Although the magic method of speeding up construction saves time and money, in order to make full use of its advantages, it is necessary to invest more money in the same amount of time.

Because the construction time has been reduced to a fraction, but the total amount of materials required has not changed (excluding logistics and warehousing), especially those mines and factories no longer need to wait for the construction of railways or ports to be completed, it will inevitably lead to a sharp increase in construction investment in the base areas.

Fortunately, the cost of the system is very low, and Li Hui has made a lot of money in the past few months, although the pressure is not small, but he can still afford it.

Excluding the time spent on the road and building makeshift camps, the less than 700 gold prospectors Li Hui sent to the lower Yukon River actually worked for about two months, but the total gold production there had already exceeded 20,000 taels, more than the combined gold mines in the base area during the same period.

This shows how easy it is to mine gold in the Land of Gold Rush.

Of course, the foundation laid by the previous technicians who worked hard to explore also contributed to it.

However, more than 600 people were too few after all, so within a few days of arriving at their destination, the group asked Li Hui through the message board, hoping to allow them to recruit more people.

In this regard, Li Hui was a little hesitant at first, he instinctively hoped that this secret could be leaked later, but he soon realized the key to the problem, "For me, the greatest value of gold and silver is to recruit biochemical soldiers, and the greatest value of biochemical soldiers is as the team I started, the larger the initial team, the faster the development of power." If you can get 100 tons of gold next year, it will be tens of thousands more backbone of development organizations, and if you can get it in the fifth year, you can only use it as an ordinary grassroots cadre, which is much less meaningful."

Understanding this truth, Li Hui immediately realized that obtaining a large amount of gold in a short period of time was the key, even if it was leaked in advance, resulting in only a fraction of the total amount of gold obtained in the end, it was completely worth it.

As a result, Li Hui immediately replied on the message board, agreeing that those gold diggers would recruit workers in North America, but in order to facilitate management and leak the news as late as possible, Li Hui only allowed them to recruit Chinese.

Although the total number of Chinese on the North American continent at this time was far less than later, it was enough to meet the needs of gold panning, considering that the "Chinese Exclusion Act" had been promulgated for many years and was now the most influential time, the situation of Chinese Americans was very difficult, and it should not be difficult to recruit people.

In addition, considering the need for self-defense, Li Hui also agreed that the gold diggers should conduct the necessary military training for the recruited Chinese workers without affecting the main business of gold mining.

However, the First Sino-Japanese rifles are not allowed to be issued to them, and it is not easy to transport pointed bullets to North America, which is not enough to support the training of so many people, and it is better to use them exclusively for biochemical soldiers who can maintain their level without training, and the Chinese workers can only make some rudimentary cold weapons for the time being, and follow the hunting and mending knives

Although Li Hui was pleasantly surprised by the gold rush, in the fourth quarter of 1894, Li Hui's main source of income was still the arms business.

As the reputation of the venture capital company gradually spread, in addition to Li Hongzhang's Huai army, other domestic forces also began to contact them, and by the end of the first year, the total sales had exceeded 800,000 taels of silver.

However, Li Hongzhang is still the largest customer of the venture capital company, and compared with the new order of 1.3 million taels of silver for the Huai Army, the bulk is still on the side of the Beiyang Navy

After the news of the Japanese government's frenzied purchase of ships reached Liugong Island, it immediately made the Beiyang Navy Division nervous again, but Zhou Chunyu, the representative of the venture capital company stationed in Liugong Island, comforted Liu Buyun and said, "You should be glad that the Japanese government did not make up its mind earlier, if they bought these warships before the Battle of Dadonggou, then your army would be completely useless." But now, even if they add so many new warships, your army will still have the strength to fight."

"That's right." After the loss of a large number of backbones in the Battle of Dadonggou, the quality of the officers and men of the Japanese Navy has dropped significantly, and the time it takes to familiarize themselves with the new ship is bound to be longer, and it is very likely that it will not be able to do it for a whole year.

However, Japan is a small country and cannot hold out for too long, so it will definitely not wait for its combat strength to be fully formed before launching a decisive battle at sea.

In this way, relying on the overwhelming advantage in the quality of personnel, even if the Beiyang Naval Division is inferior to the opponent's boss in terms of hard power, it may not necessarily be unable to win.

However, thinking that the Japanese government had quickly completed such a large-scale arms procurement with unimaginable efficiency, and that the Qing court, after learning of the great victory in the Battle of Dadonggou, did not increase the allocation of naval funds on the grounds that it was unnecessary, and even lacked money to replenish a batch of explosive shells and smokeless propellant kits, Liu Buyun's face still unconsciously showed a look of indignation

After guessing Liu Buyun's thoughts, Zhou Chunyu laughed, "Actually, to a certain extent, the Japanese Navy is so crazy about strengthening its armaments, which may be a good thing for your army." The princes of the imperial court are all short-sighted, only if they are clearly aware of the threat of the enemy, they are willing to throw silver into it, you might as well let Admiral Lin go to the road, try to exaggerate the impact of the armaments purchased by the Japanese army, uh, you may not understand it if you say it too professionally, you simply compare the price directly, the Japanese spent more than 20 million taels of silver at one time, more than twice the total purchase price of all the warships of your army, no, it should only be compared to the capital ships purchased, that is 3 times, well, so it seems that the gap is even greater. At the same time, the embarrassment of your army's lack of ammunition, fuel and maintenance is more serious, well, especially to point out that once the naval battle is lost, the Japanese army can directly land in Tianjin and threaten the city of Beijing, and this is what the imperial court is most afraid of, and I don't believe they still refuse to allocate money."

Liu Buyun's face suddenly turned different when he heard this, and Zhou Chunyu smiled when he saw this, "Do you think this is cheating funds?" That's right, this is cheating funds, no way, honest people have always suffered losses in this world. If you say that you need 1 million taels, maybe only 300,000 taels are allocated, which is not enough at all, and you can only be alarmist and report more, saying that you need 3 million taels, generally speaking, as long as the reason is not too absurd, even if 1 million taels cannot be deceived, 7 or 800,000 taels of silver are always some of the military leaders of Western countries, whether it is the army or the navy, are very good at this set. But if you want to be a good admiral, you don't have to be like a captain who only needs to complete military tasks."