Winter goes to spring, summer passes through the autumn solstice, and in the blink of an eye, most of the time has passed.

In the past six months, a lot of things have happened in the areas ruled by the People's Army and the Ming Dynasty.

In the Ming ruling area, the New Year of the sixteenth year of Wanli had just passed, and General Qi swallowed his breath, but not many officials and generals in the Ming court noticed this.

Compared with a dead veteran, the Ming court is now focused on exterminating the people's army, and after more than half a year, the total strength of the Ming court's support army may have exceeded 1.5 million.

Although there were a lot of recruits in the Ming army, when the number of recruits reached a terrifying number, no one could remain indifferent.

The Ming court was ready to encircle and suppress the People's Army with all its might, but it did not forget the great enemy in the north.

It seems that the Tatars also knew that the Ming court had an enemy in the south, thinking that there was an opportunity, in the past year, the Tatar cavalry repeatedly attacked, looking for opportunities to break through the border pass, most of the time were repelled by the border army, and a few times the Tatars won the victory and rushed into the pass, and soon they would be driven back by the Ming army.

The large-scale expansion of the army has brought a lot of bad effects to the Ming ruling area, and the number of anti-thieves and rebels has increased sharply, but in the face of the crazy expansion of the Ming army, any anti-thieves and rebels will be quickly exterminated or driven into the mountains.

At present, at least 600,000 Ming troops have gathered in Guangxi, Huguang, Jiangxi, and Fujian, and perhaps war will break out within this year, or early next year.

The Ming court couldn't wait too long, the crazy expansion of the army was a huge burden for the Ming court, it couldn't bear it for too long, the treasury was gradually empty, and even if the taxes were raised, it couldn't support much longer.

In their opinion, no matter how strong the People's Army is, it will not be the opponent of the Ming Dynasty who is serious, even if the war is bound to win, they must make a little more money from it, such opportunities are too few and too few.

One official can make money, and 100 officials can also afford to make money, and when hundreds or thousands of officials make money together, the tax and silver collected will be deducted layer by layer, and less than one-tenth of it will be sent to the household department.

Zhu Yijun angrily asked the ministers why they collected so little tax silver, but the ministers who benefited came out to cover for it, and made Zhu Yijun believe that there was only so much tax money on the grounds of natural and man-made disasters.

Many ministers in the court said so, Zhu Yijun has to believe it if he doesn't believe it, can he still investigate it in person?

Now it is difficult for Zhu Yijun to promote several officials who can be trusted, no one knows when they will be bought, Zhu Yijun can only wait, wait for the People's Army to be exterminated, and then slowly clean up these courtiers who do not respect the king.

Compared with the chaotic Ming ruling area, the People's Army-ruled area is thriving.

This year is already the third bumper year for the common people under the rule of the People's Army, and a large amount of grain has been harvested from the land they cultivate, so that the families who make a living from farming have finally become "rich"; even if next year is a disaster year and the grain harvest is lost, the common people under the rule of the People's Army will not go hungry, and the three-year harvest is enough for them to have some savings.

On the first day of June, the five cents and one cents were officially issued, and there were five equal coins issued in the previous year, such as one yuan, five jiao, one dime, five cents, and one cent, and the people's acceptance of five cents and one cents was faster, and there were fewer and fewer copper coins on the market, and they were all about to be replaced by more exquisite equal coins.

It's just that there are too many copper coins stored by the people, and the Ming Dynasty has been minting copper coins for hundreds of years, and it will take several years for the People's Army to completely replace copper coins with equal coins.

The glass business of the People's Army has developed rapidly, and a second glass factory has been established in Huizhou City, and less than one-tenth of the glass mirrors and transparent glass produced by the two glass factories are sold in the People's Army-ruled areas, and the other glass mirrors and transparent glasses are sold to the Ming Dynasty-ruled areas.

A glass business, the People's Army sells glass to make a lot of money, the merchants sell the glass to the Ming Dynasty, the People's Army can collect a commercial tax, earn a large amount of silver, for the People's Army, the more silver is naturally the better, government officials need to pay wages, factory workers also need to pay wages, there is not enough money, let others work for free is impossible to last.

The Guangzhou Glass Factory not only produces clear glass and glass mirrors, but also makes telescopes and microscopes.

After more than half a year of hard work, the production of telescopes increased slightly, and by the end of the year, every officer at and above the regimental level was able to be issued a telescope, and the microscope was successfully manufactured and sent to the "Biology" Institute for use by researchers.

Telescopes are very important things for the military and microscopes for medicine, and Fang Nan is ready to set up a factory in Guangzhou City to manufacture research telescopes and microscopes, as well as research and manufacture myopia glasses and astronomical telescopes.

Glass is only a part of the industrial development of the People's Army, such as cement, the number of cement plants under the rule of the People's Army has not increased for the time being, but most of the cement factories are increasing the number of workers and expanding cement production, basically how much cement produced by the cement plant, how much will be digested by the People's Army.

Water conservancy facilities and cement roads use a large amount of cement, for merchants cement roads are more important, the appearance of flat cement roads to facilitate merchants to quickly transport goods between the two places.

In particular, the merchants who were engaged in the glass business transported the fragile glass from the city of Guangzhou to the border area by horse-drawn carriage, and the glass was easily broken after a long journey, and a broken piece of glass was a loss of a few taels of silver to several hundred taels of silver.

The horse-drawn carriage travels on potholed dirt roads and gravel roads, and the glass on the carriage has a chance to break even if it is protected by various methods, but the horse-drawn carriage travels faster on a flat cement road, and the glass is less likely to break.

The merchants were eager to replace all roads with concrete roads, and the People's Army had this plan and mobilized tens of thousands of coolies, but it was not possible to complete the plan in a short time.

At present, there is only one railway road in the area ruled by the People's Army, and there are only a few dozen miles away from the city of Guangzhou.

Foshan Arsenal, with the investment of hydraulic machine tools, the output of muskets, artillery, and grenades has increased rapidly, and has now reached a limit, unless the number of craftsmen and the number of hydraulic machine tools are increased.

The production of various firearms has not changed much, but the quality of firearms has changed, and the metal research institute under the Ministry of Industry has studied steel and has developed a better kind of steel, using this steel to make the barrel of the tiger head gun, the barrel service life is at least 30% longer than the previous barrel, which is a very high improvement.

The increase in the life of the barrel means that the combat effectiveness of the KPA has increased, and the KPA is more confident in winning the future war.