

Why?

The other young military officers hadn’t drunk much, spoke rarely, and kept a vigilant eye on people trying to approach Li Qing.

Their gazes were as sharp as knives, seemingly capable of seeing right through a person.

These guys were clearly acting as imperial guards.

"You aren’t considering, even without the cripple Rofuss, there would be a blind Horforth or a deaf Tofus. Like I said in the beginning, it’s not about any one individual."

"What is it then?"

Since Bai Zhizhan had been silent, Li Yunxiang pretended to be ignorant and asked. After all, someone had to keep the conversation going.

"Interests."

Li Yunxiang pursed his lips, seemingly unsure of what to say next. From his expression, he clearly had drunk too much and was likely to pass out soon.

This answer was undoubtedly correct, but also overly broad.

For thousands of years, conflicts have arisen from interests, without exception.

Liangxia Empire emerged swiftly to become the most powerful country globally, and its tensions with the Western Powers also revolved primarily around interests. Over the past few decades, every war, every conflict, was related to interests, with the last global war being the culmination of these disputes.

To put it more concretely, how should this "interest" be interpreted?

Li Qing did not elaborate further, nor was there a need to.

Such signs had already appeared twenty years ago.

At the end of the last great war, the first two countries to enter the war, Bulan Kingdom and Locke Republic, parted ways. Although it is generally believed that the main reason was the uneven distribution of spoils and the irreconcilable differences over whether to intervene militarily in the Luosha Empire’s troops’ chaos, fundamentally speaking, it was the continuous four years of war that had exhausted the centuries-old wealth of these two old empires.

In short: there were no common interests anymore.

Of course, Liangxia Empire was also a factor.

Because the great war did not end in a complete defeat for the Liangxia Empire—in other words, the Alliance Group did not achieve a real victory—after the war, the so-called victors found it difficult to obtain the war dividends needed for complete reconstruction and to quickly recover post-war.

These old Western Empires, especially Bulan Kingdom and Locke Republic, were the actual defeated nations.

Due to its own size constraints and the inability to use colonial expansion to plunder overseas interests to compensate for losses, both the Bulan Kingdom, which aimed to reclaim the title of world’s leading colonial suzerain, and the Locke Republic, which showed signs of force in their external expansion during the post-war development, especially during the "Golden Decade," were actually unable to compete with the two massive superpowers.

This situation had already become apparent at the end of the war.

Most significantly, the Liangxia Empire was able to participate in the Seba Conference on an equal footing and was a formal signatory to the "Seba Peace Treaty." During the subsequent "Huacheng Negotiations," the Liangxia Empire gained a status equal to that of the Newland Federation and the Bulan Kingdom, with a slight advantage in specific allocations. Other victorious countries, such as the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom and the Locke Republic, were relegated to second-rate powers.

These were all major factors in the disintegration of the First Alliance Group after the war.

Regardless, the situation at that time was that the Liangxia Empire, initially a "defeated nation," managed to preserve its foundation and laid the groundwork for its resurgence twenty years later. Among the Western Powers, only the Newland Federation remained capable of confronting the Liangxia Empire after more than four years of devastating war.

The reality facing the Western Powers was as follows: either forfeit some overseas interests and remain neutral, abandoning ambitions for external expansion, or join forces with the Newland Federation, forming an alliance to counter the powerful Liangxia Empire and protect their core interests.

Clearly, different countries made different choices.

It was also from this time that the old empires, represented by the Bulan Kingdom, or more accurately, the interest groups that controlled these old empires, began a painful transformation, shifting their core interests to the Newland Federation and using the Newland Federation as a base to rebuild their network of interests.

Most notably, this included the "Rose Son" family, which originated and grew in the West Continent and then moved to the Bulan Kingdom during the Locke Empire era. Over more than a hundred years, they transformed the Bulan Kingdom into the world’s largest colonial suzerain, the first industrialized global financial superpower, and the leading Western power, as well as the Traveler Clan consortium, which they represented and which controlled the lifeblood of the Western Powers through financial means.

The "Golden Decade" after the war was related to this massive transfer of wealth.

Twenty years of diligent management later, despite still facing many problems, such as the Newland populace’s deep-seated isolationism and various anti-war groups reflecting on the impacts of the last great war, in the decisive domains of finance and economics, the Traveler Clan consortium, represented by the Rose Son family, had successfully integrated into the Newland Federation and had seized control of its lifelines.

For instance, the core financial institution of the Newland Federation, the Federal Reserve Bank, was in the hands of a few major families within the Traveler Clan consortium.

Given this, how could one expect the Newland Federation to remain a mere observer?

Indeed, there was no doubt about this question.

When devising war plans, from Xue Yuanzheng to Bai Zhizhan, all were aware that to prevent the major allies, such as the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom and the Bulan Kingdom, from quickly falling in battle and reaching an irrecoverable state, the Newland Federation would definitely intervene in the war.

Clearly, the enemy of the Empire was not the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom; it was the Newland Federation.

Since a war with the Newland Federation was inevitable, the best option for the Empire was to swiftly defeat the problematic Saiyi Imperial Kingdom.

Any action that delayed the speed of the offensive would carry a tremendously heavy cost.

Upon realizing this, Bai Zhizhan understood a lesson.

The strategy he had previously advocated, which was to first attack Tuk Fortress to the south in the name of striking at the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom and expand the Empire’s homeland defensive ring by establishing another strategic defensive line outside the North and South Sado Islands, was merely a waste of time and likely fruitless.

Indeed, even if they hadn’t annihilated two main battle corps near the Watcher Strait or lost a carrier, the Navy headquarter would still adopt the eastward strategy led by Liu Xiangzhen, focusing first on attacking Liuhuang Island in the Volcanic Islands to secure a springboard for striking at the Saiyi homeland and completing the strategic encirclement of the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom, before considering whether to move south to attack Tuk Fortress or move north to the Saiyi homeland.

Army attacks on the Ice Storm Peninsula?

Clearly, from a strategic perspective, unless directly assaulting the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom’s homeland by landing in its western region, the Army played only a supporting role.

The decisive battlefield was still on the seas.

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