After giving some instructions on Prison Island, Lin Xie set off in a small boat at noon after lunch.

  The river's fine waves surge, like scattered jade piled up. It seems that in just a few days, the river wind blowing on my face is no longer so cold. Under the riverbank, some ducks float by, watching the black awning boat sail over, flapping its wings for a while before landing in the water a short distance away.

  "Old Crow has been to Changshan Island, how's life over there? I'm afraid Mr. Qin won't tell us even if he's suffering." Lin Fu sat at the bow of the boat, talking to Wu Qi and Zhou Pu, while the person steering the boat at the stern was also a former pirate from Changshan Island who had turned over a new leaf. In the afternoon, Zhou Pu and Wu Qi personally went to the island prison to escort Lin Fu ashore.

  Before the New Year, Wu Qi personally escorted Qin Chengzu to transport a ship of supplies to Changshan Island. When Wu Qi returned, Lin Xie had already been imprisoned on Prisoner's Island, and this was still after the New Year when they met for the first time.

  Rushing against the northwest wind, on New Year's Day, we arrived on the island and immediately started making bread and dumplings, even working through the night to make new clothes... Before we arrived on the island, they hadn't had rice or flour for a whole month. They were surviving on seafood, some people could adapt, but others kept having diarrhea after arriving on the island, with no medicine and lacking warm clothing. We set up some grass sheds, but when the wind was strong, they would be blown away. The island has a lot of rain in winter, and over ten people who were weak didn't make it through.

  Wu Qi spoke about the situation on Changshan Island. He had indeed been through the trials of knife mountain and bloody seas, seen many dead bodies, and become numb to life and death. After grieving, he could put his sorrow aside and not show it on his face. After all, before New Year's Eve, a whole shipload of supplies was transported to Changshan Island, which improved the situation somewhat.

  Lin thought about the situation on Changshan Island, even if there were no new people coming to the island, just to keep nearly four hundred people alive, every two months they would need to replenish over a hundred stones of rice and cloth, medicine, some iron tools and so on. It would take almost two years for Changshan Island to become self-sufficient; once the island was hit by a typhoon, after the islanders' homes were destroyed, they would still have to rely on aid from the mainland to rebuild - this is also why the development of small islands around the periphery relying solely on folk power is extremely slow.

  Wu Qi saw that Zhao Hu did not follow Lin onto the boat and asked, "Where's Brother Zhao?"

  "Taking this opportunity, Zhao Hu was admitted to the military post," Lin Tie briefly told Zhou Pu and Wu Qi about the storm of clearing the prison for the past two days. "For the time being, let him stay on the island, I'll just run between the prison island and the river mouth, not far, no need for him to follow..."

  To make Gu Wu Chen completely trust himself, Lin Xuan had to reuse Yang Shi to train the martial arts disciples on Guardian Island, but he also had to guard against Yang Shi being disobedient, so he directly let Zhao Hu enter the martial arts profession and join the sequence of martial arts disciples.

  It would be more beneficial for him to have Zhou Pu and Wu Qi directly enter the military profession, so that he can firmly grasp the prison guards in his own hands in the future. However, Zhou Pu and Wu Qi's identities cannot withstand too much scrutiny, while Zhao Hu is clean and honest.

  Lin Xie was a minor official from the 9th rank of the Imperial Censorate who could not bear the crime of hiding bandits.

  Nothing is absolute. When Li Zhuo was the Jiangxi Provincial Governor, one day he went to the execution ground to supervise an execution. A notorious thief asked Li Zhuo for a bowl of wine before being beheaded. The two men locked eyes, and Li Zhuo admired his boldness. On the spot, he commuted the death sentence and petitioned the imperial court to pardon the thief and take him as a household slave. When Li Zhuo went to Eastern Fujian to quell the rebellion, this notorious thief became his personal bodyguard leader and brought many of his outlaw brothers to serve as Li Zhuo's personal guards. Li Zhuo openly cleared their names, and it was widely praised at the time.

  Unfortunately, Li Zhuo was already a third-grade local official when he did that thing, and Lin Xie was just a small official, but didn't have the qualifications to become a beautiful topic.

  Zhou Pu and Wu Qi have been lurking around the river mouth for days, staring at Prison Island, but they didn't expect such a big move on the island. Wu Qi scratched the back of his head and said, "Will Jin Chuan thoroughly control Prison Island from now on?"

  Lin Xian smiled slightly, and at this time the boat arrived at the mouth of the Jin River. Lin Jingzhong, Lin Mengde and others who were waiting on the shore climbed onto the riverbank one by one, and the boatman dressed as Liu Ma Kou stretched out the gangway to the riverbank, picking up Lin Jingzhong and Lin Mengde to board the ship.

  Lin Mengde and Lin Jingzhong stepped onto the swaying boat, both worried that they would fall into the water in this weather - this was the disadvantage of not having a dock.

  All boats need to be in a certain depth of water and cannot be completely pulled up onto the riverbank. Small boats can use planks to connect to the riverbank, but large ships, especially those with a sharp bottom, have a draft of almost one zhang (about 3.3 meters) deep. The slope of the riverbank is also very small, so even if there is one zhang of water, it would still be 13 or 14 zhang (about 43-46 feet) away from the shore. To connect to the riverbank, long wooden planks over 13-14 zhang long are needed, which require hundreds or even thousands of years old trees as materials. Even so, unloading goods and people onto the riverbank and then transporting them up to the river dike is still a lot of work, far less convenient than having a dock. Although there is a dock outside the east city gate of Jiangning at the north of Jiuyong Bridge, the Jiuyong Bridge dock is located in the middle of the Jin River, which is only 17-18 zhang (about 56-59 feet) wide at that point. If several boats are moored there, they can block the entire river channel, so the Jiangning government only allows official ships and military ships to be moored there.

  To facilitate cargo transportation, it is necessary to build a dock at the mouth of a wide river or directly on the riverbank.

  "Did you hear that Lin Jingzhong said, 'You are building a dock and warehouses here?'" Lin Mengde jumped onto the boat, Zhou Pu and Wu Qi stood up, yielding their seats to him and Lin Jingzhong.

  "Uh," Lin nodded, on the boat it wasn't so particular, he picked up the iron kettle and poured hot water to rinse the cup, then used the same cup that Zhou Pu and Wu Qi had drunk from to refill tea for Lin Mengde and Lin Jingzhong. "I can't just leave Prison Island, so I'll have Jingzhong invite Uncle Mengde over to discuss."

  "If it were yesterday, I would think this matter is too difficult to handle, and maybe not even bother to make the trip," Lin Mengde didn't exchange any pleasantries with Lin Xie either. He was now regretful that Lin Xie wasn't a son of the main family. He picked up his cup and took a sip of tea, which was Tie Mu Gao Mo tea. Putting down the cup, he looked at Lin Xie and asked, "Were you in charge of things on Prison Island?"

  "Uncle Mengde's news is really quick." Lin Fu smiled.

  "How can I not be anxious? Gu Wu Chen led nearly two hundred people into the city, and even if I covered my ears, I could still hear it..." Lin Meng said.

  "It seems so for now, Lord Gu has sent Yang Shi to assist me on the island." Lin Xie finally replied to Lin Meng's previous question.

  Lin Mengde nodded, he had visited the Gu residence many times before, and he knew everyone around Gu Wudeng. If Gu Wudeng didn't trust Lin Xie, he would send Yang Pu or Ma Chao to restrain him on Prison Island, not this young whippersnapper Yang Shi.

  Although Jiang Dao's prison officer was only a small official from the ninth rank, Lin Mengde was not someone who would be blinded by the size of an official position. Especially since Gu Wu Chen had made such a big move with the prison break on Jiang Dao Island, he could also guess that Gu Wu Chen wanted to rebuild the prison city on Jin Chuan Island. The size of the official position was secondary, the key was having real power, and whether this power had other uses.

  If all the serious prisoners in Jiangdong are imprisoned here, it is not hard to imagine how strict the defense of Jinjiang Prison Island will be in the future. This side is only one mile away from Jinjiang Prison Island by waterway, and can naturally radiate the defensive power to Jinjiang Prison Island.

  Lin Mengde stroked his chin whiskers thoughtfully and said to Lin Xie, "I heard that the Ji Yun Society borrowed a merchant's letter from Yu Ling County with a principal of 20,000 taels of silver. However, they need to build a dock and warehouses by the river, but 20,000 taels of silver won't even cover the foundation...". Lin Mengde was naturally aware that the 20,000 taels of silver were just an empty shell, and he couldn't imagine where Lin Xie could get such a large sum of money. He even suspected that the Ji Yun Society was just a hollow shell, except for the money they got from selling horses to those outsiders in Shanglin; besides, what was the origin of those outsider horse merchants anyway? Lin Mengde's heart still had doubts about it.

  "It's not that I don't have enough money, and even if I did have some silver on hand, there are too many places to use it," Lin said, "so I came to discuss with Uncle Meng."

  Lin Mengde and Lin Jingzhong boarded the ship, which then sailed out of the river mouth and proceeded westward along the riverbank.

  When the dock was built in Shanglinli, Lin Mengde was still young. Later, when the dock was expanded, he participated and knew how difficult it was to build a dock at the confluence of Shiliang River and Shanglin Creek. Now, building a dock by the river is even more challenging.

  Lin Mengde looked at the riverbank eroded by the Jiang River and pointed to the sandy beach under the boat, saying to Lin Fu: "To build a stone dock that can moor a thousand-ton ship in the middle of the river, we need to pile up stones for about 30 or 40 zhang. The waves are too big, using earth is definitely not feasible, even if we use stones, we have to drive large wooden stakes into the riverbed and press them down with giant rocks. This project is too massive, I'm afraid it would be difficult for the Jiangning Prefecture to take charge of it. If we want to rely on the power of a few merchant companies..." Lin Mengde was conducting an on-site inspection for the first time, and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to retreat. Building a small dock by the river would cost tens of millions of taels of silver, how many merchant companies would be willing to take this risk?

  "No, no, no, it's not as difficult as you imagined, Uncle Meng. There are two ways to build a dock: one is to build a high platform in the deep water, and the other is to dig a waterway under the high platform. The usual method nowadays is indeed to pile up stones to build a high platform that extends all the way to the deep water area for ships to anchor. I have studied this with Jingzhong, Uncle Meng, look at this riverbank, we can hire people to dig out a deep waterway from under the riverbank and let the ships drive in directly to dock on the stone shore, which will greatly save labor. The only difficulty is that the deep waterway will be silted up by the river mud from time to time, requiring people to dive down to clear it regularly..."

  Lin Mengde was stunned, he thought he had a wide range of knowledge, but he didn't expect that building a dock could be done in this way. After thinking about it, isn't it just about finding ways to avoid letting deep-water cargo ships get stuck in shallow waters and making it convenient for loading and unloading goods?

  "Have you ever asked a master builder about it?" Lin Mengde asked.

  "Having asked around and looked for experienced masters, at first they didn't believe that a dock could be built on the riverbank. After being treated to good wine and meat and coming to take a closer look, they all thought it was worth trying," Lin Jingzhong said. "Also, according to the changes in the river water during different seasons, we came up with a complete strategy. We need to choose a rocky shore, the steeper the better. If the rocky shore is too high, we can chisel out stone steps. It will be much less work than building a stone pier all the way into the middle of the river."

  Lin Meng nodded, chiseling stone was easy, first pile up firewood to burn hot, then burn cold water, one cold and one hot, the stone would crack into large pieces, and carving a straight stone staircase leading to the riverbank wouldn't waste much manpower.

  Compared to building a high platform in the middle of the surging river, digging deep waterways is much easier. Even if dredging the waterways later is easy, after all, building a high platform requires less effort to guard against the daily erosion of the river water.

  Lin Mengde found it strange: why wasn't this simple method commonly used? After careful consideration, he understood that this method was only suitable for stone shores, and even better if they were natural stone shores. If the shore was made of earth, digging a deep waterway at the foot of the embankment would not be convenient, as it would cause the earth to collapse.

  Lin Mengde looked at the riverbank and thought that it was no wonder Lin Xian built a warehouse here. These rocky shores were all made of stone, even if they dug ten zhang deep, they wouldn't worry about the river water eroding the shore.

  Lin Xuan and Lin Mengde, Lin Jingzhong were on a boat inspecting the site for building a dock, when they heard the sound of horseshoes approaching. The horseshoes stopped right above their heads on the riverbank. Lin Xuan thought it was strange: who would be riding a horse to enjoy the view at this time? He looked up and in the blink of an eye, Song Jia's stunning face appeared looking over the edge.

  **********************

  PS: Chapter 2 is online, red envelope, red envelope.