Sun Chengzong's words are not without reason. After all, the Ningyuan defense line built by him did play a major role in the Tianqi Dynasty, making it difficult for the Later Jin to move forward.

The Later Jin Dynasty is now in the four sides of Liaodong Town, Dongjiang Town, Mongolia and North Korea, and its strategic situation is extremely unfavorable. This is undoubtedly a concentrated reflection of Sun Chengzong's outstanding achievements as the commander of Liaodong.

As descendants, from the perspective of hindsight, we always feel that the Ming Dynasty is coming to an end, the Later Jin Dynasty is booming, and the situation of Huang Taiji ascending the throne is much stronger than that of Chongzhen.

But when Zhu Youjian came to this era, he suddenly discovered that the current situation in the Later Jin Dynasty was much more dangerous than the situation in the Ming Dynasty when he just succeeded to the throne.

Huang Taiji first ascended the throne of Khan, and his power was not stable. He still needed to rule with the Great Bele Daishan, the Two Bele Amin, and the Three Bele Mangguertai. This period was known in history as the Four Bele Periods.

However, Huang Taiji is one of the few heroes in history among Chinese ethnic minorities. Looking at the more than ten years since he ascended the throne, it can be said that every decision he made was correct, and every step he took was at the right step.

After Huang Taiji ascended the throne, he picked the persimmons first and quenched North Korea and Mongolia one after another, thereby gaining power and prestige, successfully suppressing the other three major belles, consolidating centralization, and forming a trend of monopoly on power.

Later, Huang Taiji used counter-espionage tactics to induce Yuan Chonghuan to kill Mao Wenlong, which made the Later Jin Dynasty have no worries. He immediately went to Mongolia, avoiding the Ming Dynasty's huge Ningyuan defense line, breaking through Jizhou Town, raging northern Zhili, attacking Beijing City, and shaking the world.

In sharp contrast to this, Chongzhen's incompetence was to play a bad hand of cards left to him by Tianqi, and it was a natural consequence of himself.

It can be said that if Zhu Youjian had not entered the late Ming Dynasty, Huang Taiji would have been the most outstanding person of this era. Chongzhen, Li Zicheng, and Zhang Xianzhong were all trashed compared with him.

Sun Chengzong's Ningyuan defense line did block the pace of the Later Jin going south during Nurhaci's reign, but when he faced the wise and powerful Huang Taiji, wouldn't it become the Ming Dynasty's version of the "Magino defense line"?

Zhu Youjian knew the result, but he still invested the money and grain accumulated across the country into the bottomless pit of Ningyuan Defense Line. Then wouldn’t he become a fool?

Zhu Youjian unceremoniously exposed Sun Chengzong's dream and said bluntly: "Mr. Sun, is the Ningyuan defense line built by the imperial court spending huge amounts of money really indestructible? Even if it is really indestructible, did Mr. Sun ever think that if the Later Jin conquered Mongolia and headed south from Mongolia, wouldn't the Ningyuan defense line be useless?"

Zhu Youjian's light rhetorical question was like thunder hitting Sun Chengzong, and Sun Chengzong stood there on the spot, like a wooden chicken.

You should know that the Ningyuan defense line built by Sun Chengzong was the greatest pride in his life. In his opinion, as long as he built the fortress until Sarhu, the Ming Dynasty could wash away the shame of the Battle of Sarhu and complete the great cause of restoring Liao.

But now his lifelong dream has been ruthlessly exposed by Zhu Youjian!

Sun Chengzong murmured: "Your Majesty..., maybe we can relax all kinds of restrictions on Mongolia, increase Mongolia's strength, and shatter the plan of the Later Jin to conquer Mongolia."

Zhu Youjian said bluntly: "Mr. Sun, Mongolia and the Later Jin Dynasty are birds of a feather. If Mongolia grew stronger, do you think they would not go south to invade?"

"This..." Sun Chengzong was speechless again.

Zhu Youjian said word by word: "The blacksmith must be strong himself. In the final analysis, it is because my Ming Dynasty did not have a unit that dared to fight against the Later Jin Dynasty. If the Qi army in our dynasty was still there, how could the Later Jin Dynasty be rampant?

Therefore, I want to form a new army to defend the capital and finally complete the great cause of restoring Liao. This new army will innovate the training methods, recruit good families as soldiers, and select generals from the outstanding officers of the Nine Border Army of the Ming Dynasty.

Mr. Sun is loyal to me, the Ming Dynasty, and is familiar with military affairs, and is quite familiar with the tactics of the Later Jin Dynasty. I plan to let Mr. Sun take charge of the construction of the new army. Do you dare to respond?”

Sun Chengzong has always been a pioneer in military and political reform. As soon as he took office in the second year of Tianqi, he was the Minister of War and the Grand Secretary of the Dongge, he submitted a memorial to discuss the shortcomings of the military system and combat command at that time and sought reform. The main contents were: (1) "There are too many soldiers and no training, and the pay is too much." This means that the military training was poor at that time and the logistics supply was chaotic.

(2) "Use generals to use military forces, and use civil officials to train; use generals to face the battle, and use civil officials to point out the command; use military forces to attack the border, and add civil officials to the shogunate." It points out the mistakes in the command strategy of "using civil war to use military forces" at that time.

(3) "The border is used to serve the classics and support them, and the day is asked to defend the court", pointing out the inappropriateness of "they will defend themselves from it".

In the fourth year of the Liao Dynasty, Sun Chengzong used the reform points of these three major army as the main theme and formed the Liaodong Army, which was second only to the Later Jin Dynasty in this era.

However, Sun Chengzong attached too much importance to the role of the general, which led to a disaster that the Liaodong General Group could not lose. Sun Chengzong also felt deeply sorry for this.

But now, Emperor Chongzhen gave Sun Chengzong another chance to retrain the new army. Sun Chengzong had the opportunity to make up for his biggest regret in his life, so how could he refuse?

Without any hesitation, Sun Chengzong bowed to the ground and kowtowed: "I am willing to die for Your Majesty!"

Sun Chengzong accepted the task of forming a new army very happily. As for forming a new army, Sun Chengzong did not dare to be good at it because of the lessons of the Liaodong Army. He asked: "Your Majesty, what kind of regulations should be used for the formation of a new army, where should the military source and military pay come from?"

Zhu Youjian thought about it and said, "Since ancient times, the Middle-Turkish dynasty has attached great importance to the role of generals. The idea of ​​"it is easy to obtain one general in three armies" is deeply rooted in people's hearts. Therefore, the army with strong combat power in history has been named the main general, such as the Yue family army of the Song Dynasty and the Qi family army of our dynasty.

But for this reason, once the general passed away, the combat effectiveness of the army showed a sharp decline. The Yue family army lost Yue Wumu, and the Qi family army lost Qi Shaobao, and the soul suddenly lost, and the army eventually gradually disappeared into the long river of history.

It is not wrong to attach importance to generals, but generals like Yue Fei and Qi Shaobao are hard to come by, and one may not be produced in a century. Moreover, time has changed. With the continuous progress and improvement of firearm technology, the role of generals and powerful generals is getting smaller and smaller, but the role of grassroots officers is getting bigger and bigger.

So, I decided to establish a military academy before forming a new army. Well..., this military academy will be built in Xishan, called Xishan Military Academy.

Military academy students were selected from outstanding grassroots officers in the Nine Border Army of the Ming Dynasty. After the officers studied in the school for three months, they used this group of officers as their branches to form a new army."

It was still a little urgent for the officers to form a new army after three months of study, but Zhu Youjian had no choice. Huang Taiji would not give him time to take his time.
Chapter completed!