Lightning tore through the clouds, and the raindrops outside the window seemed to be connected. The heavy rain for several days brought the rapidly changing Jincheng to a halt abruptly.

The warships in the harbor had been hung with iron chains to prevent them from being struck by the mast. Not far from Haikou, there is a fortress under intense construction, and the shape of the four corners has taken shape.

Behind the fortress were four docks excavated at the same time, two large and two small.

The docks, brick kilns, iron works, armories, arsenals, and other buildings needed to make up a naval base are concentrated behind the fortress.

To the south of Jincheng, in the upper reaches of the Pattanii River, two more small bastions are under construction.

All buildings under construction are made of natural cement made of Philippine volcanic ash and lime. Before there was enough refractory material to make cement kilns, pozzolana cement was the main building material that Jincheng could quickly obtain. The problem with pozzolana cement compared to later cement is that it takes up to 6 months to set.

Surrounded by powerful enemies, they captured the city of Pattani, and the pirate and maritime merchant consortium, now renamed Jincheng, invested almost all the human resources such as prisoners of war and purchased slaves into the construction of armaments.

Even the highest legislative body in the city, the Senate of Kaneshiro, temporarily resided in the original royal palace. During the initial period, everything can only be simplified. In the early days of the Senate consisted of only 40 members, half from the fleet and half from representatives from various other stripes. The seats other than the fleet are not full today. New members of parliament must be approved by the Senate. The statute for the re-election of the Senate is not yet finalized, as it is very controversial. Chen Shouxuan could only suggest to the Senate that the differences be put aside and the existing personnel should remain unchanged for five years.

The only building that enjoys the same treatment as a military building and can be constructed using cement belongs to the Nanyang Bank. Chen Shouxu's fleet brought more than 400,000 pounds of silver from the Americas. This silver is worth 1.8 million pesos, 1.2 million taels of silver. In East Asia, that's a lot of money.

The patani belongs to the spoils of the alliance, and according to the size of the contribution in the battle, everyone will have a suitable position and income. But the silver brought from the Americas could only belong to the personnel of the original fleet. In Jincheng, Nanyang Bank is a privately owned bank, and its shareholding structure is basically a complete inheritance of the original fleet model. Nanyang Bank has some cross-positions with the Kaneshiro government, but there is no legal affiliation.

On the day of the establishment of Nanyang Bank, the original Fleet Council and the General Meeting of Shareholders announced the abolition. For this, the fleet also retired a group of old men. Chen Shouxu arranged some relatively comfortable posts for them in various units of the naval base and the Jincheng government.

The Nanyang Bank provided a loan of 300,000 taels of silver to the government of Cam Thanh for the purchase of slaves, grain and other supplies in Siam and Chenla. Considering the inseparable relationship between each other, the monthly interest rate is only 2.5%, which is already a very low interest rate in Asia, where the interest rate of commercial loans is often 100% for half a year. In the early days, the Jincheng government only seized the booty from the original Pattanii royal palace and treasury. The part of these loot that can be realized has to buy materials from outside, and Jincheng's treasury is now empty and can run rats. Nanyang Bank allowed the Jincheng government to capitalize the interest during the construction period, which simply means that it can borrow new money to repay the old, and the Ministry of Finance and Nanyang Bank do the bookkeeping.

The supreme governing body of the Golden Castle is a committee. Chen Shouxu became the convener of the committee in his position as the ruling party of the Jincheng Republic. In addition to Chen Shouxu, there are also the heads of the four departments of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Trade and Shipping, and the Ministry of the Interior, as well as the mayor of Jincheng and a justice.

There are many people in the fleet who can fight, but there are very few people who know how to build a country. Therefore, those who were already well educated in Europe became sweethearts. Marmont, for example, resigned from the post of captain and became Minister of the Interior. When there is a shortage of staff, cross-part-time work becomes unavoidable. Chen Shouxu and Marmont are still the chief and deputy admirals of the fleet, but they are no longer full-time captains of a certain warship.

The Minister of Finance was the former chairman of the fleet, Dryp. He was able to hold this position because he was old enough to serve the public. Under him, there is also a group of accountants from all over the country who are responsible for specific work.

The Minister of Defense was the former Quartermaster Cowlin, who had no military command powers, but was only responsible for personnel planning, base and logistics construction.

The Ministry of Trade and Shipping gave Lin Tongwen that Jincheng currently does not have an official merchant fleet. The existing merchant ships all belong to private companies, but the merchant ships registered in Jincheng are obliged to facilitate the requisition of the navy. The role of the Department of Trade and Shipping is to supervise and guide these trading companies.

The mayor of Jincheng is temporarily vacant, and Jincheng is still under military control, and the post of mayor, Chen Shouxu's idea is not to be in a hurry to choose. In the future, Jincheng will set up a city council, and then decide who will be the mayor.

The post of judge, since Arrambi Roberts was the only person among the former senior managers of the fleet who had a lawyer's license, also fell to him. Nowadays, the kings of Europe are very fond of appointing nobles with lawyers' licenses to serve as colonial governors, so it has also become fashionable to obtain a lawyer's license. But in the New World, there are very few people with this kind of educational background.

The conquistadors chose the mode they were most familiar with for many of the jobs.

In the case of land distribution, the Senate completely copied the Spanish system of entrusted guardianship in the Americas. The Senate entrusted large tracts of land seized from prisoners of war to meritorious persons as a reward for their conquests, and made them govern the land on their behalf. Under this system, land ownership belonged to the Senate. The guardian does not enjoy ownership, but only has the right to "guardianship", use and jurisdiction over the land and serfs within the scope of the entrusted guardianship. As important logistics channels, rivers and highways are not included in the sub-enclosure and belong to state-owned assets.

As a counterpart to power, it was the duty of the entrusted guardians to bring themselves armed to join the army when the Senate was called. But at the moment, that's not a problem. Because most of the entrusted guardians themselves serve in the military.

The country is not small, but most of the area is deserted forests. The entrusted guardians only drew a few circles on the map, and no one really went to their fiefdoms.

The issue of legislation is also very troublesome, and for the time being, it is still up to each family to manage the personnel of each family. How to integrate the customary laws of different peoples will be a long-term problem. Chen Shouxu's suggestion is to enact fewer provisions in the early stage, and wait until there are more precedents. For cases involving different groups, the only way to do so is to rely on a joint jury, along the lines of the Batavian Dutch.

The departments are now only in the framework and do not have detailed charters for specific mission boundaries. Chen Shouxu never thought that he could control the overall situation alone. The republic belongs to all, not to him alone. In short, the powers and tasks are delegated to each department, and each of them can figure out their own way. Everyone is nervously busy. In the initial period, everything is lacking, but there is no lack of enthusiasm. All the work is moving forward in a quarrel.

No matter how much silver Nanyang Bank has, it will be empty. Half of the dividends distributed to shareholders and loans to the government have been removed. Taking advantage of the fact that all the surrounding forces have not yet reacted to the rise of Jincheng, Jincheng's managers are spending money at an astonishing speed, turning money into materials and manpower.

The number of conquerors was too small relative to the theoretical land. In order to conserve military resources, Jincheng shrank backwards in both the north and south directions on the basis of the original Pattani Kingdom. Kelantan City and residential areas near Songkhla have been temporarily abandoned. The existing personnel are all gathered around the Golden City.

The Queen of Pattani and her husband escaped from the royal palace before the walls were completely lost, and should now be in the court of the Sultan of Johor. Chen Shouxu knew that his army was still a one-time army, and the most powerful blow had been used up, and now he had no ability to expand. It is also difficult to face enemy countries in both the north and south directions at the same time. The hostilities in Johor cannot be lifted in the short term, and Siam is the side that must be settled.

Soon after the founding of the Golden City, the emissaries rushed to Ayutthaya and exchanged honeysuckle, prisoners of war, and artworks seized from the palace for the recognition of King Parasadong. The Golden City could now exchange silver for supplies needed from Siam, and to provide military assistance to Siam when it needed it.

With the exception of certain wording obligations, on the whole, a relatively good treaty was reached with Siam. The king of Siam received silver, and Jincheng received supplies and manpower.

The first tranche of loans was quickly spent, and a second tranche is currently under negotiation. The influx of silver in a short period of time has caused prices to rise all around, which is a price that has to be paid. Faced with the lucrative profits, Phraya on the eastern border of Siam has now stepped up its invasion of Chenla to capture slaves to earn the silver.

In addition to taking the initiative to buy supplies from Siam, Jincheng also welcomes merchants from all over the world to come and trade. To this end, Jincheng reduced the tax rate to the lowest level in the entire peninsula. For a long time, the Golden City's income will not come from taxes, but from the trade it engages in. In order to leverage more resources, Nanyang Bank issued standardized bonds. In order to attract investment, the interest on the bonds is currently inverted with the income from the loan to the Jincheng government. As the chief officer, Chen Shouxu bought almost all of his fortune into such bonds. At present, the amount of bonds is not large, and it is mainly purchased by insiders. Modelled on the Piacenza trade fair, the market framework for the trading of bonds and promissory notes has been put in place, laying the foundation for future development.

On the diplomatic front, apart from Siam and Johor, Aceh, which is currently in a state of contraction, has not said anything about Jincheng. There is also no conflict of interest between Jincheng and Aceh.

Maiden had already gone to Batavia as an envoy. Because of the bad relationship with the Tianfang Sect, Batavia will be the only reliable trading partner of Jincheng for some time to come. Maiden's biggest reliance on this trip is sugar.

Sugar was not originally an important commodity. As recently as 1622, the price of sugar in Amsterdam was only 0.27 guilders per pound. That year, the United East India Company's homecoming fleet carried only 220,000 pounds of Chinese sugar to Europe. This is because the price of sugar in China is higher than in the Caribbean.

But ten years ago, around 1631, sugar prices in Europe soared. The price of raw sugar in the West Indies rose from 0.23 guilders to 0.59 guilders per pound in Amsterdam and to 0.67 guilders in 1637.

In this context, the board of directors in Amsterdam has repeatedly increased the amount of sugar purchased in Batavia. 400,000 pounds in 1631, 600,000 pounds in 1633, 1,000,000 pounds in 1636, and now 3,750,000 pounds in 1641.

White sugar from China is the most interesting variety for the Dutch, and as long as the Chinese sugar production can meet the demand, the Dutch have little interest in Banten and Bengal sugar. In order to encourage the Chinese to make sugar, in addition to encouraging the Chinese to cultivate plantations, in 1637 Van Dimen provided a 10-year tax holiday and interest-free loans to the first Chinese to establish a sugar factory in Batavia. The sugar mill in Rongguan uses a stone mill propelled by a mixture of hydraulic and animal power.

Jincheng is not yet able to reduce the cost of large-scale reclamation of sugarcane plantations, and it will not be competitive to rely on the sugar produced on its own plantations. Among the neighboring countries, Siam and Chenla are both large sugarcane growers, but their processing capacity can only reach the level of brown jaggery. This intermediate product, which the Dutch have no interest in, is not sold at a high price.

Relying on Siam's raw materials and the processing capacity of the Chinese, Jincheng set up a sugar factory. The Sugar Company was also the first private loan made by Nanyang Bank. As long as Jincheng can achieve the same cost of sugar as Leizhou, or even slightly higher, the product will not worry about sales. Transporting sugar from Leizhou to Batavia will be an extra high transportation cost.