To achieve immortality, I cultivate using Qi Luck

Chapter 848: Chapter 362: The Yong State Battle Situation_2

By conservative estimates, over the past six years, the number of pastoralists among the Snow Plains Nomads who have died in battle already exceeds 1.5 million.

And due to reasons such as cold disasters, starvation, and war, the estimated population reduction has also surpassed 5 million.

Adding these together, the total population loss has exceeded 6.5 million, which, compared to the Nomads’ peak of 16 million, accounts for more than a third of their population.

With such severe losses, especially amongst the capable young men, the Snow Plains Nomads could be said to be teetering on the brink of extinction.

Given such reasoning, Lu Yuan couldn’t be optimistic about the future of the Nomads.

In reality, the actual situation of the Snow Plains Nomads was even worse than his estimation.

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Lu Yuan’s information on the Snow Plains Nomads was ultimately gathered only through the Helong Battlefield channels and from the details related to some bloodlines mentioned by his Spirit Consort.

Though both sources were fairly reliable, they were not as immediate or detailed as the information collected directly on the Snowy Wilderness, and they involved quite a bit of delay.

In fact, the situation faced by the Snow Plains Nomads was much more severe than what Lu Yuan had speculated.

The losses suffered by the tribes of the Snowy Wilds over the years were not far off from the wealth of intelligence previously gathered by Chu State.

However, last winter, due to a sudden worsening of the cold snap, many tribes who were ill-prepared suffered heavy losses.

Just one winter passed, and more than a million people died of freezing on the Snowy Wilderness, including some who had even received a disproportionate share of supplies.

This one wave of severe cold took away a tenth of the total population of the Snow Plains Nomads.

Now, after the reduction caused by the cold, the total population of the Snow Plains Nomads has dropped to less than 9 million.

Among the remaining 9 million people, many suffered from severe frostbite and frost injuries during the last winter, even losing toes and fingers, leaving them incapable of becoming competent laborers or combat units.

It is precisely because of this large-scale reduction in population, as well as the appearance of many injured, that the Snow Plains Nomads now find it very difficult to organize large-scale forces.

To be able to muster an army of 300,000 riders from the remaining 9 million is already considered a rarity and a miracle.

If not for the life-and-death urgency pressing upon the entire tribe and race, their organizational capability and productivity, having suffered such devastation, would have seen their societal order collapse long ago.

How would they still have the capacity to launch a spring raid against the Zhou People, extracting 300,000 riders as they are doing now?

Yet the mere 300,000 riders, as Lu Yuan thought, really posed little threat.

They could hardly trouble the 300,000 soldiers stationed by the Zhou People in the two provinces of Helong, along with an approximately equal number of militiamen.

On the battlefield, the Zhou People’s military force and strength had officially surpassed that of the Snow Plains Nomads, even gaining a crushing advantage.

In the future, unless external forces intervene, even if all the Nomads on the Snowy Wilderness were wiped out, the two provinces of Helong could not be taken.

Recognizing their decline in strength and the difficulty of their predicament, in order to ease the population pressure causing food shortages, as well as to obtain more supplies,

the Snow Plains Nomads had agreed to trade the young women from their tribes with Chu State in exchange for precious grain and various supplies.

This wasn’t because they didn’t realize that losing those valuable, childbearing-aged women would inevitably affect the long-term development of the tribe, even leading them step by step toward extinction.

But they clearly understood that if they did not do this, not only those women would not be spared from starvation or freezing to death, but their tribes would also suffer even more losses, even facing direct extinction.

Between two detriments, they chose the lesser: trading a long-term future for a short-term one was akin to quenching thirst with poison, yet it was a necessary act.

Perhaps with sufficient support, they could rebuild their strength and fight a decisive battle with the Zhou People, desperately trying to seize land to consolidate.

This hope may be slim, but there’s still that slight chance.

Compared to other futures already doomed to darkness, with no possibility left, this was enough to make it an acceptable option.

Of course, Lu Yuan was not aware of all this, limited by the scarcity of information.

Otherwise, given the current predicament of the Nomads, Chu State could have proposed even more terms to extract greater benefits.

The Nomads, having been driven to desperation, had lost all leverage, and faced with any excessive demands, they had no choice but to accept, provided they didn’t wish for extinction.

Of course, these interests, to the Chu State which was about to unify Jiangnan, really were not much to speak of.

Lu Yuan didn’t place much emphasis on them.

Compared to this, he valued friendship with the Nomads more.

After all, besides those ordinary herders, there were still more than a dozen Inborn Grandmasters among the Nomads.

If in the future the Snow Plains Nomads were obliterated, Chu State might be able to win over some people from among those Inborn Nomads, leveraging past relations with the Snowy Wilderness and the status of the Spiritual woman, to gain their most profound strengths.

In the times to come, with Spiritual Energy growing ever scarcer, once those Cultivators from the Nine Provinces reached Northern Dark City and extracted the last active Spiritual Energy Between Heaven and Earth, those Different Species that could still survive in the Blessed Lands and Cavern Heavens would begin to wither away and die due to the lack of Spiritual Energy.

By then, without the assistance of Divine Blood Elixirs, it will be incredibly hard for the Nine Provinces to produce any more Inborn talents.

The current times are essentially the last chance for all martial artists to strive for the Inborn Realm.