Chapter 67: Wu De's New Assignment (Part 1)

The officials and gentry of Lingao remained on edge. They dispatched a letter to Regional Commander Tang at Qiongshan, testing whether he might be persuaded to march against the pirates.

As for the harassment tactics upon which Jinshi Liu had pinned his hopes, these received no support whatsoever from the village militia commanders. The militiamen simply refused to fight. Word had spread that even the Huang family militia—despite outnumbering their enemies in an ambush—had been routed, and morale, already fragile, collapsed entirely.

Magistrate Wu alternated between threats and promises, but the militiamen remained unmoved. They had their own logic: these newcomers had landed without apparent robbery, murder, or arson. Even if they were building roads to attack the city, that was the county seat's problem—what did it have to do with the villages? If the militia attacked, might they not provoke retaliation? After all, the militiamen lived in the countryside, not behind city walls like the officials. When finally pressured into action, they would make a wide circuit around the construction site before returning home, having accomplished nothing. The village commanders showed equally little enthusiasm unless their estates happened to lie near the county seat. Their militiamen were either fellow clansmen or their own tenant farmers and farmhands—if these men died fighting, who would work the land? Lingao's greatest shortage was labor. So no one seriously pushed the militia into battle.

Still, the frequent militia appearances along the construction route drew the attention of the transmigrators' scouts. With the beach camp now established and requiring fewer guards, the Military Group—save for a three-man observation post below Lingao County—deployed all remaining personnel to protect the road-building site.

Watchtowers rose every three kilometers along the route. Each was staffed with lookouts equipped with high-powered binoculars and walkie-talkies, while below, guard teams erected simple fortifications: man-height earthen walls ringed with barbed wire. Inside each position sat 4WD farm vehicles and motorcycles, plus a 2-watt radio. Motorcycles patrolled between points along the site, and if an enemy attack was detected, farm vehicles could rapidly deploy reinforcements.

But soldiers alone were not enough—they had to mobilize the masses. The construction crew received a batch of SKS rifles and ammunition, ensuring each work point had four or five armed workers in addition to the Military Group guards. Should sudden attacks occur, the work points could defend themselves.

"If you're attacked, do not panic or run," He Ming instructed the supervisors at each point. "Report first, then open fire where you stand—understood? The mobile team will arrive within five minutes. If another point comes under attack, just report it promptly."

These measures meant that small scouting parties could not even approach the site during daylight. Any suspicious figures detected would be immediately reported to construction headquarters, which would dispatch patrol motorcycles to investigate. The guards rarely even needed to fire—the roaring motorcycle engines alone sent the enemy fleeing in panic. Sometimes the more enthusiastic motorcyclists would give chase until the quarry collapsed from exhaustion and could be captured. Had Beiwei not worried about ambushes and banned extended pursuits, they would have caught even more.

Interrogating the prisoners produced incomprehensible gibberish at first. They radioed for Xiong Buyou to come interpret. Fortunately, the Lingao dialect had not changed dramatically over the centuries. After considerable effort, they understood that these men had been ordered to scout. Beyond that, the prisoners offered only the usual pleas about elderly mothers and young children waiting at home.

From them, the transmigrators pieced together a picture: their road-building had thrown the county seat into a panic, with day-and-night preparations for a siege underway. That mere road construction could so thoroughly frighten the locals surprised the Committee—they had expected some effort to expel them, and evidently Lingao's Ming officials and gentry feared them far more than anticipated. This firsthand intelligence gave the Committee great confidence.

The prisoners were too few in number to bother releasing. But the Committee recognized an opportunity: a rehearsal for the future large-scale employment of local labor. All were kept.

The alarm clock's ringing dragged Wu De from sleep. One glance at the clock: 9 AM.

He had been on night watch until four in the morning before finally turning in. Now he could barely pry his eyes open. But arriving in ancient times was no vacation—it was making a living. Sleep any longer and there might not even be food left.

As commander of the fishing boat squadron, Wu De could have slept aboard one of the better-equipped fishing vessels. But with the Military Group shorthanded, naval personnel had to pull shifts ashore like everyone else.

Years in the military, a childhood in a fishing family, then working in the city after discharge—his varied experience had given him many survival skills. He found the Committee's unified tents too small and crowded. After negotiating with the Medical Group, he claimed a clearing in the nearby woods and acquired about ten wooden poles under three meters from the logging yard. He tied one end together with rope, spread the other ends into the ground, covered the frame with canvas, and left an opening for entry. A layer of reeds on top completed the structure: an Indian-style teepee. He dug drainage ditches around it, lined the floor with sand and wood ash, and a decent shelter emerged. The riverside-coastal location was pleasant, with the added advantage that he could keep an eye on his four fishing boats.

To conserve fuel, two of the fishing squadron's four boats were kept ready for immediate deployment while the other two remained mothballed. One fished—the Longhao Bay area was rich in fish, shrimp, and even edible seaweed like kelp. Wu Nanhai had been running back and forth on the fishing boat lately, photographing every catch and taking meticulous notes. The other vessel served as backup, with a crew always aboard, ready to respond to seaborne threats.

This morning, Wu De took an aluminum pot of wood ash to the river, scrubbed his face, and bit a tender willow twig into a makeshift brush to clean his teeth. Between the night shift and yesterday's watchtower repairs—without even a sleeping bag—his body was beginning to ache. His nose was stuffed, his head pounding.

Am I coming down with something?

The thought crossed his mind with some alarm. He felt his forehead—no fever, thankfully. He snapped off some willow twigs, peeled the bark, and chewed it. Willow bark was rich in salicylic acid: hard on the stomach, but quite effective for headaches and minor fevers.

At the river bathing area, he stripped and got in. Yesterday had been too exhausting for bathing, but given current sanitation conditions, skipping baths meant inviting skin diseases. This all-natural open-air bathhouse was another civil project the Construction Group had completed on D+1: a shallow, sandy-bottomed river cove near the mouth, with barrier nets at the opening. They had cleared out debris and silt, then covered the riverbanks with sand hauled from the beach. Screens had been considered, but that seemed like too much trouble. Every day after quitting time around five or six, hordes of naked men splashing around made quite a spectacle. Wu De, working rotating shifts, had missed this communal experience. Supposedly bathing naked together fostered male bonding—he should find a chance to bathe with Commissioner Ma and the others sometime.

The morning water was cold. Wu De shivered as he wet his body and hair, then lathered up with soap. When he finished, he used wood ash to wash his underwear and socks—critical hygiene matters. He was reluctant to use too much soap. Though soap-making was not complicated technology, given the current chaos, a soap factory remained far in the future. He wrung out the clothes and hung them on nearby trees to dry.

The camp cafeteria operated twenty-four hours, but he had no interest in crowds. Besides, the cafeteria had nothing worth eating: kelp soup, boiled squid, boiled shellfish, boiled shrimp, boiled crab—basically all boiled seafood. At first, everyone had been enthusiastic, even arguing over crab sizes. After three or four days, the novelty wore off completely. The previous night, someone had made a pot of instant noodles and attracted a crowd drooling with envy—sick of seafood, suddenly craving cheap instant noodles. How quickly tastes changed.

Wu De did not mind seafood as meals—he just despised the cafeteria cooks for ruining perfectly good ingredients. He went directly to a bay outside camp where the shoreline rocks were covered with oysters and barnacles. Good stuff. He pulled out a small knife and pried off a few dozen—not too many. These shellfish died quickly once removed from water, and dead shellfish stank. Eating spoiled ones meant diarrhea severe enough to make you black out. Even living near the infirmary, he could not risk that. He sat on the rocks, cracked open the shells, and ate all the meat and juices. So fresh—farmed stuff could never compare.

Back at his shelter, he pulled on underwear from his pack—only because some women occasionally wandered the beach. Otherwise, he would have preferred going naked to dry faster. His thermos was empty. In previous days he had boiled his own water. The machine-condensed water piped from the ships had an indescribable taste, which some tea leaves luckily masked. Recently, the cafeteria had started water service—twenty-four-hour boiled water was Wu De's favorite amenity, even if it was a bit heavy on chlorine.

He made a pot of strong tea in the kitchen and felt considerably better. I wonder if Lingao produces tea. Even if not, surely such a basic crop should be on the Agriculture Group's agenda.

"Chief Wu, want to try the Cafeteria Office's newest product?" A cook brought over something black.

"What is this?"

"Smoked fish. Top-quality fish meat, smoked all night. Definitely tasty."

Unable to refuse the kind offer, he accepted. The fish had indeed been smoked all night; moisture and oil were nearly gone. The outside was blackened and hard to the touch—its appearance horrifying. It tasted worse. This so-called "smoked fish" had not been salt-cured before smoking. Who knew what wood they had used—it tasted exactly like the willow he had been chewing earlier. With hot tea, he barely forced it down.

After eating, he chugged more tea to suppress the urge to vomit.

"How is it? Good flavor, right?"

"Brother, what did you do before?" Wu De asked with some difficulty.

"Me? I studied bioengineering. I'm Hu Yicheng." This former lumberjack, skilled at animal dissection, had infiltrated the cafeteria to practice his dissection techniques on fish.

(End of Chapter)