Chapter 1398: Daydreaming! (Please Subscribe)

When the Englishmen Blake and Worcester were lamenting that this rich land at the southwestern corner of the Southern Continent was about to fall into the clutches of the Great Ming Dynasty, so much so that they wanted to spread Puritan and republican ideas to "stir up shit" for the Great Ming, they probably never imagined that for a Great Ming already upgraded into a world empire, the southwestern corner of the Southern Continent could hardly be counted as rich — this was merely a middling-prosperity colony.

The true "land of tycoons" was, of course, the "Tycoon United States" belonging to Zhu Cilang's eldest son, the Tycoon King. Yet at this moment, the streets of the Tycoon Kingdom's capital, Washington, showed not the slightest trace of luxury or extravagance — on the contrary, they seemed especially plain and unadorned.

Washington was not large. It lay on a peninsula at most sixteen or seventeen li across at its widest, and the urban area did not occupy the whole peninsula, only the western part near the bay. Nor were there many city blocks. The streets were mostly broad and straight, but there were few buildings along them and plenty of empty lots; only a small number of blocks were at all lively.

The head of the peninsula was very pointed, looking from high above like a sharp-tipped hat, so it was also called Hat Peninsula. West of Hat Peninsula was a bay about seven li wide, named Harbor Bay — as the name suggests, the bay where the harbor lay. The harbor at Harbor Bay was now the largest port in the New Continent United States!

The United States' largest port was actually not very big either — it was simply a ten-li stretch of docks and berths opened up along Hat Peninsula's western shore. Though the docks and berths were numerous, most of them were cold and deserted.

The docks and their surrounding area were the liveliest part of Washington, and at the same time the most prosperous place in the entire United States.

Of course, this prosperity was relative to the rest of the United States. If placed in the Great Ming homeland, it would be no more than the scale of a middling city.

Before the opening of California's Golden Gate Harbor and America's Mountain-Sea Harbor, Washington's Harbor Bay had once been the first landing point for Great Ming immigrants arriving in the New Continent... truly of extraordinary historical significance!

The Tycoon King, Zhu Hehao, had also landed at Harbor Bay, in the late autumn of the twenty-first year of Hongxing, roughly three months after he left the Great Ming — crossing the Pacific certainly did not require three months, but he had stopped in the Eastern Capital of the Kingdom of Japan for nearly a month, during which he held a grand wedding with Xu Jingzi, daughter of the King of Japan, Xu Guangguo. After the wedding he also gathered a retinue of seemingly quite capable household retainers and a maidservant corps sufficient to make up an "Ōoku," and only then departed the Kingdom of Japan, fully satisfied...

Because his entourage was too large, the first problem the Tycoon King faced upon arriving in Washington was, of all things, housing.

The Tycoon King actually lacked housing — and this in a Tycoon Kingdom in which he held a 30% share.

Of course, the Tycoon King himself would not be sleeping in the streets; it was just that his 300 female guards and the Japanese "Ōoku corps" had nowhere to be quartered. They had no choice but to put up many small wooden huts around the large white house — outwardly very plain — where the Tycoon King resided.

The Tycoon King's "White House" stood in the middle of Hat Peninsula — actually already near the edge of Washington, where the surroundings were open and desolate, though there was ample space for putting up small wooden huts.

The reason the "White House" was white was that it was built from a white granite quarried in the Great Stone Mountains. Handicrafts were undeveloped here in the New Continent United States; fuels and paints could not be produced, so the outer walls of buildings were all left in the natural color of their materials — either the color of red brick, or the color of raw timber, or this white stone flecked with bits of mottled color. This stone was called white hemp stone, produced in the Stone Mountains near Washington and transported to the capital by water. It was extremely expensive, and only the Tycoon King could afford the cost of a two-story "White House" twelve bays wide.

Because of this costly white house, Zhu Hehao's royal palace was also called the White King's Palace. Standing at the window of the second-floor study of the White King's Palace and gazing out, Zhu Hehao could also see a red-brick wall and a Western-style wrought-iron gate. At the gate, a squad of red-uniformed female soldiers stood guard with flintlock muskets on their shoulders, standing ramrod straight and motionless — a great draw for the eyes!

Having female guards stand sentry was not because the Tycoon King lacked male soldiers — four battalions, 2,000 "Old Guard" troops in all, had come with him to the New Continent United States. In addition, more than 500 Japanese household retainers had also followed him to the United States, forming the "Tycoon Samurai Corps."

Furthermore, large numbers of Shaanxi military households from Sichuan were still arriving in a steady stream aboard Pacific sailing ships... so the Tycoon King did have the strength to muster large numbers of gun-toting men.

But after learning the conditions of the New Continent United States, the Tycoon King felt that neither the Old Guard nor the Samurai Corps was enough to display his power.

It turned out that here in the New Continent United States, the one thing there was no shortage of was men who could shoulder a gun — because of the United States' ceaseless expansion, and the rise of the fur boom and gold rush, the conflicts between East Asian immigrants and the Indians of the Stone Mountains were growing ever more intense, and hard to reconcile!

Moreover, the Indian tribes of the Stone Mountains had also obtained "aid" in the form of muskets from New France, posing an ever greater threat to the East Asian immigrants of the New Continent United States.

So now every man of the New Continent had a gun — in fact, firearms were the single largest commodity exported from the Great Ming to the New Continent United States!

Within the United States, gun-toting men were everywhere, but there were not enough gun-toting girls to form families with them... In the early days, when the New Continent United States had few people, girls could still be "imported" from the Kingdom of Japan for marriage. But now the population of the New Continent United States numbered in the hundreds of thousands, with men making up nearly sixty-seven or sixty-eight percent, and the shortfall of women reaching two hundred thousand. Where could one go to buy that many Japanese girls? And as the Kingdom of Japan hitched a ride on the Celestial Empire's coattails, quite a few Japanese had gone south to the Southern Seas in recent years; many "non-heir sons" who originally could not marry and have children now all

Therefore, here in the New Continent, having 2,500 gun-toting men was nothing remarkable. But having 600 gun-toting, young, beautiful girls of East Asian stock... now that was a true Tycoon King!

So outside the White King's Palace there always gathered many manly fellows with pistols stuck in their belts and thick gold chains around their necks, staring longingly at the girls standing there with chests out and stomachs in, practically drooling... After gawking for a while, someone would wipe away his drool and start asking around.

"Where are they from? So pretty!"

"They're carrying guns too — real heroines!"

"They stand for an hour or more without moving... how long must it take to train that?"

"Look at those bosoms, held so high! Tsk tsk tsk..."

Some thick-skinned manly fellows went right up and started asking through the iron-barred gate.

"Say, miss soldier, may I ask where you're from?"

"I'm from Shizhu in Sichuan!"

The one answering this thick-skinned fellow was Du Mulan's younger sister, Du Mumian. Her elder sister was now Zhu Hehao's woman and no longer served as a guard, so she had come to fill the vacancy — the numbers of Zhu Hehao's female guard corps and Ōoku corps were fixed at 300 each; when one left, another was brought in.

"Sichuan? Isn't that place occupied by the roving bandits?"

At the words "roving bandits," Du Mumian's delicate brows knitted slightly, and she was a little displeased — she was clearly a member of a superior military household, so how had she turned into a bandit?

"Sichuan has been recovered!" Someone answered on Du Mumian's behalf — also a gold prospector with a thick gold chain around his neck. In recent years, shallow-buried gold had been discovered in all four states of the New Continent United States — America, Washington, Poland, and Canada — setting off wave after wave of gold rushes. Most gold prospectors were, of course, doomed to have their dreams shattered in the New World, but a few had struck it rich.

These gold prospectors swaggering around Washington with gold chains around their necks were the sort who had not yet made the big fortune but had already scooped up a fair bit of small money... With a little money, of course they began thinking of wives, but they were unwilling to go back home to marry — never mind how much the trip cost, it wasted time, wasted time that could be spent digging gold!

And entrusting someone to "bring" a wife to the New World cost a lot and, worse, left one easy to swindle... one might end up paying a sky-high price for a hideously ugly bride — that would be a colossal loss.

"Recovered?" The thick-skinned fellow did not ask further, but continued questioning Du Mumian: "Miss soldier, then what do you do? Why have you come to stand guard at the White King's Palace?"