Chapter 106: All in Readiness

Cai Feiming spent an entire hour writing and drawing on the whiteboard before he finally made the current situation clear to the two Japanese merchants.

In truth, the lecture was mainly for Dongye Shangche's benefit — Dongye was a Kyoto merchant, and he wasn't very familiar with the script of how the Nagasaki officials and merchants fought the Red Hair.

Lin Xun was different. Long before he set sail from Nagasaki, Hamada Yahyoe had already been whipping up public opinion on a grand scale, stirring up the Dutchmen's rude treatment of the merchants all over Nagasaki harbor. After that, Nuytz arrived in port, went to Edo to seek an audience with the Shogun, and the Nagasaki Daikan along with that old rogue Hamada worked behind the scenes to trip the Dutch up — these matters had the backing of the great Nagasaki merchants from the start, so he knew them very well.

So, while marveling at the Crossing Faction's intelligence-gathering capability, Lin Xun also supplied Cai Feiming with quite a few details from the Nagasaki side on the spot — the two of them essentially crammed the lesson into Dongye Shangche together.

They dumped out the long-spent tea leaves, replaced them with fresh tea, and after a short rest, Cai Feiming formally began laying out the Crossing Faction's deductions and plan: "According to our intelligence, Nuytz is already on his way back to Dayuan. We'll handle the Dutch matter ourselves — you stay out of it."

"Hai!"

"When you return to Nagasaki, you'll find Hamada recruiting masterless Samurai in droves. He plans to come to Dayuan next year to make trouble for the Dutch. Please convey to Hamada that Dayuan's new owner does not welcome the Samurai sword. We only welcome masterless Samurai who come here looking for work — and of course, bars of gold, silver, and copper."

At that last line, all three men shared a knowing laugh.

"If that's the case, Hamada-san will certainly bring silver bars to Dayuan. The Dongye family is, after all, also a great merchant house of Nagasaki!" Lin Xun said.

"Mm. None of that is the main point." Cai Feiming leaned forward, his expression grave. "The main point is this: our side now demands that your three houses unite, cooperate closely, leverage your influence, and have the Shogunate formally issue an edict to close the Dutch Trading Post and forbid the Dutch from trading in Japan!"

... Since the original historical fuse was now gone, the Dongye and Lin families, who had profited from the Transmigrators' occupation of Dayuan, naturally had to fill this gap themselves.

"Cai-san, please be absolutely assured — this was precisely the suggestion I intended to present to my Family Head the moment I returned to Nagasaki!" Lin Xun said, his face full of resentment as he gripped the crutch beside him tightly.

Cai Feiming nodded and shifted his gaze to Dongye Shangche.

"With so many wonderful goods, the Family Head will certainly agree!" Dongye Shangche gave his guarantee at this point as well.

"Mm. Lord Chaya Docho's influence within the Shogunate is unmatched. With him taking action, we shall have no worries." Cai Feiming clapped his hands at this. "After the matter is done, your three houses will receive priority purchasing rights for the goods in Dayuan's warehouses. Gentlemen, do your utmost!"

"Hai!"

The next morning, the two Red Seal Ships, laden deep in the water, were towed by boats and slowly departed the Dayuan Dock. Cai Feiming, who had come to the dock to see them off, shouted to the horse-faced Samurai Dongye Shangche, who stood at the bow waving at him: "Don't forget that!"

Dongye pulled a thick stack of high-resolution pictures from his bosom and waved them. "Cai-san, take care! Dongye will return!"

December 18, 1627. 1218 — a very auspicious number, a day that ought to be remembered by history.

All laborers working in Dayuan, regardless of rank or nationality, were given the entire day off. The Shanty Area at the foot of Shang Hall was much smaller than before. Those broken bamboo shacks had been demolished one after another and all sent to the Kiln District for fuel.

Early in the morning, apart from the garrisoned Fort duty officers, every single Transmigrator at the Dayuan Trading Post turned out without exception. The whole group grandly and vigorously boarded the Yuan Dou and sailed toward the opposite shore of Taijiang. That day, the Yuan Dou extravagantly fired up its Outboard Motor, and five minutes later they arrived at the Chikan New District Pier.

The planned new fortress in the Chikan New District was still just an empty stretch of beach, though the ground had already been fully hardened. The Chikan Avenue designed for the front of the new city was still a dirt road, and the ditches and such reserved on either side showed no sign of construction whatsoever.

The first row of the checkerboard grid opposite the New City had also not been started: it was designed for a commercial street, and they simply couldn't spare the attention right now. But the second row of the checkerboard grid was different — one and a half grid squares were already filled with "Ocean Mansions."

Each checkerboard grid square was designed to hold ten "Ocean Mansions," housing one hundred people, along with public facilities like toilets and a Water Room. At the center of each grid square was a drill ground, so that after the workers had eaten their fill in the evening they could have group brawls on the drill ground... Playing basketball was out of the question — there was no import quota for that.

The construction progress of the "Ocean Mansions" was actually not ideal. The shortage of manpower was one aspect, and the mortise and tenon structure also revealed another drawback: it required knowledgeable carpenters to cut and shave everything bit by bit with hand tools. Dried and cut wood was now piled up like a mountain, but the bottleneck was stuck at the manual mortise and tenon work.

Fortunately, this situation would soon change. There would be nails, and there would be hinges... as long as Cao Zong delivered today.

Walking along Seaside Boulevard, a faint smile on his face and heavily surrounded by his escort, Cao Zong was of course brimming with confidence. The large party of Transmigrators followed the dirt road straight north at this time, passing by the Ocean Mansion area, passing the Japanese village, passing a stretch of desolate "Rotting Land," and finally arriving at the Kiln District.

The Kiln Area Base, situated on the southern bank of Xingang Creek, was already prepared to welcome the descent of industrial civilization!

The Core Power Plant, three hundred meters from the creek bank, was the most important building. The plant was formed by several interconnected wooden sheds, their thick pillars supporting the refrigerated truck body panels overhead — a blend of native and foreign, bizarre in style.

The first two bays housed the Boiler and Generator rooms, their floor laid with precious Cement. The rear two bays held the Biomass Pellet Machine and the wood chipper, their floor paved with steel plates stripped from the "Transmission Box."

The core plant ran parallel to the stream, like a short green worm crouching beside Xingang Creek. The tail of the green worm was piled high with vast quantities of timber — the carpenters simply could not cut so much wood in time, so it was left stacked there, awaiting the soon-to-come debut of the electric saw.

At the foot of the core plant, ditches of varying widths had already been dug. All the pipes and cables stockpiled earlier had been used on the lines connecting the Wood Factory and the brick kiln, with access paths branching out in all directions linking the few existing structures.

The trapezoidal earthen batch kiln had long gone extinct in later generations. The Transmigrators' available materials couldn't even build a rotary kiln, so they could only first construct a single-chamber kiln of very low efficiency. The brick kiln's walls and chimney were all built from basalt blocks shipped from Penghu — the square-cut stones needed only a little grinding with a hand-held abrasive wheel to become excellent building material.

In the planned storage yard behind the brick kiln sat mound after mound of thoroughly rotted raw earth. Every bit of their stockpiled refractory cement had been used on the brick kiln itself. The Transmigrators had now staked everything on a single throw — all the cement brought from later generations was completely used up, and they were just waiting for the brick kiln to ignite and fire some red bricks and soil cement to meet the emergency...