Chapter 1093: Late Winter, Early Spring

Zhao Jin's attitude surprised everyone in the room. They had assumed that, given his style, he wouldn't care about the price of copper, especially in matters related to firearms. They hadn't expected him to take it so seriously.

Xu Housheng, after all, had not been working at Zhao Jin's side for long and didn't fully understand his reactions. Hearing this, he instinctively felt he was being rebuked and reprimanded, and for a moment he dared not speak further.

This meeting was about firearms to begin with, and with him falling silent, the others had little to say either. Wang Zhaojing, attentive to detail, noticed his emotional turmoil and shot Zhao Jin a look.

Zhao Jin smiled and shook his head, then spoke: "It's not even the Lantern Festival yet and we're already this busy. Everyone, go back to your own posts. Arrange for rest and recuperation, but don't let it delay official business."

Meng Zhiqi and Zhang Hubin hastily acknowledged the order and withdrew. Status and position differed; once they left, Wang Zhaojing, Ji Xiang, and Xu Housheng remained as usual.

Zhang Hubin walked out of the meeting hall with a ramrod-straight back and powerful strides. As Meng Zhiqi left, he glanced back, feeling somewhat disgruntled. Back when he was a personal guard, he could always attend upon Lord Jin, privy to every confidential matter.

Once they were gone, Wang Zhaojing smiled and said to Xu Housheng, "Housheng, in this meeting hall we discuss matters on their own merits. Argue when you must, point out mistakes when they're made—it's the same even with your brother-in-law. You have nothing to worry about or fear. If none of us dared to speak, we wouldn't have grown to where we are today."

These were words Wang Zhaojing could say, but Zhao Jin could not. He merely smiled and nodded at Xu Housheng. Only then did Xu Housheng relax considerably.

"Brother-in-law, those foreign monks are very strange. You'd think that after we captured them, they'd be anxious and frightened, but they settled down very quickly. Now they're even working quite diligently. According to Old Lu, they answer whatever they're asked and hold nothing back." Xu Housheng spoke of the captured missionaries in the workshop.

"Especially that Tang Ruowang—not only did he take a Chinese name, but his Mandarin is quite good, and he really knows his cannons. He's been a tremendous help."

Hearing Xu Housheng's words, Zhao Jin smiled and said, "They don't care about courts or dynasties. As long as they're allowed to preach, they'll do anything."

"But not all foreigners are the same. That Old Lu also came from some foreign monk background, yet he never brings up preaching. He chants his scriptures now and then, no different from the rest of us. The other day he was even asking about the customs for starting a family—he really means to put down roots in our Xuzhou." Xu Housheng's words drew laughter from everyone.

Louis and his servant had blended in seamlessly with everyone else. Louis drank, took an interest in women, and his Mandarin with a Xuzhou accent grew more fluent by the day—naturally, people liked him. His servant Bordeaux spent more and more time at the Xuzhou Martial Hall, passing on his martial skills and experience to the young men of Xuzhou. Bordeaux thoroughly enjoyed this process, and likewise, he relished the respect the young trainees showed him and the title of "Teacher."

"It's because these foreigners have discovered that preaching in Xuzhou might be a little easier than elsewhere, or that preaching here holds more value than in other places. But no matter what they think, we have one strict order here: they are forbidden to preach, and our people are forbidden to convert. If anyone is found violating this, severe punishment will follow!" Zhao Jin spoke with absolute finality.

Zhao Jin had emphasized these words more than once, so everyone understood well. Because he stressed it so often, no one dared treat it lightly.

Yet there were things Zhao Jin did not say. In the perception of those missionaries, Xuzhou, compared to other parts of the Great Ming, was perhaps a bit more "Westernized." That sense of familiarity might have been what made them decide to stay.

"Those foreigners have a decent eye. Our Xuzhou is a hundred times better than the Great Ming!" Wang Zhaojing had his own thoughts on Zhao Jin's words.

He wasn't the only one who thought so—Ji Xiang and Xu Housheng felt the same. Niu Jinbao and Sun Dalin, standing nearby, also wore expressions of agreement, every face beaming with pride. Wang Zhaojing raised his voice slightly and said, "Anyone who comes to our Xuzhou would think this is the finest place under heaven. Those foreigners traveled all the way here and saw plenty along the road."

From the late twelfth month of the second year of Tianqi to the early first month of the third year, all of Xuzhou was steeped in a festive atmosphere. From the wealthy and noble to the common folk, from the household troops' barracks of the Zhao Camp to the refugee farmsteads, everywhere was bustling and jubilant.

After a year of hard work, with full bellies and ample means, when the New Year arrived, of course everyone wanted to celebrate properly. But the top-tier wealthy merchants headed straight for Qingjiangpu. Though the martial tournament had already ended, the excitement there continued, nearly descending into a frenzy.

Compared to the festive cheer everywhere else, Zhao Jin and his companions were not so idle. At most, the few of them managed to share a New Year's Eve dinner with their families—and some didn't even manage that.

Zhao Jin went to the Fengpei Regiment for the New Year's Eve dinner, then spent the first day of the new year with the Personal Guard Brigade, and on the second day rushed off to the Suzhou Regiment. By the time he returned from the Pizhou Regiment, it was already the sixth day of the first month. Only then did he share a New Year's meal at home with his family. His parents were fine with it, but Xu Zhenzhen merely went to play with the child, while Mu Shulan, heavily pregnant, lost her temper outright.

But these were all minor matters. The next day, Zhao Jin was already in the meeting hall handling official business. Every level of leadership across the entire Zhao Camp began their busy work that same day.

With thousands of years of Chinese heritage, the New Year is a grand affair. Many people would spend the entire first month celebrating, and this was especially true everywhere in the Great Ming. Many wealthy households would even continue their revelry into the second month. But in Xuzhou, many customs were quietly changing—for instance, many places were already bustling with work well before the fifteenth of the first month.

Elsewhere, you couldn't find anyone to discuss business or work during the first month. But in Xuzhou, the Xuzhou Salt Market and the general market would open for business on the seventh day of the first month. Many deals for the new year had to be settled at this time, especially the distribution of illicit salt to the surrounding provinces. The same was true for the Qingjiang Grand Market—many prices had to be fixed before the canal opened for navigation, and the prospects for many products could already be glimpsed by then.

After a year of toil, rest was indeed important, but making money and building wealth was even more so. If the pleasure-loving wealthy merchants of Qingjiangpu didn't understand this, they wouldn't have the fortunes they possessed today.

In the past, they couldn't celebrate a proper New Year but longed to; now they could celebrate a fine New Year but didn't want to. A perceptive person, realizing this, couldn't help but marvel at Zhao Jin's Midas touch. The existence of Zhao Jin and the Zhao Camp not only awed the four directions and protected the people—imperceptibly, it had changed everyone profoundly.

There were also those who had no right to celebrate the New Year—for instance, the refugees in Shandong caught up in the Incense-Smelling Sect rebellion, and the refugees who had just arrived in Liaodong from Dengzhou Prefecture. They had only just secured their basic needs, so naturally, celebrating the new spring was out of the question.

To gather up these refugees and Liaodong migrants who might have died amidst the rebel armies or perished from cold and hunger, saving countless lives—this was a tremendous and meritorious deed.

But Zhao Jin and the Zhao Camp were not philanthropists running a charity. The refugees and displaced people they took in had no reason to eat for free. The settlement they received, every single grain of food they ate, had to be earned through heavy labor.

Apart from breakfast, everyone had to complete their daily quota in order to eat their fill. Building their own shelters, leveling roads, digging ditches, dredging river mud from the canal's edge to fertilize the fields, raising livestock, and so on and so forth.

In winter, except for the coldest twenty-some days when the ground was frozen iron-hard, all the remaining time was spent on water conservancy projects. The various river channels near the farmsteads had to be widened, the excavated mud used to enrich the fields. At the same time, this relatively idle season was used to screen the populace.

Those with trade skills, and those willing to learn various crafts, were selected. People who knew how to spin thread and weave cloth were also registered in ledgers. These individuals would receive preferential treatment in the coming year. Not just crafts—veteran farmers skilled in planting and those who knew how to grow cotton were also sorted into categories.

As for the farmsteads along both banks of the Yellow River, they did not have a single day of rest in winter. They had no respite whatsoever compared to the busy farming season. Reinforcing the river embankments, dredging the river channels—everything related to waterworks had to be done. Much of it seemed like useless busywork, yet they had to toil without pause.

"Keep them busy. Only when they're busy do they have no idle time for wild thoughts."

The Zhao Camp had amassed rich experience in absorbing and integrating refugees. Moreover, the so-called useless work was in fact useful. Through massive amounts of labor, these refugees grew accustomed to collective action. Refugees and displaced people familiar with commands and formations became the best source for militia and household troops.

From every village, people were drafted and sent to the Xu family holdings at Jingshan. The iron and coal mines there required vast amounts of manpower. Here, too, there was training, and here, too, they exchanged labor for their basic needs.

But the largest-scale labor was centered around the Yellow River. Ever since the Zhao Camp had its own farmsteads in Xuzhou and sufficient manpower, it had begun working on the Yellow River. Although the labor of a few thousand people meant little against the mighty Yellow River, even just the Xuzhou section, this work had been ongoing, its scale expanding from a few thousand to tens of thousands, and now nearing a hundred thousand.

Regarding many things Zhao Jin and the Zhao Camp did, even those in Xuzhou close to them would judge it as wasteful. Only on this matter of Yellow River waterworks did no one say it was wrong. At most, they would remark that a mere local strongman was actually doing such things—clearly harboring disloyal intentions.

Even the gentry and local strongmen most hostile to the Zhao Camp, even the officials who were openly at irreconcilable odds with them, all provided various forms of assistance and convenience for the Yellow River waterworks.

Actually, at the very beginning, when Wang Zhaojing and the others wanted to undertake water conservancy projects, Zhao Jin couldn't understand it. In his past memories, the Yellow River was merely a broad channel with a shallow surface. The Yellow River he now saw did indeed surge with mighty currents, but whenever the dry season came, large stretches of the riverbed were exposed and the water level was very low—it hardly seemed dangerous at all.

Thanks to the four old friends "Black Water Old Demon, User Cold Night, Qi Sanwen, Suixin Ziwo 0" for the tips, and thanks to everyone for your subscriptions and monthly tickets. Thank you all.