Chapter 22: The First Encounter (I)
The trees on both sides, accompanied by the morning breeze, quickly retreated on the sides of the two knights.
The morning sun in the sky had just risen, and the golden light shone softly on the earth.
"Dao Chief, the original landform here is specially reserved by us."
Li Changming rode on a black healthy horse, and led the Taoist priest who was also riding on a horse behind him, walking in the primeval jungle under the sun, which looked like there was no human activity at all.
"Mainly as a guard against some white explorers and travelers who happened to pass by."
Although it is located outside the border of Rokofell, the Taiping Fortress is very far from the city of Esalius, and there are some inaccessible and sparsely populated areas along the way.
However, because of the relationship between the land alchemy array built by the Rum Railway Group and the branch railway that extended not far from the area where the Taiping City Fortress was located, it only took the two of them four days to reach the outer forest of the Taiping City Fortress.
And because after the "real body" was discovered by the Taoist priest, the various squads of the Foreign Affairs Department of Esaliliu City did not find that there were white forces snooping.
Li Changming, who knew that the Taoist in front of him strictly kept his promise, could be regarded as a preliminary establishment of trust with the Taoist priest, and he rode a horse to lead the way in the forest, while popularizing some common sense related to the Taiping City Fortress to the Taoist priest.
"Under normal circumstances, our people, disguised as Indian tribal warriors, patrol this place non-stop······"
As Li Changming spoke, he led the Taoist priest to ride a horse through some ancient, gaps between rocks and trees, and continued to move towards the interior of the forest.
"It's almost there!"
"If you climb the hill in front of you, you will see the road of our town!"
Sure enough, with Li Changming's words, the primitive area they rode through finally came to the end.
After climbing over a hill that was unsightly, the two knights' eyes lit up.
The forests around them gradually thinned, and a plain appeared in sight, which made people feel suddenly brighter.
A gray, if Hong Tiangui's previous life was like a cement road in the countryside of the Heavenly Dynasty, like a long snake, extending to the end of the line of sight.
"Da! Da! Da! ······"
In the crisp sound of horses' hooves, Li Changming gestured to the Taoist priest behind him, took the lead in leading the horse onto the road, and began to gallop quickly.
And the Taoist priest who followed him closely behind him followed him with a shocked expression, and also galloped on the long and winding hard concrete floor.
The Taoist priest was shocked.
Because on both sides of the road, a piece and Daqing territory is completely different, than the single area of ordinary fields in Daqing, to be dozens of times larger than the round farmland, is in the center of the smoke, constantly slowly rotating with the help of long pole farm tools, only five or six people can complete the whole field of all the sprinkling and fertilization.
It was even more because at the end of the road, surrounded by mountains, a tall town that looked a little hazy in the faint smoke emitted by the factory in the early morning had appeared in the eyes of the Taoist priest.
It is a completely different city from Daqing.
Taller than the city of Daqing. Generally five or six storeys, no less than the Taoist priests, the workers' buildings seen in the industrial cities of northern America, stand in rows and rows.
But it was cleaner than the city of America, and even the horses of Li Changming and the Taoist priests brought horse dung bags at the entrance to the city in accordance with the regulations.
Dozens, hundreds, of red slogans demanding that the people under the rule of the Taiping Society, "Love Hygiene, Speak Clean," were hung on both sides of the streets after entering the city.
What shocked the Taoist priest even more was that after he followed Li Changming into the city, he found that these people in the city were numb compatriots like ants and slaves in Daqing.
Except for a few, who may have just been rescued from a slave ship or a railroad site, there was still a slight uneasiness on their faces.
The vast majority of people are walking on the road with their chests held high!
It is full of a high-spirited spirit that cannot exist in any royal state in the current world in the Oriental Daqing!
"I'm getting more and more curious about your Taiping Society!"
The Taoist priest, who had been silent all the way, finally opened his mouth after entering the city, and solemnly said to Li Changming.
"I thought I would probably see a stockade like a bandit in Daqing."
"Or even better, a mountain city like an ordinary Daqing Tucheng!"
"But I didn't expect that what I saw was a ······"
He frowned, and the scene in front of him made it impossible for him to describe it in accurate Daqing words.
"Dao Chief, Taiping City Fortress, it's just the name we call it."
"When it was first built, it was indeed a cottage surrounded by a wooden fence."
However, Li Changming responded at this time.
"Now, our leader, the president of the Taiping Society, calls it the 'Taiping Industrial City', a more advanced human gathering place than you have seen in the past!"
Words such as "industrial city" and "human gathering place" are all newly born words created by Hong Tiangui in the Daqing language of this era.
In addition to the members of the Taiping Society who have studied specially, even the Taoist priests who are now well-informed can only hear their names and cannot understand their meanings.
But the Taoist priest who was riding on a horse and walking on the streets of Taiping City did not say anything more.
At the bottom of his heart, on the contrary, he relaxed.
After all, no matter how much Li Changming said these words, no matter how much he didn't understand them, the farmland and grain outside the city and the spiritual outlook of the compatriots in the city could never be faked.
He was at least sure that his compatriots had not just come out of the tiger's den and into the wolf's mouth······
————————————
A true oriental cultivator in the New World, after crossing the great ocean, was able to meet him in this foreign land, which was also a wonderful fate for Hong Tiangui.
In combination with the Taiping jade bamboo slips, those Taiping Dao ancestors, make friends with the experience of his faction; As well as the opinions of Li Gu and other old comrades who had seen the true face of the transcendent world of the East during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom era, Hong Tiangui decided to use the etiquette of the rivers and lakes to interact with him.
"Taiping, Hong Tiangui."
"Welcome, fellow of the Maoshan faction."
Except for a personal guard who had been following behind him, Hong Tiangui stood alone at the door of his two-story small building, smiling and bowing to the oncoming Taoist chief.
He very cleverly named his identity with the word "fellow Dao", and also quickly established a relationship between the two parties.
Sure enough, when he heard the "fellow Dao" in Hong Tiangui's mouth, he sensed the aura of the young man in front of him who was not concealed at all, only a step weaker than himself.
A feeling of being in a foreign country surged into the heart of the Taoist priest, and he also bowed back to Hong Tiangui.
"Maoshan, Lin Miaoshan, I've seen Hong Daoyou!"
······
This is the history of the development of the future Taipingism.
Mr. Hong Tiangui, a theorist and practitioner of the great dream of "peace to peace" of mankind, and the common leader of the world's Taiping countries, met his wife Lin Miaoshan for the first time.
And now, Hong Tiangui doesn't know what kind of huge changes the woman in front of him who has transformed into a man will bring to his personal life in the future.
He just wanted to make friends with him.
Of course, it would be better if this Taoist priest in front of him, who seemed to have some kind of involvement with the high-level forces of the white people, could help him and the Taiping Society in the future to explore the secrets behind the territorial alchemy array formed by the American Railroad······