On Saturday, August 5, 1645, the first year of the Ming Empire, the 14th day of the leap June.

A horse-drawn carriage drove along a forest road on the outskirts of Pearl Island, heading inland to the southwest. Flat, gravel-asphalt roads are flanked by lush, soggy tropical primeval forests, and occasionally one or two heavy pallet trucks loaded with produce from suburban agricultural farms are missed by horse-drawn wagons.

The wild plantain trees, which are unattended all year round, have heavy ears of fruit hanging from the car window, and the canopy of tall tropical trees almost obscures half of the sky, and the temperature on the forest road is still a little cool.

In the carriage, Deng Jiaqiang, who was dressed in a straight and gorgeous army officer's uniform, was supporting his chin with one hand, leaning against the window and looking at the scenery, with a cynical smile on his young and delicate face.

Opposite Deng Jiaqiang, there was a girl wearing an ordinary Daming dress. A pair of hands were placed in front of him, rubbing a silk handkerchief, his body was tense, and his expression was very restrained, or obviously timid.

"You said you just came for a ride, why are you so nervous, and you're afraid that I will eat you?" There seemed to be the sound of the girl's nervous breathing in his ears, Deng Jiaqiang turned his gaze back to the carriage and laughed softly, "I remember that you are on the night shift tomorrow night, right?" Today is my rare vacation, so I'll walk with me and send you back when the time comes. ”

"The little woman knows ......" The girl's face turned red as soon as she brushed the ground, and her head was lowered, as if she was afraid of letting the other party see her embarrassed expression.

"Where was the last time?" Deng Jiaqiang sat upright, took off a military kettle hanging on the wall of the carriage, and handed it over, "The scenery of Qingzhou Camel Mountain, or the peach of Qingzhou?" ”

The girl carefully took the kettle handed by the other party, gently sipped the sweet juice in her mouth, and quickly lowered her head: "It's talking about the Haotian Palace and the Giant Buddha in Qingzhou Camel Mountain...... My mother has taken the little girl to incense a few times, and now I still remember the Qing ......"

One question and one answer. The embarrassing and dull atmosphere in the carriage gradually dissipated, and occasionally Deng Jiaqiang was surprised or confused, which could also cause the girl to chuckle, and Deng Jiaqiang's mood also calmed down from the previous boredom and discomfort.

The girl in front of her was the hostess Deng Jiaqiang once met with Ren Xingzhong and Lu Yuzhou in a restaurant on the commercial street of Mingzhu City, and she was teased by Deng Jiaqiang indiscriminately at that time.

In the days that followed, Deng Jiaqiang visited the restaurant more than once, and asked the girl surnamed Fang to be in charge of the private room service. Sometimes several people go together, but more often, Deng Jiaqiang is alone.

When Deng Jiaqiang was adopted by Deng Mingquan, chairman of the board of directors of Huamei Wood Group. Not yet a year old. It can be said that in the years when Deng Jiaqiang was growing up, on the surface, he was no different from the biological children of other gorgeous and powerful families, and he did not feel the shackles of any old memories at all.

Deng Jiaqiang's adoptive mother, or Deng Mingquan's first wife, was the first batch of refugee households to move from Daming, and gave birth to a daughter to Deng Mingquan before Deng Jiaqiang entered the Deng family, which is Deng Jiaqiang's sister. It's a pity that just this time of childbirth, Deng Jiaqiang's adoptive mother suffered from Yan zhòng's postpartum physical weakness. Then he lost the ability to continue to have children, but he died in a few years. Later, Deng Mingquan married a younger and more beautiful oriental wife, and then gave birth to several younger siblings for Deng Jiaqiang.

Deng Jiaqiang and his first adoptive mother were together for a short time, so short that they couldn't even remember the appearance of the other party. Although he is a titular son of the Deng family. But in addition to having the best relationship with her sister Deng Jiayi since childhood, the relationship with her stepmother is very cold, especially after the birth of several younger siblings, the relationship within the family is full of various subtle tensions.

When Deng Jiaqiang was in elementary school. By chance, he overheard his own background from the private conversation between the steward of the manor and the servants. It turns out that he is not his father's biological son, no wonder he has no resemblance to his father's appearance, and he understands the root cause of his stepmother's cold attitude towards him.

Deng Mingquan is a typical ambitious man who puts his mind on the family business. And the personality is more impatient, with what he once said to summarize: Huamei Wood Group is not a unique enterprise in China, if you want to survive and maintain the status of the enterprise, you must seize a favorable opportunity and conditions to expand the group's territory.

It is precisely because of this that Deng Mingquan's discipline or education of the children of the family is lackluster, and almost all the young wives in the family are in charge. However, the relationship between his wife and his eldest son was not harmonious, but it did not attract Deng Mingquan's attention. In other words, in Deng Mingquan's heart, adopting Deng Jiaqiang at the beginning was just a positive gesture in the middle of the crowd, and what will happen to this child in the future, the importance of the family's future is even far inferior to that of the first biological daughter Deng Jiayi.

After that, Deng Jiaqiang was sent by his parents to study in Qingcheng, Haizhou, until university, and the number of times he went home to get together with his parents was also a handful. Over the years, the feeling of being a stranger to his parents and family has created Deng Jiaqiang's sunny and free on the surface, but unruly and withdrawn on the inside.

Like Su Fangwei of the Su family and Yan Shuming of the Yan family, Deng Jiaqiang, who is still in his third year of warehousing and logistics, finally chose to interrupt his studies and join the army. After a year and a half of short-term training at the military academy, Deng Jiaqiang joined the Eastern Brigade of the National Defense Force as a second lieutenant logistics quartermaster and came to Pearl Island. It is said that even this job appointment was arranged by his father Deng Mingquan behind the scenes.

Before leaving, Deng Jiaqiang finally learned the information of his biological mother from an old servant in the manor, a widow from Qingzhou, Shandong Province, who was trafficked by Dutch traffickers from the far east. After boarding North America, due to the deterioration of health on the way and the lack of adaptation, Deng Jiaqiang died soon after, and the infant Deng Jiaqiang was taken to Deng's house shortly after.

Since then, Tang has been privately exposed to some oriental stories or rumors, consciously or unconsciously. When the girl surnamed Fang from Qingzhou, Shandong Province appeared in front of her, Deng Jiaqiang was full of a strong sense of intimacy that was difficult to express.

Just a few months after arriving on Pearl Island, Deng Jiaqiang received a telegram from home and learned of three major events.

The first major event is that Deng Jiayi, the sister with the deepest affection between sister and brother, got married and married to Haimen City, Haizhou. The brother-in-law is Zhou Bitang, the eldest son of Zhou Junting, chairman of the board of directors of Xinhua Chemical Group, who is in a high position as the mayor of Haimen City, and has an unlimited future.

Deng Jiaqiang saw the mystery almost at a glance, because his father made a large investment in Haimen City a few years ago, invested heavily in the purchase of a vast area of natural forest farms, not to mention the purchase of a complete set of comprehensive forest industry projects such as wood processing, board making, papermaking, pine resin and wood dry distillation chemicals. Establishing a closer bond with the Zhou family, who are also core members of the Oriental Union Group and monopolize the domestic chemical industry, is probably the life arrangement made by his father Deng Mingquan for his sister Deng Jiayi.

The second big thing. It was his father who transferred all the shares of the Far East Agriculture and Forestry Seedling Company under the group to his own name, and instructed himself to retire and settle down in the Pearl Island in the future.

Far East Agriculture, Forestry and Seedling Company is one of the key industries of Huamei Wood Group's overseas investment in Pearl Island, providing hundreds of local jobs, especially half of them are women. For more than 10 years, the cooperation between Tongguò and the Agricultural University of Porter has successfully completed the seedling breeding project of dozens of tropical or subtropical agricultural and forestry crops.

From coconut palms, rubber trees, and oil nan, to abaca, oil palm, and spices, the company has almost monopolized the seedling supply market for tropical and subtropical agricultural and forestry crops in Southeast Asia and Hainan Island in the Ming Dynasty.

Although the company is not large, and it is not a high-profiteering industry. However, the operating conditions are very stable, and the annual net profit after tax is at least 10,000 US dollars or 20,000 US dollars, not to mention the value of the large experimental forest farm that belongs to the company's fixed assets.

This means that Deng Mingquan used a superficially generous way of dividing and granting property during his lifetime to "exile" Deng Jiaqiang to the Far East, so as to eliminate the internal conflicts within the family and the possible heir problems in the future.

The third major event is more closely related to Deng Jiaqiang's future. Deng Mingquan has already set Deng Jiaqiang's marriage plan, and the marriage partner is Liu Jun, the fifth daughter of Liu Xiang, the lord of the Southeast Asian Allied "Lanfang Free Collar".

Although Liu Xiang has more than a dozen wives and concubines and countless children, only three of them have been sent to Huamei as "hostages" and received Huamei education.

Liu Xiang's second son Liu Yongxin and third son Liu Yongan, as well as the fifth daughter Liu Jun. Several children were sent to live in overseas territories on Huamei Pearl Island when they were only a few years old. Five years ago, three children were sent to middle school in the capital of China, Manchester City, two of the sons have been admitted to the National University of China and the United States this year, and the daughter Liu Jun was deliberately arranged to return to Pearl Island after graduating from middle school. Enrolled in the secretarial higher vocational class of Mingzhu Municipal Higher Vocational and Technical College.

On the surface, the Oriental Union Corporation is a large overseas enterprise, but in essence, the core composition is a large capital cooperation organization of a group of liberal capitalists, including Huamei Wood Group, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the Oriental Union is a chaebol. Huamei's development support strategy for Lanfangguo, Huamei Wood Group also has a lot of investment interests in it. In particular, in recent years, the rubber planting and oil nan planting projects have been vigorously promoted in Lanfangguo. It is also the core profit income of the Deng family in the Far East.

It is said that when the Deng family first entered these two industries, they had a verbal conflict with Ren Changle, who monopolized the supply of overseas rubber, and Zhang Li, who monopolized the domestic oil and chemical industry. In the end, it was through the coordination mechanism of industry and market monopoly within the liberals that a final settlement was reached.

Deng Jiaqiang married Liu Jun, the fifth daughter of Liu Xiang, the lord of Lanfang. It has to be said that Deng Mingquan is bent on squeezing into the key point of Lanfang's national economic field. As for Deng Jiaqiang's own thoughts, no one has ever considered Deng Mingquan's consistent family dictatorial style.

And stories like this are actually far from Deng Jiaqiang's case. A considerable number of the adopted children who have crossed through many families have been more or less estranged explicitly or covertly when they grow up, and the clan blood kinship in the genes of oriental culture still dominates this group that considers itself advanced.

……

"Deng Gongzi? Is it that the little woman is too boring to say? ”

I don't know when, the girl whispered and fished Deng Jiaqiang back from the memory. Looking at the other party's long silence and distraction, the girl was a little overwhelmed.

"It's nothing, I guess I drank too much yesterday."

The carriage passed through the dense primeval jungle, and in the distance a regular farm and forest farm gradually emerged. Seeing the approaching experimental forest farm and nursery of the Far East Tropical Agriculture and Forestry Seedling Company, which covers an area of more than 3,000 acres and is fenced with wooden fences and wires, Deng Jiaqiang regained his kind and sunny smile, and took off his military hat and put it on nonchalantly.

Recalling that Deng Jiaqiang drunkenly invited himself to go out sightseeing in the private room of the restaurant late last night, the girl's face turned red.

The carriage crossed the forest farm path and finally stopped in front of a large manor villa with an elegant environment, and the middle-aged European manager and Chinese housekeeper of the Far Eastern Seedling Company, who had long been waiting here, were respectfully guarding the gate.

This is the property that Deng Mingquan bought on Pearl Island on a whim a few years ago, imagining that one day he would travel here to live, but since it was built a year ago, Deng Mingquan seems to have forgotten about this place. In the end, it just contributed to the local real estate development. The luxury estate, which cost tens of thousands of dollars to build, is empty, and only a well-paid housekeeping team is here to take care of some of the day-to-day tasks that don't make much sense.

When Deng Jiaqiang was forcibly arranged by his family to arrange his future, this manor became Deng Jiaqiang's residence on Pearl Island. An empty home that truly belongs to him, even during his vacation, it is difficult for Deng Jiaqiang to come back to live once.

"Eldest young master, you are here, you want to rest at home today, right?"

The middle-aged Chinese housekeeper is the first batch of naturalized nationals on Pearl Island, and even has a black history of being a small pirate under Liu Xiang for several years. However, sixteen years have passed, and this Chinese housekeeper has already been reborn into a new gorgeous life and has children. The days went by smoothly. Because he was quick and good at observing words and feelings, he was recommended as the head of the Deng family's Far East Manor, and lived a leisurely life without worrying about food and clothing.

"Mr. Ensign, welcome to the Forestry Base of Far East Seedling Company, if you need to check the business operation in the first half of the year, I can ask the secretary to send the text to you!"

The European experience of the local company is also full of smiles, and the second lieutenant of the Chinese Army in front of him has been the real owner of this place since a few months ago.

"Hmm. I have a weekend break here, and I have invited a friend to come here and ask for a maid to take care of it. Also, Mr. Manager. I'm not here to work, and I don't know anything about these businesses and have no interest. Deng Jiaqiang didn't even look at the European manager, then turned around and greeted a plainly dressed Chinese girl from the car door.

"But Mr. Deng, the chairman of the board of directors, has already handed over the management of this place to you. The company's latest registration of shareholding and legal entity adjustments has also been completed. If you have no other instructions, you can only continue with your previous business plan. The European manager nodded awkwardly, frustrated that he hadn't made the right time.

"Need my instructions? That put the operating profit for the first half of the year. Let's donate half to the social support fund of the city hall. After Deng Jiaqiang finished speaking, he walked towards the manor without looking back, but the girl who was traveling with him was a little panicked.

Hearing this instruction, the European manager's mouth opened wide. Although the seedling company has a stable profit, it also has a lot of expenses, especially the experimental forest farm, which employs more workers, and the annual salary cost is tens of thousands of dollars.

Of course, the Chinese housekeeper was an old man, but he secretly looked at the strange girl who was accompanying him, and immediately understood, and hurriedly beckoned a few maids to lead the girl to follow behind his own young man.

If there are worries, it is destined to be a weekend holiday that does not make people relax. Even though the Chinese housekeeper specially arranged a whole table of exquisite lunches for Yingshangyi, and specially instructed the maids to dress up the girls from top to bottom, Deng Jiaqiang was absent-minded during the lunch.

"Manager John, do you need to send a letter to the eldest master? I heard that Miss Liu Jiawu is about to go to Pearl Island......"

The Chinese housekeeper who exited the restaurant had been secretly checking the lunch situation outside the door. With a pair of shrewd eyes, it took a long time to mutter to the European manager next to him.

"I'm sorry, but I'm only in charge of the day-to-day management of the company and don't intend to interfere in any of Mr. Ensign's personal affairs. Oh, I need to get back to the office now, and if Mr. Ensign needs to know the company's accounts, I can always send someone to get it. The European manager had also heard about the family marriage arranged by the Deng family for a long time, but at this time he was very cunning and avoided it.

The European manager left, and the Chinese housekeeper looked at the sky outside the window at this time, looking a little unpredictable. (To be continued......)

PS: It's a bit off-line.,There's only a draft of a dozen chapters with untidy content.,Sure enough, it was done in diligence and defeated in slackness.。

Let's update a chapter today, and strive for another triple shot next week.