PS: I wish today's collection to break 4000 and add a more chapter! Please collect more!

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However, what Princess Xue Ji Dailan, who was melancholy in the wind, did not expect at all was that Comrade Wang Qiu, who she was full of concern, was in another shijie at this time in order to solve the ration problem of their travelers, and to make the team of tens of thousands of people have enough to eat every day, it is simply very busy.

“…… Flour, dried chilies, salt, canned luncheon meat, fruit sugar, and instant spicy soup and seaweed soup ......"

Under the scorching summer sun, standing in front of the dock warehouse full of various boxes and bags, Wang Qiu, who was wearing a summer uniform and a large-brimmed hat, squinted his eyes, hastily checked the type and quantity of goods, and signed the receipt in a flying manner, "...... Well, the numbers are right. Although the arrival time was a little late, it was finally not wrong, only this once, not an example! You go to Ma Tong to get the money!

“…… Yes! Thank you so much! Comrade, you are really reasonable! Next time, we will ship the goods to you, and we will not delay time if we work hard! ”

A swarthy and lean driver took the receipt with a grin, and then asked casually, "...... I don't know where you want to sell so much food, comrade leader? It looks like hundreds of tons! ”

“…… Of course, it was shipped to the engineering team that was aiding the construction overseas! Wang Qiuhun made an excuse indifferently, "...... Alas, there is another famine in that part of Africa, and when our engineering team arrives there, even food must be shipped from the country, so they must not be allowed to work hungry......"

Obviously, the above-mentioned batch of food urgently purchased by Wang Qiu and his colleagues will not be transported to some non-existent "overseas engineering team", but will be transported to another time and space to be used as military rations for the army of the Hongshutizgan Kingdom.

The expedition to the valley of Mexico, as it was likely that it was going to meet the Spaniards, drew a full 7,000 troops, plus some nobles, maids, porters, and accompanying servants, the total number reached nearly 10,000, forming a huge consumer group in need of military rations.

According to general marching common sense, the larger the army, the slower it will move under the same conditions. The 300-kilometer straight-line distance and 2,200-meter altitude difference between Port Hope and the Valley of Mexico last time traveled about a month for the 1,000-strong envoy group, and this time the large army of tens of thousands of people is estimated to take two months.

However, in this way, the traversers have to solve the problem of eating with so many mouths on the trip.

Even if each person eats only one kilogram of food per day, then it is ten tons a day, three hundred tons in a month, and six hundred tons in two months. The entire team walked from Port Hope to the Valley of Mexico, and the food rations expected to be consumed during the journey were only enough to fill a small freighter.

In fact, due to the great physical exertion of carrying luggage over mountains and mountains, one kilogram of food per person per day is not enough, and some more redundancy is required. There are also some consumables of matches, shoes, socks and heatstroke medicine, which must also be replenished at any time during the march.

Of course, this army did not go on the road empty-handed, and everyone set out from Hope Port with a lot of dry food in their bags. However, the Indians of Central America did not have large animals that could carry their luggage, and the electric tricycles brought by the traversers could not run over the bumpy and rugged mountain roads. Therefore, all the baggage of the army can only be transported by manpower.

And an ordinary person can only carry a maximum of 30 kilograms of luggage when traveling long distances. Considering that these soldiers also had to carry weapons, cutlery, clothes, blankets, tents and a few bits and pieces, it was not easy to carry five or six kilograms of dry food. …,

-- With just the little dry food that I carried with me, I am afraid that I would not be able to survive even a week's journey, let alone two months.

On their way to the Valley of Mexico, the small team of Wen Desi went mainly by buying corn and vegetables from the tribal villages and towns along the route with matches, refined salt, plastics, and ceramics.

But now is the time of green and yellow, and the drought is so severe, that each tribe is watching its own grain stock. Even if the expeditionary force was willing to give out sugar, refined salt, glass beads, and steel tools, I am afraid that no one would be willing to trade in grain. Moreover, the last time there were less than 1,000 envoys, but this time the expeditionary force was in the tens of thousands, and the amount of food consumed along the way has more than tenfold, which is not enough to supply even in a normal year.

-- In the early 16th century, the eastern and western sides of the Mexican plateau were very different in terms of socio-economic development. On the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean is the core hinterland of the Mexican and Mayan civilizations, and most of the area can be described as densely populated by American standards. Cortés' Spanish expedition set out from the port of Veracruz, and by virtue of robbery and deception, it was finally possible to scrape together enough food with relative ease. The western side of the Mexican Plateau, near the Pacific Ocean, is sparsely populated and desolate in these years, similar to our Tibet.

Therefore, in such a place, the army may not be able to come across a small village after walking for four or five days in a row, and even if it occasionally finds a village where they can rest and buy food, the other party will not be able to squeeze out so much surplus grain -- these small villages scattered among the lofty mountains and mountains often have only a few hundred or even dozens of peasants themselves, but this time they have to prepare food to feed tens of thousands of mouths...... When the expeditionary force is gone, what should the villagers themselves eat?

Unless the expeditionary force completely tears off its face, it will burn, kill and loot all the way to play "devils entering the village", and rob the grain of the villages along the way...... But if this is the case, let's not talk about how long it will be delayed, how many people will die, and whether it will be ambushed because of too many feuds when it comes back in the future. The most terrible thing is that even if the villages along the road are really emptied, the food collected from them may not be enough for 10,000 people to eat for two months.

Since there is no hope of raising food on the spot along the way, in order to prevent the expeditionary force of the Hungshutizgan Kingdom from starving to death on the way, they can only rely on the logistics of modern Shijie on the other side of the space-time gate - for this, the wallets of the traversers have to continue to bleed.

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Due to the 24-fold difference in time flow on both sides of the portal, the expeditionary force's two-month journey on the Mexican plateau was only two and a half days on the other side of the wormhole. On average, every hour in modern time and space, which is equivalent to a day on the other side, Wang Qiu has to transport fifteen tons of flour, thousands of canned luncheon meat, hundreds of boxes of instant soup, plus some pastries, candies, soju and other "high-end foods for the best people".

These things are rations for 10,000 people a day, which should be considered very shabby by modern standards.

Therefore, when he was just preparing to purchase military rations, Wang Qiu, who was a little admiring foreign and flattering to foreign countries, wanted to catch up with the fashion and get some military rations that the legendary American soldiers often eat, that is, wartime individual food, and send them to this 16th-century army to open foreign meat.

Who knew that when he inquired about the price on the Internet, he found that even if it was a domestic knock-off food, the price made him feel unbearable.

Even if it is the cheapest "compressed biscuit + sauce meat + pickles + instant soup" cold meal set, without disposable heating equipment and tableware, the price of each serving is fifteen yuan. Each person in the whole army must eat at least two individual rations every day, so the daily food expenses of more than 300,000 yuan are more than 300,000 yuan, and if snacks and heatstroke prevention drugs are added, it is estimated that the average daily expenditure can reach 500,000 yuan. …,

What's worse is that letting soldiers eat cold food and nibble on compressed biscuits that are as hard as stones for a long time may seriously affect morale. And if you want to be like the modern U.S. military, every ration is equipped with disposable self-heating equipment, and everyone must have steak, fruit and chocolate candy in their rice bowl...... Then this army will be able to eat 100 million yuan in a long journey of two months!

This is really a knife and gun, ten thousand taels of gold!

The 150 million yuan "military spending" paid last time to buy equipment such as Liuyang cannons, electric tricycles, modern bows and arrows, and metal anti-cutting clothing has already squandered most of the huge profits from cross-time and space trade. In the following period of time, because the timber trade has been suspended, the funds on the account are basically only in and out, if they are still so extravagant and wasteful, Wang Qiu and they are afraid that they will really have to go to the bank to apply for war loans.

Therefore, Wang Qiu had no choice but to replace the staple food of the military rations with the cheapest ordinary flour, and the wholesale price was an average of 3,000 yuan per ton including freight -- pure wheat flour was naturally not so cheap, and the price of the more expensive high-gluten wheat flour was even 20 or 30 yuan a kilogram. But the flour blend, which is mixed with a lot of corn, potato and sweet potato starch and contains only about 10% wheat flour, can be pushed to that price.

The non-staple food is only luncheon meat and instant soup, plus candy and snacks for only a few people, and the rest of the vegetables and fruits are collected by the army itself. Rao is like this, and the cost of military rations for the whole journey has also reached 15 million yuan.

Moreover, for the traversers, this money is a purely consumptive expenditure, and there is no way to get any decent compensation from the way.

Fortunately, relying on this space-time logistics line and the Aztecs leading the way, the expeditionary force of the Honshutizgan Kingdom was quite smooth.

At the same time, the Spaniards, on the other side of the Mexican plateau, did not stop their footsteps.