Chapter 571: The Team from the North

Amid the endless, unceasing rain, a large number of construction workers were laboring desperately on a foreign coast.

The construction workers fell into two types, distinguishable at a glance from their attire: one kind were short, lean locals wearing straw rain capes or tattered homespun clothes; the other were outsiders in canvas raincoats.

After surviving the most grueling first two days and barely gaining a foothold at Hongji Port, the transmigrators could not wait to order their troops to strike out in all directions, "recruiting" local natives to join the construction.

Thus, mobile squads like Wu Sanye's received their orders, setting out into the endless rain and venturing inland to search.

Before long, some coastal fishermen and natives from scattered inland villages were "invited" by the pioneering teams to the Hongji Fort construction site.

Under normal circumstances, native villages would not submit so easily. However, in the season of relentless rain, the harsh natural environment severely limited the natives' reaction speed and mobility, so Wu Sanye and his men easily trapped them in their dens.

At this point, the natives could only obediently "perform corvée labor for the authorities." Yes, Annam, that copycat state, modeled its entire political system on China from top to bottom, and corvée labor was inherited wholesale as well.

As for the translator speaking with a local accent who told the natives that this key project was an order from the authorities — had they not seen the well-equipped "Imperial Guard" already at their doors?

The natives, invited by guns and bayonets, might inwardly doubt the legitimacy of these arrivals, but in action they had to obey the newcomers' commands.

Yet the situation quickly reversed. After the frightened people were escorted to the worksite and labored for a day, not only did they eat meals with sufficiently high calories, but when they got off work in the evening they also received wages: their choice of copper coins or daily necessities like cloth, candles, salt, rice, and so on — paid daily.

For the impoverished Annamese farmers of the seventeenth century, finding such well-paid work in the rainy season was an incredible bargain. At once, the notion of fake authorities vanished; the officials flying the great banner bearing the character "Cao" were the true authorities, and anyone who said otherwise would have to answer to them!

Very soon, the natives were calling on friends and relatives, braving the rain and bringing fellow villagers and kin to support the national construction.

Compared to the outsiders, the natives were far better adapted to the local rainy season and terrain, so they undertook nearly all the non-technical work, such as clearing the surrounding vegetation and bringing back sufficient building materials to the worksite.

The so-called building materials were mainly wooden poles and broad plant leaves. Both were intended to carry out Zheng Yangyang's earlier directive: dig trenches and erect sheds.

The circle Zheng Yangyang had previously drawn on the map was actually a square. The reason was simple: compared to oddly shaped barbettes and circular fortresses, a square structure required the least construction time, the lowest cost, and was the most convenient for later planned expansion.

With advantages naturally came disadvantages: a square fortification presented a broad attack face to besiegers, offering low defensive capability.

Yet the military had confidence in the square. To date, the crossing army had only ever carried out offensive siege operations, which demanded far more resources and technical expertise; at least within Great Ming territory, the situation of a grueling defensive battle had never arisen.

By this reasoning, a stronghold that required only a small force to defend offered an immense bonus to the side with a technological advantage. The Annamese army might be able to pressure our forces in field battles, but when it came to defensive siege warfare, the military held it in utter contempt, and maintained this same mindset even in the rainy season.

Even though the Annamese regular army's combat strength was not low — this had already become a consensus — the fact that no one could capture a city equipped with quick-firing cannons and breech-loading rifles was likewise a military consensus.

Thus, after comprehensive consideration, moats appeared on the coast of Ha Long Bay.

The moats formed two parallel lines.

The inner moat was square, both deep and wide — this was the foundation prepared for the city wall. The outer protective moat was much shallower; here they only needed to build a low wall, and it did not need to be a neat square, just constructed facing the inland direction.

Next came erecting the grass sheds.

To build walls with bricks and cement in the continuous rainy season, waterproofing work had to be done properly. Once the rainproof grass sheds were set up over the moats, the next step was for workers to level the foundation, mix the cement, and lay the walls.

During this process, they also needed to dig drainage ditches along the sides of the moats to channel away groundwater at any time.

Without a doubt, the brick walls piled up in this environment would certainly not match the sturdiness of northern standards, since the cement would only slowly set after the rainy season ended. For the transmigrators, however, these were minor issues: under the cover of the rain sheds, the firing rate of firearms greatly increased, more than enough to annihilate the enemy on their charge — if a large force ever came charging at all.

The work described above consumed the greatest share of the engineering personnel's effort. Another major focus of labor was the pier, where a stone dock extending deep into the bay was under construction — the stones themselves had to be shipped in by sea, as there were simply no stone-processing enterprises to be found on this desolate Annamese coast.

Just as the pioneers on the Annam coast were racing desperately against time, a large passenger ship departing from Taijiang Port docked at the Guangzhou New District Official Dock.

Disembarking from the ship was a team from the north.

Earlier, at the end of May, the imperial court had received a memorial from the south. In addition to reporting the causes and outcomes of the Macau campaign, it also included a stack of title deeds — purportedly "willingly contributed" to the authorities by the Frankish merchants after Macau City was breached.

Everyone at court knew exactly what the game of "willing contribution" was about. Yet at the time, no one's attention was on that: the spoils of war and title deeds sent from the south were the main event. No one disliked profiting from war; it was simply that the sovereign and ministers of Great Ming had always lost money in warfare and had never savored this particular taste.

After this, a round of offensive and defensive skirmishes erupted between sovereign and ministers over the spoils. Naturally, the young Emperor, as expected, was soundly defeated by the civil officials once again and stripped of the majority of the spoils.

And today, disembarking at the New District Pier was precisely the team dispatched by the imperial court to take receipt of the title deeds and estates.

The reception delegation was a patchwork of several parties with different statuses. The two most important among them were Ma Min, a Secretary of the Ministry of Revenue, and Du Shangbao, the Vice Director Eunuch of the Inner Palace Treasury.

Ma Min and Du Shangbao — one representing the Ministry of Revenue, the other the inner palace — were the standard grandees sent to take receipt.

The remaining members of the delegation were sent by various powerful figures to gauge the wind direction.

Ever since the Manchu Qing first breached the passes and Regional Commander Cao marched to Beijing for the King's Rescue, the interest of the capital's power brokers in acquiring property in the south had grown day by day.

At first, people adopted a probing attitude, sending household slaves to Yizhou to buy some of those legendary large fields as a trial.

After this, setting aside the rich returns on their properties, there was another very important notion that was slowly transformed among the high-ranking figures: miasma.

Yes, the phenomenon of the "miasma-ridden lands" — which had killed countless people since ancient times and which the ancients avoided like the plague — no longer existed in Yizhou, or indeed across all the Cao clan territories.

Now, as time passed, the elite stratum of Great Ming far in the north had verified this point beyond all doubt. Though all manner of bizarre legends circulated, the fact remained unalterable: in places like Yizhou, the number of people contracting miasma, malaria, and various tropical fevers was vanishingly small.

This phenomenon undoubtedly added a dazzling halo of mysticism to a certain Cao.

In this way, the simple investment act of "acquiring property in the south" became complicated: since miasma could be overcome, then in "times of urgent inconvenience," could not one's clansmen go to that land of eternal spring to "branch out and flourish" and "rest and recuperate in peace"?

With this thought in mind, from this year onward, figures from official families across Great Ming had been arriving one after another to acquire property in various southern locales. Land prices, including those in Yizhou, had even experienced a minor surge. It should be known that, as of today, the development level of the Tainan Plain was still far from what later generations would see, and in theory there was still a great deal of land available for sale — this wave of buying had the Chikan District government grinning from ear to ear.

And this time, with the imperial court forming an official reception delegation because of the title deeds presented by the Loyal and Brave Count, it was an even more superb opportunity to conduct an inspection tour of the south. The reason? The folding-paper office of the Loyal and Brave Count Residence in the capital had already put out word that the miasma in that corner of Annam had been entirely eliminated, that the Annamese were warm and hospitable, and that Regional Commander Cao had also collected quite a few title deeds locally, just waiting for everyone to come invest.

By now, the Ming people had grasped one truth from the Tartars who had rolled back beyond the passes and the fried-chicken-selling Yizhou natives: since the mighty, overbearing, and ferocious Loyal and Brave Count said so, then those grass-eating southern barbarians must certainly be warm and hospitable, and Annam must certainly have many title deeds waiting for everyone to pay silver for.

And so, the capital bigwigs' reception and inspection delegation was formed.

Its members included not only the Secretary and the eunuch with official status, but also trusted family members dispatched by various capital magnates. Incidentally, when the ship reached Shanghai Zhangsutan Port, it also picked up a large wave of gentry and their arrogant household slaves from Jiangnan, among whom were quite a few current Family Heads or second-generation heirs of major gentry houses.

Thus, the guests disembarking at the New District Official Dock today were, in terms of sheer numbers, quite considerable; counting the attending servants each family brought along, they numbered a full three hundred and more.

First release, domain name,

After disembarking, the delegation naturally lodged at the White Goose Pool Hotel. That very evening, beneath the luxurious large crystal chandelier, Cao Chuan, Grand Master for Glorious Happiness, Pillar of State, Imperially Ennobled Loyal and Brave Count, Vice Minister of War, and Left Regional Commander of the Rear Army Command, stood in the hotel lobby and personally raised a glass of bright red grape wine, toasting each honored guest of the delegation in turn to welcome them. The lively banquet continued until the early morning hours.

Over the following two days, the delegation members seized the opportunity to first visit relatives and friends in Guangzhou City, then roamed wildly around the New District, thoroughly experiencing and contrasting the difference between a "modernized" city and the ancient urban quarters.

After that, the delegation hurriedly boarded a passenger ship: the nth wave of transport fleets organized by the New District happened to be heading to Ha Long Bay to unload cargo, and the delegation naturally had to travel with the large fleet escorted by warships for safety.

Thus, one early morning in late July, in a bay outside national borders not far south of Fangcheng Port, the delegation members inadvertently witnessed yet another instance of a certain someone's overbearing and ferocious conduct.

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