Guangzhou, in the back house of Ambassador Yingtian.

"Lychees, lychees, a lot of lychees"

The little pendant calamus buried her head in a pile of lychees taller than she was sitting, like a jolly chipmunk and stuffed her mouth full.

However, it didn't take long for her to stop suddenly, and her eyes stared at the distant sky in a daze, and the piles of lychees suddenly lost their attractiveness.

"Wan'er is homesick?

Then he walked the skeleton spirit that had grown up in a circle of bears, wolves, and dogs, and when he saw this, he couldn't help but come over and take her in his arms and said warmly.

"Sister, I miss that thief a little."

The small pendant was unexpectedly in her arms, and she raised her delicate little face and said.

"Think about the stories he told me, the things he taught me, the way he looked when he laughed and got angry."

“。。。”

Then, the skeleton spirit couldn't cry and grabbed the small pendant hard and whimpered.

"It's not good to be a slave, it's useless to be a slave, and you're tired of being in the situation you are in now. A slave is really one of those who cannot be redeemed for death. ”

"Sister, don't say that."

The little pendant also became teary-eyed.

"Even if we hadn't had those things at the beginning, how much better would our situation have been?"

"At least the thief who likes to bully people is right,"

"There is no natural wealth and power in this world, and how can there be a life that is born to suffer and starve."

"Looking back, it is nothing more than a desperate attempt to squander the legacy of the ancestors, and self-deception is taken for granted."

"Therefore, even if there is no thief. We can't escape what happened. ”

"Wan'er, don't say that. How can you succumb to the thief. ”

The skeleton spirit looked a little confused and a little frightened.

"As long as the slave is still alive, I will do my best to find an opportunity to get you out of this dangerous situation."

"Go back,"

The childish face of the small pendant came, but it showed a distressing amazement, and sighed softly

"The world is so big, where can we go back?"

。。。。。。。

The Luankou ferry outside Jiaozhou City has been docked with a fleet of ships ready to go.

In front of Zhou Huai'an, there are simple four dishes and one rice, simmered pig's trotters with sour horns, stuffed kidney beans and snails, fried Hehua fish, and stir-fried duck with ginger. The staple food is blood glutinous, blue stem, fragrant rice three-color rice packed in a bamboo tube to bake out of the tube rice, this is his last meal before leaving Jiaozhou.

Perhaps if we persist for a while, we will be able to complete the infiltration and transformation of most of the plains in the northern part of Annam outside Jiaozhou, without compromising with those places and leaving more hands to clean up later.

But in reality, there are not so many ifs and maybes. After all, Zhou Huai'an's real focus and foundation is still in the north, unless he wants to be the monkey country of the Indochina Peninsula in the future, unanimously recognized as the founding ancestor Yunyun.

In this short period of time, Zhou Huai'an quickly cut through the chaos in the name of the envoy who left behind, and presided over the initial reconstruction of the Jing Navy. But the number of nine thousand men was composed of the young and strong of those who had come to defect in the battle of the barbarians, or who had contributed from the armies; Together with the strong and powerful united soldiers in Jiaozhou City, it serves as a mobile force for daily guarding and deterring places in Jiaozhou City.

It's just that the daily expenses for food, clothing and temporary military use need to be routinely apportioned according to the proportion of the large and small families under the name of the Metropolitan Protectorate; The armor and daily drills were provided and mastered by the rebels, thus forming a dualistic structure of relative checks and balances. For other matters and emergencies, the permanent representatives of each family and the agents of the rebel army are composed. The collegial council under the name of the Metropolitan Government will decide on the countermeasures.

Of course, just by relying on these days of fighting, it is impossible to clean up the barbarians around Annam. But at least Zhou Huai'an can ensure that after passing through his hands, all that remains are relatively weak and highly civilized existences; They also had to provide all kinds of property, taxes, and labor to the state to ensure the value of their survival. At the same time, they are also used to remind those heroes that it is not so easy to cross the river and tear down the bridge.

Then, the daily affairs of Annan or Jiaozhou were handed over to the pro-affiliated forces led by Qu Rong, the representative of the Qu family; As for Qu Chengyu himself, Zhou Huai'an just said, "You should have a broader world to seek a future and display your ambitions." It was easy for him to decide to continue to follow him and leave Annan, a limited corner of the world.

therefore

When Zhou Huai'an led his troops to leave Dagang, not only did the overall slightly lost troops greatly expand, but also more than 17,000 new soldiers and servants from the local area; They are all selected from among the local young people who have joined the army, who have nothing to worry about, and who are willing to leave the land of Annam, where they have lived for generations, to seek some future and a way out in the northern interior.

As a result, even the return boat group suddenly increased by more than ten times; Among them, of course, there were ships that were compensated according to the agreement, or local representatives who were appointed to be stationed in Guangzhou, and there were also local shipbuilders who had made up their minds to follow the returning army to Guangzhou to make a profit; There are also some "cow ghosts, snake gods" recruited through the old roots of the new subordinate Li Siya.

Of course, the main ones who can get this opportunity are smugglers and salt barons who are relatively less harmful to the social order or who have not committed crimes; As the price of their whitewashing and public activities, they must contribute to the rebel regime represented by Zhou Huai'an in the gray areas that are not easy for the army to take care of for the time being:

For example, under the constraints of a certain order and bottom line, it is used to fill the gap of underground forces in Guangzhou, an international metropolis; Excavate, crack down on, and eliminate the eyeliners and spies sent by other forces, and suppress the root causes of cheating, cheating, stealing, and stealing by controlling some ancient gray industries and underground places, and exclusively drive out the soil and signs of some vicious crimes such as murder and stealing goods; Even at sea to deal with former peers and old acquaintances, to protect the exclusive interests and safety of the shipping route.

In addition to the trophies and specialties from the locals, there were also many native men and women with frightened and desolate faces; They were already scheduled to be used as new labor supplements under the Rebels.

This is also to use the righteousness of their own survival of the family and country to force those local forces to redeem slaves and maids, clear the fields and households to a certain extent, while Zhou Huai'an helped those relatively remote and poor people in the south to develop a new industry that can be trickled into a long stream;

It is to let these local wealthy clans who have been armed through the war capture and sell as much as possible, represented by the Xiyuan Barbarians and Lin Shanman, the local Tu men and women who are not subject to the king's transformation, and then exchange them for the import of corresponding commodities and materials from Guangzhou through the channels of maritime trade.

At least in the Pearl River valley controlled by the rebels, there was a hunger and thirst for this kind of cheap labor, in the plantations and public farms that were developed everywhere. Since the rebels want to ensure the basic living standards and relative treatment of the people under their rule, they need a large number of alternative "non-ours and no distress" existences to accept the sophisticated exploitation and oppression mode under the high degree of organization.

For these local wealthy families, this is also a good thing to reduce the threat of the surrounding area and divert the social contradictions after the war, and also make a profit from it. This is the most basic immediate and microscopic sense.

Macroscopically speaking, this is also a norm in the evolutionary history of human civilization; The victor in the competition of civilizations usually uses the corpse of the loser as a stepping stone, nourishment, and firewood to continue to stand tall among the nations of the world, and continues to march forward.

Whether it is brutal enslavement and oppression, integration and absorption, enlightenment and indoctrination, or more hidden economic colonization and monopoly blood sucking; It's just that in different eras and stages of social development, the form of expression is different.

In addition, there are hundreds of craftsmen of all kinds who have a special skill, and hundreds of young children who have studied in their families or received basic education in the school. Of course, the reason why young people are chosen is mainly because they are motivated and impulsive; It is less contaminated and influenced by traditional habits, and it is easier to accept new things (brainwashing) indoctrination.

On the other hand, they are mainly the children of those who are powerful or side branches, and they are not deeply involved in the interests of their own families, and their sense of identity with their own class has not yet been formed.

According to the lessons of later generations, only those who have endured hardships have the motivation and desire to urgently change their personal status quo; And people with slightly better living conditions do not have so much patience and perseverance because of their higher starting point, so they put down their bodies and sink into the grassroots to do something.

After all, what Zhou Huai'an needs is a group of practical people who can start from the bottom, not some traditional staff and officials who can only talk about big truths, or who are proficient in the unspoken rules and officialdom methods of the system, and are good at currying favor with camp drills.

On the bright side, as the price of this troop dispatch, in addition to the Dagang of Jiaozhou and a few towns with supporting industries nearby, it only got a title of the Protectorate of Annam, which was publicly recognized by the other party; On the surface, except for some chambers of commerce and guards, even the direct garrison of Jiaozhou City was not left.

But don't underestimate this title, in the joint discussion formed by the wealthy families of Annan, it has the ultimate arbitration rights. This is also more in line with the current limit of the control ability of the rebel army under Zhou Huai'an, as well as the truth and reputation of continuing to interfere and intervene in the local power structure of Annam in the future.

By resettled in the coastal areas, a stable source of food output can be obtained, and at the same time, a potential source of troops and labor can be replenished. Although the quality and standard of the Annan soldiers themselves are at the bottom of many military towns in the world, they need to be guarded by the imperial court from Jiangxi, Hunan, Xichuan, Henan and other places;

However, as a garrison on the third and fourth lines to maintain local order, or labor for the army to open up and reclaim and siege cities, it is still a large and cheap source. In this way, Zhou Huai'an was able to calmly recruit the poor people, miners, and fishermen who were fierce and hard-working among the Fujian immigrants and their descendants from various states as the main source of supplementary soldiers.

(End of chapter)