By August, the number of slaves had doubled to 49. In order to reduce the consumption of food, Hong Tao had to be a bad guy again, and despite public opinion, he reduced the daily meals of all slaves from three meals to two.

Only children under the age of 15 can eat three meals without having to do heavy physical work, just study hard at school.

With these slaves as the main labor, the camp expanded so quickly that the original yard had more than tripled, and rows of wooden houses had risen inland along the riverbank.

Many of the trees on the north bank have been cut down, even the roots have been dug up, the land has been leveled, and more than 20 acres of rice fields have grown more than a foot high.

If you look at it from the air, the north bank of the Jinhe River, which is densely covered with jungles, and when you reach more than 200 meters within the coastline, a bare clearing suddenly appears, like a ghost shaving his head.

This expansion shows no signs of stopping, and according to Hongtao's plan, all the trees within a five-kilometer radius will be ruthlessly cut down, leaving only a few trees to dot the village and future roads.

The reclaimed land will be planted with rice, and irrigation facilities will have to be excavated, using simple windmills and water wheels to lift water below the river bank and irrigate the farmland through a network of ditches.

If heavy rains fall during the rainy season, these networks of ditches can drain excess water into the Golden River.

The temperature on Luzon Island is above 25 degrees Celsius all year round, and as long as the rice seedlings are planted, it can grow normally, even if you can't grow three seasons of rice, four seasons of rice, two seasons of rice is still no problem.

As long as there are no large-scale pests and diseases in these paddies, they will be able to meet the needs of more people.

However, the villagers of Jinhewan are not experiencing pests and diseases, but wild animals.

Those monkeys, wild boars, hares, wild mice, and other things seem to be very fond of rice, so they come and sweep them when they have nothing to do.

For this reason, Hong Tao had to arrange manpower, take slaves on duty all night, and light bonfires around the rice fields to drive away those pesky little ones.

In mid-September, Hong Tao sailed out of Jinhe Bay again, this time not to catch slaves, but to return to Ximaozhou to pick up people.

Jinhewan has been regarded as the completion of the reclamation, and there is an urgent shortage of labor at the moment, and the manpower on Ximaozhou has to be transferred to Jinhewan, not only the rest of the Weng family, the Bu family, and the Chen family have to come over, but I am afraid that a few more families will have to be pulled, leaving only Bo Fu and Bo Xiaoer to stay there to help them keep an eye on the production of whale oil.

Can a ship fit so many people on the Predator?

Definitely not.

But it doesn't matter, the Predator's sister ship, the Whaler, should also be launched.

When Hong Tao pulled the whale back in July, Boss Wen had already basically built the hull of the ship, leaving only some parts in the cabin that had not been installed.

With this new ship, Hong Tao has three ships that can be called upon, not only has the transportation capacity doubled, but the whaling team finally has a dedicated whaling ship, so that Hong Tao no longer has to go to sea to chase whales, and by the way, he can also take care of the work of transporting supplies to Jinhe Bay, so that he can spend more time on capturing slaves, exploring routes, and perfecting nautical charts.

His charts are still north of Kalimantan and have not been developed for months.

"I really said that I want to leave here, I'm still a little reluctant to do this......"

In the end, the Tan family who followed Hong Tao added the old man Rong, he was put on the boat by Hong Tao's death and life, Hong Tao's theory is that the ancestors stipulated that two generations of people in the territorial sea cannot be together, but the ancestors' rules did not say that one is on land and the other is not at sea.

He asked Old Man Rong to go to Jinhewan to be the official village head, and with this sensible, selfless, and prestigious old man to help him sit in Jinhewan, even if he sailed away, he would be relieved a lot.

And there is his own father-in-law Bo Fu staring at Ximaozhou here, so there is no need to worry.

"Hehehe...... Weng Weng, when you get there, you will immediately forget about this place, if you don't believe it, ask my third brother, he will definitely not lie to you. ”

Hong Tao stood beside Old Man Rong, looking at Ximaozhou farther and farther away, and he didn't have any nostalgia in his heart.

On the contrary, he felt like a chick that had just taken off from its nest, and could finally break free from its original shackles and spread its wings.

"Weng Weng, it's good there, you can't grow more land, you can eat whatever you want, there are countless prey in the forest. Sometimes we don't have to go into the woods, and those guys come and wreak havoc on our crops at night, killing several in one night! ”

Bo Xiaosan has been very comfortable in Jinhewan these days, and even when Hong Tao pulled him on the boat to go back to Ximaozhou together, he didn't want to leave, and always wanted to reclaim a few more acres of land, so that when his brother and grandpa came over in the future, there would be ready-made good land to plant.

"How can there be such a good place in the world?"

Old man Rong doesn't believe it now, but he just can't understand why none of the Tan family members could find this kind of place before, and no one thought of this idea.

"Weng Weng, there are so many good places, we used to be too close to each other, and we saw too little. This time, Uncle Wen's family will go back with me, and they will start building a bigger sailing ship with Uncle Wen, and I will take you farther away when the time comes. If you fancy somewhere, let's occupy it again, as long as our Tanjia boat can reach in the future, it will be the land of the Tanjia family, maybe bigger than the Great Song Dynasty! ”

Hong Tao remembered that there were already hundreds of people around him, plus those slaves were almost two hundred, which was enough for a small village, and he was a little high-spirited.

At this rate, it snowballed, and within three years, Jinhe Bay would become a large town and a large port, and when the time came, it would be possible to exchange all kinds of goods with merchants with the abundant wood, whale oil, soap, candles, gold and copper, and soon it would become a prosperous trading port.

At that time, the land in front of the mountains can be developed along the coastline, and it will not be a problem to feed more than 100,000 people, and even continue to advance inland along the upper reaches of the Jinhe River, and maybe find a suitable place to live and more abundant minerals.

Jinhe Marine Resources Management Co., Ltd. is not just a name, it will become an economic entity with a city, a production base, a trading port, or it will become a territory, in essence, a country.

"You have too big a heart, do you still want to be the emperor?"

Old man Rong heard Hong Tao's voiceover, he was not as panicked as Chen Mingen, nor was he as worried as Huang Hai and Old Man Bofu, but just asked in a low voice.

"No, the emperor's position sounds wonderful, but it's not a beautiful thing, all day long to be wary of others overthrowing him, usurping power, even his brothers and sisters can't be trusted, it's too tiring to live. My ideal is to let the cooperatives continue like this forever, no one should be the emperor, no one should be the usurper, everyone will discuss problems together, everyone will share benefits together, and everyone will bear the hardships together. Of course, my ideal may be a bit too good, but I'm going to give it a try, and who knows if I can succeed, and if I don't try, I'll never know. ”

Since Old Man Rong raised this question, Hong Tao happened to explain his thoughts to him, this question will be raised sooner or later, and it is better to explain it clearly sooner than later.

Those who can understand themselves should work together, and those who can't understand themselves should leave as soon as possible, so as not to cause any conflicts in the future.

Hong Tao didn't force himself to do anything, he would play more if he could, play less if he didn't, or simply play something else.

There are many things that interest you in this day and age, and there is no need to hang yourself from a tree.

"Let's discuss? What if we can't discuss going together? ”

Old man Rong couldn't understand Hong Tao's remarks and thoughts that were out of the times.

"If you can't discuss it together, you can continue to discuss, even if you don't do anything, you can't let one person have the final say. We are not afraid of slowness, but we are afraid of going the wrong way, which will waste more time and resources, and will break the hearts of many people, so that future generations will also want to be this one-man figure, and then it will become everyone desperate to grab the emperor's seat. Would you like to see that in the future, in order to become emperors, they will think about how to kill my son every day? I don't want to see it. ”

Anyway, he has to sail on the sea for several days, Hong Tao has time to talk to the old man Rong about his ideals, one day can not finish talking about two days, two days can not be finished for ten days, ten days can not be finished for a hundred days, as long as he is clear, it is equivalent to talking through Bo Fu, Chen Mingen, Huang Hai, Wen Laoda, Wen Lao Er, these old people of the Tan family, with these old people of the Tan family to help themselves stand and cheer, Bo Xiaoer, Bo Xiaosan, Huang Lang, Huang Tao, these middle-aged people of the Tan family will also abide by the rules.

The rest of the young people and children of the Tan family, Hong Tao himself can persuade them and influence them, as for a small number of natives, they can't make waves, and those slaves have no right to deliberate, so they can be ignored for the time being.

"You are a person who has studied, I don't understand these truths, Weng Weng I don't understand these truths, it's better for the Tan family to follow you than ever before, Weng Weng I believe you, and I support what you say. If you say that you are not the emperor, then it is not appropriate, Weng Weng, I will help you keep an eye on it, who dares to think crookedly, I will be the first to disagree. ”

It's a pity that Old Man Rong didn't give Hong Tao a chance to convince him, or he didn't want to know what Hong Tao thought at all, he only valued what Hong Tao did.