In the south of Guangzhou Prefecture, approximately where Xinhui County, Shunde County and Gaoming County of Zhaoqing Prefecture meet, it is a small village on the bank of Nacangbu River.

It was already late at night. To save money on lamp oil, the farmhouse turned off the lights early. Only two small landowners in the village supported the scholars. In order to enable their children to read more sages' books, they raced against time.

Facing the upcoming county school entrance examination, I am still lighting up the lamps and consuming fuel like a competition.

The village has long been silent. The chickens don't crow and the dogs don't bark. As you get closer, there seems to be some inaudible movement from time to time, but it is nothing more than an accompaniment that has never been missing in the small village.

Such tranquility was awakened by a barking of dogs in the second half of the night. Soon, all the men, women and children in the village were driven to the threshing floor at the entrance of the village by a group of soldiers wearing Ming army uniforms. Torches surrounded the crowd, and the light

, flickered here, illuminating the frightened faces, flickering brightly and dimly.

The whole village, even the two Confucian scholars, were brutally dragged here. After making sure that there was no one else in the village, the officer leading the team stepped forward, surrounded by a group of soldiers, to better expose his body to the crowd.

caught in the sight of those who were panicking.

"Let me tell you the good news. Chen Fujun, who rescued Guangzhou four years ago, decided to let the people who once lived in Guangzhou City return to their homeland.

The people who have fled here should go home."

What the officer said was righteous, with Chen Kai's name as an endorsement, and he was completely serving the country and the people with a sense of righteousness. However, at this hour, the people were surrounded in such a small area, and the sheep

The scene of a group of people being trapped by a pack of wolves seems to be a replica, but none of the people trapped in it dare to believe it.

"Do you need to be so shameless when doing public business?"

These words appeared in the minds of most people, but absolutely no one would dare to say them out. Last year, the Ming and Qing armies clashed here, and their entire village fled to the mountains to take refuge, so that they could fight in the army.

Survived the disaster. Who would have thought that the war was over, and this place was controlled by His Highness the King of Xining, who was said to be strict in running the army and never violated the common people, but there would still be rebels coming to make trouble.

At this moment, the gray-bearded villager gritted his teeth and kept comforting himself by saying, "In the past few years, I have overcome so many difficulties, and this time is not the least of them." Finally, he mustered up the strength.

Then he nodded and bowed forward.

"In reply to the commander-in-chief, our village is indeed composed of local villagers, and there are no people who have fled from Guangzhou City. On the contrary, the officers and soldiers are diligent in the king's affairs. We are very grateful and would like to give ten loads of them.

Forage, to reward Master Wang." At this point, the village elder did not forget to explain: "Last year, Master Wang besieged Xinhui, and the Tatars came to the village to burn and kill many people.

I was willing to pay a small fortune to the Tatars for grain, so I simply fled into the mountains. The autumn grain has been completely wasted. I really don’t have any savings, and I haven’t even collected this year’s seeds. I beg your forgiveness, Commander-in-Chief.”

The old man spoke humbly, but the officer's brows were raised, and the storm of anger condensed in the deep frown became more and more intense. Before the officer could speak, a soldier beside him pointed at the nose of the old man and shouted angrily.

He yelled: "Fodder, you old fool, you are using me as livestock, right?"

As soon as he finished speaking, he prepared to fight. But at this moment, the grandson of the village elder, one of the only two scholars in the village, stepped out from the crowd and directly protected the old man behind him, wearing a net scarf and a Confucian shirt, standing proudly.

He stared at the soldier intently, showing no sign of weakness.

"Master Wang should take it as his own responsibility to protect the environment and the people. I dare to ask, your department gathered the people here in the middle of the night, but you don't know what the word "nuisance to the people" means?!"

The young man's righteous words shocked the soldier. Seeing this, the old man secretly thought something was wrong and tried his best to pull back the seeds of the family's revitalization, but the Confucian scholar stood there motionless and said

Reluctant to retreat from anything.

"You are such a troublesome person. You dare to resist Master Wang. I will kill you today."

As he said that, the sword was unsheathed, and the cold light flashed, and the reflective blade pointed straight upward, and then it flashed downward for an instant, hitting the nearby torch, causing the Confucian scholar to subconsciously close his eyes.

However, at the same time as the screams were heard, the white light did not have time to turn into blood. Looking closely, it was the officer who stopped the soldiers with a look of displeasure on his face. I don't know if it was because of the dissatisfaction of these unscrupulous people.

Knowing the current affairs, the soldier had the rashness to kill a Confucian scholar, which would put them into an even more unfavorable situation.

Before the sword fell, the Confucian scholar was already frightened and stayed there. At this time, the officer did not show any weakness. He insisted that the people in the village were Guangzhou people who had fled that year, and immediately ordered all these people to be driven away.

Direction of Henan Island.

After the order was issued, the soldiers stepped forward with guns and knives in hand and drove them away. Even though there was a chaos among the people in the encirclement, the soft crying that could have been hidden in it suddenly turned into howls. Unfortunately, the crying

Regardless of whether they were crying or howling, these Ming troops did not care about these many things after receiving the order. They just drove them northward with bright swords and torches.

At the forefront of the team, the officer sat proudly on a poor horse. Speaking of which, there is a screening mechanism on Henan Island. Even if they send all these fakes, they will still be admitted.

Not to mention the real refugees among them. As long as there are more people and they are suffering from hunger and cold along the way, even if they get to Henan Island, is it possible that Chen Kai will still ignore it? As long as they cause enough trouble to Chen Kai

, they can always force this feudal official, who has always been known to love his people like his son, back to the negotiating table. At that time, the initiative will be in their hands.

They were not the only ones who did this. It was the consensus of all the generals who were present at the meeting. Only one Wang Xing was concealed. It was because that guy was too close to Liancheng Bi, and also because he was too close to Liancheng Bi.

I listened too much to the civil servant's words, and now it's hard to say what Lian Chengbi's attitude is towards this, so as not to alert the enemy.

The team was still moving forward, and time was passing by. It was already midnight when they set off, and gradually they were getting closer and closer to the bright light. But not long after, this team was like a long queue.

Like fire, they came straight forward on horseback. After startling the team, the visitor was brought directly in front of the officer.

"The commander-in-chief has ordered that the operation be cancelled."

The person who came was the captain of the private soldiers who was directly subordinate to the officer, but the order he brought made him stunned. He knew the details best. This plan was originally started by their commander, and it was very difficult for him to do so.

He quickly convinced the other generals. Among them, isolating Wang Xing also had the intention of using this matter to expand their influence. But the plan had already begun to be implemented, and even the first batch of people estimated that they should arrive in Henan soon.

Island, who knew the instigator suddenly had a recurrence.

"What's going on? Why did you cancel it when you said it was cancelled?"

After all, this is Li Dingguo's control area. They started taking action in the middle of the night, and they were afraid of alarming others. After staying up like this for most of the night, it would be hard for anyone to accept that they just returned without success. But if you ask,

However, the answer they got was that Supervisor Guo Zhiqi and Governor Lian Chengbi had orders strictly prohibiting them from harassing the people. Seeing that their commander had alarmed these two men, they had no choice but to stop there.

"What kind of bullshit supervisor? When we were short of food and wages, we couldn't see him coming out to distribute it. At this time, we took action ourselves, and he jumped out to sing the opposite. Why, can't he be responsible for the food shortage?!"

The officers were full of resentment. Speaking of which, today's food shortage was similar to last year's Ming army's campaign in western Guangdong, but the war could not be settled. The people were harassed, with food and men being levied, and some were also expanding the army, so that the agricultural production of the people was affected.

Had a very bad impact.

In addition, after the city of Guangzhou was defeated, Li Dingguo, Guo Zhiqi and Chen Kai divided the spoils on behalf of the three Ming armies that participated in the war. Fortunately, Li Dingguo and Chen Kai had a system of troops under their command, and their rewards and distribution were all due to their kindness.

On the above. But when it comes to the generals in western Guangdong, although Guo Zhiqi and Lianchengbi tried their best to mediate, they still have to fight for each other. For this reason, the pace of military expansion and recruitment cannot be stopped, which further leads to a shortage of civilian labor.

and a decline in agricultural production.

After the war, there will be years of famine. This is a real problem. They are neither willing to compress the expanded army and turn swords into plowshares, nor are they like Chen Qice and Li Changrong who have a tacit understanding with Chen Kai and can obtain varying degrees of support.

Subsidy. Who would have thought that now that Chen Kai was trying to trick him, he was stopped by Chen Kai's political opponents and had nothing to say.

The officer was very dissatisfied with this, but it was difficult to disobey the military order, so he had to order the people to leave on their own. However, after such a long trip and not getting anything back, it felt like a loss. So, the officer

Order the troops to return to the original route and search the village first.

The commotion in southern Guangzhou came to an abrupt end. Over in Guangzhou City, the city's vitality is still recovering. Although Chen Kai promised not to interfere in the civil affairs of Guangzhou City, so many people have returned from eastern Guangdong and southern Fujian.

, Jin Weixin, the aide in charge of civil affairs in Guangzhou at this stage in Li Dingguo's dynasty, inevitably has to keep in contact with Chen Kai to ensure smooth progress.

"It's really easy to have these officials involved. I heard that they have been doing these things in Chaozhou and southern Fujian in recent years?"

"Yes, many of them were originally local grassroots officials in Guangzhou. When they arrived in Chaozhou, they came in handy, and they have been like this ever since."

In the government office, Chen Kai and Jin Weixin sat and talked in detail, but they were talking about the local officials from Guangzhou who had returned with the people of Guangzhou. They all had rich administrative experience in Chaozhou and southern Fujian. Compared with Li Dingguo's staff,

Compared with Guo Zhiqi, Lian Chengbi and the Confucian scholars they had just promoted, these officials obviously knew better how to handle administrative affairs.

Chen Kai said it in an understatement, but the dispute between the natives and invaders in Chaozhou Prefecture was also a big deal. The first thing Chen Kai did when he took office was to attack Suli and attack the largest remaining native invader in the area.

, it had the effect of killing the chicken to scare the monkeys, thus suppressing the fighting parties as well as Hao Shangjiu, who was watching eagerly from the north.

Afterwards, they divided the area according to their place of origin, established two new counties, and sent some scholars from both sides to southern Fujian. Not to mention swearing a lot, the riot was finally calmed down. But the three Today, years later, these officials from Guangzhou returned to Guangzhou City and immediately played a role in grassroots management. Under Chen Kai's suggestion, they tried their best to cooperate with Jin Weixin's work, and their achievements were quite remarkable.

To reciprocate the favor, Jin Weixin has also placed these officials from Guangzhou in the yamen of Guangzhou Prefecture and Nanhai and Panyu counties, so that they can play their roles more legitimately.

Both Chen Kai and Jin Weixin came from the same background as military generals and staffs. Although their official ranks were very different, Chen Kai and Jin Weixin still regarded each other as peers. Their origins and the famous chain of contempt for imperial examinations made it inevitable for them to exist with orthodox civil servants. The word estrangement is mentioned. However, the estrangement between Chen Kai and the Western Guangdong civil servant group has become clear, and has entered the stage of struggle early. It is just that it is not a matter of life and death, but Jin Weixin has not yet reached that point. .

Cooperation is beneficial to both parties. The current prosperity in Guangzhou is a clear proof, clearly displayed in front of everyone. This is not only Jin Weixin's political achievements and resume, but also a fruit of Chen Kai's years of preparation.

The conversation was very pleasant, and Jin Weixin soon brought up the matter of Guo Zhiqi's return to the city. In the past few days, Guo Zhiqi seemed to have been missing for a while, but Chen Kai knew exactly where he had gone.

Regarding Macau, he is not very worried. Speaking of which, it is a colony for the Portuguese. They occupy it for commercial trade, and secondly for missionary purposes. As for plundering resources, it can be done in South America and Nanyang, here But it seems a bit unsatisfactory, especially when the Dutch are watching eagerly. In such a situation, the policy will certainly try to avoid risks as much as possible, but it does not mean to eliminate risks, but It depends on the ratio of effort and benefit. Not to mention that at this stage, the Governor of Macau is just a military figure under the Council. Even if all members of the Council are replaced, the continuity of the policy will still exist.

The current situation is that there are stable commercial exchanges between Macau and the Zheng Group. The navy of the Zheng Group also controls the coastal trade of Fujian and Guangdong provinces. There is no need for Macau to offend the Zheng Group too much, so for Guo Zhiqi There will be support, but only to a certain extent, and much of it may not be immediately apparent at this stage.

There is nothing to worry about there, so when Guo Zhiqi proposed Xiangshan County in exchange, he agreed so readily. In the final analysis, he had a good grasp of Macau's situation.

All this flashed through Chen Kai's mind, and in front of Jin Weixin, he just said "Oh" and said nothing more. Instead, the two chatted for a long time, and while they were having dinner, A soldier of Li Dingguo hurried over and whispered a few words in front of Chen Kai in front of Jin Weixin. However, the latter's expression changed, and after telling the man to leave, he turned to face This is Chen Kai.
Chapter completed!