The "La Plata Star" train, which was clanging all the way, slowly stopped at Shengxing Township Railway Station. With the whistle arriving at the station, Zhou Shenwo, director of the State Administration of Precious Metals, walked straight into the office of the Shengxing Township Military Administration not far away, and then called Nanjiro, director of the Military Administration.

Although Minamijiro was an army official, considering that the high-ranking officials who were summoned to question him were not something he could offend, and the man was a little sleek in his personality, he immediately ran over, which made the other army red deer in the office look at him.

"Director Nan, I heard that Chief of Staff Mo has come to the mountains. Where is he now?" Zhou Shenwo asked straight to the point as soon as he met. Nanjiro, who was standing opposite him, was wearing a white shirt with a pair of old mature cowhide boots that were not stained (perhaps lost) in his feet. His expression was a little restrained and he also had a flattering smile. He did not have the stinky, hard, and "abhorrent" look like most army officers.

"His Chief of Staff came to Shengxing Township Railway Station last week. He came back with a team of laborers, but he only stayed for a day and a night and went north again. We don't know where we are now, after all, there is no telegram there. I suggest you go to Anyuan Township and Anping Township to see. The team of the Chief of Staff should be quite large. You can find out by going there and inquire." Minamijiro answered carefully.

"Okay." Zhou Shenwo immediately stood up and said, "How can I go? Do you have a horse here?"

"There is no more horse. But there is still a carriage." Minamijiro said. "Would I send some more people to escort you there?"

"The carriage is a carriage. If you want to choose the guards, you can choose the following options. This is an area that has been cleared for many years on the East Coast. I don't believe anyone else can threaten my life." Zhou Shenwo said, and asked his subordinates to prepare to set off.

Zhou Shenwo and others soon returned to Shengxing Township Railway Station. Unfortunately, a small fire just happened near the railway station. A house storing military canned food was burned for some reason. Fortunately, the patrol militia discovered it in time and immediately organized labor workers to put out the fire. However, hundreds of boxes of canned oranges, canned fish, mushroom sauce, and canned green onion and whale meat stored in the house were greatly damaged. The two warehouse managers who were negligent in their duties have been arrested by the military police, and the outcome is probably not very good.

The traffic chaos caused by the fire lasted for a long time before it ended. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Zhou Shenwo and others took a convoy to transport supplies to the north and embarked on a long journey. Here we went to the banks of Wujiang River, there were four settlements on the way, namely Shenglong Township, Shengyun Township, Xingguo Township (newly established not long ago, near the town of Saiertang in later generations) and Xing'an Township. Some of them were established a year before the outbreak of the war, and they were almost barely self-sufficiency, while others were established during the outbreak of the war. There were not many residents and the infrastructure was poor. They were not much different from the wild land.

It was already mid-autumn when it was well-developed settlements like Shengxing Township, where yellow wheat ears could be seen everywhere in the fields, and their growth was extremely gratifying. Some farmers sat in front of simple houses built with branches, pine boards, adobe and thatch, and were grinding their sickles happily, as if they were preparing for the autumn harvest.

"What a lucky person. He was not transferred to the front line to act as a supporter. Then he was exhausted and went home with scars and diseases. The reward was just a few bags of tobacco and sugar that he had snatched back. Perhaps if he was lucky, he could still get a sheep back and find two pairs of farm tools in the house of the Brazilian manor. What else could be there? Is it interesting to be driven away by the army's red deer like a chicken or a dog?" A slight discussion came from behind Zhou Shenwo, which made him frown secretly. Did he treat people too generously, so that these young interns dared to discuss the wrongs of the Army Department in a noble manner. This atmosphere cannot help.

"That's right, I wanted to say that." Another person's echoed behind him. Zhou Shenwo listened to them patiently: "Look at these rotten houses, rotten wooden houses, and those in the Yazi Lake basin, and those in the east prairie area? There are durable and solid brick houses, and there are beautifully decorated vegetable gardens around the house. Wheat and alfalfa are planted in the farmland. Every household has 810 cows. The fruit trees on the edge of the field have become forests. Children can climb up to pick fruits and eat them after school, and they can also go down to the canal to catch fish and shrimp. The rich life is not comparable here. Why are these people's lives so difficult? Is this a new settlement? Of course not, it is because the military headquarters and the war occupy a lot of resources and money. This is the root of their poverty. It's ridiculous that these people still support the army unswervingly. It's ridiculous!"

In fact, what this person said just now may not be without merit. For example, with the increasing size of the army and the surge in daily military expenditure, the money that the Ministry of Finance can use for national construction is insufficient. Of course, the increasing number of immigration is also a reason that cannot be ignored, but the white shirts naturally will not mention this point. In addition, the outbreak of the Eastern Portuguese War, all kinds of construction funds were greatly squeezed and all work needed, so domestic construction was naturally lost.

In rural areas like these newly set settlements, in the early days, people from the East Coast built houses and waited for immigrants to come, and then let the immigrants pay for the construction of the house by mortgage loans; later, because the number of immigrants is becoming increasingly large and other expenses have surged, this form has gradually become unable to continue playing. The Ministry of Construction has gradually begun to require new immigrants to pay the "down payment" to buy a house to raise funds for the start-up of housing construction projects; in recent years, this way of paying "down payment" is not enough to fill the massive construction deficit. The Ministry of Construction began to freeze most of the housing construction projects in the new settlements indefinitely, and only select some key areas for centralized construction (it is best to be convenient local transportation, it is better if a building material factory is opened), and claimed with confidence that all new settlements must be self-reliant and cannot "wait, bet, bet", and the words are almost explicitly saying that I have no money and can't take care of it. You can solve the housing problem yourself first.

So, you can see now. Along the way, there are such thatched huts built by villagers, which are very simple and not beautiful, but they can only make do with it. Moreover, these people don’t have enough money to build houses, and there are no construction materials companies nearby. Buying building materials from a distance and then transporting them back is really touching. It’s better to make do with it first, and when you have some savings on hand in two years and the railway transportation capacity will no longer be squeezed out by military funds (this means you can transport building materials from other places at a relatively low cost). You can almost build a brick house.

"There is no agricultural machinery rental team here, and Dafeng Factory probably doesn't have the money to produce enough agricultural machinery to cover the place; the number of livestock is not enough, and the size of the person you see is very thin. Can you really use it to plow the fields?" someone echoed.

After hearing this, Zhou Shenwo could no longer listen. Although he was one of the major backstages of the Army's white shirts, it did not mean that he would ignore the facts. In fact, the residents here had poor living conditions and lack of livestock and agricultural machinery. The main reason was inconvenient transportation and poverty. Many livestock stolen by the Army from Brazil were actually trying to find ways to sell them at low prices for credit, and this was actually the reason why these people supported the Army. Otherwise, do you think they were stupid? Therefore, Zhou Shenwo coughed heavily at this time and interrupted the unreliable discussions of his followers.

The convoy continued to stagger forward. Due to the use of the latest steel axles (forged by ironworkers series hydraulic presses), the performance of this type of heavy-duty carriage has been greatly improved, and the average failure-free time has been greatly improved. Coupled with the advancement in shock-absorbing springs and the convenience of the widespread use of solid rubber tires, using freight carriages to travel among low hills is no longer an unbearable thing - at least the failure rate has been reduced by more than one-third, which is enough for the supporters who have suffered from the breakdown of trucks.

Not far away from the convoy, black workers who were leveling the foundations could be seen everywhere. The situation of these workers transported from Angola, Swasily and Congo is much worse than the ones who originally worked on the East Coast prairie. Nothing else, because of the war needs, the supervisors are constantly urging and questioning by superiors, so they are driven to work like mad dogs all day long. On these construction sites where people are exhausted everywhere, it becomes a luxury for anyone to sit down and rest for a while. Sometimes, they will even be served by whips and military sticks when their hands and feet are slow. Everyone has been squeezed out twelve points and makes every effort to advance the time for the railway to open, which naturally causes the mortality rate of construction workers to remain high - the East Coast people are almost overdrawing these workers by killing chickens and retrieving eggs.

It was also with their efforts that the Khasheng section of the Northern Railway (about 58 kilometers) miraculously opened the entire line at the end of January 1661, making the mileage of this railway an astonishing 214 kilometers (including 57 kilometers of Pingliu Line that had been repaired before). It can continuously and quickly transport material resources from industrial and agricultural areas such as Ping'an County to the Brazilian Plateau, and then transport them to the front line by mules and horse teams and freight horse carriages to support the combat operations of our soldiers on the east coast.

This section of the roadbed is the Shengxing-Shenglong section of the Northern Railway, with a total length of about 51 kilometers and is not very difficult to build. After a large number of construction workers switched to this section, the progress of the roadbed leveling work that consumed the most labor and working hours was greatly accelerated. About half of the workload was completed in just two or three months. The final opening of this section of railway will be achieved in the second half of this year, which made everyone feel very excited. The work efficiency during the battlefield is indeed not comparable to that of ordinary people.

The convoy of Zhou Shenwo and others finally crossed the Wujiang River on the last day in April and arrived at Anyuan Township on the north bank. Here, he really met Mo Ming, the chief of staff of the National Armed Forces. At that time, he was escorting a group of prisoners of war with the Dongfang County Security Corps who were returning home with the disbanded ones. After seeing Zhou Shenwo also came here, he was a little surprised at first, but then he seemed to think of something, smiled, and did not say anything, but directly sent someone to invite them to the township government to discuss in detail.

Anyuan Township Government is a rather grand stone building. It was previously the municipal council of the Portuguese colonial government. Now it has naturally been transformed into a township government by the East Coast mansion. It also has multiple functions such as banks, warehouses, police stations, etc. Mo Ming's adjutant brought everyone the popular matte tea, and then served some snacks - mostly robberies stolen from the north, such as Brazilian nuts, etc. - and then quietly went out and brought them to the door, leaving the space for both sides to discuss secretly.

"Chief of Staff, I came to the newly occupied area in the north this time, and I was actually entrusted by the Central Committee. In fact, there is nothing big. Just one thing, to rectify the economic order that is almost collapsed here and make it run normally. The first one is about you sending military tickets and IOUs with various names..." Zhou Shenwo first took a few sips of tea, then raised his head and said, "Especially those rough-printed military tickets, if I expected it was good, you have printed a lot recently? Moreover, the types and systems are different, and each army even printed their own. This is simply a group of demons. Chief of Staff, this is not OK, this will greatly affect the reputation of our army and our government..."

"What am I doing? It turns out that it is these." Mo Ming lit a pipe on his own, took a breath of smoke, then looked at Zhou Shenwo and others, and said: "The IOU is mainly distributed in Anyuan Township, Anping Township, St. Vicente Port and other places. It is for some Chinese merchants, mainly for the real goods, mainly for military supplies. In the war, all the materials were consumed very quickly, and the rear was not transported enough, so he had to find someone to respond to the emergency. As for military tickets, there were indeed many, South Road.

The army, Eastern Army, Saint Vicente, and Rio have been printed in a batch, and the types are different. Most of them are circulated in the hands of the Portuguese and Indians in the occupied areas. Especially after liberating a large number of Indian slaves, we hired them to work and serve as soldiers, and we all need to pay. However, there was no such expense in the plan in advance, so we had to add military tickets. What? Your financial authorities want to recycle these military tickets? Are you so rich? It's really amazing!"
Chapter completed!