"My lord, the food sent from my hometown is in place."

On Phi Island, Dongjiang Town, when Shang Kexi and Geng Zhongming were anxious about the poor grain harvest on the island this year and the increasing number of people, the soldiers who walked in from outside made a report, which made them temporarily relieved.

However, this is just a sigh of relief, 30,000 stone and other food per season, when they first came to Phi Island, the supply was more than enough, but now they have taken root on the island for more than a year and wait for them, it is a little beyond their means.

After more than a year of operation, although it has not yet reached the point where hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians lived on Phi Island in the heyday of Mao Wenlong, the total number of soldiers and civilians on Phi Island has reached more than 50,000 with the Hongtang army.

Many of them were slaves who had escaped from the Jurchen territory, or who had been rescued by the Hongtang army during the previous eradication of the Jurchen tribes by the Hongtang army, and some were tenants who had fled from the Korean Kingdom.

On the coastline of Liaodong north of Phi Dao, because of the endless, strange and unpredictable harassment actions of the Hongtang army on Phi Dao, the tribes within a radius of dozens of miles of the coastline have been forced to huddle together to keep warm, unless the Hongtang army mobilizes a scale of more than thousands of people to attack, the small-scale attack tactics are no longer effective.

This made Shang Kexi's previous tactics of warfare and warfare unfundamental, and it was difficult to rely on the limited amount of cultivated land on Phi Island to support such a large group of people when they could not annex and eliminate the Jurchen tribes.

At that time, Mao Wenlong used the special products of the Korean Peninsula, cattle and sheep seized by the Jurchens to attract those merchants who were willing to take risks for high profits to come and trade, bringing prosperity to them and at the same time, allowing them to purchase the materials they needed.

At this time, after the Korean Kingdom was conquered by the Qing Dynasty and submitted to its rule, at least on the surface, they could no longer interact with the Ming army in Donggang Town as before, and due to the impact of that war, until now the Korean Kingdom itself is still in a painful recovery period, and there are many peasant riots in the country at the same time, and they do not have the strength to trade with Donggang Town.

Therefore, the supply of food and materials from Dongjiang Town is more dependent on the Dayuan Island side, but with the growth of strength, the supply given to Dongjiang Town by Hongmen at the beginning is already beyond its means, and it is inevitable that there will be a shortage of food in the later part of the quarter.

Shang Kexi used various means, such as releasing the warships under their command to fish and hunt, and the people collectively went out to the wild beach to look for edible wild vegetables and shells, and at the same time controlled the food, limiting the daily rations per person, but still could not eradicate the food shortage.

At this time, before the arrival of the food supply on Dayuan Island, in fact, Shang Kexi had no food on the island half a month ago, and everyone obtained it through fishing and hunting, plus gruel and wild vegetables with excess water and rice as rations, and struggled to support it.

It's not that Shang Kexi didn't want to complain to the base camp and ask for help, but it was that they realized that after they were stationed on Phi Dao, they actually got very little success, and the capture of some Jurchen tribes was not as good as the support of the Hongmen base camp for them.

Shang Kexi was happy that they came to Phi Dao at the beginning, but they made up their minds to make some efforts to repay Li Tianyang for their re-encounter, at this time more than a year has passed, but they have been still cowering on Phi Dao, far from reaching the point where Mao Wenlong's supervisor was in Dongjiang Town, so that several of his generals did not feel a little guilty.

Originally, there should have been grain and grass support from the imperial court, but except for the time when he first established himself in Dongjiang Town, the governor of Shandong reluctantly transported some grain and grass over, and in the following months, the governor of Shandong's yamen shirked for various reasons, and it was normal to have no grain and grass for several months in a row, and even about half a year has passed since the last time thousands of stones of grain and grass were transported.

Looking for someone to go to the governor's yamen to ask about grain and grass, it was not on the grounds that the granary in the province was empty and there were many people in the country, that is, their Dongjiang Town was too far away from the border of Shandong Province, and the round-trip journey was dangerous, and it was easy to be blocked by the Qing people.

In fact, to put it in one sentence, their Shandong governor himself is also a clever woman who has no rice to cook, and there is no grain and grass to supply Dongjiang Town, so let Shang Kexi and them fend for themselves!

Although the governor of Shandong and others knew that Dongjiang Town had a very important role in containing the Qing people from entering the Ming border pass, they had to let Shandong Province shoulder this burden and support the work of Dongjiang Town, but they could not command the other party and could not reap the credit of the other party.

"By the way, the grain and grass sent from my hometown this time is 50,000 stones, and the family has said that in the future, the grain and grass supplies from our side will be transported according to this standard."

The logistics officer who came to report to the work suddenly remembered the most important thing, and as soon as the words fell, Shang Kexi and the others suddenly smiled, and at the same time, they couldn't help but turn their eyes to Xiang Shenggao on the side.

"Lord Admiral should say that if this food is not enough in the future, remember not to hide it, although you are independent, we are still a family!"

Shang Kexi's hearts warmed, and a kind of gratitude rose on his face for the death of a confidant, for those of them who were born in a reckless background, maybe people and horses have such and such defects and problems, but compared to the literati who know how to examine the degree, they pay more attention to the feelings of kindness and righteousness, which also corresponds to the old saying: every time you slaughter more dogs, you are more likely to be readers.

"Lao Xiang, you're really not interesting, quietly report to the family, so that we are lost in front of adults!"

It seemed that he was complaining, but with the grateful expressions on the faces of Shang Kexi and the others, Xiang Shenggao didn't know that they were joking with themselves and using another gesture to express their friendliness.

As the only general from Hongmen among the four, even Xiang Shenggao himself knows that there is actually some estrangement between each other, when they used to work together, although everyone respected themselves on the surface, and at the same time listened carefully to each of them, but everyone was always invisibly separated by something, so that they could not get close to each other.

But after this incident, the relationship between the four of them must have improved a lot.

(End of chapter)