Outside, the place was completely surrounded by several countries, packed tight. I couldn't even count how many troops there were myself—at least three to four million. I heard that the five surrounding countries had all sent armies to join the battle, plus the main force of the Wen Dynasty, which had sent over one million Elite Soldiers. Primarily, the Feng Imperial Dynasty had dispatched a corps of 100,000 Houtian Martial Artists to oversee the battle, forcing the surrounding nations to send twenty million—no, twenty thousand—Elite Soldiers to obey their commands.
The armies outside looked magnificent, drilling outside my walls every day. They clearly wanted to intimidate me. But I honestly couldn't beat the other side; there were simply too many of them. This inevitably caused a great deal of anxiety among the civilians inside.
To maintain internal stability and eliminate these unstable factors, I gathered all the civilians and gave them a speech. Anyone willing to leave would be given money and grain. As for those willing to stay and weather the storm with me, this Holy Son guaranteed that every single one of them could eat meat every day.
Chapter 278