Zhutian: Starting from the Space-Time Merchant

Chapter 651 In business, nothing beats ceding territory and paying reparations!
"Who is in the hall?"

"I am an English citizen and enjoy extraterritorial rights. You have no right to interrogate me."

'Pat pa pa pa~'

"Who is in the hall!"

"Sha~ David, the manager of Sha Xun Foreign Firm~"

"Have you done anything evil since coming to the Central Plains?"

"Our trading company does legitimate business; we sell cotton cloth."

"Bah! Your trading company sells opium! You are the biggest opium traffickers in China!"

"Innocent! Innocent!"

'Pat pa pa pa pa~'

"Do you plead guilty or not?!"

"I admit it! I admit it! I sell opium!"

"Drag him out and deal with him according to the law!"

Within the foreign concessions, the once arrogant foreigners are now all feeling the power of the iron fist of justice.

Within the Huangpu River, everywhere you look, there are lotus flowers belonging to opium dealers, Far Eastern adventurers, scum mercenaries, and Indian lackeys.

The sign at the park entrance was smashed to pieces.

The foreigners who managed to hide lived in constant fear.

The Ali consul, who hadn't washed his neck, was hung up at the gate of the concession.
There are no more concessions now. Lin Dao does not recognize any agreements or treaties signed by the Qing Dynasty, so naturally there are no more concessions.

Such occurrences have happened repeatedly around the world since the Europeans embarked on the Age of Exploration.

Unfortunately, almost all of their counterattacks ended in failure.

Even a temporary victory could not prevent the colonists from making a comeback.

The only exception is Middle-earth.

Lin Dao dared to do this because he had the modern world as his backer.

He doesn't need to operate or maintain complicated weapons.

Purchase large-caliber coastal defense guns and various types of mines directly from the modern world.

Even if the English sent over a hundred battleships, they would still be doomed.

This is only a temporary difficulty.

Once the navy, which is undergoing training, has gradually taken shape, it will be time to launch an offensive.

"The meeting begins!"

One-eyed Yang Xiuqing ran over excitedly to report, "Hangzhou has been captured!"

This was expected news, and Lin Dao wasn't surprised. "In the city~"

"The entire city of Hangzhou, which polluted West Lake for two hundred years, has been demolished!"

"West Lake is truly clean now!"

"Very good." Lin Dao smiled with satisfaction. "The destruction of the Tartars is just around the corner."

Today, most of the area south of the Yangtze River has been captured by the Taiping Army.

Jiangxi's Jiujiang exit was blocked, Fujian was nestled in the mountains, and Feng Yunshan and Hong Xiuquan in Guangdong were gaining more and more power, forming a siege of Guangzhou.

All we need to do is send troops to attack the restored city.

Next, it will be time for the Northern Expedition.

The core of the mite-killing product is in the north.

"Three months, three months to settle people in various parts of Jiangnan."

"Then we'll launch the Northern Expedition!"

Three months is only enough time for a rough cleaning and redistribution.

However, the Taiping Army's night schools began to graduate on a large scale.

Those who graduate from these crash courses don't even have an elementary school education.

At least they can read and write, understand arithmetic, have received ideological education, and have learned to ride a bicycle or even drive a single-cylinder tractor, etc.

It's barely enough to settle people in.

Some of the graduates from the accelerated training program were assigned to various places to organize local affairs and to undertake the important task of literacy education.

Many more people will continue their studies.

While continuing to strengthen basic learning, we will also engage in more specialized studies.

A large number of them were assigned to study on ships, where they would one day sail the seas.

This kind of learning is semi-compulsory in nature.

Lin Dao had already made it clear to everyone that knowledge leads to more opportunities for promotion and higher salaries.

If you don't want to learn, that's fine too. You can just keep carrying a musket and go home to farm when you get old, or become a militia leader or something.

As for positions like village chief and militia captain, one must have knowledge to be qualified.

The young Taiping soldiers were full of vigor.

Almost all people learn knowledge proactively and enthusiastically.

This was the complete opposite of the listless Qing army.

As for the reason, it was naturally because the Taiping Army could see a bright future here.

As for the Qing army, their fate was already determined by their birth, and their future was predictable, so naturally no one would bother to work hard.

On this day, Lin Dao returned from the modern world, carrying a large number of discarded shared bicycles.

These shared bikes were acquired at very low prices, which is a way of helping to clean up trash.

It's inconvenient for military campaigns, but it's suitable for use in cities and villages.

Large-scale road construction has now begun.

It's hard to say about other things, but there shouldn't be any problem with bicycles passing through.

Arrange for staff to register the bicycles and put them into storage, awaiting allocation and distribution.

Lin Dao, clearly preoccupied, sat on a stool and carefully examined a document.

This is a letter of advice from his friends in the modern world. Its main content is to suggest that Lin Dao strengthen business dealings and exchange goods for precious metals and various mineral products.

Although they spoke in a very veiled way, Lin Dao understood what they meant.

All kinds of goods from the modern world would undoubtedly be highly sought-after items in this era.

As business picks up, precious metals and various mineral products will inevitably flow in continuously.

After careful consideration, Lin Dao got up and locked the proposal in the cabinet.

"Doing business?"

"The European pirates have already shown me the way forward."

"Set up a few cannons on the coast, blast open the country's gates, and cede territory and pay reparations!"

"If they can steal it, why can't we?"

"That doesn't make sense!"

"Why waste energy and effort doing business? I'll set up cannons and rob them!"

"Even if it's for business, the most I'd do is sell them opium."

This was a truly dark age.

Speaking is not based on reason, but on rhetoric.

Truth lies only within the range of cannons; whoever wins the battle will possess everything.

Lin Dao had seen through it all long ago; he would never go into business.

We should learn from the Europeans and directly bombard our borders, forcing them to cede territory and pay reparations.

Having initially pacified the Jiangnan region, Lin Dao quickly launched a northern expedition.

This time, the objective is very clear: to take the capital city directly!

The troops from various factions who were scheduled to participate in the Northern Expedition gradually gathered in Yangzhou Prefecture.

The main force traveled north along the Grand Canal, passing through Shandong and Tianjin before reaching the capital.

The detachment was commanded by Xiao Chaogui and Wei Changhui.

They set off from Nanjing, crossed the Yangtze River into Anhui, contacted and merged with the local Nian rebels, headed north into Henan and then into Hebei, and finally launched a joint attack on the capital.

In addition, Shi Dakai, who was far away in Sichuan, also received Lin Dao's telegram order to quickly capture Chengdu, pacify Sichuan, and then send troops into the plateau.

Chen Yagui of Hubei also planned to launch an attack, heading through Shangluo and Tongguan into Guanzhong, and directly attacking Shaanxi and Gansu.

In the south, Meng De'en, Hu Yihuang, and others were tasked with sweeping away the remnants of the Qing dynasty in Jiangxi, Fujian, and other places, eventually joining forces with Feng Yunshan and Hong Xiuquan in Guangdong.

The massive army mobilized numbered in the hundreds of thousands, with even more auxiliary forces.

If you include the new recruits absorbed along the way who were allocated land, the number is even more terrifying.

Throughout history, even the mighty Qin Dynasty, which swept across the land, could not mobilize such a large-scale operation.

It's not that we don't have enough people, nor is it a lack of organizational skills.

The main reason is that there are not enough supplies to support the operation.

They mobilized people to leave production to fight wars, do transportation, and so on.

In terms of clothing, food, housing, and transportation, all aspects must be guaranteed.

The larger the scale, the more various materials are needed.

People in the industrial age can hardly imagine how difficult it would have been to gather such a large amount of resources in a purely agricultural era.

Putting aside everything else, the very issue of food alone would have been enough to overwhelm most dynasties.

In this era of low productivity and widespread hunger.

Mobilizing so many people for an operation spanning thousands of miles is something only Lin Dao, with his space-time portal, could accomplish.

Massive quantities of food, military supplies, medicines, tools, vehicles, equipment, materials, and so on.

Lin Dao transformed into an aerial acrobat, piloting a Cessna plane to Jinling, and then to the territory of Shi Dakai, Chen Yagui, and their forces.

They left behind mountains of various supplies.

Apart from the troops traveling along the Grand Canal, who had Lin Dao accompanying them and could obtain supplies at any time, all other troops had to rely on themselves for transportation.

The number of civilians mobilized and recruited for this purpose was several times that of the soldiers.

The food they consumed and the fuel they used along the way amounted to the size of a mountain.

In Yangzhou Prefecture, Zhou Lichun, Xu Yao, Chen Alin, Liu Lichuan, and other former members of the Small Knife Society stared blankly at the hundreds of large carts filled with various supplies.

The grass-green clothing consisted of single-layer shirts for summer and thermal underwear and military overcoats for winter.

They were even provided with rubber shoes and cotton shoes, summer hats and winter cotton hats.

Furthermore, items like gloves, protective goggles, socks, and underwear were completely unthinkable.

As for soap, shampoo, antifreeze, sunscreen, toothbrushes, toothpaste, towels, washbasins, needles and thread, these were far beyond their imagination.

"Soldiers need this much stuff for their rations?!"

In their minds, soldiers were simply given a weapon, with swords and spears considered good weapons. Usually, they were given a sharpened wooden stick, a full meal, and then they could go to the battlefield.

Do we need these things in front of us?

That's enough to buy so many lives!

In addition, there are first aid kits containing highly effective but extremely expensive medicines that ordinary people could never afford in their lifetime.

Emergency individual rations and compressed biscuits, bags of White Rabbit milk candy, boxes of dried bay leaves, etc.

The mealtimes were even more extravagant. Eggs were sold by the piece, meat by the box, and white flour buns and rice were available in unlimited quantities. As long as you didn't waste any, you could eat as much as you wanted!

Everyone was given a single tent, and the team members combined the single tents to form a large tent.

Soft, warm sleeping bags and blankets, rain boots for rainy days, raincoats, shovels, etc.
In comparison, firearms and ammunition were hardly noteworthy.

In Chen Alin's words...

'They're armed to the bone, can they even be called soldiers?'

Once the abundant supplies were distributed, all the former members of the Little Knife Society had no other thoughts.

Only one thought remained in their minds.

"Follow the leader, and you'll eat nine meals in three days!"

(End of this chapter)