"Is it a letter from Jeanne?"

Seeing Edwin walk in with a letter sealed with red wax in hand, Horn put down his pen and asked.

"Yes, indeed." Edwin placed the letter on Horn’s desk.

Horn didn’t open it immediately but looked up at Edwin.

Today, she wore a gray woolen suit, her short hair pinned at the back with a hairpin, her smile as radiant as a blooming flower.

The metal hairpin was made from scrap near the Lightning Forge and recently sold very well in the ry Court Barracks.

Horn glanced nostalgically at the hairpin that closely resembled a memory from his previous life before he unfolded the letter to read.

Lately, Jeanne has been sending a letter almost every week, recounting her experiences on Dawn Island.

Horn assigned Jeanne’s letters the highest priority; as soon as they arrive at the ry Court Barracks, they are delivered to Horn without delay.

She did not betray Horn’s trust. After encircling and annihilating the Gun at Doubi Village, Jeanne is now advancing on Duck Port.

Taking Duck Port and using an iron chain to block the river is akin to cutting off the kingdom’s major artery that supplies the area around Longbow Castle.

Henceforth, the likes of Count Ruka of Dawn Island or Regent Duke Omeis will find it impossible to quickly deploy troops and supplies to Longbow Castle as they previously did.

As for Socette and others who remained at Longbow Castle, they issued letters to surrounding churches and monasteries, inviting them to a meeting at the camp outside the city.

If you attend the meeting, there is room for negotiation.

If you do not attend, then prepare to be divided by those who do attend.

Unless your power can surpass the leading forces of the meeting, then whether you attend or not is up to you.

As Horn and the advisors predicted, these churches and monasteries had long since lost their former arrogance.

After King Jiji fell, and Holy Seat City was captured and garrisoned by three major kingdoms, their military might relied solely on the Armed Monks to support them.

With the collapse of royal order, the once-stable noble system underwent a reshuffle.

The church and minor lords and knights the royal family used to counterbalance the Great Lords were all annexed by local great nobles.

The once-seemingly disappeared feudal wars resurfaced within the Leia Kingdom.

Especially in the regions of Dawn Island and Immortal Stone Field, even on River Island, a series of feudal disputes have erupted.

Vast armies of wanderers numbering in the thousands, including many retired royal soldiers and robber knights, are rampant.

This scene of thriving vitality that is burgeoning with life, Jeanne described in her letter as "the most beautiful landscape."

For these people, regardless of whether they are recruited or defeated and reorganized, they can quickly form a resistance army.

However, Horn and Jeanne were both dissatisfied with one point — the peasant revolts were still quite rare.

After all, Dawn Island is not like the Thousand River Valley; it is inherently wealthy, with various forces tugging at each other, preventing anyone from being too excessive.

The peasants’ living standards here are neither too good nor too bad.

Therefore, Jeanne’s recruitment efforts usually involve selecting relatively innocent and honest wanderers to form the Longbow Castle Defensive Army.

The first batch of the Defensive Army now comprises nine hundred individuals, organized into nine hundred-man teams, consisting of six Holy Gun Teams and three Long Spear Teams.

However, Jeanne also requested more officers and veterans in her letter, even newly graduated warrant officers from military academies would suffice.

Currently, Jeanne has eighteen infantry officers, nine cavalry officers, and a dozen veteran sergeants under her command, enough to muster a force of two thousand troops.

This number is certainly sufficient for Longbow Castle at this stage.

If all goes well, by the end of the month, Horn should be able to see the merchant ships from Longbow Castle arrive at Xia Lvcheng.

Yet, considering the enemies that will be faced in the long term, this number would need to reach eight thousand to be adequate.

Seeing this, Horn couldn’t help but rub his temples; there are plenty of officers, but very few are willing to actively go to Longbow Castle.

Officers graduating from military academies are generally granted the rank of warrant officer, serving as a deputy to the Captain Bai.

Then they are promoted to second lieutenant, serving as Captain Bai.

Next comes the subcolonel, serving as a deputy to the Corps Commander, followed by the Junior General as Corps Commander, and finally the Grand General as Battle Commander.

This is the complete promotion path.

Just one trip to Longbow Castle for a mission results in a blank spot or blemish on one’s career record.

What if the combat is level dated back to ten years ago, unable to keep up with the trends of rear-loading clockwork guns?

Since the appearance of rear-loading clockwork guns, the Holy Alliance Army immediately began adaptation and reform internally.

At such a time, going to Longbow Castle is indeed minor at the expense of major shifts.

Horn could, of course, force orders, but this wouldn’t be very motivating.

After pondering for a while, Horn simply wrote a small note.

In essence, it allowed officers to take a rank to lead troops at Longbow Castle, enabling Jeanne to promote officers and upgrade military ranks autonomously.

After the military rank promotion, they can return to the Holy Alliance with half the rank, or be appointed as senior local officers on the spot.

This way, it should temporarily alleviate the personnel shortage issue at Longbow Castle.

Having put Jeanne’s letter away in the cabinet, Horn pulled out "Dawn Island Assistance Plan" from a stack of documents.

Having stabilized the city by this step, the next would be to clear peripheral threats and export the revolution.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, the next step would be rural preaching, abolition of privileges, military escort, and organizing into Hundred Households Districts.

However, the Hundred Households Districts of Dawn Island are destined not to be as devout or centralized as that of the Thousand River Valley.

It is predetermined by customs, economic conditions, and living standards.

Yet it matters not, throughout this process, the Holy Alliance Army led by Jeanne and the monks will gradually transform the local society.

Once the grassroots level is secured, the focus will turn to military development, using military power to overthrow the great nobles.

Using the wealth left by the great nobles, completing an agricultural revolution, and liberating consumption power.

By then, the industries related to peat, textiles, tools, and construction materials within the Holy Alliance can experience another wave of growth.

Regarding Shattered Stone Plain or Immortal Stone Field, Horn is still unsure if they have the consumption power, they might even need subsidies or expenditure.

But Dawn Island, with its congregation of old nobility, is well-known for this.

With numerous aristocratic families, thousands of years old, common as the sands.

Their territories spread throughout the empire, with enclaves and noncontiguous small plots scattered everywhere, not relying solely on Dawn Island’s territory for sustenance.

Thanks to this economic environment and political norm, territorial wars within Dawn Island usually restrain, valuing peace.

Thus, the local war intensity is minimal, having accumulated thousands of years of wealth.

Otherwise, why would King Jiji maniacally exploit Dawn Island and not other places?

A meeting could be convened, and the current production capacity can gradually be expanded.

Upon considering this, Horn added a few more notes to the paper, walked briskly to the door, opened the study room door, and called across to the Secret Monk’s chamber: "Petier."

Petier quickly walked over, and Horn handed out the note: "Draft it into a proposal and forward it to Madlan, Catherine, and Hakuto for review."

Petier quickly glanced at the content on the note: "Forgive me for speaking out of turn, Your Eminence, but sending a large number of officers out and granting Jeanne battlefield promotion power, might it be..."

"Don’t worry about it." Horn patted his shoulder, "Just do it this way."

For these few Saintesses, there is the potential only to surpass the height of the Lord, but not to overshadow the achievements of the Lord.

"Yes."

Petier left with the note, while Horn didn’t sit back but instead went to the window, gazing towards the rain-clouded woods and the central park.

Lately, Horn had been working from home in a mountain villa.

It wasn’t that he was mimicking a certain Taoist teacher by not attending court, but rather that the Holy Seat Mansion was undergoing renovations.

It required the installation of new fluorite lamps, as well as leaving space for the installation of a plumbing system, fans, and heating system.

After all, at the current pace, by the end of the year, the prototype of the ether clock would be completed and operational within the clock tower.

Then the long-standing issue of difficult winding due to long-term relaxation of the clockwork stockpiles would be resolved.

As long as one sits at home, once the ether comes through, the slack clockwork springs can be retightened without needing to replace them over ten times a day.

The only current limit to the ether clock and clockwork stockpiles is the frequency of ether drawing.

According to Hilov’s calculations, launching an ether field ten to twelve times a day is needed to barely maintain the continued operation of the clockwork stockpiles.

Currently, the ry Court Barracks can only launch an ether field once a day, far from the needed requirement.

However, with the energy issue resolved, many star-cast gear-driven mechanisms could be replaced by clockwork stockpiles.

This freed up more star-cast gears to drive the clockwork stockpiles, allowing for almost all-day operation.

With dreamless divination coordinating, calculating more weak points in the ether ridge wouldn’t be a problem.

Looking at the lampposts gradually being erected along the distant roadside, Horn couldn’t help but smile.