Although Alexander III was reluctant to admit it, the defeat of the Cossack Empire was an inevitable fact, and the army of the Chinese Empire was still encroaching on the eastern territories of the Cossack Empire, and if the war could not be ended as soon as possible, the Cossack Empire would pay an even heavier price.

Knowing the situation of the road, the anger in his heart could not be calmed, so the angry Alexander III could still summon the Minister of Finance Dimitrov to discuss the possibility of expanding the scale of the land war, and if he could, he still hoped to invest more troops to save face.

After a series of battles, the treasury was already empty, and this time Dimitrov could not hold back any longer, and he directly told Alexander III that the treasury was completely empty. If the Cossack army had to force its sortie, it would have to extract at least a hundred tons of gold from the emperor's private stockpiles as an upfront capital investment, and then how much more would be invested would depend on the course and scale of the war.

The Cossack royal family was a well-known miser, and if he was asked to come up with so much money, it would be like cutting his flesh. After thinking about it, Alexander III felt that even if he took out the gold, the purpose of the war might not be achieved, and it was better to fight for it at the negotiating table, as long as he had strong strength as the backing, he believed that he would not suffer.

The treasury had no money available, and Alexander III had nothing to offer, so he had no choice but to hope for negotiations.

The next day, the Cossack Empire sent Foreign Minister Nikolayevich and Deputy Finance Minister Brozhnev to the Chinese Consulate to discuss the armistice, after all, they still held Marshal Baglamyan and tens of thousands of Cossack naval officers and men prisoners, in addition to the army's Admiral Romanov and tens of thousands of army officers and men also lingering in the encirclement of the other side.

As winter approached, the temperature in the northern land plummeted, and the actions of the Chinese army were suspended, and even the soldiers of the defense army besieging the city of Kuli built warm houses near the positions and burned ondols to prevent frostbite.

Due to the poor road conditions, the winter supplies in the settlements are not abundant, but fortunately, there are many forests in these areas, and the harvest from hunting can also supplement some food for the winter.

Only the first few settlements have been living for half a year, and they have caught up with the sowing of the last season, and the grain harvest is so large that it is enough to survive the winter without the need for government care.

Although the East China Bank had begun to mobilize construction teams to plan the construction of railways in the Far East, the time was too short, and the railways were only built for less than 200 kilometers, and the construction of the railways was forced to stop when winter came.

Fang Xiaoyu knew that it was not enough to build the railway, but now the territory of the Chinese Territory has increased a lot, and the cost of the railway is very high, so it is impossible to cover everything, so a large number of roads are needed as a supplement.

Although the highway can only use horse-drawn carriages now, it doesn't matter, when the internal combustion engine can be put into practice, the role of the highway will be greatly increased, and even more than the railway, if the time comes to start building the road, it will be a little late, so Fang Xiaoyu has already started to build cement roads in advance in various parts of the Chinese Territory, but in the Far East Fang Xiaoyu has encountered problems.

The latitude of the Far East is relatively high, and the lowest temperature can reach minus forty or fifty degrees in winter, and cement roads are very easy to crack and damage in such cold conditions.

If you want to build a road at such a high latitude, the best choice is an asphalt road, but now there is no oil industry, naturally there is no asphalt, which makes Fang Xiaoyu scratch his head very much, he never thought that the reason why he needed oil was to get the waste residue in the oil.

Without asphalt, it is impossible to build a large number of roads in the Far East, and it is impossible to effectively control the Far East, so Fang Xiaoyu decided to start building oil fields.

Xiao Feng's scan made Fang Xiaoyu know the mineral situation in the territory well, and he directly ordered the engineering team to start drilling in a place in Dalinghe Mansion in Shuangcheng County, with Fang Xiaoyu's precise positioning, the oil well only spewed out oil after only more than 30 meters.

The field had been drilled with fifty wells, and Fang Xiaoyu had built a petrochemical plant nearby, and although the distillation column was quickly manufactured, Fang Xiaoyu did not want to separate all the petroleum products.

At present, there is no internal combustion engine, gasoline and diesel are of little use, and these two substances are not easy to store and are very prone to fire, so Fang Xiaoyu plans to separate the oil into heavy oil and asphalt first.

Heavy oil is not volatile and easy to preserve, Fang Xiaoyu can set up a warehouse to store these heavy oils first, and then separate them for use a second time when the internal combustion engine appears.

The newly established petrochemical plant is not large in scale and the workers are not skilled, so the output is not high. However, it is winter, the roads in the Far East are not yet open, and the petrochemical plants still have enough time to stock up on asphalt.

Later, the two 'Lanting' class battleships that were built and did not catch up with the naval battle of Diaoyu Shrimp Island have also entered the outfitting stage and will soon be ready for sea trials, and at the same time Holland has developed the first submarine.

This submarine has only 152 tons of underwater displacement, the whole hull is oval, with two pairs of horizontal wings, the submarine is battery-powered, can continue to sail 80 kilometers underwater, the speed is three knots, the maximum depth is five meters, three people are carried, and the injection and drainage of two water tanks are used for lifting.

This submarine is only an experimental version of the most rudimentary class, purely for the sake of gaining experience. The second submarine, Holland, was intended to use a barracuda-type hull and steam-electric dual power, but because the steam power required a chimney to exhaust smoke, the problem of chimney waterproofing and the oversize of the steam engine could not be solved for a while.

Now the territory of China is getting bigger and bigger, and things are getting more and more complicated, fortunately, the administrative staff have two years of experience, and the school has also trained a group of barely qualified personnel to supplement, and the government is operating normally, but due to the increasing number of people entering and getting faster and faster, the Department of Civil Affairs is a little overwhelmed.

In order to facilitate management, Fang Xiaoyu proposed the ID card system in a timely manner. The census and the issuance of identity cards will be carried out in the Chinese territory, as will the identity cards issued to new immigrants, and these population information will be filed in the local police stations.

I don't know what to do if I don't check it, and it really startled Fang Xiaoyu when I checked it. Unexpectedly, the increased immigration efforts in the past two years have actually brought the population to more than 13 million, exceeding 10 million.

With such a large population, Fang Xiaoyu once again asked Zhonghua Group to spend a lot of money to expand the production line and build a new factory, with the support of Xiaofeng, Fang Xiaoyu has more than a dozen new products.

The current research speed of Xiaofeng is not fast, mainly because Fang Xiaoyu knows that the technology needs to be developed in a balanced way, so he asked Xiaofeng to try to maintain a balanced research in each project, which has slowed down the speed of scientific and technological updates, but the comprehensiveness of science and technology has been greatly improved.

Xiao Feng's slowdown in research speed did not hinder the development of the territory much, because Fang Xiaoyu also had the help of two experimental groups, and he was not worried about the progress of scientific and technological development. The rapid development in the early stage has made the scientific and technological level of the Chinese collar a large step ahead of the world level, and it will not be surpassed easily.

The river water in January has frozen, and the cold wind makes people shiver, but at this time, Fang Xiaoyu is standing on the dock of Vladivostok Port with a hot heart.

A regular round-trip passenger ship from the West Continent to the East Continent began to slowly enter the port, two in front of one behind three huge iron anchors into the sea, the cable was also fixed on the berth by the sailors of the pier, the suspension ladder of the disembarkation soon approached the hull, and the guests on board began to disembark one after another.

"Husband." A crisp voice sounded, and then a pink shadow threw herself into Fang Xiaoyu's arms.

Fang Xiaoyu held up the pretty face in his arms with both hands and said, "Let me see, my baby has lost weight." Xia Tingyunjiao smiled and shook off Fang Xiaoyu's hand and said, "No, I haven't seen you in the past few years, and I don't know how stable I have been." ”

Fang Xiaoyu smiled: "Then it would be good if you lived for a few more years." ”

Xia Tingyun threw herself into Fang Xiaoyu's arms again and murmured, "No, in fact, I miss you." ”

Fang Xiaoyu stroked the satin-like long hair of the beautiful woman in his arms and looked ahead. A shadow in a pale yellow cotton suit was standing there smiling at him.

Fang Xiaoyu stretched out his left hand and beckoned to Xia Tingwei and said, "Wei'er, come here." Xia Tingwei walked over with a smile, and also threw herself into Fang Xiaoyu's arms and whispered: "Husband, I miss you so much." ”

The pedestrians on the pier couldn't help but look sideways when they saw three such handsome people hugging each other, but when they saw a few big men behind Fang Xiaoyu and another beautiful woman who was fully armed, they also knew that this was definitely a big man.

After saving for a while, Fang Xiaoyu let go of the two sisters and said, "Okay, it's windy here, let's go home and hug it again." ”

Xia Tingyun blushed and said, "I won't let you hug you when I go home." ”

Fang Xiaoyu smiled and gently scratched Xia Tingyun's nose and said, "You two, you just came back and didn't go home first, so you came to me first." ”

Xia Tingyun said: "We miss you, anyway, it's a few days before the New Year, so let's come to see you first, and by the way, let's also see my mother." ”

Fang Xiaoyu said with a smile: "I haven't passed the door yet, and I have changed my name." ”

Xia Tingyun knew that she was speechless, and her face was flushed, and she hammered Fang Xiaoyu a few times. Xia Tingwei said: "Can't you go back to the capital with us?" ”

Fang Xiaoyu pretended to be embarrassed and sighed, making the two sisters very disappointed. Seeing the disappointed expressions of the two women, Fang Xiaoyu smiled again and said: "There are a lot of major events that have happened this year, so the emperor wants to specially recruit all the lords to come to Beijing to discuss politics, and I will go back in a few days, so we happen to be together." ”

"Ah, you're fooling us." Xia Tingyun gently hammered Fang Xiaoyu's chest a few more times with her small fist.

Xia Tingwei smiled: "That's good, let's go back together." ”

Fang Xiaoyu said: "Let's go, my mother is still waiting for us at home." ”

Seeing Fang Xiaoyu and the two girls' affectionate expressions, Elena, who had been behind them, showed a slightly unnatural look on her face.