Chapter 82: Base

That night, Cao Zong was placed in a private room specially prepared for him next to the administrative office. Many people from the Company came in shifts to visit him. Solemn and silent, they paid their respects with their eyes from the doorway. CEO Xia stood at the door, whispering to everyone: "Let him rest. He's far too tired."

Well, the originally planned, rather grand ideological seminar was forced to be postponed due to the mascot kicking the bucket. The theoretical meeting was dead; they could only focus on practical matters first.

The opposite bank of Taijiang. After a week of mindless slash-and-burn, at the cost of over a dozen European lives, there was no longer any terrifyingly dense vegetation within visual range. Wild grass and shrubs were the natives' natural invisibility cloaks, and also hotels for mosquitoes, all kinds of insects, and parasites.

The vast, empty land, reeking of char, was the best barrier for outsiders, like the rotting land of an undead tribe.

It shouldn't have cost that many lives. However, when the slash-and-burn operation pushed 10 kilometers inland, the pyromancers began to be frequently skewered by natives — the nearest villages were no longer far, and the natives had no desire to be smoked into cured meat.

A large crowd was now busy on the opposite bank of Taijiang. The Dutch would build a commercial street and the ruling center, Chikan Tower, here in the future. This place faced the Dayuan Trading Post across the river. The indigenous people of Chikan Society had long been driven inland by pirates and the Dutch. Now, those laboring on this hot land were the Bandanese, and their former masters: the Red Hair.

All the labor force was currently doing the same thing: leveling the land. The silted-up mounds on the plain, some only three to five meters above sea level, were all being flattened. The soil was used to fill puddles, pits, and small lagoons. The Transmigrators' planning was far grander than the Dutch's years later: centered around Chikan City, there would be a residential area, a pier district, and a commercial district. The flat Jianan Plain made the blueprints exceptionally easy to draw. The large natural streams had already divided the blocks; only slight adjustments were needed to create parcels of land ready for auction.

The person overseeing the project here was Feng Guanjie. The blueprints for Chikan Town were his own design. The two sand ships that entered the harbor yesterday brought 150 Ming employees and 30 Transmigrators. The Company's strength had greatly increased overnight. The Crossing Faction, which had been holed up on Dayuan Island not daring to make any big moves, now impatiently split its manpower to start building a base.

2.5 kilometers north of Chikan New District was Xingang Creek. With Xingang Creek as the boundary, the southern bank was now bare, undead rotting land covered in plant ash, while the northern bank still preserved its original appearance.

The twenty-odd people from the infrastructure and industrial departments, led by Xia Xianze, were now all gathered on a mound on the southern bank of Xingang Creek, gesturing and pointing, laying out grand plans.

Apart from shovels and dirt, the Transmigrators could currently be described as having absolutely nothing. To contend for hegemony, they needed to develop industry. The prerequisite for industry was infrastructure, yet the Company didn't even have qualified construction materials right now.

Everyone was here scouting locations today because the kiln district plan Chen Dong had produced designated this very spot. The kiln district blueprints were, of course, all kilns: wood drying kilns, brick kilns, cement kilns, charcoal kilns, carbonization kilns...

The kiln district would generate a lot of dust and required industrial support, all of which needed water, so it had to be built beside a freshwater river. The lower reaches of Xingang Creek were often inundated by seawater backflow, making it not very suitable for industry — this stream would be called Saltwater Creek in later generations.

However, the Crossing Faction's control range could not yet reach farther places. Even this piece of land under their feet was simply commandeered by the Company on its own authority. So the more distant Zengwen River was out of the question. For now, they could only move the kiln district site a bit upstream along Xingang Creek, which was exactly where everyone was standing now.

"If there are no objections, then let's settle it. First, we urgently need to fire some bricks to build houses. The Shang Hall is simply too packed inside and out to fit any more people. The Shanty Area urgently needs demolition and relocation now." After everyone finished discussing the location, Xia Xianze made the final decision.

"Boss, you're showing your inexperience," Chen Dong said with a smile.

"Oh?"

"All the buildings over in Chikan New District, except for the castle, will be bamboo and wood structures in the future. So the top priority right now should be building the drying kiln and the wood processing plant." Chen Dong pointed at the little tofu-like blocks on the blueprint while giving the Old Chief a quick lesson.

"Brick kilns need a lot of manpower and equipment to operate. We don't have those conditions right now. As for a brick making machine, we don't have electricity at the moment, do we? By the time you've manually made enough green bricks for one kiln, I'll have already built an entire district of bamboo and wood dormitories!"

"Oh, is that so? Are bamboo and wood dormitories reliable?"

"Come on, you're discriminating against coastal people. They've lived in bamboo and wood houses for thousands of years. Oh, and the American people protest too!" Chen Dong said with contempt.

"Pfft, when a typhoon hits, they get blown apart like building blocks. The news broadcast shows it every year. Don't think I'm a layman; I've worked in real estate, okay?"

Chen Dong rolled his eyes, looking like he was about to croak: "North America has draft winds; houses getting blown all over the place are called hurricanes. We've got the Ali Mountains right behind us. Is it really that exaggerated? By your logic, the natives would have been blown all the way to Fujian ages ago! No wonder your real estate company went under, tsk." The last sentence was muttered under his breath.

Xia Xianze glanced left and right at the other members of the Infrastructure Department, only to find this bunch of guys all holding their birds and gazing at the sea, grinning broadly. Realizing he was probably mistaken, he quickly forced a change of topic: "What about power? Don't we need to fire kilns and make bricks? Where does the steam come from? The coal? The electricity?"

Xia Xianze's question stumped Chen Dong — he was in civil engineering, and his understanding of motive power was limited to hooking up a wire from the village utility pole or starting a diesel engine. The problem was, the natives of Xingang Society hadn't undertaken any electrical infrastructure construction, had they?

The slash-and-burn at least meant everyone no longer had to cover their faces with gauze scarves, so today many of the Transmigrators were smoking cigarettes. When the topic of power came up, everyone unanimously turned their gaze to a group of people squatting off to the side, idly gathered together smoking.

Comrade Zou Guoqing had been waiting for this moment for a long time!

Ever since arriving at Dayuan, these bastards hadn't treated the engineering brothers like human beings: night shifts, watching prisoners, kitchen helper — all the hard and dirty work went to the engineering dogs. Couldn't be helped; what else were the industrial guys supposed to do with nothing to work on?

Now they couldn't get anywhere without the professionals, right?

Heh heh, even though Zou Guoqing knew perfectly well that Xia Xianze was staring at him, he deliberately pretended not to notice. Squatting on the ground with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, he struck a pose like he was taking a dump, looking utterly content.

"Zou Guoqing! What's with this emotional nonsense? You were the one, Viscount, who sweet-talked everyone into coming to Taiwan. Something about washing feet in some river or other. Where's the power you promised?"

Zou Guoqing stood up and gave a standard, mock military salute: "Assign the Yuan Dou to me, and the Industrial Department will go dig for oil tomorrow. Results within two months. Boss, I'll write you a military pledge right here on the spot!"

"Dig my ass. Is there time for that? Don't talk nonsense. Tell me properly, what's the first step we should take right now." Xia Xianze's tone softened now.

Zou Guoqing clapped his hands together and shrugged his shoulders: "What else can we do? Burn firewood."