Chapter 70: Bairren Fortress
In the days that followed, Fu Youdi completed his swift transformation from honest farmer to petty tyrant. To his peasant mind, skimming off the top was simply the natural order of things.
It began innocuously enough—when distributing meals, he scooped himself the thicker portions from the bottom of the pot, where the meat settled. Then came the work assignments. Wu De only specified daily quotas, leaving the division of labor entirely to the prisoners themselves. Fu Youdi seized upon this immediately, parceling out all the work among the other four while doing almost nothing himself. Some resisted by slacking off in turn, and at first, Fu Youdi lacked the courage to confront them. But mealtime revealed the true nature of his power. Those who had shirked found only watery broth ladled from the top of the pot. Wang Tian, a fellow local, quickly aligned himself with Fu Youdi and became the favored one—less work, more food. The other three became his victims, bearing heavier loads while their rations dwindled.
One evening at dinner, the simmering resentment finally boiled over. Lin Xing led a revolt, knocking Fu Youdi face-first into the mud. Wu De did not intervene to judge who was right or wrong—he simply had everyone involved lashed fifty times. Lin Xing, who had struck first, received one hundred.
That night, five prisoners lay on their bellies, their burning buttocks matched only by the burning hatred they now nursed for one another. Fu Youdi abandoned all pretense of fairness. He began openly berating Lin Xing and shamelessly hoarding rations, and the conflict deepened into outright faction. According to Wu De's observations, the five had split into three camps: Fu Youdi had drawn Wang Tian to his side; Lin Xing attempted to mount resistance; and both leaders vied to recruit the two remaining bystanders who preferred neutrality. Wu De occasionally stirred the pot himself, citing poor work or inadequate cleaning as pretexts to cut rations. When one person's mistake meant everyone went hungry, the mutual blame only drove the wedges deeper.
Lin Xing proved the smarter and bolder of the prisoners. He mustered the courage to approach Wu De directly with complaints about Fu Youdi—despite his halting, sometimes incoherent Mandarin. Wu De responded by administering a thorough beating to the increasingly well-fed Fu Youdi, reminding him of his limits while displaying obvious favoritism toward Lin Xing. The exploited prisoners now appreciated Wu De's perceptiveness and understood that Lin Xing had been the informant. Even the laziest among them suddenly developed an eager interest in learning Mandarin.
"Ah De, you're remarkable! Did you drug them?" Xiong Buyou marveled at how his students had become so diligent overnight—after dinner, instead of rushing off to sleep, they now sought him out for language lessons.
Wu De only chuckled. The outcome was hardly surprising. Human nature in the seventeenth century was not fundamentally different from the twenty-first.
Wu De's new assignment was but a small episode in the transmigrators' daily work. Though it would later be recognized as significant, at the time few paid it any attention. All eyes remained fixed on the highway construction's progress.
Except for minor leveling and shaping done by hand, the entire route employed mechanized construction. The Building Group grew increasingly proficient at organizing the work. By D+6—the seventh day of the ninth lunar month in the first year of Chongzhen, October 3rd, 1628—the full twelve-kilometer Bopu–Bairren Rapids simple highway stood complete, only one day behind the Committee's demanded schedule. Though the terrain from Bairren Rapids to Bopu appeared level, there was in fact a slight gradient. The highway was not perfectly straight but curved gently to follow the contours of the land.
The fortified posts along the highway were retained. In time, they would be expanded and hardened into small fortresses to protect the road.
As for Bairren Rapids itself—it would become the transmigrators' first city in this timespace. The Committee's plans for this base were ambitious indeed.
The Building Group had already given the new city a simple, fitting name: "Bairren Fortress."
"Sounds like something out of a martial arts novel," Mei Wan remarked, standing spiritedly at the cliff's edge overlooking Bairren Rapids. This was the spot where the twenty-first-century hydroelectric station's overflow dam had stood. The drop to the powerhouse below measured roughly sixteen meters. Here the Wenlan River made a sharp turn, and nine rocky levels formed Bairren Rapids' sloping cascade—fast-flowing, thundering—the famous "Roar of Bairren Rapids," audible for more than twenty li in every direction.
"Lord of Bairren Fortress!" Yan Quezhi brandished his ranging pole and struck a theatrical pose. Several others joined in, throwing exaggerated kung-fu gestures.
"Is the master plan finished?"
"It's done." Li Xiaolu unrolled a 1:1000 master plan. For this "base conveying the twenty-first century's torch of civilization," everyone from the Building Group to various Committee departments had contributed views and suggestions. Li Xiaolu had synthesized them all, ultimately deciding to design according to late-1970s "socialist new countryside" planning concepts. There had been specialized designs for "commune headquarters"-level townships—incorporating administration, education, small industry, and agricultural production buildings—a city-rural hybrid that balanced industry, agriculture, and sideline enterprises in a new rural residential model.
Bairren Fortress's plan spread along both banks of the Wenlan River: the main city district and hydroelectric zone on the east bank; heavy industry on the west.
The hydroelectric zone would house the power station and water treatment plant, with a small inland wharf and warehouse to be added in the future.
The main city lay about one hundred meters from the riverside hydroelectric zone. This plot enjoyed lower groundwater levels and excellent soil-bearing capacity. The entire surface sloped roughly four percent from south to north—sufficient natural drainage for rainwater runoff.
At the main city's southern end stood the water supply station. Thanks to the gradient, piped water required no pressurization; a simple water tower could serve the entire city.
The main city was divided into functional zones:
Administrative Zone — The central area, arranged along the north-south main road, with government institutions placed in sequence.
Culture, Education, and Health Zone — East of the administrative zone; planned to include schools, a clinic, a library, and a simple stadium with recreational facilities.
Residential Zone — The northeastern area, occupying the largest footprint. Though simple dormitories did not require this much space, the planners considered that all five hundred transmigrators would eventually form families—possibly large ones—so land was reserved generously.
Industrial Goods Warehouse Zone — Storage for all materials, equipment, and machinery from the twenty-first-century timespace, including munitions. This area would have its own perimeter wall.
Agricultural Zone — Including agricultural processing plants, granaries, a veterinary station, vegetable greenhouses, livestock pens, and a biogas digester.
Industrial Zone — Various machinery, parts manufacturing, and equipment factories.
The entire main city was planned according to function. Residential and industrial zones were kept separate, maximizing both comfort and safety.
The heavy-industry zone, being highly polluting, was placed downwind on the Wenlan's west bank to account for Lingao's prevailing northeast winds. This would house the planned steel mill, chemical plant, and other pollution-heavy industries like paper mills.
Outside the main city's east gate, an open commercial trading zone would be established for exchanging agricultural products, local specialties, and small goods with natives.
The ambitious Bairren Fortress master plan won unanimous Committee approval—almost too easily, for immediately afterward, certain people began fighting over their department's position on the future "Chang'an Avenue." The question of which ministry building would be closest to Committee Hall nearly came to blows. Finally, Wen Desi had to explain repeatedly that the current plan included no ministry buildings and no Committee Hall—just a marked foundation for administrative buildings. For years to come, everyone would share offices.
To begin construction, powering operations with ship auxiliaries as they had on the beach was no longer practical. The Committee had options: diesel generators, wind turbines, or solar power—each with its own advantages and drawbacks. Inland wind was limited; three-hundred-watt wind turbines were barely useful beyond basic lighting. Solar output was similarly restricted. To conserve diesel, the generators were reserved for emergencies only.
A tractor hauled a strange-looking contraption from the beach base on a trailer: black cast iron, with a smokestack and flywheel, exposed pipes, valves, and pressure gauges. It was unmistakably steampunk. Everyone crowded around curiously.
"Portable steam engine," Ma Qianzhu explained simply. This "locomobile" combined boiler and steam engine in a single mobile power unit. Its structure was straightforward, its operation and maintenance easy. It could be deployed mobile or fixed in place, and offered high efficiency, reliable operation, and the capability for continuous long-term work. Its versatility was remarkable: irrigation, drainage, rice milling, flour grinding, oil pressing, driving generators, or directly powering industrial machinery—comparable to modern rural single-cylinder diesels. Its only real disadvantage was weight; it was far heavier than diesel engines. But for the transmigrators, weight was not the concern. What mattered was that the boiler was not picky about fuel—wood, brush, low-grade coal—anything combustible would do, saving their precious diesel reserves.
Even in an era when diesel engines were commonplace, locomobiles still had a market. The Committee had purchased six. Two were Czech-made, single-drum fire-tube horizontal compound condensing locomobiles—flywheels spinning at one thousand rpm, capable of a maximum 290 horsepower, or 213.15 kilowatts—driving generators that produced over two hundred kilowatt-hours per hour. These were fixed units requiring level ground. The other four were hundred-horsepower mobile units, towable by truck, tractor, or even horses.
(End of Chapter)