The largest province was nearly three times the size of the smallest.
It was clear that the division of provinces had not been a simple matter of drawing lines on a map, but the result of the civil officials' careful deliberation.
Pointing at the names of these provinces, Shi Haoyu continued, "At present, administrative reforms have been preliminarily completed in the twenty-one southern provinces. A large number of officials have been reassigned and stationed within them."
"Of the eleven northern provinces, these areas are still temporarily under military administration. It is estimated that another three to four months will be needed before they can gradually emerge from military rule."
"Currently, according to rough population estimates, these newly governed thirty-two provinces have a combined population of more than one billion five hundred thirty-two million."
"Of course, this figure remains open to discussion, but the margin of error will not exceed thirty million people either way."
"Within these thirty-two provinces, there are still large numbers of half-orc professionals. These professionals are the greatest problem our officials have encountered in governing these provinces."
At this, Shi Haoyu looked toward Huo Ling and asked, "Your Majesty, how should we deal with these half-orc professionals who are disloyal to the Duchy?"
Huo Ling felt a headache coming on as well.
They had easily seized all the half-orcs' territories without any large-scale war breaking out. That had both advantages and disadvantages.
The advantage was that it had preserved the half-orcs' strength to the greatest extent possible, allowing Huo Ling to make use of these half-orc soldiers later.
The disadvantage lay in the same matter: these half-orc professionals would not hold much loyalty toward the newborn regime.
Most of these half-orc professionals were Silver-rank or Black Iron-rank.
As for those of higher rank, they had basically all