Of the 120,000 taels, Wenren Sheng spent 50,000 taels training five hundred men in the Governor Standard Camp.
That came to one hundred taels of silver per man per year.
Decent wages these days were only two taels of silver a month.
Actually paying full wages and provisions already surpassed most troops.
Then there were food allowances, armor, weapons, horses, fodder, beans, eggs, stirrups...
With all the miscellaneous expenses added together, another fifty to eighty taels would be spent each year.
Of course, the costs could be cut, but combat strength would be reduced as well.
Wenren Sheng naturally would not do that.
Living under someone else's roof like this was not a long-term solution.
His countrymen valued legitimacy.
Without legitimacy, soldiers would harbor doubts in battle, and doubts easily shook morale.
But he already had a solution: train troops at sea.
There were many islands overseas. He could find an island abroad and train troops on a large scale.
And the rules at sea were not those of an official establishment like Great Ming.
They were the Red GuoGuo way—blades and guns, a jungle at sea.
Fighting at sea required fast ships and powerful cannon.
To rule the coastal waters, one needed large numbers of fireships and oared sailing vessels, winning through massed ramming attacks.
Even the Red-Haired People had been defeated by the Zheng Family fleet.
And he could replicate that method.
But the Zheng Family could not control ocean-going routes.
After all, Zheng Zhilong lacked grand vision. His horizons were those of a pirate and maritime merchant.
Of course, he had grown old by then as well.
He clearly possessed enormous wealth and was at the height of prosperity, yet he never systematically studied Western shipbuilding methods.
Still, in the coastal sphere, the Zheng Family stood unrivaled