The Jiaozhi Red River is located south of the Tropic of Cancer and has a tropical monsoon climate. Except for a few northern mountainous areas, there is no obvious winter, which is almost the same as Guangzhou.

Since implementing the policy of clearing the world, it is easy for the high-ranking officials and nobles to be rich, but when they moved from the east, they brought some food and property, which would not be a problem after three or five months. For ordinary villagers, these three or five months can be called hell.

Although there is no winter in Jiaozhi, there will still be a cold wave in the twelfth month. Not long ago, a cold wave came from the northern mountainous areas, which made the villagers tremble with coldness.

Moreover, the food was already in a dilemma of extreme shortage. In order to prepare for the war, Zheng Jian could not have taken out a grain of food to provide relief, and the villagers began to endure hunger.

Fortunately, the villagers saw that they had no physiological experience in Jiaozhou and slowly spread around them. A considerable number of them entered the mountains and forests. All leaves and tubers were collected to fill their stomachs, and there was no starvation to death.

Zheng Jian was anxious about all this, but he had no choice but to do anything. All he could do now was to prepare for war and wait for Di Wei to attack.

As for taking the initiative to attack, don't even think about it. Zheng Jian suspected that once the main force of the Imperial Army went out to fight in Jiaozhou City, there might be a rebellion in Jiaozhou, and he would not be able to return to Jiaozhou City again.

What's more, Di Wei controlled the waterway, and his mobility was far greater than that of the Imperial Guards, and attacking was equivalent to death.

Zheng Jian's mind has not yet been so funny.

Zheng Jian was frightened when he thought of the terrifying artillery in the Jingzhou army. What's more, the Taiping River channel was about to be cleared, and the warships of the Appeasement Fleet could drive to the city of Jiaozhou at any time and aimed at the city of Jiaozhou.

Relying on the city wall to resist Di Wei's offensive, there is no future.

Zheng Jian ordered the construction of fortifications everywhere in Jiaozhou City and recruit archers in a large number of ways, hoping to shed the blood of the Jingzhou soldiers in Jiaozhou City.

On the other hand, Zheng Jian felt deeply insufficient troops and wanted to transfer the imperial guards to the south back to Jiaozhou. He was afraid that Ruan Phoenix would take advantage of the situation to rob. So Zheng Jian sent an envoy to Ruan Phoenix, saying that his lips were dead and his teeth were cold. He hoped that Ruan Phoenix would not attack the north. If possible, he should also send troops to attack the Jingzhou army.

During the ruling order, Lin Chunhong regarded Ruan Phoenix and Zheng Ju as birds of a feather, and regarded the entire south as the homeland of the Ming Dynasty.

Ruan Phoenix knew very well that the only reason why Lin Chunhong had not yet attacked the south was that he could not make any move. After Zheng Jian was resolved, he would point his finger at him sooner or later.

Based on the above considerations, Ruan Phoenix promised Zheng Ye not to take advantage of the situation. As for attacking the Jingzhou army from both sides, Ruan Phoenix did not want to choose such a painful way of death, so he naturally rejected Zheng Ye's proposal.

After receiving Ruan Phoenix's response, Zheng Yan felt very calm and immediately transferred the Southern Army back from Guangde and Hejing, stationed near Meide, showing a horn with Jiaozhou, and maintaining pressure on Nanding and Haiyang.

The Southern Army was led by General Wu Daheng. Wu Daheng was Zheng Jian's confidant and was extremely loyal to Zheng Jian.

Zheng Jian tried every means to deal with the upcoming decisive battle. However, he waited for more than a month and did not see the Jingzhou army.

Zheng Ye Daqi made people inquire about the movements of the five palaces and the report of the whistle detective made Zheng Ye feel like a knife.

According to Ma Shiqi and Xu Yun's approach, within a year, the Jiaozhi people in the five prefectures would completely forget Zheng Jian and Li Chao, and would become like people from Guangdong and Guangxi, identify with the Ming Dynasty court and Lin Chunhong, the former governor of the Ming army!

Zheng Yan was anxious and immediately ordered Wu Daheng to advance to Nanding.

As soon as Wu Daheng moved, the entire Jingzhou army started to move. Cai Mingshan led the Guards south from Taiyuan, the Second Army advanced to Jiaozhou along Jiaping, the First Army in Nanding approached Wu Daheng, and the Third Army entered from Haiyang between Jiaozhou and Meide, and there was a faint momentum to encircle Wu Daheng.

Zheng Yan was very scared and hurriedly ordered Wu Daheng to retreat to his virtue.

Wu Daheng became a turtle with a head-retten turtle, and Di Wei seemed to have no intention of making progress, so he also became a turtle with a head-retten turtle, and ordered all troops to retreat to their original garrison.

Zheng Jian was helpless and could only sit in Jiaozhou and live a hard life. Ma Shiqi was showing off his strength. The biggest move was that Kang Dingbo personally led more than 400 technical craftsmen to Taiyuan.

Originally, after all the Dragon and Tiger Legions came ashore, Kang Dingbo decided to start from Jingzhou. However, there was a dispute within Jingzhou, which delayed for more than a month before setting off, one step later than Ma Shiqi.

Kangdingbo originally planned to build a large-scale steel center in Taiyuan, but this plan was firmly opposed by Zhang Daohan, Zhu Zhiyu and other groups.

Zhang Daohan and others believe that once the most advanced steelmaking technology flows into Jiaozhi, there will be endless troubles. It is better to mine from Taiyuan and transport it to Guangzhou for smelting, just like the iron ore in Qiongzhou.

Kangdingbo refused to give in and defended that Qiongzhou had no coal, so he was transported to Guangzhou. This move made the steel smelting cost in Guangzhou much higher than that in Daye, which was not cost-effective. If the iron ore was transported from Taiyuan to Guangzhou, it would first be transported out by an inland transport ship, then transferred to a sea ship, and then unloaded the iron ore from the sea ship. The cost would be unbearable.

Besides, the Dadongyang Trading Company had already established a steel smelting furnace in Nanfen. Since we are not afraid of technology flowing into the hands of the Qing Tartars, why are we worried that technology will flow into Jiaozhi?

Neither of the two sides could convince the other party and beat the lawsuit to Lin Chunhong.

Lin Chunhong only said one sentence, "Jiaozhi is like Guangxi", and ended the argument and asked Kang Dingbo to let go without caring about anything else.

Kang Dingbo rushed to Taiyuan with great confidence. In Taiyuan, in addition to the conventional smelting of steel, he had extremely important things to do.

In recent years, the price of steel has risen sharply, which has stimulated the Institute of Engineering to invest huge investment in improving the process of steel smelting. After countless craftsmen's day and night exploration, converter steelmaking has been successfully realized in the laboratory. Compared with the previous steelmaking process, converter steelmaking has a large output, low cost and fast production speed, which can greatly alleviate the current dilemma of lack of steel.

Due to the extremely heavy tasks of major smelting centers, technical innovation is not taken into consideration for the time being, so this process flow has not yet been in the laboratory and has not been put into practical use in the steel workshop. Kangdingbo is thinking about taking advantage of the opportunity of the new construction of the Taiyuan Steel Workshop to build a converter steel furnace to see if this process is practical in engineering.

As soon as Kang Dingbo arrived in Taiyuan, he immediately devoted himself to his work passionately and realized his dream in the deep mountains, dense forests, rivers and ditches.

The first problem he faces now is the extreme shortage of manpower. Mashiki made some preparations and recruited more than a thousand miners in advance. These more than a thousand miners are just a drop in the bucket for the converter to be built. Even building furnaces is insufficient, let alone mining.

Kang Dingbo was anxious and immediately found Ma Shiqi and said, "What I need is 50,000,000, or 200,000, I can swallow it too! More than a thousand people, send the beggar?"

Kang Dingbo's attitude angered Ma Shiqi. Ma Shiqi said with a frosty face: "There are less than 300,000 people in the five palaces. Now they are paving roads and building bridges and dredging rivers. People are needed everywhere. Where can I get you tens of thousands of strong men?"

Kang Dingbo was very ruthless and left a sentence: "I don't care! I just want people, you can find a way to help me solve it!"

After saying that, Kang Dingbo ignored it, left Hai'an and then went into Taiyuan to think about his converter.

Ma Shiqi was so angry that he shivered. Finally, he took into account Kang Dingbo's behavior and began to think about how to solve this problem.

After thinking about it, Ma Shiqi monkeys in the South China Sea. At present, I can only expect Lu Shiyuan to capture a large number of monkeys from Luzon, Java, and Sumatra to transport them to Taiyuan for purchase by Kangdingbo.

Ma Shiqi vaguely heard that Lu Shiyuan made the slave trade prosperous in Southeast Asia. He was a standard Confucian scholar and instinctively resisted the slave trade. However, the matter at that time was not about himself, and he did not pay much attention to this matter.

Now, Kang Dingbo actually forced him to preside over the slave trade himself, which is called forcing good people to become prostitutes!

Of course, Jiaozhi is not really short of labor. To the west of Jiaozhou, there are nearly 800,000 strong men living in the mountains and forests. However, luring eight or 900,000 strong men out of the mountains and forests is a long-term matter and cannot solve the urgent problem.

After hesitating for a long time, Ma Shiqi wrote a letter to Lu Shiyuan, inviting Lu Shiyuan to visit Taiyuan Prefecture, Jiaozhi.

The letter was written awkwardly. Lu Shiyuan saw Ma Shiqi's intention at a glance and immediately laughed: "The world is the most cunning Confucian scholars. They obviously want to buy and sell slaves, but they pretend to be ignorant, and they cover up their ears and steal the bell?"

Lu Shiyuan had no reason to refuse, so he immediately called a group of slave traders to inform them that Taiyuan had a big business. The slave traders were very happy and increased their efforts to capture monkeys. After only half a month, more than 4,000 monkeys were transported to Taiyuan.

Kang Dingbo was overjoyed and asked Xu Yun to send archers to take care of the slaves. Xu Yun was happy to answer the same thing and sent more than 2,000 archers to be on the battlefield.

Originally, these archers were confused and confused. They always felt uncomfortable with the new identity of the Ming people, and even subconsciously resisted. Now Lu Shiyuan sent thousands of monkeys for them to bully in one breath, and they were so happy that they had become the best man. They accepted the fact that they were a Ming people from the bottom of their hearts and were proud of it.

Xu Yun keenly observed the changes in the psychology of the archers and was overjoyed. He simply divided all the archers into several batches and took turns to maintain the safety of the mining area.

As a result, almost all the archers of the five palaces became devoted people of the Ming Dynasty.

Sold slaves is not a long-term solution, and Ma Shiqi put his ideas on the refugees in Jiaozhou again.

Ma Shiqi announced that any adult in the Ming Dynasty, whoever miners in Taiyuan, who earn more than 50 cents a day and who have worked for two years, can rent six acres of fertile land, with a tax of less than 10%.

This announcement was spread to the west of Jiaozhou through the Military Information Department, arousing great interest from refugees.

The daily wage is fifty cents, and the monthly wage is at least two rounds. Two rounds can be bought with two stones of food in Jiaozhi! The refugees were moved. Even if they did not say that they would rent fertile land, the refugees would slowly move towards Taiyuan for this wage.

As expected, refugees gathered from trickles into torrents and flowed to Taiyuan.
Chapter completed!