"Ouch~"
"Jiejiejie~"
The rain started to fall again, and strange shouts came from all around.
The noisy colonists stopped. They looked at the dense rainforest around them, and their memories of a few months ago gradually returned.
It's this sound, the trees are talking!
Sure enough, not long after, a gunshot was heard in the distance, and a small cloud of smoke rose to the treetops.
The colonists exploded.
"There's an attack!"
"Counterattack, counterattack quickly!"
A strong man with a beard shouted his voice. He took off the musket from his back, and the musket was filled with cold rainwater.
He anxiously wiped it with cotton cloth, trying to clear the water droplets from the gun chamber and the medicine tank.
A short arrow flew towards him, and he felt something pecked his neck. Curiously, he stretched out his hand to pull it out.
What caught the eye was a short arrow less than twenty centimeters long. It had three gorgeous feathers. The arrowhead was a wooden thorn coated with a green, viscous liquid.
"Farke!"
He only felt dizzy, his body was numb, and his lungs were unable to expand and contract to provide oxygen to his body.
He felt suffocated and his vision was blurry.
From the moment Sisi attacked, the entire colonist camp was in chaos.
They fired randomly into the dense forest, the sound of gunfire echoed in the rain forest, and the thick fog made them nervous.
A few months ago, they were driven out of the rainforest by Sisi's Freedom Corps.
The colonists felt that there were enemies everywhere. Every movement of wind and grass and every sound of breaking branches would make their nerves tense.
"No chaos, no chaos!"
The leading officer wanted to maintain order. He hurriedly walked around the camp and stopped the colonists running around one after another.
After finally gathering fifty or sixty people, the officer just wanted to assemble his team to defend on the spot.
Suddenly, someone fired the gun, and a lead bullet blew off his Tianling Cap.
The fifty or sixty people who had just calmed down looked at the red and white brain flowers exploding like a goddess scattering flowers, and ran around in fear.
"There is an enemy behind the tree, shoot and kill him!"
A frightened colonist shivered when he saw branches shaking in the distance. He loudly warned his comrades nearby and raised his flintlock gun to pull the trigger.
"Bang~"
Smoke rose, and a lead bullet was shot from the barrel, hitting the figure behind the tree in an instant.
"Hey, okay, I got it!"
The colonist smiled in the tense atmosphere, and he led the two people forward to check.
Peeling off the branches, a colonist was shot and fell on the water. Bright red blood seeped out and dyed the water red.
The three of them looked at each other and exited silently, as if nothing happened.
The officer was shot dead by his own people, and the colonists had to fight on their own. They fired volleys of guns into the rainforest, and the bursts of gunfire sounded like fried beans.
The gunshots were heard far away.
Outside the colonists, countless shirtless Freedom Corps soldiers squatted on the trees, quietly looking at the smoke of gunfire in the distance.
Sisi climbed up a big tree, and through the gaps in the leaves he could see a dozen Freikorps soldiers on the outside, creating pressure on the colonists.
They make strange calls and move through the rainforest.
A soldier raised a long blowgun and fired an arrow at the terrified colonists not far away.
Of course, some soldiers would be hit by indiscriminate lead bullets and fall into the water.
"General, when will the general offensive be launched?"
Sisi stared at the colonists closely and said to Asa who was asking questions: "Don't worry, let the lead bullets fly for a while. When they run out of gunpowder and lead bullets, it's time for us to take action."
After a while, the gunfire in the rainforest gradually became sparse.
Sisi's eyes lit up and he waved his right hand behind him. The soldiers of the Freedom Corps climbed down from the trees and began to quietly approach the colonists.
The tree finally stopped talking.
At this time, the colonists became quiet, and they vented their fears by beating them randomly.
Everyone checked the ammunition and sadly found that there were not many rounds left.
At this time, the soldiers of the Freedom Corps pushed aside the branches, and their figures appeared in front of the colonists.
In the distance, Sun Zhongren held up his telescope and took a breath of cold air.
Seeing the brutal hand-to-hand combat, he suddenly felt a toothache.
The Ming army just abandoned the colonists and searched forward for a certain distance. When they turned around, the colonists were defeated by the Free Corps?
"What a disgrace to the colonists!"
Sun Zhongren murmured.
The officer next to him scratched his ears and asked, "Are we going to help them?"
"Why help?"
Sun Zhongren glanced sideways at the officer, stretched out his right hand and looked at his watch.
The colonists and the Freikorps had been at each other's throats for half an hour.
But it was not enough, Sun Zhongren continued to squat behind the tree.
"Let the soldiers remain alert and wait until they are done fighting and we will clean up the mess."
…
Jinling Forbidden City.
Ming Dynasty received a telegram from Panama's Jin Yiwei, claiming that the Freedom Corps, which had been troubling South America for more than a year, was captured by the Ming army in the Amazon rainforest.
Zhu Zaiming quickly held a cabinet meeting.
The ministers sat around the huge "0"-shaped table and kept looking at the documents.
Qin Yuan frowned as he turned over the pages, and he couldn't help but ask Zhu Zaiming.
"Your Majesty, the geographical environment of South America is only of some value along the coast, but the inland environment is extremely harsh. It would be extremely difficult for Ming Dynasty to vigorously develop it."
"Qin Shangshu is right. Now our Ming Dynasty's infrastructure construction is under way. There is a shortage of people everywhere and the country has not done a good job. Is it..."
At this point, the minister stopped talking. His meaning was obvious.
Until Ming Dynasty completes infrastructure construction, demilitarization investments should be put in the back row.
But now in the entire Ming Dynasty, Zhu Zaiming, as the emperor, can make decisions with a single word. No matter how big the opinions of ministers, it depends on the emperor's face.
In addition, the Great Purge had just passed, and the last batch of officials who hung foreigners on trees had not yet starved to death. No one dared to stab Zhu Zaiming in front of him.
What Zhu Zaiming is considering is the large amount of forestry and mineral resources in South America.
More importantly, on the left side of Guyana, buried under that large piece of land is the world's largest reserve of oil.
Internal combustion engines and related technologies are developing. Whoever controls oil in the future will control the world.
In Zhu Zaiming's mind, digging the Panama Canal and controlling the area from Panama to Guyana would not only gain access to the world's largest oil fields, but also collect tolls.
The same goes for the Cairo Canal in Egypt.
No matter how much you invest in this kind of project of the century, it is worth it.
Zhu Zaiming walked around the giant table. He asked the ministers to open the technical report of the Ministry of Industry and said.
"The power experiment team of the Ministry of Industry has achieved initial success. The new power machine has also been prototyped. It is smaller in size and more powerful. I believe you have read about it in the internal newspapers."
The ministers recalled the recent newspapers and periodicals, and then looked at the documents in their hands. A minister who had been in charge of the internal combustion engine project seemed to have grasped something.
At this time, Zhu Zaiming's voice came.
"Steam engines use coal, while internal combustion engines use fuel oil.
In the history of ancient Greece, they used a thick black liquid to create Greek fire…
Unfortunately, the fuel required for internal combustion engines is also produced from this black viscous liquid. "
Qin Yuan raised his head and asked: "Your Majesty, do you mean that there is this kind of liquid in western Guyana?"
"That's right, not just in northern South America, but also in Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula!"
"Hiss~"
The ministers took a breath. They finally understood. They finally understood why Zhu Zaiming had insisted on the Panama Canal and the Cairo Canal.
Before, ministers could not understand that he would build canals for others thousands of miles away, but now they couldn't help but admire Zhu Zaiming.
Fortunately, he is the emperor that Taishang Laojun likes, and he only thinks about the long term.
A minister discovered Hua Dian and couldn't help but ask: "Your Majesty, these oil fields are all abroad. Is it because we have no oil in Ming Dynasty?"
After all, from ancient times to the present, people in China have prided themselves on their vast land and abundant resources.
Now I see that the two major oil-producing areas are both abroad, which makes me feel uncomfortable.
Zhu Zaiming smiled slightly.
"Of course there are some in the Ming Dynasty, but let's eat the food from our neighbors while we sit in our own pot!"
