The harvest season begins on the east coast in May, and the fields are full of farmers at work. Jiang Nanqi looked all the way, and both sides of the railway line were full of endless farmland, and golden soybeans were planted in the farmland. The horse-drawn soybean harvester newly developed by the Northern Harvest Agricultural Machinery Factory is being dragged forward at an unhurried pace by four horses, and the soybean stalks cut by the blade are neatly lying on the edge of the field.

Several Serbian women in red turbans or small flower hats hum an unknown tune as they tie the stalks of beans from the fields into bundles out of thatch, and then stand there against each other, waiting for someone to carry them away. Sometimes they work violently, and they will accidentally wake up the baby on their back, and the baby's loud cry will suddenly resound throughout the field.

Some of the older children loaded their mother's bundled bean stalks onto the cart and drove the ox cart full of soybeans towards the threshing site. There, the men of the village have moved the entire animal thresher and they help each other to threh the soybeans and load the coarse and threshed soybeans into large baskets.

These coarse, coarse, threshed soybeans also need to be blown in front of animal blowers to remove a lot of debris. The soybeans are immediately packed into cloth bags and transported to the threshing field not far away, where they have to spread the soybeans on top of the tarpaulin on the ground to dry when the weather is good, otherwise the soybeans will not be stored for a long time. Moreover, this soybean, which contains a lot of water, will be rejected by both state-run material reserves and private oil mills. Therefore, they must dry it as necessary.

This is May at the Lower Yi Fort. Harvest in May. See a scene like this. Jiang Nanqi, a senior investigator at the Ministry of Justice, couldn't help but feel good. He never gets tired of looking at the golden fields, as if there is a unique beauty that attracts him, so much so that he feels that the air is full of freshness.

This is the railway line from the Lower Yi River Fort to the Canyon Fort, where countless workers are sweating and contributing to the completion of this railway line that runs from north to south. The Executive Council recently proposed a "Northwest Corridor Railroad Plan" that would lead directly to the future Corrales mining area, in which the East Coasters would first complete the railroad between Fort Lower Yi and Fort Canyon, and then cross West Ridge to the northwest. After later generations, Merlot reached the manganese, iron and gold mining areas of the Corrales region, laying the foundation for the development of the country's machinery and materials industry.

Of course, the railway line stretched for hundreds of kilometres, requiring the construction of more than one settlement along the way, which would take much time, manpower and material resources, and at the same time face diplomatic and security threats, which was not insignificant. However, the Northwest Corridor railway plan was strongly supported by Peng Zhicheng, a veteran of the army, a former member of the Central Executive Committee, and now the commissioner of the Yihe region, and the superintendent of the national railways. And to this policy and resource tilt.

As for the question of the crossing of the legal borders of the Republic of the East Bank, the East Bankers decided to put it on hold for the time being. Pretend not to know the way, anyway, let's talk about it first. They had already consulted some old friends in Buenos Aires about Baron Bravo's visit to Port Oriente a while ago to "ask for guilt", and after contacting Peru through the fast horse, they suddenly found that the officials in Lima were also puzzled by this, and they did not have such strong hostility towards the people of the East Coast, because no one would have believed that the people of the East Bank would demolish the city suspected of crossing the border (Fort Changshan) and close the nearby iron mines, which was absolutely impossible.

Well now things are getting a little interesting. Based on what sounded like the self-talk of Baron Bravo, who had a strong sense of religious mission, the officials of the Executive Committee decided to put aside the pretentious Baron for the time being and continue with the original policy of linking the resource-rich Corrales mining area with the local core through the Northwest Corridor Railway Plan, so as to exploit the manganese ore resources that were urgently needed in the domestic industry as soon as possible.

Many of the farmers who come to the railway line to do odd jobs during the off-season have gone home to do their jobs, and the only people who are fighting on the railway line are some immigrants from Central and Southern Europe who have crossed the border from the La Plata region. Most of these people were Italians, but a few were South Germans, Hungarians, and Bohemians, all poor people recruited by the Habsburgs to make it in the Old World. They were transported from Austria to Barcelona and then transported to the La Plata region to replenish the sparse population so that they would have enough strength to defend themselves against the threat of the East Coast.

This policy has been in place for almost a decade, and in the past ten years the Spaniards have transported more than 25,000 immigrants from Central and Southern Europe from the Old World to La Plata. Unfortunately, they overestimated the capacity of La Plata, a low-developed area that was not well equipped to accommodate these migrants, and the local farmers and ranchers were not very keen to hire them, so many of them were struggling to make ends meet. Over the years, nearly 5,000 people (mostly Italians) have illegally entered the territory of the Eastern Republic through various means, and then worked in odd jobs in order to wait for enough years to obtain legal identification.

The railway line from Fort du Ib to Fort Canyon is now active with such illegal workers from La Plata. Due to the lack of domestic labor, the military police and militia on the East Bank border have always turned a blind eye to these poor people who cross the border, and rarely arrest or deport them. They go to the East Coast to do odd jobs, and employers are paid very little or no more than they can afford to eat. The people are also very honest, and many private owners and even farmers will employ two or three people, which are much cheaper than the Charua and Guarani people, who are known as cheap labor.

Jiang Nanqi rode on his horse and looked at these cross-border refugees who were resting under the trees in rags, these people had dull eyes and few expressions on their faces. Words are even more pitiful – or perhaps it has something to do with their poor Chinese skills, and they may only say a few words of gratitude when they receive their lunch of salted fish and steamed potatoes. They had a reason to do so, and the locust-like armies of the old continent were fighting around and making a mess of their lives, and many of them were even starving to death, so they had to come to the New World to make a living.

Who would have thought that the longed-for "new life in La Plata" would give them another blow, the local farmers or ranchers did not need to hire too many people, and the Spanish official who was responsible for the placement of them was also irresponsible, he recruited only a few people to open up new land, and at least a third to half of them spent the whole day doing nothing and wandering around. Some of them went to Paraguay to try their luck because they had heard that it was wealthier and more needed, while others went to the East Coast savannah, ready to go to the East Coast in search of jobs to support themselves.

In this way, the king of Spain was like a captain of a transport brigade, and his relatives helped him to bring a large number of people from Central and Southern Europe, but he could only keep some of them, and in the past ten years at least 5,000 people had entered the territory of the East Bank Republic by various means to work, and then settled, and effectively enriched the population of the East Bank.

Of course, the fact that so many people come to the East Coast every year naturally causes some trouble for the residents of the western inland areas of the East Coast. From time to time, these hungry homeless people steal potatoes, sweet potatoes or vegetables that they grow in the fields to satisfy their hunger, and sometimes they steal poultry and even livestock. Even recently, there have been sensational rumors of robberies and murders committed by homeless people crossing the border in two places. All of this has caused the local residents to "look differently" at these homeless people from the west, and their sympathy for them has gradually diminished or even disappeared, replaced by prejudice and disgust.

The court that Jiang Nanqi visited this time has recently tried a number of such cases.

The court is located in the city of Lower Ib Fort and is under the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court of the Lower River Ib and is responsible for all types of litigation in and around the Lower Ib Fort as well as in the nearby rural areas. The courtroom was small, with only two rooms, a judge, a clerk, two bailiffs, and that's it. The judge is a famous criminal master from Jiaozhou, Shandong, who is about 30 years old; The clerk is also a native of Shandong, who was originally a down-and-out scholar, who made a living by writing letters and copying books for others in Fushan County, claiming to have been captured by the soldiers of "Mo Dashuai" and brought to the east coast; The two bailiffs are both from Ninghai Prefecture, one is from the guard sergeant, and the other is from the Yamen Arrest Kuai, and the court of this all-Chinese class is trying cases extremely quickly, basically at the speed of dozens of people a day.

Most of the crimes were Italians who had crossed the border, and all the crimes were thefts. These people couldn't understand their words, and they didn't know anything about it, and the middle-aged judge who was privately called Master Liu by several other people didn't think it was wrong, because he didn't plan to listen to those people's answers or justify anything, so there was no need. For what? Because most of these people were twisted by the villagers, and they were caught red-handed when they stole them, so what else is there to say? The evidence is conclusive, the human and material evidence is there, and even the trial is exempted, and the verdict is directly announced!

Jiang Nanqi just got off the horse and saw such a scene. The two bailiffs kept carrying the prisoner over, Master Liu symbolically asked a few words, and then directly convicted the offender, and the clerk next to him simply recorded it and stamped it on the sentencing notice, and the case was closed. (To be continued......)