"Pfft—"
"Cough, cough!! You aren't joking?" the Jade Emperor gave a few dry coughs, masking his awkwardness.
He had just been sipping the celestial tea of Queen Mother right here.
His mind was extremely relaxed, enjoying the graceful dances of the fairy maidens in the grand hall below while casually listening to Thousand-Mile Eyes and Wind-Following Ears observe the situation of the Journey to the West.
When Thousand-Mile Eyes and the other told the Jade Emperor that Tang Emperor Li Shimin of the mortal realm intended to dispatch an army of half a million, marching all the way to... cough, cough!! Personally journeying to the Western Paradise to retrieve the scriptures.
Hearing this news, the Jade Emperor reacted so violently simply because he understood Tang Emperor Li Shimin.
All the achievements and thoughts of Tang Emperor Li Shimin were not worth mentioning to him, yet he had to admit that at the level of mortals, the man had reached the absolute ultimate.
Therefore,
the Li Shimin in the Jade Emperor's mind was definitely a rational and clever emperor.
A rational and clever emperor could never issue such an absurd order.
Fighting all the way from the Eastern Tang Dynasty to Western Paradise, Spirit Mountain, that was an extremely unreliable decision.
A front stretching over one hundred and eight thousand miles was practically a child's game.
Dispatching half a million troops meant the absolute number of people going to the battlefield was far beyond half a million; they would need countless corvée laborers behind them to transport rations and heavy equipment, and adding miscellaneous duties together, they had to mobilize logistical personnel numbering at least three times that of the army.
Only in this way could a war be guaranteed to proceed.
Half a million troops, plus three times their number