Your Majesty, please spare Diao Chan; your yang energy is too strong.

Ordinary iron armor weighs only twenty or thirty pounds.

However, the amount of refined iron required for a single Iron Pagoda is at least five times that amount.

Because ordinary iron armor only protects the upper body.

The required amount of refined iron is limited.

However, the Iron Pagoda directly protects the eyes.

There is not a single blind spot on his body.

Even the warhorses were clad in iron armor.

The amount of refined iron required is beyond your imagination.

This is why, even with the full strength of the Jin Dynasty, they could only build five thousand iron pagodas.

The amount of refined iron required is simply beyond the capacity of any single power to bear.

Zhou Heng now doesn't even have any armored soldiers under his command.

It's impossible to create an Ironclad Pagoda in one go.

You have to eat one bite at a time; you can't get fat overnight.

Let's set a small goal first: everyone should be armored.

"Yes."

Although it is unknown how Zhou Heng can provide him with an inexhaustible supply of refined iron.

But Mi Zhu still unconditionally trusted his lord, who had repeatedly performed miracles.

He nodded emphatically immediately.

"In addition, I have a forging diagram for a horizontal sword and a long sword here. Take a look at the forging diagrams first."

"Once it's finished, send it to me as soon as possible."

Zhou Heng then took out two more pictures from his bosom depicting the Tang Hengdao and Tang Modao.

Fortunately, Zhou Heng was reborn in 2060, just in time when a record of the Tang Dynasty's Mo Dao (陌刀) was unearthed.

It caused quite a stir at the time.

Otherwise, I really wouldn't know how Tang Modao managed to defeat him.

"Yes."

............

Mi Zhu left, but Zhou Heng did not return to his room immediately.

Instead, they were thinking about what to do next.

After all, despite his clever tactics during this period, he managed to capture Xiapi.

It appears that it has already become a major regional power.

But those on the inside know what's going on.

Although my current strength is not bad, it is still far inferior to those great warlords of the world.

Especially one's own background, which is a major disadvantage in this era.

The Three Kingdoms period was a time of vying for supremacy.

To put it bluntly, it's a power struggle between powerful families.

You, a commoner, want to survive in this era, and even eventually unify the world.

It's definitely not that simple.

Neither the powerful families nor the feudal lords would let him off easily.

The reason is that none of the major feudal lords take him seriously.

The powerful families looked down on him.

That's why he had a chance to catch his breath.

If, once the major feudal lords and powerful families react...

There is absolutely no way he will be given that chance again.

"Now that Lu Bu is helping me resist Cao Cao and Yuan Shu, there shouldn't be any major problems in the short term."

"But what about a year from now?"

"My current advantage is that I can develop rapidly by relying on my two thousand years of memories."

"But if you want to develop rapidly, you need money."

"You need money to do anything."

"Moreover, to put it bluntly, war is essentially about fighting the economy."

"Although I have the support of the Mi family now, the Mi family cannot support me for life."

"Moreover, the support we've received during this period has all come from the Mi family. We've used the Mi family's resources, and the future armor forging and the provisions for the next year will all depend on the Mi family. I imagine that after this, the Mi family will be severely damaged."

"It's impossible to rely on him for everything."

"What are some ways to quickly gain economic benefits?"

Zhou Heng frowned.

The digging up of graves and tombs will not stop; in fact, it will continue.

However, digging up graves and tombs was barely enough to sustain them.

With the upcoming Central Plains war, money will no longer be so important.

We still need to have food.

But the grain...

The best solution is to emulate Cao Cao's system of establishing military farms.

But he couldn't emulate Cao Cao at all, because Cao Cao's land reclamation was based on his own base of operations.

Xuzhou was never their base of operations.

Now, if we're going to establish military farms, aren't we just making things easier for Cao Cao?

It's obviously unrealistic.

"Why don't we follow Boss Yuan's example and give out vouchers to the people? How can we swindle money from them?"

An idea flashed through Zhou Heng's mind.

However, he quickly rejected it.

Ordinary people are so poor they have to sell their pants, where would they get so much money to be swindled?

When Cao Cao slaughtered people in Xuzhou, those with money fled long ago.

Those who remained were all dirt poor.

Moreover, this idea differed from Zhou Heng's own thoughts.

As a commoner, I can only rely on the common people to achieve anything.

They were also using the pretext of saving the people.

That's how he managed to convince so many Yellow Turban rebels to fight for him.

He was fundamentally different from Yuan Shao.

After all, one's foundation lies not in a prestigious family, but in the poor and needy people of the world.

Yuan Shao's power base, however, lay with aristocratic families.

It didn't matter if Yuan Shao issued vouchers and cheated the common people.

He represents the powerful families; what do the lives of ordinary people have to do with him?

However, their foundation lies with the common people.

Those who followed him were all from impoverished backgrounds.

No powerful family would support someone like him, a commoner.

If I had done the same thing as Yuan Shao.

Having lost the support of the people, he had no other way out but defeat and destruction.

Not to mention, issuing vouchers is simply digging their own grave.

This is like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Why did Cao Cao lament after defeating Yuan Shao, "White bones exposed in the wilderness, a thousand miles without a rooster's crow"?

It's all because Boss Yuan killed the goose that lays the golden eggs.

It was done by issuing vouchers.

The people were so poor they didn't even have enough food to eat, and yet you still give them vouchers.

This directly blocked the last way for ordinary people to survive.

They all starved to death on the streets.

That's how this famous saying came about.

Don't assume that Yuan Shao was very rich.

They had to maintain an army of 700,000 and confront Cao Cao for two or three years.

The economic costs required are simply astronomical.

Cao Cao clearly had an army of two to three hundred thousand, so why did he only send out seventy thousand troops?

Ultimately, it's simply because they can't afford to raise them.

That's the only good thing about Boss Cao; at least he doesn't cheat the poor.

They'd rather dig their own graves.

“Reclamation is not an option for the time being, and issuing vouchers is also not an option.”

"We can only seek support."

"There are four extremely wealthy people in the world: Mi, Wei, Zhen, and Lu."

“Every extremely wealthy person can easily support a regional lord.”

"Now the Mi family supports me, the Wei family supports Cao Cao, the Lu family supports Sun Ce, and only the Zhen family is left, whose support for Yuan Shao is still uncertain."

According to historical records, the Zhen family fully supported Yuan Shao in the third or fourth year of Jian'an.

Zhen Mi married Yuan Shao's son.

"Even if we support Yuan Shao now, it will probably be the same as the Mi family, just the first round of financing."

"If I could intercept Zhen Mi, I might be able to win the Zhen family's support."

"If you look down on your humble origins, I'll just tie up your whole family and bring them here, then we'll see if you have any other choice."