Feeling the waves of powerful Soul Power constantly radiating from Xu Yuanding, Xu Mochen saw a flash of astonishment in his eyes! Xu Yuanding was far more than just an imperial prince and the military's deputy commander-in-chief. He was also the second-strongest person in the Sun Moon Empire, surpassed only by Kong Dehan!
Xu Mochen had heard plenty about Xu Yuanding's strength, but this was the first time he had seen him reveal it! The terrifying aura emanating from Xu Yuanding made even Xu Mochen's Soul Power tremble. If Xu Mochen's Martial Soul weren't of such high quality, and Xu Yuanding hadn't deliberately kept his pressure away from him, the aura alone would have crushed him!
"So developing technology alone isn't enough. To forge iron, one must be strong oneself. I need to train harder. Completing my assessment as soon as possible is absolutely urgent." Xu Mochen could only smile wryly to himself. If Xu Yuanding had been his enemy, he had no doubt that he would be the one lying on the ground right now.
Considering the strength Kong Dehan and Mo Wuying, commander of the Shadow Guard, had displayed during his Martial Soul Awakening, Xu Mochen understood perfectly well that the reason he could now direct the nation's progress with ease and eliminate obstacles in his path wasn't merely his status and position or the wisdom he had shown. More than anything, it was because he had a powerful fighting force at his command!
In a fantasy world like this, where the strong preyed on the weak, talent in other areas wasn't enough to secure one's power and position. Above all, one needed strength! And with his Soul Power at only level twelve, he was clearly still a long way from that goal.
Unlike the protagonists of many system novels, he couldn't raise his strength to an invincible level in a short time. This world therefore remained full of danger for him. And that was before even considering his plans to visit Douluo Continent one day. There were certainly more Soul Master powerhouses there than on Sun Moon Continent, and they were far more terrifying. Thus, Xu Mochen's resolve to grow stronger only became firmer.
For now, however, the most pressing matter was dealing with the criminals according to plan. Xu Mochen ordered them placed under guard in the Shadow Guard's prison, then instructed that the candidates he had personally selected over the past few months be notified at once to fill their vacancies. Those candidates had already been waiting for some time.
So, in just two or three hours, the entire military high command underwent a major reshuffle! Fortunately, this was an exceptionally peaceful period, with neither war nor foreign enemies. Otherwise, Xu Mochen would never have dared to do this.
After all, replacing so many senior military officers at once, then clearing out another group of people from local posts, would inevitably create a transitional vacuum between the old and new powers. If anything went wrong, the entire military system could rapidly collapse.
That was why Xu Mochen used the quickest, most decisive approach with the high command, rooting out every corrupt officer among the senior ranks. Better a short, sharp pain than a long, lingering one; only then could he smoothly carry out his plans. As for local officers and soldiers, he focused more on punishing a small number of the most heinous offenders to make an example of them and intimidate the petty troublemakers.
At the same time, Xu Mochen was "broad-minded" enough to say that the most heinous offenders would receive severe punishment, while most of those whose actions were less serious would be treated leniently or let off without further consequence. He used both carrot and stick.
Xu Mochen naturally welcomed anyone willing to reform. As for the stubbornly unrepentant, those who still dared to defy the central government's policies, well, after securing the Empire's central government, he would slowly weed out those rotten apples.
With the new group of senior officials Xu Mochen had personally selected now in place, he began pushing ahead with his plans. First came the matter of weapons and equipment. Xu Mochen assured the assembled generals that he would find a way to persuade the National Congress to increase military spending, giving the military more money to strengthen its forces.
Xu Mochen also pointed out that the Sun Moon Empire's weapons development had a major problem. Most importantly, Soul Guidance Weapons had barely advanced over the years. As a result, the Sun Moon Empire's military strength had not only failed to increase, but had actually declined!
The Sun Moon Empire's approach to weapons design also had its flaws. Its primitive Soul Gunpowder weapons had fallen far behind, while Soul Guidance Weapons such as guns and cannons needed an entirely new approach to research and development!
Xu Mochen hadn't spent the past two months idle just because he had handed the development of the Soul Guidance Steam Engine over to Kong Dehan and the others. Instead, he had worked alongside the Soul Guidance Weapon experts at the research institute to develop new types of Soul Gunpowder and ammunition-based guns and cannons.
After a long period of discussion and experimentation, Xu Mochen and the experts had finally developed a new smokeless Soul Gunpowder, fixed Soul Guidance bullets, Fixed Soul Cannon Shells, and the corresponding weapons! After the meeting, Xu Mochen planned to show all the generals the Sun Moon Royal Soul Tool Research Institute's results from the past two months.
In fact, while discussing designs and conducting practical trials with the Soul Guidance Weapon designers, Xu Mochen had discovered that, compared with ammunition-based guns and cannons, ray-based firearms had several advantages. For example, they didn't need a dedicated supply of bullets or shells in a specific caliber. As long as there was enough Soul Power, they could be used, greatly easing the burden of transporting ammunition.
Moreover, Soul Guidance Ray guns and cannons had greater range than ordinary ammunition-based weapons, and their attacks penetrated more effectively. When necessary, skilled Soul Guidance Weapon designers could also customize the energy arrays inside ray guns and cannons, giving them other special abilities, such as burning, freezing, or inflicting poison. But that didn't mean Soul Guidance Ray guns were simply better than ammunition-based weapons.
First, the most obvious problem was that Soul Guidance Ray guns and cannons consumed far more Soul Power than ammunition-based weapons. That made sense: one required a Soul Master to provide enough Soul Power to form an attack beam that could be fired like a bullet, while the other only required the Soul Master to supply the power to propel a bullet. Some weaker new smokeless Soul Gunpowder weapons didn't even require Soul Power to use.
A Soul Master in their twenties would often use up nearly a tenth of their Soul Power with a single shot from a Soul Guidance Ray Gun. Ninety-nine percent of the Sun Moon Empire's Soul Masters had unimpressive Martial Souls, and plenty of them had Martial Souls with no offensive power at all.
For most of them, then, their weapon was their only means of attack. But a battlefield was unpredictable. They couldn't fire ten shots and then tell the enemy, "Hold on a moment. I'm out of Soul Power. Let me replenish it, and then we can fight again," could they?
Second, Soul Guidance Ray guns and cannons in the Sun Moon Empire cost far more than ammunition-based weapons. According to Xu Mochen's experiments, a Soul Guidance Ray Gun cost more than three times as much to make as a gun that fired Soul Guidance bullets!
That didn't include the cost of the bullets, but even after adding that in, unless a Soul Guidance Ray Gun could be used for a very long time, the cost of a Soul Guidance bullet gun and its ammunition still wouldn't match that of a Soul Guidance Ray Gun of the same grade.
However, calculations showed that Soul Guidance Ray guns had a much shorter average lifespan than Soul Guidance bullet guns, and their failure rate was far higher. This wasn't hard to understand: Soul Power wore down and corroded a gun's barrel and body more than bullets made of Soul Guidance metal did.
So even though Soul Guidance Ray guns didn't need ammunition, they required regular maintenance, repairs, and replacement. For soldiers worn out after a day of fighting and the maintenance personnel supporting them, this was undoubtedly both troublesome and exhausting.
Of course, that didn't mean Xu Mochen intended to phase out Soul Guidance Ray guns and cannons entirely. They simply couldn't be issued to the military on a large scale. After continual improvements in the future, however, they could still serve in certain special units. Their advantages were plain to see, and using them as elite special-purpose weapons rather than standard-issue arms was undoubtedly the better choice.
Xu Yuanding and the other generals supported this approach, but they still wanted to confirm what these so-called new weapons of Xu Mochen's were like. Xu Mochen didn't refuse. Instead, he took the initiative and invited all the generals to visit the weapons testing ground after the meeting.
Xu Mochen then moved on to propose an expansion of the military. He made no secret of the matter, telling everyone about the intelligence he had received concerning Douluo Continent. The revelation landed like a thunderbolt, leaving the assembled generals in an uproar!
If anyone other than Xu Mochen had said this, they would probably have suspected that person had lost their mind. But Xu Mochen told them with absolute conviction that the intelligence was genuine, and with Xu Yuanding's support, the military's generals finally agreed to his arrangements, though still somewhat skeptical.
Xu Mochen knew, however, that persuading his own generals wasn't especially difficult. The real challenge was getting the National Congress to approve his request for expansion. Without funding from the National Congress, his expansion plan would never get off the ground.
For now, though, Xu Mochen needed to focus on the Soul Guidance Weapons demonstration. With Xu Mochen leading the way, the assembled generals were already riding carriages to the Sun Moon Empire's royal weapons testing ground.
Inside the Crown Prince's carriage, Xu Mochen, Mo Wuying, and Xu Yuanding sat together. Yet Xu Yuanding still couldn't hide his concern. "Your Highness, even now, I can hardly believe that another continent really exists east of the Sun Moon Empire's waters! This place called Douluo Continent—is it really as miraculous as you say?"
Mo Wuying had also heard Xu Mochen speak about this continent. Despite his intelligence-gathering skills, he had never heard of it before. Even so, he chose to believe Xu Mochen, because the existence Xu Mochen had invoked left him no choice but to believe.
"To be honest, I'm not entirely sure either. My ancestors told me about it, and I can hardly doubt them." Xu Mochen smiled wryly and lied. After all, he couldn't exactly say he had crossed over from another world and already knew the story of this one, could he?
For now, using the Purple Imperial Chaos Dragon King as a convenient excuse was undoubtedly the best option. Of the three of them, only Xu Mochen had met the ancestor, and he had received the ancestor's most important legacy. So only Xu Mochen knew what the ancestor had said.
Besides, most of the Sun Moon Empire's high-ranking officials knew many of the secrets in its history, and naturally held the founding ancestor of the Sun Moon Continent's royal family in awe. Xu Mochen therefore wasn't worried about being exposed. After all, Douluo Continent really did exist.
As they talked, Xu Mochen and the other officers finally reached the designated royal weapons testing ground. After undergoing a thorough security inspection, they were at last met by a group of Soul Guidance Weapon designers.
"Your Highness, this old man has been waiting here for some time. Thanks to your help these past months, my work on Soul Guidance Weapons has made such tremendous progress!" The white-coated old man at the front laughed heartily as he stepped forward.
Xu Mochen replied modestly, "Elder Xiao, you give me too much credit. Without the combined efforts and tireless work of all our esteemed seniors, I could never have achieved such success on my own."
Seeing this, the surrounding officers were secretly astonished by Elder Xiao's behavior. It seemed that this Crown Prince had remarkable talent not only in politics, economics, and cultivation, but perhaps also in Soul Guidance Weapon design. After all, they had heard about Elder Xiao's temperament: he was famous for his stubbornness, and in discussions about all sorts of Soul Guidance Weapon research, he was a hard man who even dared to talk back to the late emperor and Prince Yinyue, Kong Dehan!
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