In the training camp hut on Dongtan Island, two bronze oil lamps were placed on a thick wooden table, and the light spilled onto the table. Lin Mengde unrolled the long scroll in his hand on the table, revealing a large five-foot square map. People familiar with the southern part of Chongzhou's river mouth could see at a glance that this map accurately depicted the terrain of Xisha Island and the surrounding riverine sandbars and Zilan Mountain.

  To draw this accurate map, Lin Mengde mobilized a large number of people in the past month on Xi Sha Island and searched the entire island.

  "The problem of Xi Sha Island, apart from typhoons and tides, is mainly the instability of its terrain. The upstream river water erodes and collapses, while the downstream sea tide piles up sand and silts. By comparing old maps and using Zi Lang Mountain as a reference point, we can confirm that Xi Sha Island moves more than 100 steps towards the river mouth every year..." Lin Mengde introduced their recent achievements in surveying the terrain of Xi Sha Island.

  If you don't know the terrain, you can't blindly transform the Xisha Islands.

  The Xi Sha Island is now about 40 miles wide from east to west. With the Yangtze River water flow washing against Xi Sha Island at this time, it will not take two hundred years to completely wash away such a large island, and then the sea tide will accumulate in the lower reaches to form an even larger sand island.

  Building a fort on the west bank, there is always the threat of being washed away by the river water. Building a fort on the east bank, due to the constant accumulation of silt from the sea tides, it will be impossible to find a suitable beach for building a harbor wharf. Although the silting situation in the south and north banks is not as severe as that in the east and west banks, it is still present.

  Lin and many others present certainly did not want to spend a great deal of effort building the Wuhu dock only to have it abandoned after one or two years.

  The world is not yet developed enough for the Jiangkou sandy island, and there is a lack of experience. Perhaps in the future, when the land in Chongzhou or Pingjiang Prefecture becomes scarce to a certain extent, people will be forced to compete for land on the sandy island, and effective governance experience will gradually accumulate; For later generations, some experiences have become common sense that ordinary people can possess.

  Lin Xie said: "To overcome the geological defects of Xi Sha Island, we need to work from both inside and outside. Firstly, the drainage facilities on the island must be built to perfection, excluding the internal accumulation of water from impacting the beach; secondly, we can minimize the direct impact of river flow and sea tides on the beach as much as possible. We can build a horizontal dike outside the Guanyin Beach...". Lin Xie pointed with his hand to the north of Xi Sha Island's Guanyin Beach, drawing two lines extending into the river, "During dry season, this side of the shallow beach will be exposed, and the horizontal dike will be built on top of it. The eastern dike blocks sea tides and siltation, while the western dike changes the direction of the river flow, avoiding direct impact on the harbor. During stormy weather, ships can also take refuge in it. This winter, we'll first build two dikes, and later, depending on needs, add more horizontal dikes to expand the scale of the harbor, although the engineering volume will be slightly larger."

  "It's not just a little more work," Lin Mengde said, his eyes fixed on the two marks scratched out by Lin Xian's fingernail. "On this side of the river mouth, we mainly dug waterways and used so many working hours. At Guanyintan, in addition to building a dam, we also need to dig waterways, build stone dams at the shore, and the west dam needs to be built with large stones to block the river embankment..."

  "Build a stone dam, fill the middle with earth, and within the two horizontal lines, the deep water can moor large ships. The outer sides that are prone to siltation can moor small boats," Lin said, "A berth at the riverbank dock costs 4,000 taels of silver, while investing in Xi Sha Island's Wan Port would cost 40,000 or even 80,000 taels of silver..."

  Cao Zi'ang said: "The labor force on the Xisha Islands is not lacking, and organizing 5,000 workers to work for six months should be enough." Cao Zi'ang has been organizing people at the river mouth to engage in the construction of the Jianggang Port. He himself is also very skilled in practical techniques, with a deep understanding of the subject matter, and can keep up with Lin Xiang's thinking. The others are carefully considering the purpose of building a horizontal dike outside Guanyintan.

  Lin Mengde calculated in his heart: the food expenses for 5,000 strong laborers for six months would be at least 20,000 taels of silver. A large amount of stone materials also needed to be transported from the counties in the southwest of Taihu Lake recently, and a budget of 40,000 taels of silver was really not enough.

  "It's also fortunate that we don't lack silver, this silver will eventually be spent, otherwise it would just be a cold and lifeless object." Lin Xuan smiled and said, "We also don't lack labor, but we can't just focus on this one thing. Whether the 24,000 people can finally settle down depends on the next six months..."

  Luo Yanghu got 100,000 taels of silver without spending a single penny, then raided Anji Shu's stronghold and obtained more than 20,000 taels of silver. On Xi Sha Island, they used the "black-eat-black" fishing mode to rob passing East Sea bandits, getting goods worth over 80,000 taels of silver. Now they have nearly 200,000 taels of silver in hand. With over 24,000 disaster victims waiting to be resettled on Xi Sha Island, most of whom are young and able-bodied laborers, there will be no shortage of manpower on the island.

  There are many things to be done, and more than 24,000 people still live in simple sheds. Opening up wasteland is not a simple matter either. To transform 100,000 mu of wasteland into good fields that can be planted with two crops a year - winter wheat and summer rice - requires digging shallow ditches for irrigation which alone will total 200 li in length. When other projects are added, the amount of manpower and materials consumed will be enormous.

  Even if everything is left to fate, the relief wheat seeds distributed by Chongzhou County are scattered in the wilderness, waiting for next year's harvest, there are still more than seven months of time, and two million people on the island cannot survive on northwest wind for more than seven months.

  At the rate of one person consuming one kilogram of rice per day to sustain basic survival needs, 24,000 people would consume 240 dan (a unit of measurement) of rice per day. Over seven months, this amounts to 500,000 dan of grain.

  If everything is done according to the memorial presented by Chongzhou County and approved by the Pacification Commissioner, more than 24,000 refugees will not be able to survive on Xiasha Island.

  Lin Jie would neither really escape and leave Xi Sha Island, nor would he allow Li Shuyi, Hu Zhiyong and others to settle the refugees according to the terms of the Xuanfu Shi Si.

  Lin's approach was to carry out large-scale commercial reclamation, and in the name of Jiyun Society, all the land that should have been rented to refugees was leased, and Jiyun Society organized refugees to plant economic crops such as mulberry, cotton, and hemp on the leased land.

  Chongzhou local government only leased land on Xisha Island to migrants and did not grant land rights, which also created conditions for commercial reclamation.

  The Xisha Islands have convenient water transportation and are surrounded by a region rich in fish and rice, so the islands do not need to grow their own grain, which can be completely imported from outside.

  Otherwise, it would be impossible to settle these more than 200,000 refugees on the barren and uncultivated land of over a million mu.

  If Jiyun Society had no pursuit of interest and selflessly assisted so many refugees, it would be even more suspicious.

  Concentrated large-scale commercial development or exploitation of the Xisha Islands can effectively organize so many people.

  Previously, it was a prerequisite to persuade the Pacification Commissioner's Office and Chongzhou local authorities to allow refugees to settle in Xisha Island. Now, it is necessary to persuade Chongzhou County local authorities to agree to resettle the refugees in their own way.

  Lin tied up in Jiayang city under the bloody battle, except for making Donghai Kou in the short term unable to form a fatal threat to Xisha Island, is also to make Chongzhou local forces see that under the threat of Donghai Kou, his forces penetrate into Xisha Island and Chongzhou can get more security barriers.

  Lin Yiguang needs to make various efforts to alleviate local resistance, otherwise it is difficult for the local government to allow outside forces to take root locally.

  The dispute with the Qu family was largely due to the fact that the local forces in Jiangning excluded Lin Xie, an outsider, from gaining a foothold in the river mouth. Otherwise, even if Qu Wuyang was willing to help Chen Xiyan deal with Lin Xie and Gu Wuhen, other members of the Qu family would not have agreed to Qu Wuyang's reckless use of the Qu family's resources.

  "Has Chongzhou County's attitude softened?" Lin Fu asked Hu Zhicheng, who was in charge of communicating with the local authorities in Chongzhou County.

  "Chen Kun has already made up his mind that the adult is after those few tens of thousands of mu of Xisha Island settlement land," Hu Zhicheng said, "According to the staff around him who revealed the message, he is now grasping how to set a price..."

  "Let's wait for him to make an offer," Lin Fu said with a smile, "When registering the refugees, we must strictly control the number of registered households and try not to exceed 2,000 households. Also, when negotiating with Chongzhou County, we should do so separately in the name of the Hu family and the Ji Yun Society..."

  "This is not a problem, the people Li Shuyi uses to compile the household register are all our people. Except for Li Shuyi who may know some details, Chongzhou and the county's declaration and comfort agency do not know the actual number of refugees on Xisha Island," Lin Mengde said. "In Jiangdong County, it is common for large families with some influence to control thousands of households. Xisha Island is located in an open area, without geographical advantages, and is also at the mouth of the East China Sea where pirates invade, so the possibility of the declaration and comfort agency being vigilant is relatively small, but we need to work hard to communicate..."

  Locally, newly deposited land such as riverbanks and sandy islands were allocated to displaced people, mostly for rent. However, on grand occasions like the ascension of a new emperor, or the birthdays of the emperor, empress, or empress dowager, and during imperial amnesties, the court would generally grant land ownership to displaced people, demonstrating the emperor's great benevolence.

  At this time, Ji Yun She got the large piece of rented land in hand, and when the imperial court granted a general amnesty, it was naturally easy to get the land rights into their own hands.

  For over 200 years since the founding of the country, land annexation has been severe. Many local aristocratic families have also taken land as their foundation, and their greed for land has almost reached its peak. Scholars and officials have accumulated wealth, with buying land being their top priority, beautifying it as "farming and reading", but in reality, it is nothing more than owning land and profiting from it. The Lin family controlled the upper Linli ferry in Shanglinli, with the greatest benefits coming from the control of the upper Linli ferry and the monopoly on the output of goods to Dongyang; however, the amount of land held by the Lin family still reached over 400 hectares. In Jiangdong County, there were not a few large landlords who owned thousands of hectares of good land.

  Chen Kun suspects that Lin Tie's ultimate goal is to occupy the land of Xisha Island.

  Chongzhou County initially concealed the disaster situation of Xisha Island, with more than 20,000 people drowned and missing in the great disaster. In the end, only over 200 people were reported to have been killed or gone missing on Xisha Island when reporting to Hailing Prefecture and Junxian Fu Shi Si. The scale of the refugees from Xisha Island was greatly concealed from the very beginning.

  Lin Xuan reduced the resentment of Gu Wu Chen and others towards his disaster relief efforts in Xi Sha Island by personally bearing the expenses, and only mentioned in a private letter to Gu that the scale of the disaster victims on Xi Sha Island was approximately over 10,000 people. The Taizi Lake grain reserve had allocated over 40,000 dan (a unit of measurement) for Xi Sha Island, which would be used until June next year when the wheat harvest began. During this ten-month period of disaster relief, even if Lin Xuan satisfied the basic survival needs of the 24,000 disaster victims, he still had to privately provide an additional 40,000 dan of grain. At that time, Lin Xuan could not get more than 10,000 taels of silver from the Taizi Lake grain reserve to allocate to Xi Sha Island, which was far from enough.

  It can be said that except for Lin Xie and his men, others knew nothing about the situation on Xi Sha Island. The number of refugees to be resettled on Xi Sha Island had to be calculated based on actual household registration, which was Li Shuyi's job as the head of the Household Registration Office in Chongzhou County. Perhaps the She family, who had been paying attention to Xi Sha Island all along, knew something about it, but everyone understood that the East Sea pirates were a menace, and the She family no longer had much positive influence in Jiangdong.

  Control the number of households, and the scale of land leased from Chongzhou County is also limited in name. However, there are no other forces on Xisha Island, as long as Chongzhou County ultimately nods its head in agreement, how to develop Xisha Island is still a matter of Ji Yun She's word.

  In the name of both Hu's family and Ji Yun She, they also negotiated with Chongzhou County, dispersing their goals and weakening any potential vigilance some people might have had. After all, no one would have thought that Lin Xuan, apart from occasionally lending a helping hand to rescue Hu Zhi Cheng and Hu Qiao Yi in Yangzi River, had such deep connections.

  Many are external workers, and for the Xi Sha Islands, the most urgent task is to settle so many refugees and build a large-scale material transportation dock and a defensive building complex that can control the dock.

  Lin carefully calculated that in order to stand firm on the Xisha Islands and settle down so many people, 200,000 taels of silver would barely be enough. To achieve this goal, he absolutely could not afford to lose Gu Wu Chen's support in the short term.

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  PS: Great effort, another chapter, seeking red tickets!