Jokes aside, but the work that needs to be done has to be done. As a representative sent by the military, Tom Wang is not only responsible for inspecting the sea conditions, shipping lanes, ports, etc., but also making professional military assessments of the target areas and providing operational advice on possible military means. In other words, even if the army was the army that finally served to subdue Danzhou by force, the preparation for this inspection in advance would still have to be led by Wang Tom.

Even if the navy and army are in internal competition, and the opponent's strength is as weak as a chicken, but the military order is like a mountain, Wang Tom will not treat the reconnaissance mission as a child's play, and will still operate in accordance with strict operational procedures. The group entered the city of Danzhou, and after a simple meal in the Danzhou office, Wang Tom took a few people, and asked Zhang Xin to send two reliable naturalized people to lead the way and go out to check the city defense. He Xi, on the other hand, went with Zhang Xin to visit some leading figures in the local officialdom and cultural circles.

That night, the two groups of people returned to the office to summarize the information collected during the day.

"The situation of the city defense is basically the same as our expectations and the information reported by the garrison office before, the garrison here can only be said to be slightly stronger than Yacheng, but it is not enough to cause big trouble to the militia. Tom Wang spread out the hand-drawn map on the table and explained to the two: "The Danzhou garrison has set up a total of four lookout posts along the coast of Danzhou Bay, which is also the only official early warning means in the area outside the city, which is easy for us to solve." However, if you want to advance into the city after taking the city gate, you will have a little trouble. ”

"Is it because of the buildings in the city?" He Xi looked at the hand-drawn map and found that in addition to the two main roads in the east and west, north and south, there were many winding alleys in this small city.

"It's not just about architecture. Tom shook his head and said, "I walked around the city a few times today, and noticed that there are too many academies in this city, at least a dozen! If the defenders resist and force us to attack with heavy firepower, then there will definitely be academies that will be affected." ”

"In wartime, the overall situation is important, and when I was in Hue City, I heard that you relied on artillery fire to forcibly carve out a road. He Xi quipped.

"Hue was in a different situation at that time! All the people in that city could be regarded as enemies, and they were not Han Chinese, so we didn't have to worry about how many people died. After this Danzhou City is defeated, they are all our people, not to mention that there are many scholars in this place, if it affects the reputation of our Haihan, this pot will be big. Tom Wang explained. He is not a mother-in-law, but when he went out today and saw the academy and many scholars on the whole street, he still had doubts about the previous assumption of force flattening.

"In a war, you always have to die ......" He Xi said and felt that the taste was wrong: "Who is the military between the two of us? I came here to investigate the possibility of peacefully subduing Danzhou, how do you feel that I have become the main battle faction now?"

"Let's talk about your harvest first. Tom Wang also stopped talking at the right time.

"In a word, they are all guys who see money!" He Xi's expression was very disdainful: "I met with the deans of several colleges, and I heard that I am a cadre from Sanya, and most of them are busy asking me if there are any new sponsorship projects for the cultural circles of Danzhou this year." ”

"Oh, then how did you reply?" asked Tom Wang, with interest.

"I'm not Ning Qi, how can I set up a flag for him outside. He Xi shook his head and said: "I can't interfere in the affairs of their cultural and educational system. ”

He Xi wanted to say that if he held an "I Love Haihan" essay contest or something like this year, it would be a big deal for Lao Tzu to personally take out the money to give out the prize, but if he thought that if this thing stimulated the self-esteem and patriotic enthusiasm of the local literati, the effect would be counterproductive, and finally dispelled this unrealistic idea.

"What is the attitude of the people in the government?" Wang Tom thought that what He Xi said was also reasonable, so he turned to ask about the official situation.

"I didn't come forward directly, all of them were the staff, the master and the like. Speaking of this topic, the expression on He Xi's face also became a little gloomy: "It seems that in the past two years, the appetite of these magistrates has really been fed bigger and bigger, and they haven't said anything yet, and they are silver when they open and close their mouths one by one!

Zhang Xin responded at this time: "Mr. He, the funds used every year to buy local officials have been approved by the Executive Committee. ”

He Xi waved his hand and said: "I don't blame the Danzhou Office for not doing things well, the money spent in the Danzhou officialdom also has account books on the Ministry of Security, don't worry about it." These officials in Danzhou have a bigger shelf than the officials in Guangzhou, and when we take Danzhou, I really want to see what these people will be!"

"If you want money, you don't want to die, then you have to talk about it!" Wang Tom was not as angry as He Xi: "Since it is death and money, then you can talk about the price of anything, and let them open the city and surrender when the time comes, and probably they can talk about it." ”

Hearing this, He Xi's face relaxed slightly: "It is estimated that it is a bit difficult to surrender directly to Kaicheng, after all, these officials still want to be famous." But if possible, let them give up resistance, or pretend to surrender when the time comes, then it is possible. ”

He Xi and Wang Tom stayed in Danzhou for only two days, then returned to the seaside by the same route, boarded the ship and left the port to continue northward, bypassing the northwest corner of Hainan Island and then turning eastward and sailing directly to the capital city of Qiongzhou. Although there are still two counties of Lingao and Chengmai along the coast, according to the information we have learned, the city defense of these two counties can only be described as simple, and it is not enough to hinder Haihan's plan, so He Xi and Wang Tom decided to go straight to the topic and went directly to the capital city of Qiongzhou.

The capital city of Qiongzhou was built in the fifth year of Kaibao in the Northern Song Dynasty, which has a history of more than 600 years, and it is from that time that the seat of Qiongzhou Island has changed from Yazhou to this new city. However, it was not until the second year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty that Sun An, the squire of the military department, led his troops to Qiongzhou Island, and Qiongzhou was upgraded to a prefecture, and this prefecture city ruled the whole island.

In order to be able to meet the status of a government office, the city was once again expanded, and the construction period was as long as nine years. After the completion of the Qiongzhou capital city enclosure up to 1253 zhang, high two zhang seven, thick two zhang eight, the city wall is built with 1843 moats, open three city gates in the southeast and west, respectively, Chaoyang Gate, Jingnan Gate and Hue Gate, although the north side does not open the city gate, but there is a Wanghai Tower of auxiliary defense on the city wall. In the seventeenth year of Hongwu, Hainan Wei commanded Sang Zhao to lead another expansion project, and added an earthen city with a circumference of 380 zhang as a sub-city outside the west gate, which basically announced the end of the construction project of Qiongzhou Fucheng. There is a moat outside the city, and foreign ships can sail all the way to the city from the waterway of the Nandu River.

Qiongzhou is the largest city on Qiongzhou Island, and in terms of city defense facilities alone, Qiongzhou is much stronger than Danzhou they inspected before, after all, this place is the political and military center of the entire Qiongzhou Island, and the defense is definitely much tighter than other border towns.

After listening to the briefing of the personnel of the Fucheng Office, the two of them each spent a few days in the city to conduct on-the-spot inspections.

The situation in the capital city of Qiongzhou was much more complicated than the cities that Haihan had previously infiltrated, mainly because the population here was much larger than in the rest of the island. The population of the city and the surrounding area is almost as large as the population of the other cities on the island combined. He Xi had been here two years ago, but this time he revisited the city, and he could still feel some significant changes in the city.

You can see a lot of daily necessities made by Haihan on the market, from high-end glass mirrors to cheap soap and matches, as long as they are sold in Sanya, there is basically everything here - of course, the price is at least double that of Sanya. When the people saw him dressed as a Haihan, they no longer watched as curiously as they did two years ago. Occasionally, one or two children came over to follow, and were soon scolded by their parents and dragged away: "What do you see, haven't you seen Master Haihan?"

Encountering such a situation, He Xi was a little ridiculous, there were actually only two or three people in the Haihan Office in Fucheng, but there were more than 30 people under the office, and these people were basically naturalized people, among them, many of them were determined to follow Haihan, so they chose to shave their heads and disguise themselves to show their loyalty. As long as they have been in the Haihan system for a little longer, their temperament and spiritual outlook will naturally be different from the ordinary people of the Ming Dynasty, and these people can't tell which ones are real Haihan people and which ones are just naturalized people, but for them, Haihan people are not unusual, and they can see a few on the street almost every day, so there is no need to watch.

Haihan did not open retail shops in Fucheng, which is also a very significant feature of Haihan's commercial system at this stage - most of the goods are sold through dealers and agents, so that Ming merchants can get a share of Haihan's industrial production methods. And the storage of these Daming agents has also cleared the last obstacle for Haihan commodities to enter the Daming market, and can even become a usable force in the hands of the Executive Committee under certain conditions.

For example, although the official staffing of the office in the capital city is less than 40 people, the entire Qiongzhou capital city accepts Haihan's employment to run errands for Haihan, as well as direct stakeholders, to say the least, there are as many as 2,000 or 3,000 people. These people seem to be a small proportion of the tens of thousands of people in the prefecture, but what cannot be ignored are the hidden indirect connections behind them.

For example, the local distribution of Haihan's private salt is in the hands of the brother-in-law of the Hainan Wei commander, and this business can bring at least 5,000 taels of silver to his family every year; There are at least a dozen other such related households, which have almost all the distribution rights of Haihan goods in Fucheng, and these vested interests will not be disgusted with the operation of Haihan's business system in the local area, but hope that Sanya can launch new products on a regular basis, so that their shops can have new hype.

There are not many shops operated by Haihan itself, and the core of them is Haihan Bank. As the main sales market on Qiongzhou Island, the Ministry of Finance also opened a branch in the capital city of Qiongzhou, which was mainly used to settle the payment between Sanya and the capital city of Qiongzhou in the early days, so as to facilitate those maritime merchants who traveled back and forth between the two places. However, with the gradual expansion of the scope of banking business, the current business of banks is no longer limited to settling payments for merchants, and silver bills printed with fixed face value have begun to gradually circulate in the market.

At present, the fixed amount of silver bills issued by Haihan Bank in Qiongzhou is the same as that issued by Guangzhou Branch in the local area, which is divided into 10, 50 and 13 denominations. After the introduction of this small amount of silver bills, it was generally praised by the business community, and even those who were initially suspicious were invited to the bank's underground vault to see the 100,000 taels of silver stored here after their identities were verified, and most of their original doubts were dispelled. According to the figures provided by Haihan Bank, the proportion of transactions in Qiongzhou's business circles using Haihan silver bills as a means of payment has been as high as nearly 50%.

However, the government did not have the slightest sense of vigilance against the Haihan Bank's silent grasp of the lifeblood of the local economy - for the officials, it was far better to keep the silver collected through various channels outside the city in a bank vault guarded by the Haihan militia with live ammunition than to dig a big pit in their back garden and bury it in the ground, and then worry about it every night. Anyway, when you need to use the silver, you can directly send a message to the Haihan people, hand over the silver ticket to them, and the bank's silver transport car will transport the full amount of cash to the designated place within half an hour.

After more than two years of operation, the relevant departments have become proficient in using commercial channels to pave the way for other infiltration efforts. Combined with the promotion of political, cultural, economic and trade fields, this whole set of operational systems can produce a much stronger role than simple trade relations. The lifestyle, values, and cultural concepts of the Haihan have been continuously infiltrated into the lives of every resident of the prefecture through the guò system.

The only problem is probably that it is a little far away from Sanya, and it is unlikely that it will be quickly assimilated by the Haihan in just two or three years, as Yacheng did, and then the local government will be emptied and de facto annexation will be achieved. In fact, the whole trend of Haihan's expansion on Hainan Island also showed a difference in the progress of the process with the change of geographical distance, the closer the distance, the higher the distance of the Haihan control zhì, and the farther the Haihan's influence in the local area.