May 21, 1643, on the west coast of Zhifu Bay. A dozen local fishermen squatted on the ground in trepidation, having just been forced to cut their hair short with knives and guns by a group of blonde and blue-eyed men, before being driven en masse into several wooden sheds to bathe. This process was definitely not peaceful, many people cried and cried, but in the face of those fierce soldiers, everyone still had to choose to submit.

More than two months ago, the Qing army crossed the sea by boat, and then turned back after breaking through Laiyang County, Qixia County, Ninghai Prefecture, and Chengshanwei all the way, and surrounded Fushan County. During the more than a month that the Qing army was raging, the local people suffered a great disaster, and one by one they were also afraid of these brutal foreign invaders. Therefore, what the East Coasters asked them to do, they basically did not resist anything.

After taking a shower, everyone suddenly found that their original set of tattered clothes and pants had been taken away! God, my important property was actually taken away, which made many people unacceptable. But before they could be sad, those who looked like military men brought a lot of light blue clothes and pants for everyone to wear. The style of these clothes and pants is a little strange, but the material feels quite good to the touch, and it looks strong and durable, but it is much stronger than the original shirt they were wearing. It's just that this style is too ugly, but it can't be helped, it's better to wear it than not to wear it, so let's deal with it first.

Luo Tiansheng touched the short hair full of stubble, put a set of sky-blue denim clothes and pants on his body, and after walking a few steps, he suddenly found that this set of clothes actually fit strangely. "Strange. These people are also a little ingenious. This shirt is even better than the cloth of Fu Ji Cloth Village in Ninghai Prefecture City. I'm afraid it won't take a few taels of silver to buy it. ”

Luo Tiansheng was caught by the people on the east coast yesterday on the wolf smoke pier in the south, and he was arrested along with four or five veterans and nearly 20 of their relatives in the pier. It's unlucky to say that Luo Tiansheng was originally the younger brother of Luo Guoshi, a gentleman from Dezhou and Chongzhen, who had been a scholar for ten years, and this time he was ordered by his brother to go to Ninghai Prefecture to visit an old friend of Luo Guoshi. Ninghai Prefecture had just been poisoned, and Luo Guoshi was very concerned about the whereabouts of his friends, so he specially sent people from his clan to visit.

It's just that he didn't expect that when he passed by the fire pier to rest, he ran into the people on the east coast who sent troops to exterminate this nearby pier, so he was taken captive to the place in front of him together with the soldiers and family members who had just come back from hiding from the Tartars.

"It should not be far from Zhifu Island. It's ten miles away from yesterday's fire pier. Luo Tiansheng secretly pondered, "What are these people doing here?" It's all sand, or it's a water damage area (swampy area) on both sides of the Dagu River, which is not a good place to look. Seeing that they are digging ditches and draining water, it seems that they are going to build a fort and a moat here. It's weird, just because of these hundreds of people, you want to force here? Thinking of this possibility, Luo Tiansheng couldn't help but shake his head, the situation is chaotic and the building is about to collapse! In this world, not only thieves are making trouble, and Tartars are in trouble, but even this lustful man who came from nowhere has to come here to cut the land and defend himself, which is really unreasonable!

"What are you shaking your head at? Why don't you get to work? A strangely accented angry voice rang in his ears. Luo Tiansheng suddenly became a spirit, and he was still in their hands now. I don't know what kind of means they have, so it's better to be careful. Therefore, a flattering smile quickly appeared on his face, and he said to a colored soldier who urged him to work: "Don't worry, the villain will go to work." With that, he put on the cotton gloves given to him by the people on the east coast, grabbed a shovel, and ran towards the construction site where he was digging.

At this moment, with the sharp copper whistle of the soldiers and supervisors on the east bank, the thousands of North Korean men and women who were still squatting on the ground to rest on the entire huge construction site immediately stood up, and then silently walked to their own lump sum area under the leadership of the foreman and began the hard work.

The topography of this area is dominated by sand bars, and like the large sand bar land along the mainland coast on the east coast, the sand bars here are also very barren, and there is little food to grow, and it often takes great cost to improve the soil before it can be turned into fertile land. To the southwest of Shaba, there is a large alluvial plain of the Dagu River. In this alluvial plain, overgrown with weeds and shrubs, swamps dotted around, flooding every flood season, it does live up to the reputation of the Dagu Jia River as "harmful to water".

No matter how you look at this land, it is a "bad land" where birds don't poop, but Mo Ming still decided to build a fortress here. The perimeter of the fortress city he initially planned was about a kilometer, with a polygonal bastion structure on the south and west sides of the wall, and a normal straight line wall on the north and east sides.

As for the floodplain to the southwest of the planned fortress, Mo Ming decided to build a small artificial reservoir, on the one hand, as a barrier between the west and south walls, and on the other hand, a secret passage could be built to lead directly into the city, as a source of water for the soldiers and civilians in the fortress. Of course, just in case, some wells and rainwater collection ponds must be built in the fortress to prevent water interruptions when people are besieged for a long time.

According to the existing 1,000 North Korean migrant workers and 100 captured Ming fishermen, I don't know how to be busy until the Year of the Monkey. Now there are some messy tents everywhere on the shore, barbed wire is also pulled everywhere, and many supplies are piled up in the open on the grass, and the soldiers of the 102nd Company only hastily cover them with a layer of tarpaulin. There was no way, there were too many food, munitions, cloth and other supplies, and there were not enough tents to stack them, so they had to be disposed of.

Yesterday, the "Breaking Waves" and three other ships set off for Jingyi County to pick up people and livestock. Now anchored in the harbor are the three ships "Fubo", "Zhuhai" and "Baobab", which arrived here last night after the maintenance of the port of Blackwater. The hold was loaded with some cattle that had been transported along the way from Jingyi County, a large number of fir and birch wood that had been processed from the port of Heishui, and about seventy or eighty recruited natives of Sakhalin. Mo Ming was very enthusiastic about these newly arrived natives, and after rewarding them with a large amount of money, he organized this group of about 130 natives into the 3rd Squadron of the Standing Force, which served as an important garrison force for the future Yantai Fortress.

"Captain Mo, the Heishui Coal Mine has officially been released on May 8. They dug a few more shafts in the mountains, and I had sent 300 Korean men to dig coal, and after the ships returning from Jeongyi County a while ago had brought in a new group of laborers, I had sent 400 more men to the coal mining area, and they were now able to produce more than 200 tons of coal a day. It was quite cumbersome to transport, and the coal mine was several kilometers away from the port, and we had to carry the coal out of the mountain by manpower at first. Later, after getting some horses from Jingyi County, our work became easier. Sergeant Johnson, who came from Blackwater Port to report to Mo Ming, took the work report at hand and said with a straight look.

"More than 200 tons of coal a day is a bit too much, and we don't need that much at all." Mo Ming sat on a wicker chair and said, "Build a coal washing plant in the mountains, and the raw coal will be washed and then transported to the dock of Heishui Port for storage. As for the manpower, you can choose from the coal diggers, we don't need that many people to dig coal at the moment. By the way, how do you solve the security problem? Do these North Koreans obey orders? Has anyone escaped? ”

"I've promoted some of the former Yi Dynasty exiles from the group of Koreans we captured last year, as well as some of the former Yi Dynasty exiles who were captured from Jeongui County a while ago, to supervise the work of the remaining North Koreans. Their families were left behind in the city below, and I let them exchange the coal they mined for food every day. They are not stupid, Sakhalin is a place where a single person escapes from the city, there are endless mountains and primeval forests, and it is difficult for a single person to survive the winter, either freezing and starving to death or being eaten by bears. Johnson smiled and said, "So far, the situation is not bad, before there were only three or three people who ran away, and then they all ran back, and I reduced them all to slavery." ”

"Well, good job." Mo Ming nodded approvingly at him, and then continued to ask, "I'm not worried about the coal mine." But the matter of the brick kiln factory has to be hurried, you have also seen, now that the Yantai fortress has begun to be built, we urgently need a large number of bricks, and you must also be careful about this matter. The silt of the Heishui River and the pulverized coal washed from the coal washing plant are all good raw materials for burning bricks, in short, this matter must be grasped quickly! I don't want the Yantai Fortress to be built by June next year because of a lack of building materials! ”

"I understand, I'll take this as a top priority when I go back." Sergeant Johnson nodded vigorously and said, "This brick kiln is expected to produce three million standard bricks per year, and I have sent a hundred people to work on it, and the kiln will be completed by the end of this month, and it will be put into use next month." When the time comes, I will send a large number of workers to make bricks, and I will definitely not delay the construction here. ”

"There should be nearly 3,000 North Koreans on the side of Heishui Port now, and our guard strength is less than 300 people, so we must be careful and not make trouble." Mo Ming thought for a while and then advised, "Arrange for five hundred people to go to Yuanbo Port on Rishiri Island to build a wharf." There is no need to send guards, such a large island, there is nothing to eat, where can you run? Use the fishing boat in the dock to send them some food regularly, and if the construction period is slow, detain a batch of rations, not afraid that they will be dishonest. In addition, the second dock of Heishui Port will also be officially built, the timber drying plant will be gradually prepared, a number of farmland will be reclaimed in the Heishui River Valley, the channel of the river port will also be dredged, and trade cannot be delayed, damn, there are so many things! I'll leave it all to you, I can't leave here for the time being, don't let me down! ”

Hearing this, Sergeant Johnson stood up and said loudly: "Please rest assured, Captain Mo, the department will definitely complete all tasks!" (To be continued......)