stubborn thief

In the summer of the ninth year of the Chongzhen reign, Chaigang on the banks of the Tomu River was completed.

The setting sun cast its golden rays across the wide river, bathing the dense forest on the right bank in a golden glow.

The rafts, made of huge logs, set off from several logging camps more than a hundred miles upstream, carrying goods and horse-drawn carts, and drifted downstream to Chaigang, where they were moored on the shore to unload the cargo.

Empty horse-drawn carts, carrying lumberjacks, filed south along the frozen path by the riverbank, repeating the cycle endlessly.

On the wooden watchtower of Taimeng Fortress, Zhou Yijing looked down at Chaigang with a smug smile on his face.

This port, which could only accommodate small boats and rafts, was very rudimentary. Even the original location of the harbor was a few trenches plowed out by Liu Chengzhu's navy when they landed.

Although the port was very simple, it was still one of the two major achievements Zhou Yijing made after arriving in Thailand.

In some respects, this small port, named Chai Port because it was mainly used for transporting timber, was more strategically significant than his own book, "A Brief Study of Taizhen".

With the completion of this port, the forest tribes along the southern Tomu River no longer needed to send people to Taimengwei City for help. They could simply cut down trees on the riverbank, weave them into rafts, and transport goods and people downstream.

Before the river freezes over, it is navigable for at least half the year, allowing for greater transport capacity and faster speeds.

Moreover, the warships patrolling the two routes of Lake Zaisang and Altai make it easier for them to unload and resupply at Taimengwei.

Over the course of six months, Zhou Yijing tried his best to understand this land. Now he understands many things, but there are still many more things he cannot understand.

He could understand Liu Chengzong's frantic expansion in the northwest.

This was based on the Marshal's Mansion's strong military force and survival needs; after all, Zhou Yijing knew several of the Marshal's Army's generals.

According to those warriors, the most powerful opponent they had ever encountered was the Ming army, but the most dangerous battle they had fought was against the Oirat in Qinghai.

Zhou Yijing initially couldn't understand these words until someone explained them to him in detail, and then he understood what they meant.

The Ming army was strong and its generals were fierce, but it was leaderless and constrained in many ways.

The Oirat were different. Although their weapons, equipment, tactics, and methods were far inferior to those of the Ming army, they did have a true leader.

Therefore, in the eyes of the marshal's generals, the Ming Dynasty was more powerful, but the Oirat was more dangerous.

For this reason, Liu Chengzong wanted to send the Tianshan Army to Yili and also allowed He Renlong to lead troops to occupy Turpan in the west, thus consolidating his territory in the desert of the northwest.

Zhou Yijing could understand this.

To be honest, Zhou Yijing couldn't understand why Zhou Riqiang would continue to invest resources and manpower in construction and development after capturing this small stronghold in Tomsk and Rus's battle.

It even felt like they wanted to use this place as a frontline base for expanding their territory.

According to Zhou Yijing's own ideas, they only needed to station troops in Ili. The north could be left to the Oirat or even the Dzungar tribe to rule over the people in the forest. In any case, all the Marshal's Office needed was a huge amount of furs.

Vilat can easily handle this.

Therefore, Zhou Yijing felt that from Liu Chengzong to Zhou Riqiang, the Marshal's Mansion was full of madmen with their brains fried.

They actually want to push the border line to Taimengwei, and strategically, this is just the beginning.

What kind of place is Taimengwei? Not to mention how cold it is here, just the distance is 3,000 li (1,500 kilometers) from Yili to get here.

There was no infrastructure whatsoever, and the nearest doctor within a hundred miles was a shamanic sorcerer performing rituals in the forest.

Human life here is as fragile as a joke.

Let alone the pampered scholar Zhou Yijing, this place was a veritable den of dragons and tigers, even for the servants and lackeys of the various vassal states.

Last month alone, in Taimeng City, with a total population of just over 400, 19 people died and two went missing.

Some were kicked to death by wild donkeys, some died from injuries caused by falling fir trees while logging, and some went hunting with muskets only to be hunted by their prey.

There were also timber transport trips where rafts would become unstable and fall into the river. The river, which is three miles wide, is turbulent in the spring, and once a raft fell in, it would be swept away and never found again.

Even more common cases involve animals that went missing in the woods last autumn and were only found this spring.

lifelike.

There were indeed some unlucky souls among them who were doomed to die, but at least half of them, if they had encountered the same situation in the Central Plains, would not have died at all.

But in the Taimeng Guard, where there were no herbs but only gunpowder, and no doctors but only strategists, even if a slightly serious injury was brought back to the fortress, they could only lie in bed and wait to die.

Even though the war had laid the foundation for their strategic foothold here, Zhou Yijing still believed that they lacked the ability and experience to establish themselves here.

But Zhou Yijing is very enthusiastic about his work.

It wasn't that he truly believed Liu Chengzong's strategy was correct, or that Zhou Riqiang's arrangements were good, or that he, like Tai Mengwei's soldiers, firmly believed that fortune favors the bold and that one should build a resume and advance one's career.

Quite the opposite.

Zhou Yijing didn't believe any of that. Whether he had a foothold or not, whether he had a strategy or not, none of that mattered to him. He was just certain that he couldn't run back.

Therefore, he could only accept his fate and try to get Liu Chengzong to transfer him back.

For him, being sent to Taimeng Guard, despite holding the high-ranking official position of Taimeng Assistant General, was far more enjoyable than being exiled to the frontier.

That rank of brigade commander was practically meaningless.

The total registered population of the entire Taimeng Guard is only a little over four hundred. Where would he find the Taimeng Camp to form? Moreover, he has neither military pay nor food, and even if he had soldiers, he wouldn't be able to recruit them.

Zhou Yijing believes that Taimengwei's operating model is a death sentence with no future.

This place has no independent capabilities, and the forest dwellers are untrustworthy, but the living conditions in the citadel are even worse than those of their own tribes, making it difficult to recruit people.

The only thing that could counteract natural attrition was the scraps of Ming dynasty imperial family that Liu Chengzong sent to the Tianshan Mountains.

But there are too few of them.

Three thousand members of the royal family set off from the sea. There were not many casualties along the way, and there were few accidents or injuries. The only problem was that the post stations along the way were short of people, so a few people were taken to stay and replenish the ranks. By the time they reached Tianshan, there were still two thousand seven or eight hundred left.

But Liu Chengzhu would leave behind at least 2,500 men.

Needless to say, the women of the clan will definitely stay in Tianshan; none of them will go north.

Among the Zongnan, anyone with a decent resume, even if they knew nothing, would be kept by Liu Chengzhu in Tianshanwei to do manual labor.

As long as someone has a skill, even something as simple as picking locks, Liu Chengzhu would keep him in Tianshan, citing the lack of professionals who understand lock mechanisms.

Being sent to Taimengwei was only a prerequisite for being utterly wicked; the real reason was a lack of ability.

From the moment they were loaded onto the ship, it was decided that these people would be human scum who could critique fine food and wine, possess superb musical and dance appreciation skills, and be lazy and ignorant of basic agricultural knowledge.

In Liu Chengzhu's mind, such a person setting foot on the frozen ground is no different from a dead person.

If there is no replenishment, it would be considered lucky if two out of two hundred people survive after three years.

Once Zhou Yijing was thrown into this environment, he stopped thinking about things like dying for his country and being loyal to the country.

At first, he even had some thoughts of comparing himself to Su Wu, but he was quickly silenced by the harsh cold of the Tai Meng Guard. As long as he could be recalled to the Central Plains, it didn't seem to matter much whether he had become a bandit. He would even be willing to become a prime minister if he returned.

Zhou Yijing really couldn't understand why Liu Chengzong, that barbarian, was so stubborn and didn't understand the value of being a third-class Jinshi. Why was he sent to this barren land?
They even gave it the fancy name of "Tai Meng Can Jiang" (a military officer).

Let's be honest, the prisoners and immigrants sent here don't need anyone to manage them at all.

Let this ice sheet manage them; that's enough.

This is exile, for prisoners, for officials, for soldiers.

Exile and border service have always been serious crimes, but the purpose of this punishment is to torment people mentally and in terms of their living standards—not to actually kill them.

Even if the Jade Emperor were killed, he shouldn't be exiled to such a remote and godforsaken place.

He compiled "A Brief Account of Taizhen" in order to make Liu Chengzong recognize his talent so that he could be summoned back.

A scholar who passed the imperial examination with top honors is wasting his talents by serving as a jailer.

Even setting aside him, even an official like Zhou Riqiang, who was a successful candidate in the imperial examinations and had experience as a local prefect, would have his talents wasted here.

It hadn't even been half a month since Zhou Yijing came over, and he already knew it.

The ruled are all strange and inhuman, so what's the point of sending these officials who are responsible for educating the people here?

The most suitable officials to govern this godforsaken place are not them at all.

Liu Chengzong's idea of ​​establishing guard posts here was correct; the most suitable form of officials here is indeed the Tusi (chieftain) and the guard posts.

But the wrong person was chosen.

Even those who passed the imperial examinations were not gods; they were better suited to grand strategies, but when it came to the concrete execution of those strategies, they might not be as good as more professional talents.

Zhou Yijing felt that the best officials governing this place were the local grain and land officials he had met a few times when he was the magistrate of Haifeng.

All that's needed is a grain chief with experience leading clans in water-grabbing battles, who can bring his brothers, nephews, and their families to move here, and preferably a few younger relatives who have made a living at sea. Taimeng Guard can quickly gain a core thousand-household unit.

This godforsaken place clearly doesn't need fighting.

The external environment only required a few military boats patrolling the river by the Tianshan Army.

All you need to do is survive, do everything you can to survive, and outlive all your rivals who want to seize the land until they freeze to death; then you've achieved your goal of conquest.

Several local chiefs and grain officers would bring a few hundred men and each establish themselves along the river, pacify a few affiliated forest tribes, suppress any disobedient tribes, build a few boats, and travel back and forth with the Tianshan army's warships to transport supplies, thus managing both fishing and hunting and production.

They can manage to get by.

In contrast, the current Taimeng Guard has over two hundred resident soldiers, accounting for half of the population. The rest are human scum with no survival skills, who neither understand life nor know how to produce, and their efficiency in carrying out all tasks is extremely low.

Calling them useless wouldn't be an exaggeration.

To this day, there is only one person who has made a meritorious contribution: a lieutenant from Fengguo who discovered a kind of herb.

Tai Mengwei has now discovered two kinds of herbs. The two people who made contributions are one Fengguo Lieutenant of Qingfan and the other is called Zhengxi Xiaowei, a yellow dog brought back from Shaanxi by Chu Huer.

That yellow dog was a puppy that Chu Hu'er snatched from the Chijin Guard. Kang Liangfu had just bought it back from Shaanxi when Chu Hu'er took it away.

Chu Hu'er found the dog's appearance novel and planned to snatch it to present to Liu Chengzong. However, after entering Shaanxi, he discovered that all dogs looked like this, so he kept it for himself for a few months before sending it to Zhou Riqiang when he returned to Altay.

It has to be said that, regardless of how she obtained the items, Chu Hu'er was indeed very good at giving gifts.

Zhou Riqiang adored the yellow dog from the Central Plains and named it Zhengxi Xiaowei (meaning "Commander of the Western Expedition").

But for the Commandant of the Western Expedition, this life of constant wandering was getting worse year by year.

The food for the Red Guards was poor to begin with. The Captain of the Western Expedition learned from a young age to fight with vultures for bones, but if he was lucky, he would eventually get to eat fried noodles a few times.

However, there's no way to cure my illness.

In other places, if a puppy eats something wrong, it will eat grass to induce vomiting. The grass leaves will swirl in its stomach and come out along with the food.

But in Chijinwei, the limited amount of grass they had was all eaten by the sheep.

Therefore, the Captain of the Western Expedition was born with a weak stomach.

Following Chu Hu'er, a guy who never shortchanged himself, the life of the General of the Western Expedition improved dramatically. He ate meat every day, and even had chilled ham when he returned to Altai.

It completely ruined my stomach and intestines.

When he was taken to Zhou Riqiang's hands on Sunday, he stopped eating and drinking soon after.

Zhou Riqiang was at a loss. A few days later, the Commandant of the Western Expedition ran away, and everyone in the fort thought that the yellow dog from his hometown had died.

Who knew that a few days later, it came back on its own, not only recovering its digestive system but also eating everything with gusto.

Later, on Sunday, someone was forced to follow the Captain of the Western Expedition. They discovered that after eating, the Captain would go into the forest and wander around the birch forest, munching on the black fungus growing from the birch roots.

The people of Taimengwei had long ago discovered something under the birch trees, but no one knew that it was edible because it was dark in color, like a mark deliberately made by a hunter in the forest.

It was only then that people realized that the dark, lumpy things on the tree roots were edible fungi.

It appears to be able to treat gastrointestinal disorders.

Another meritorious lieutenant from Fengguo was not as good as the captain of the Western Expedition; he was an escaped prisoner.

Running out of food on their escape, they found a lone wild donkey. After a fierce battle, they were narrowly defeated, but managed to wound the donkey's leg with a trap. The donkey then chased them up a tree and kept them there for several days, nearly starving to death.

While starving in the tree, they discovered that the injured wild donkey always ate a certain plant. Later, they found an opportunity to collect the herb and escaped back to the Acropolis.

After verification by a veterinarian invited from the Tianshan Army, it was determined that this herb resembled Acanthopanax senticosus and had a similar processing method, and should therefore have a qi-tonifying effect.

Zhou Yijing genuinely believed that with this group of people, there was absolutely no chance of them gaining a foothold here.

Compared to Zhou Riqiang's desire to expand territory and thus the Battle of Tomsk, Zhou Yijing no longer had that temptation when he came over, which allowed him to observe Taimengwei from a more objective perspective.

Strategically, this place is certainly not bad. It can maintain the existence of the Marshal's Mansion, house the Ming imperial family, and prevent its reputation in the Central Plains from getting too bad. At the same time, the timber and furs are indeed related to the Marshal's Mansion's northwest trade routes.

But establishing a foothold is by no means easy.

The most important reason is that the natural environment here is simply not suitable for them to stay for a long time.

Therefore, Zhou Yijing's greatest hope in being transferred back was to improve the living conditions there.

Otherwise, before they could even establish a foothold, everyone would die in their struggle against nature, and this place would just be a slaughterhouse a little further away.

Improving the environment would prove his usefulness to the Marshal's Office, allowing him to write to Liu Chengzong as an official of the Marshal's Office, requesting a transfer back to the Central Plains to lead a task of supplying people to Taimeng Guard.

Doesn't that make it perfectly legitimate for us to go back?
Now that Chai Port has been completed, timber rafts transported from logging camps dock at Taimeng Weicheng every day. The ample supply of building materials gives Zhou Yijing more confidence in transforming the environment.

Soon, he unveiled his second plan: a heated kang (a traditional Chinese bed-stove). (End of Chapter)