Chapter 41: Power Is King

Zou Guoqing: Before crossing over, he was a technician at a major metropolitan electrical repair and manufacturing plant. Having grown pessimistic about whether he could ever own a commercial housing unit before he died, he fell into the clutches of certain people, was bundled up and brought to the Great Ming Dynasty, and is now one of the few engineering dogs among the Transmigrators.

"First of all, what I'm about to say represents the collective view of our industrial colleagues."

After sweeping his gaze around the room and feeling his side's momentum swell a few more degrees, Zou Guoqing continued: "The so-called farming and industrial development boils down to just those few places along the Great Ming coast, and it will inevitably face the following problems: population, malaria, raw materials, and military pressure. These problems will exist to varying degrees; it's only a matter of severity."

"All our discussions so far have just been haggling back and forth over these few issues."

"However," at this point, Zou Guoqing's tone suddenly rose a notch: "All of these can only be considered secondary problems. Even if you add them all together, they are not the decisive factor."

Seeing everyone staring intently at him, Zou Guoqing then continued: "We all come from the Information Age and understand perfectly well what the Industrial Revolution is about. And our power base, because it has a steady stream of 'import goods' as support, is capable of starting up in this savage world with one unit of an exquisite internal combustion engine system."

"Taiwan. The initial base can only be Taiwan!" At this, Zou Guoqing looked left and right, noticed that some people seemed to have already caught on, and then slightly curled the corner of his mouth: "From a strategic level, no matter how rampant the malaria, no matter how many lives need to be thrown in to fill the gap, no matter how harsh the external environment, none of these factors are as important as that one barrel of diesel. Any other place, no matter how good its starting conditions appear, will sooner or later be overtaken by the industrial development speed brought by internal combustion engines and electricity. This is certain."

At this point, Zou Guoqing's eyes gleamed: "As long as we endure the difficult early stage, we can arrange for people to go to Miaoli to drill for oil. Even if it's the crudest primitive refining method, that still counts as petrochemicals! Hmph, let me put it this way: if any of you are intending, within twenty years, to sail a battleship and drink a bowl of Thames water, then from this moment on, you should honestly consider how to drill for that barrel of oil, rather than wasting time haggling over those secondary problems."

"Believe me, once you have diesel, you really can do whatever you want."

An issue originally thought to require extensive controversy to reach a consensus was thus KO'd. After discussing a while longer, Zou Guoqing looked at the Transmigrators nodding one after another, feeling immensely proud and satisfied for a moment.

With the strategic direction now settled, what followed was much easier. The conspirators then discussed three subsidiary agenda items: first, the plan for collecting refugees; second, the plan for resolving the Pingfeng Stronghold power base; third, the plan for which part of Taiwan to settle in.

The meeting continued until two in the morning before concluding.

Describing the Transmigrators' first Plenary Session with fine words like victorious, united, and historic is not an overstatement. At least on this night, everyone was thinking and discussing with an attitude of solving problems, and the resolutions formed after the meeting were the result of everyone's mutual recognition.

As for this meeting's status historically, it is certainly important beyond all measure. In the distant future, brats will be dragged into the office and subjected to the roar: "You can't even answer what year the 'Opening Gong Conference' was held? Tomorrow, call your father in!"

That's right — the Transmigrators' First Plenary Representative Assembly is also known as the "Opening Gong Conference."

At the very end of that night's meeting, a small interlude occurred — a certain Transmigrator demanded to exercise his partner rights: spend a bit of public funds to buy a "secretary," one that everyone could share.

The CEO understood immediately upon hearing this: This guy is demanding back pay! Doesn't he know I've worked in real estate?

So Xia pondered briefly, then casually rattled off five or six reasons. Things like "The estate is in such chaos right now — can't we wait until the craftsmen finish their projects before considering this?" were considered the mild ones. By the time Xia moved from the simple to the complex, earnestly and patiently beginning to expound on the dialectical relationship between "pioneering through brambles and thorns" and "our own enterprise," Bai Hongda had already caught a thick whiff of ominousness.

Yet when he looked left and right, he discovered that those righteous, thick-browed, big-eyed types had somehow vanished without a trace. Bai Hongda was momentarily filled with grief and indignation. Seeing that the huge hat of "Traitor" was about to be brought out at any moment, he had no choice but to flee in disarray.

The above interlude has been excised from the official histories.

On the afternoon of the seventh day after the Opening Gong Conference was convened, Chu Jianli, with a few underlings in tow, paced restlessly by the Private Port in front of Tangzhuang's gate. The Third Lord, likely preoccupied at the moment, kept pacing along the shore, constantly gazing into the distance.

Ever since a few days ago when Cao Chuan invited him to the Back Residence and amiably told him he wished to "catch up on old times" with the two chiefs in the mountains, the Third Lord knew that the job had come.

During these days, as "friends from West Kunlun" kept materializing out of thin air in Tangzhuang, the group from Pingfeng Stronghold who had originally accompanied Cao Chuan to Hangzhou had already realized that this Cao's so-called "tempering oneself in the mortal world" was probably not so simple. As for the business of Cao Chuan running back to "West Kunlun" to pull strings while in "Cultivation," Chu Jianli and the others had likely guessed the gist of it.

However, this was of No Use. Now, they could hardly even get an audience with Chairman Cao anymore. What roamed Tangzhuang were all sorts of monks, ascetics, Daoists, and burly men carrying AKs. The Back Residence had gradually become a forbidden zone for the Ming People.

Of course, the relationship between the two power bases was still very harmonious. Though the Transmigrators were few in number, they lacked no silver. Chu Jianli and his men had originally come to sponge off the immortal masters; it was just that as time went on, things between the two sides became slightly awkward — not quite like partners, not quite like master and retainer.

Observing coldly from the sidelines these days, the Third Lord had also discerned some clues: Cao the Immortal was still that elusive, mysterious Cao the Immortal; it was just that the "friends" he had invited had now coalesced into A Group, and the one in charge was that "Mr. Xia" who had shown his face the earliest.

Watching the Transmigrators buy boats and set sail, launching massive construction projects, faintly carrying the air of preparing some great undertaking, the Third Lord knew very well that this muddled situation probably could not last much longer. Sooner or later, the two sides would have to lay their cards on the table — was such a thing rare in the Edo?

As for the matter of laying cards on the table, he himself did not feel any sense of impending doom. Everything the Transmigrators had displayed had long since far exceeded the traditional Edo concept of a "powerful dragon." On this point, the men from Pingfeng Stronghold felt it most deeply — they knew best what exactly an AK-47 was.

Since the disparity in strength was so vast, having the several chiefs come to "catch up on old times" with Grand Master Cao was not necessarily a bad thing. Wasn't the philosophy of siding with the powerful and abandoning the weak precisely the specialty of short bandits?