In September, autumn is getting stronger, and the temperature outside is starting to gradually decrease, and people who feel the slightest chill have to add a few pieces of clothing to adapt to the cold weather in the morning and evening.

In the vast fields of Zhenzhou, farmers are also beginning to enter the busy harvest season. Thanks to God's blessing, this year's wind and rain are smooth, there is no frost in the spring ploughing season, and there is no frequent rain in the summer, and now autumn has arrived, and the fruits of hard work for more than half a year can finally be harvested.

Compared with the peaceful and joyful fields, the railway construction site in Chunhua Town, Shuangchengzi County (now Galyonji Town, Russia) is a little bloody and tyrannical.

Shunji Otake, a ronin from Osaka, stepped on the back of a North Korean coolie with one foot, and at the signal of a Beiming overseer, he immediately raised the long knife with both hands high, and his waist and abdomen exerted a slight force. The big head instantly rolled down to the ground, and the red blood soaked through the soft soil, which was particularly dazzling.

After killing a coolie, Toshiharu Otake rubbed the bloodstained stains from his long knife against the corpse, then turned his head to look at the other Korean coolies who were limp on the ground, their eyes full of bloodthirsty light, and they screamed in horror when they were incontinent.

"Didn't you think about this fate when you were destroying the materials on the construction site and planning to escape? He ...... and now that he is dying, he knows that he is afraid? Toshiji Otake smirked.

Three days ago, because they could not bear the heavy work of the railway construction site, more than a dozen coolies from North Korea took advantage of the night rest to light a fire in the tent where materials were stacked at the construction site, and then took advantage of the chaos to sneak out of the camp, identified the direction a little, and fled to the west.

As long as you can run to the realm of Great Qin, you can get out of the sea of bitterness and avoid the bitter days of being continued to be oppressed and tortured. Perhaps, in order to demonstrate the grace of the Heavenly Pilgrimage, the Daqin officials within the border walls will also comfort them, and they will be assigned to 30 acres of land each, and become the people of Daqin.

But who knows, in the early morning of the next day, after the supervisors on the railway site learned that coolies had escaped, they immediately reported to the local government and the Ming army stationed there.

The Ming army immediately sent several teams of cavalry, with hounds, and chased them in the direction where the Korean coolies had fled.

Obviously, the two-legged Korean coolies began to flee in the middle of the night, but eventually it was difficult to escape the pursuit of the four-legged cavalry. Two days later, after some searching, the cavalry team of the Ming army found the fleeing Korean coolies in a mountain forest, killed four people on the spot, and successfully captured most of the fleeing people and escorted them back to the railway construction site.

The engineering and technical personnel of Qi who were in charge of railway construction did not complain about anything, railway construction was originally a chore, and during the period of the construction of the railway in Hanzhou, there were often Nanyang natives who escaped.

But who would have thought that the supervision and management personnel of Beiming would impose capital punishment on these North Korean coolies who destroyed the construction site and fled, so as to warn all the coolies on the railway construction site.

And the Japanese ronin, who is the engineering escort team, took on the executioner of this torture.

Nima's several fierce Japanese ronin, like killing chickens, pressed the captured Korean coolies to the ground and beheaded them one by one on the construction site, stained red with blood, not only silenced all the coolies, but even several North Korean officials who were watching the execution were frightened.

After seeing such a bloody scene, the engineers and technicians of Qi State did not change color in shock, but they did not eat for a day.

Previously, in the mines, railway construction sites, and even large-scale cantonment farms under the control of the government, it was not without incidents of coolies escaping, but after they were generally caught, they were punished slightly, and then continued to be used. After all, in Beiming, where the population is not abundant, any labor force is extremely precious and cannot be wasted.

However, since the beginning of the spring, the Beiming Dynasty suddenly decided to build the railway to Funingbao (now Suifenhe City) in the border area of Qinming and Ming, and ordered that it must be completed by June next year.

Obviously, in order to strengthen the control of the border area, and more importantly, to deal with the possible military threat of the Qin State, the construction route of the originally planned Shuangzhen Railway to the north to Boli was directly changed direction, and prepared to build a branch line to Funing first.

I Daming and your Qin State fight for manpower and consumption, most of them will not succeed, but I can use the convenient railway line to maximize my own internal line advantage, no matter which direction your Qin State is attacking from, I can use the railway to quickly transfer the limited military force to form a local military advantage. As long as they survived the first wave of the Qin army's offensive and stabilized the battle line, they would be able to obtain a steady stream of military assistance from the Qi State.

With the national stake at stake and external military threats, everything has to give way, including the construction of the promising and economically lucrative Zhenzhou-Boli railway.

Therefore, under this urgent situation, the Beiming not only demanded that the villages and towns along the railway line be extensively conscripted and provided with the necessary construction manpower, but also requisitioned a large number of people from North Hamgyong Province, Gyeongsang Province, Jeolla Province, and Chungcheong-do Province, which were indirectly controlled by the Northern Ming Dynasty, to come to Zhenzhou to participate in the construction of this armament railway.

Well, if you wait for the Korean coolies to work hard and share the worries of the kingdom, but want to escape from the labor on the construction site and escape into the territory of the Qin State, this move is tantamount to a rebellious act.

In this case, then don't blame our subordinates for showing mercy and killing killers to set an example.

The officials of the Northern Ming Dynasty and the railway overseers watched coldly as the Japanese escorts carried out the execution, without showing the slightest sympathetic gaze. If this railway is not completed according to the deadline of His Majesty the Emperor and the cabinet government, everyone will not end well, and if they are implicated, the dismissal of officials will be light, and there may be a danger of imprisonment.

The so-called dead friends do not die poor, and the North Koreans have a large population anyway, even if they consume a little more, it doesn't hurt.

In other words, these small Japanese guards are also conscientious, and they are also handy when they are called, and they are all obedient to orders to do whatever they want, and they can do any pickled evil things, dare to do them, and they are easy to manage. The Koreans on the construction site were oppressed and enslaved, and although they knew who their real sufferers were, they dared not speak out under the power of the Northern Ming Dynasty for many years, and could only focus their hatred on the Japanese who directly committed violence against them.

These Japanese ronins also didn't care what the Koreans thought, and they were also more than happy to take on such a role, acting as a sharp knife in the hands of Beiming.

It is also hard to say, although today's Japan has been peaceful for a long time, but economically it has completely become a colony of Qi and Beiming, and all industries are withering and people's livelihood is difficult. The number of broken samurai and disqualified samurai is also increasing day by day, and they have become ronins.

Edo, Kyoto, Osaka and other large cities with strong commercial atmospheres are home to tens of thousands of ronins who have no food or clothing, living a life of hunger and cold. These ronins can be recruited by merchants to protect the safety of their masters or to take care of their homes, and they must bow to Amaterasu three times and bow nine times, and be grateful. But more ronins can only do some daily work such as short-term work, and some of them have no meals, which is miserable and loses the so-called dignity of the samurai.

Therefore, if you can go to sea to get a job in a foreign country, it is still the kind with a fairly good salary, so it is natural to perform positively.

At present, there is a guard team composed of more than 80 Japanese ronins at the railway construction site in Chunhua Town, which is responsible for maintaining public order and order on the railway construction site, defending the engineering and technical personnel of Qi State, equipped with a mixture of firearms and cold weapons, and at the same time supervising and managing nearly 1,000 Korean coolies to prevent them from sabotaging their work or escaping without permission.

As for their salaries, they have a monthly salary of three yuan per person, as well as food worth five dimes worth one piece, in-kind subsidies such as salary carbon, and collective dormitory housing, with no food and clothing, and good treatment.

What's more, after five years of service, if you don't want to return to Japan, you can choose to become a naturalized Beiming and get a piece of land of your own, and bring your family in Japan to live a good life of food and clothing.

The railway from Shuangchengzi to Funing is about 120 kilometers long, passing through valleys, dense forests and many winding rivers, and the construction is still not easy. Not to mention, in the middle of winter from the end of October to March next year, thousands of miles of ice and the ground are frozen, which increases the difficulties in the construction process, and it is still extremely challenging to complete the construction on time by June next year.

However, the Beiming government has requisitioned more than 6,000 laborers from North Korea, and also pulled out a lot of some tribal and wild people in the mountains and forests, just to ensure that the railway construction section always has abundant human resources. In the eyes of the officials, with people and enough food, even if they pull me with their feet and gnaw on me with their teeth, they have to ensure the progress of the construction of the railway.

Under such high pressure, there is no doubt that the physical strength and even their lives of road construction workers will be brutally squeezed.

After several months of high-intensity construction, the original number of road construction laborers, which originally numbered more than seven or eight thousand, has lost four or five hundred people one after another, including work-related accidents, some falling ill, and some fleeing. If the weather turns cold and the snow falls, I am afraid that the number of workers lost will be even greater.

Yes, when the winter comes, the railway construction management personnel in Beiming do not plan to stop the construction, and are ready to repair one more section if they can, as long as the laborers can bear it, then they will continue to work for me.

To be honest, when Beiming occupied Zhenzhou, he didn't pay much attention to this vast territory. Not to mention the cold weather, there are no resources, there are deep mountains and dense forests everywhere, and there are countless savage tribes, and it is simply a wild land that has not been developed in any way. It would be too tyrannical to throw away precious immigration resources here.

As the core ruling area of the Northern Ming Dynasty, Yunzhou (Hokkaido), although it is also relatively cold, but there is a warm current (Tsushima warm current) passing through, belonging to the temperate monsoon climate, most areas, in winter, the general minimum temperature is only minus ten degrees, precipitation is 800 mm to 1200 mm, which is also abundant. It is almost unaffected by rainy seasons and typhoons, and the four seasons are distinct. After only a few decades of development, it has become the largest granary in Beiming. Not to mention the nearby fishing grounds (Hokkaido fishing grounds), the fishery resources are simply not too rich, just catch a net, you can pocket a full of fish, salmon, pollock, herring, sardines, saury, ......, fat, delicious, become the main meat supplement in the mouth of the majority of Beiming people.

What's in Zhenzhou?

Wood?

Kuye Island (present-day Sakhalin), which is closer to Yunzhou, has more abundant timber resources.

Fishery?

It can be compared to the fishing ground near Yunzhou!

Fur?

Well, of course, this is also a relatively valuable thing, whether it is sold to the people of Qi or sold to the mainland, it can be exchanged for a lot of silver.

Well, it may be for this reason that the early Northern Ming regime reluctantly began to settle in Zhenzhou, conquer the local indigenous tribes, establish local governments, and bring this wild land under the Northern Ming Dynasty.

However, later, in the local war against the Qing and the puppet Qin (that's right, the Northern Ming has always insisted that he is the legitimate regime on the mainland, and the Sun clan of the Qin State is just a rebellious minister and thief who seeks power and usurps the throne), he frequently recruited the local natives of Zhenzhou to participate in the war, and found that these savages are quite high in combat effectiveness after simple training, and they are not afraid of death, whether they are scouts and sentinels of the army, or the death squad that charges into battle, they are definitely the best cannon fodder in the army, oh no, it should be the best source of soldiers.

In order to strengthen the combat power of their own army, the Beiming government immediately recruited natives in Zhenzhou, Kuye Island and other places, and began to kill the Quartet with strong musketeers.

Before the Qing captives fled to the mainland, the Northern Ming Dynasty frequently landed in coastal areas and launched "summer hunting" and "winter hunting" operations to obtain valuable population and materials to enhance and replenish their own strength. In the face of the Qing captives' counterattack, the "barbarian army" composed of natives really surprised the Eight Banners armor soldiers, "The captives are fierce, and their courage is not weaker than Sauron's soldiers, supplemented by sharp firearms, and the armies dare not plunder their edges." At one time, the Qing Dynasty was forced to set up the so-called relocation of the border and the forbidden sea in some coastal areas, and ordered the people of the South and North Seas to build boundary walls at important passes, from Jiangkou to Jinzhou. The wall is four feet wide and six feet high, and each house is built two feet and one foot. A watchtower was erected at the mouth of the boundary, and another boundary embankment was built when it met the sea. ”

In 1662, when the Northern Ming Dynasty united with the Qi State to invade the territory of Korea, these "barbarians" often dared to chase thousands of Korean troops with only dozens or hundreds of people under the cover of musketeers, slashing and killing, so that the Koreans could experience the Dingmao and Bingzi chaos caused by the Jin invasion in the past.

In 1677, and in Korea with 3,000 miles of rivers and mountains, the Ming army invaded Korea from North Hamgyong Province and Dongnae (Busan) respectively, and fought fiercely with the Qin army for a year.

It was also on the basis of continuously subduing the indigenous tribesmen and incorporating them as a source of troops for the army, that the Northern Ming Dynasty also gradually increased the development of the Zhenzhou territory.

With the deepening of the development of Zhenzhou, towns and villages have been established, and countless cultivated land has also been reclaimed, and crops such as buckwheat, wheat, corn, oats, barley, soybeans, and various vegetables and fruits can be grown, and the yield is not low. What's even more amazing is that under the service of a group of North Korean immigrants who are good at planting rice, rice was actually grown, so that the people of this wild land can also eat rare rice.

Since 1672, Zhenzhou has not only achieved food self-sufficiency, but also exported tens of millions of stone of grain to Yunzhou, Korea, Dongdan and Bohai every year, contributing a lot of financial revenue to the Beiming government.

At the same time, precious furs, ginseng, deer antlers, and Dongzhu from Lingbei, Beihai, and Zhenzhou have also brought a steady stream of wealth to Beiming.

Not to mention, under the guidance of the geological exploration personnel of Qi State, the Beiming government has successively discovered coal, iron, zinc, tin and other mineral resources in various parts of Zhenzhou, which has a positive role in promoting the industrial development of Beiming.

Eight years ago, with the financial and technical support of Qi State, the second steel plant in Beiming was completed and put into operation in Zhenzhou City (now Vladivostok City), with an annual output of 20,000 tons. It is precisely because of the existence of this steel plant that Beiming has the confidence to extend the Shuangzhen Railway to Boli City in the next few years.

Today, Zhenzhou has become the most important industrial base and grain base of the Northern Ming Dynasty, and it is also the most important source of furs. More importantly, with the existence of Zhenzhou, the Northern Ming Dynasty was able to control Dongdan and Bohai in the north, suppress Korea in the south, control Qin in the west, and then control the entire Xihai (today's Benhai).

Therefore, Zhenzhou is the core of the Northern Ming Dynasty, no matter what the circumstances, it should be protected!

(End of chapter)