Three hours later, the refugees who were the first to land on the island began to get busy after resting.
Under the command of Shengsaburo, they began to pull out weeds, remove shrubs, and dig up gravel with the small flag set up by Liu Sheng as the center.
The remaining dozens of people began to level and compact the cleared land.
Zhao Xin and Liu Sheng did not join the labor force. This was not because they were lazy, but because they wanted to walk around with guns on guard to prevent the sudden appearance of wild beasts.
"This gun is so heavy, my neck can't stand it anymore. It's over." Zhao Xin, who was patrolling, complained on the walkie-talkie. He and Liu Sheng were more than 200 meters apart, with the working refugees in the middle.
"I suggested buying an AK from the beginning. You insist on HK416. You deserve it. Anyway, I have no problem. Over." Liu Sheng replied with gloating.
"This gun is so cool, and it's a military version. It's much better than an AK. Most people with money can't buy it. Over."
"It's so expensive! It's over." Liu Sheng cursed. "Besides, why did you buy so many? Are you using one to play with the other? That's it."
"Go~ This is not a fried dough stick. It's over."
"You still need to exercise. You look strong, but your body is too weak. Starting early tomorrow morning, call your seven dwarfs and do more exercise. Over."
"Oh my god~ I, I can't live anymore." Zhao Xinyan screamed.
On a large stone with a very flat bottom, eight thick braided ropes were tied; and on each rope, there was a knot tied every one palm's length.
Each of the eight refugee women held a thick rope. They shouted chants rhythmically while lifting the big stone together, causing the stone to quickly rise above the height of their heads, and then fall heavily to the ground vertically, hitting the soft ground. .
There are four such groups of eight women in total. While pounding, these women wiped the sweat from their foreheads with towels or the backs of their hands, but their faces showed great joy.
This land is our own. Mr. Zhao told everyone the day before boarding the ship that after they settle down, each family will be assigned land for farming. There will be no need to pay grain for the first five years. After five years, they will only need to pay 10% of the land harvest every year.
Zhao Xin also announced that the words he said would be engraved on a stone tablet and erected as evidence.
Every refugee was shocked by the policy announced by Zhao Xin. In these years, the "four people, public officials and six people" were considered good governance, but Mr. Zhao only had 10% of it five years later. They work desperately for the land and for the bright future described by Mr. Zhao.
"My lord! My lord! We have found the river!" Jiuzang and Hetai shouted as they trotted towards Zhao Xin from a distance.
By the time the two of them ran up to Zhao Xin out of breath, they were already panting from exhaustion.
Jiuzang bent down and rested for a while, then straightened up and pointed to the hills four or five miles away behind him and said: "The river flows from that valley."
Zhao Xin picked up the telescope and zoomed in to observe the direction Jiuzang was pointing. The hill is located in the eastern part of the camp, stretching from north to south, dividing the entire Bear Island into two.
The two main rivers on the entire island are hidden in the valley. One runs from west to east and flows into the northern part of the bay where Zhao Xin and the others are located; the other winds from east to south and flows into the sea in the southern part of Bear Island. .
It has a cold temperate continental monsoon climate. Under the influence of northerly winds from the polar regions and southeasterly winds from the ocean, precipitation is very abundant in winter and summer, especially in winter.
Every spring, a large amount of snow water stored in the valley melts and rushes out from the mountains, nourishing the entire island and creating dense vegetation, thus attracting a large number of wild animals.
"It seems that we need to buy a set of drinking water purification equipment." Zhao Xin muttered in his heart. The first thing he thought about was how to facilitate himself. In fact, can’t you drink boiled water? Pretentious.
"This is a treasure land!" the excited Katsusaburo exclaimed from the side.
"Yeah." Zhao Xin nodded, then raised his hand and pointed north. "Going north and east from here, the other end of the strait connects to the entire continent. It's a huge place, and it's all uncultivated wasteland."
Shengsaburo suddenly walked up to Zhao Xin and knelt down on one knee.
"What do you mean?" Zhao Xin asked. He complained in his mind: "Kneel down all the time, how verbose."
"My lord, my subordinate wants to change his name. Please allow me to do so."
"Want to change your name? Why?" Zhao Xin asked strangely. I'm used to hearing "I'm stuck" every day.
"My subordinate had determined to lead the refugees across the sea with you to survive. The day before yesterday, I saw the big boat that your Excellency and his companions drove. Both the shape and speed of the ship were far superior to the large Anzhai ship that I had seen before. It was definitely out of this world. thing.
Therefore, the subordinate wanted to use the word "Haizhou" as his new name. "
That is - Sheng Haizhou. I wipe it! Zhao Xin took a breath, he knew this name.
(Katsu Kaishu, a politician from the late Edo period to the early Meiji era, a representative figure among the old shogunate and the founder of the enlightened faction and the shogunate navy. Commonly known as Rintaro, and later called himself Yasuyoshi. Together with Yamaoka Tetsufune and Takahashi Nifune Known as the "Shogunate Mifune". He has successively served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of War, the Assistant to the Navy, the Councilor and Minister of the Navy, and the Councilor of the Senate.)
"You really dare to think about it!" Zhao Xin secretly cursed while looking at Shengsaburo. "However, from 'I'm stuck for three times' to 'I'm stuck and I'm off'... it's up to you, do whatever you want, as long as you don't change my name."
"This name is very good. I agree." Zhao Xin thought about it for a while, and then solemnly nodded in agreement.
"Thank you very much, lord." Sheng Haizhou knelt down and saluted Zhao Xin.
What Zhao Xin didn't know was that among the samurai surnames in the island country, the surname "Sheng" was very rare. During the Edo period, the main branch of the Katsu family was the unconquered Ogami no Hatamoto of the Tokugawa shogunate's Kofuji group. Later, he became an imperial family member and became a member of the flag family from the second year of Horeki. Therefore, Katsuzaburo followed him decades later. Sheng Haizhou is very likely to be related by blood.
"From the camp to the valley, ditches will be dug to connect the water sources later." After Zhao Xin waited for Sheng Haizhou to stand up, he raised his hand and gestured.
"Sir, we don't have enough manpower at all." Pingtai said from the side.
"I've also noticed this problem. It seems that we have to make a trip to try to get another boatful of people back before the water freezes." Zhao Xin turned to Pingtai and said. "You and Wan Zao will come with me in a few days. Sheng Haizhou, Li Ji and the others will guard the camp."
Don’t be afraid if you have a small number of people. As long as you have an excavator, this workload is nothing.
But then again, Lan Xiang doesn’t know anyone.
These one hundred and seventy-one people, plus Zhao Xin and Liu Sheng, were busy from morning to dusk, and finally opened up a flat open space with an area of about 400 square meters.
Zhao Xin saw that it was getting late and everyone was slumped on the ground from exhaustion, thinking that this could only be done for the time being.
So I first arranged for a few women to take out the purchased compressed biscuits from the pile of supplies and distribute them to everyone, and then they made it as dinner. After eating dry food, he called all the adult men to start setting up construction tents.
Everyone had done this job many times before in the island country, but it was just dismantling, assembling, and disassembling, so it was very easy to set up again. Under the lighting of a few bonfires, eighteen tents were set up in two hours. .
After these few days, all the refugees, including Sheng Haizhou, were very tired. From cleaning up the old camp, getting seasick all the way after boarding the ship, and then landing to open up the site, Zhao Xinguang felt tired just looking at it.
Zhao Xin and Liu Sheng waved away Sheng Haizhou and others who asked to stay on duty overnight, telling them to go to bed first and take their place in the rest of the night.
So, the exhausted "Seven Dwarfs", bah! wrong. It was the "Seven Samurai" who returned to their tents and fell asleep.
"I said, are you really going to go back to the island country to recruit refugees?" Liu Sheng threw a piece of wood into the bonfire and said casually to Zhao Xin.
"What do you think? Look at the 170 people we have now. Most of them are elderly, women and children. There are a lot of things to do in the future." Zhao Xin counted them with his fingers. "Camp building, digging trenches to divert water, developing wasteland to prepare for the coming spring, and we both have to find a place to prepare for military training. Neither of us knows how to drive construction machinery, so we can only take a trip before the sea water freezes. , get more people to work.”
According to the plan previously discussed by Zhao Xin and Liu Sheng, the entire camp area is divided into four major areas: living area, garbage storage area, work area, and material storage area. Because time was urgent and manpower was limited, the first thing the refugees started cleaning was the living area and material storage area.
Liu Sheng is a historical idiot. He asked doubtfully: "Then why don't we go to the Northeast to recruit people?"
"Holy crap, have you forgotten all the historical background I told you before?" Zhao Xin picked up a small clod of soil and threw it towards Liu Sheng.
Liu Sheng chuckled and dodged away, saying, "You can tell me more."
"There are no Han people in the Northeast now, they are all ethnic minorities. Mainly the Kurkhaqi, Feyaka, Oroqen, Hezhe and so on. The Manchu Qing Dynasty has not yet opened the wicker border wall. Even if there are, they are all suppressed. Banner slaves who were exiled."
Zhao Xin fiddled with the bonfire with a long bush branch and said leisurely: "In those Qing palace dramas you watch, it is often said that 'Ning Guta was exiled as a slave to an armored man', and it was these people he was talking about. 'Ning Guta' is full of Language, translated as 'six'..."
"Six? Six what? Six walnuts?" Liu Sheng opened his mouth and came.
"Fuck you, you're so mad at me. It's not six, it's just six. In Manchu, 'tower' means one or two."
"Damn, you are so knowledgeable."
"The more you read, the more you will naturally remember it." Zhao Xinxin said that she has read a lot of information recently.
"For the exiled Han people, Ninggu Pagoda is a hell on earth. Many people would rather die than go there."
"What did you say?" Liu Sheng was very curious.
"There are no roads now, they are all so-called broken-earth official roads. It takes half a year to walk from the capital to Ninggu Pagoda, and many people get sick and die on the road. Even if they arrive alive, they still have to farm and dig ginseng. It’s not over until you’re exhausted.”
"It's so dark." Liu Sheng cursed in a low voice.
"No. It's colder over there than here on Bear Island. When the white-haired wind blows in winter, hehe..." Zhao Xin teased. "By the way, it seems that the descendants of Lu Liuliang's family were exiled there."
"Which Lu Liuliang?"
"Literary prison, Lu Siniang's grandfather."
"Oh. I know Lu Siniang, this is impressive." Finally Liu Sheng knew about it, and he was still a character in the novel.
The Lu Liuliang case was a major literary prison case involving rebellion that occurred in the sixth year of Yongzheng reign. Among the many people involved at that time, except for the descendants of Lu Liuliang and his disciple Yan Hongkui, who were beheaded, the rest of their families were sent to Ninggu Pagoda as slaves.
It was not until the Jiaqing period more than a hundred years later that the descendants of the Lu family petitioned to take part in the imperial examination. As a result, the Qing court supported the ruling of the year that "any Lu family born in Ninggu Pagoda will always be exempted from donating to the imperial examination." After the family's rebellion, it cannot be invoked. It was not until the Qing government promulgated new laws in 1909 that the slave system was abolished. This was the end of the fate of slavery for generations.
A female colleague of Zhao Xin's former company was a descendant of the Lu family in Heilongjiang.
He rolled his eyes at Liu Sheng angrily, then changed the topic and said, "In two days, we will take Pingtai and Wan Zao away in two days. It will be sooner rather than later."
"Where are we going this time? Or to Aomori?"
"No, let's go to Sendai and have a look. Mutsu is dead and running away. There are not many people left."
The firewood crackled in the campfire, and the two of them didn't speak for a long time, just sitting quietly.
Zhao Xin got up, walked around the camp, and finally came to Liu Sheng and said, "We still have to find a way to go back and find people."
"Who are you looking for?"
"Of course they are modern people." Zhao Xin rolled his eyes. "Do you know how to drive an excavator or do I? I have bought so much machinery and equipment that I have to put into use. Even if we are covered in iron, how many nails can we drive?"
"We can teach them how to use it."
"Can you teach excavators? Did you graduate from Lan Xiang? How long do they need to learn to master it? Alas, at first I just wanted to save people, but I didn't expect that there would be so many troubles next."
"Where is your cousin? Didn't you say you would call him?"
"Not yet. That kid is too impetuous, and you have seen the shooting training, and he is still far from good. Let's polish him off first, and then talk about it after a while." In fact, what Zhao Xin thought was that if something happened to him, at least his cousin would be able to survive. Take care over there; if both of them come, if they fall into trouble, it will be all in vain.
"Then what do you think we should do?" Liu Sheng also scratched his head a little.
"Hey, do you think any of your former comrades have the potential to explore?"
"Then I have to think about it carefully, and I don't know what is going on with her now. We have to meet and have a chat."
"Okay. Let's pick up the next group of people and get them settled before we leave."
"Hey, I'll go!" Zhao Xin suddenly slapped Liu Sheng's thigh, and there was a crisp "pop!"
"What are you going to do?" Liu Sheng was startled.
"I'm such a stupid person, I didn't buy the most important thing!"
Liu Sheng didn't bother scolding him and asked quickly: "What?"
"Portable toilet."
Liu Sheng: "..."
