Chapter 336: The Situation in Laizhou

Lü wanted to eat, so of course Fan Shier had to oblige. As the owner and head chef of a restaurant, he was no stranger to making this. The common people couldn’t afford decent fish and meat, so this delicious and cheap thing was a common dish in restaurants.

Even so, sea intestines were still a bit too humble. In a good year, even the common people rarely ate them. They were mostly used to feed pigs, and some people used them for fishing. Fan Shier knew that although this thing was a humble object, it could enhance the flavor, so he always made some sea intestine powder for seasoning, pretending to be a high-end soup.

Fan Shier readily agreed and hurried to the kitchen of the Wang family’s burial ground. A large part of the burial ground was a yang residence. When the masters and mistresses came to sweep the graves in the twelfth lunar month or to go on a spring outing, they would inevitably have to stay here for a few days. Therefore, the facilities in the yang residence were similar to those of an ordinary large household, and the kitchen was also very exquisite. Not only were the pots and stoves complete, but even the pots, bowls, and ladles were all complete, even more complete than the utensils in Fan Shier’s restaurant.

The kitchen had been cleaned to the point where Fan Shier felt “unable to set foot”—it was too clean. This group of militia from Lujiazhai had shown their astonishing cleanliness from the moment they arrived at the suburb. Everyone put down the luggage on their backs. Except for those on sentry duty, those who had nothing to do would sweep the streets and courtyards and clean up the garbage. Not only did they sweep the station, but they also swept the streets and alleys of the suburb clean. The piles of garbage and dust on the streets were also cleaned up, and even the potholes on the streets were filled and leveled with earth and broken bricks. The whole suburb immediately had a new look.

Fan Shier had lived in Laizhou for most of his life and had seen many people and things. Except for when the prefect of Laizhou sometimes organized the paijia to clean the streets and repair the roads to welcome imperial envoys, high officials, and the like, there was never such a thing as sweeping the streets. The sanitation on the streets was managed by the “street watchers,” who were just responsible for sprinkling water on the streets and collecting the bodies of those who had fallen on the road.

Garbage all over the ground was the norm, and urinating and defecating in public was not uncommon. For example, the outer wall of his small restaurant was often used by people to urinate in the street, making it smelly and unbearable.

Fan Shier wiped his feet at the door and then carefully walked in. He saw a person busy in the kitchen. He thought it was a cook brought by the militia, but when he looked closely, it was Commander Lü.

Commander Lü was wearing an oilcloth apron with his sleeves rolled up, busy at work. Fan Shier was so stunned that he couldn’t even speak—this Master Lü was actually cooking himself?!

In his experience, being the commander of a stockade and being able to pull out more than a hundred fierce fighting men at any time made him a considerable figure in the local area.

He did not expect that he would personally go to the kitchen to work. It was really a bit hard to figure out—looking at the commander’s appearance, with his fair and delicate skin, he did not look like someone from a poor background.

Seeing Fan Shier come in, Lü Zeyang greeted him, “Come, help me clean the sea intestines!”

Another purpose of Senator Lü’s trip to Haimiao Port was to get something to eat. He had successfully seen the two delicacies he had long coveted—sea intestines and mackerel meat. Although the sea was frozen now, it was also the season for harvesting sea intestines. Senator Lü had long admired this taste. Unfortunately, Lingao neither produced this nor did anyone know how to make it. He had reluctantly made do with earthworm jelly, but the taste was not the same. Now that he was on an external assignment back to the Jiaodong Peninsula, he naturally had to have a big meal. As for the Engine Operation, he would talk about it after he was full.

Lü Zeyang then instructed Fan Shier to start cooking. Modern cooking was somewhat different from that of the Ming Dynasty, especially in terms of heat control and seasoning. He then instructed Fan Shier to handle the knife and chop the fish to make the filling.

Fan Shier wanted to please “Commander Lü,” so besides the sea intestines, he also stir-fried a few other dishes. He had originally thought that Commander Lü wanted to drink, but he didn’t ask for anything. He directly ate a full basin of stir-fried sea intestines with chives. Still not satisfied, he had Fan Shier cook him more than fifty mackerel-filled dumplings as a snack.

“Bring it to the main hall later,” he ordered, and then moved to the bedroom with his map, calipers, and notebook to consider his grand plan.

“You got it! You’ll see how good it is,” Fan Shier knocked on the side of the pot and regained the feeling of a restaurant owner.

Lü Zeyang chose a room on the side of the main hall as his bedroom. This was the yang residence part of the Wang family’s burial ground. The housing facilities were very exquisite, with a ground fire dragon. The orderly lit a fire, and the entire room was as warm as spring. Unfortunately, his personal secretary had studied accounting and could not serve as a versatile female orderly. Thinking of this, he immediately considered selecting one or two big girls from his hometown in another time and space to serve as his guards when he returned to Lingao.

There were guards standing guard outside the room—the senators were very careful about their lives. Senator Lü let out a full burp and paced around the room with his stomach sticking out. After eating and drinking his fill, his mood improved a lot, and he became more optimistic about the future. Since it was God’s will, he would wait for a month. The top priority now was to quickly put his ideas down on paper and send them back to Lingao as soon as possible to gain the support of the bigwigs in the financial circle at the enlarged meeting of the Executive Committee, so as to facilitate the passage of the proposal.

Thinking of this, Lü Zeyang stuffed two more dumplings into his mouth and mumbled to the orderly outside, “Make a pot of tea, it’s too salty!”

Huddled on the kang and staying up until midnight, the more than 30,000-word “Laizhou Bay Shipping Situation Investigation Report” was finally completed. With this report, making a PPT would have sufficient materials, and at the enlarged meeting, he would appear even more capable. As the saying goes, whether the work is good or not depends mainly on the report—Senator Lü knocked on his sore thigh with a pleased expression. He had finally gotten a load off his mind. The next step would depend on the activities of Cheng Dong and Yi Fan in the Senate. As for himself, he still had to help Old Sun defend this Laizhou city!

With the powerful Qian Duo company guarding him, Lü Zeyang was not worried about the safety of Laizhou city. Historically, with only a thousand or so scattered reinforcements, Zhu Wannian and the two governors had defended the city with a hastily assembled force of four or five thousand old and weak soldiers. Now that he had decided to use Laizhou city as a temporary winter settlement for the refugees, he had to put some effort into the city’s defense, at least to protect the core parts of Laizhou city: the four gates and four corners.

From the map, Laizhou Prefecture city was a north-south rectangle. The part enclosed by the city walls was roughly the area surrounded by the four streets of Wenhua East Street, Wenchang South Road, Wenquan East Street, and Laizhou South Road in later generations. In addition, there were quite prosperous suburbs outside the four city gates in the east, west, south, and north. Now, this place had been “fortified and the fields cleared” by Sun Yuanhua. Most of the residents had been gathered into the city, and many of the empty houses were left. They were just right for use as refugee camps, provided that they were under the protection of the artillery’s range—but at present, there were only two mountain howitzers available.

There were thirty-six Great General cannons on the city walls of Laizhou. Although they were not as good as the Hongyi cannons, they had also played a great role in the historical defense battles. With these cannons, the rebels would not dare to get too close.

Zhu Mingxia had also promised that if necessary, as soon as he called, he would send reinforcements from the sea to support Laizhou. It would be easy to land one or two companies at Hutouya or Haimiao Port from the sea to catch the rebels off guard. If the situation was favorable, it was also possible to take the opportunity to fight a battle of annihilation and capture prisoners.

Compared to Sun Yuanhua’s anxiety, the senators actually despised the combat effectiveness of the rebels. From the moment they raised the banner of rebellion, the little organizational discipline that this unit originally had had long since disappeared. Of course, under the banner of the Ming Dynasty, they were just a group of old soldiers who served for food. Stripped of their fine equipment and a considerable number of horses, what was left was just a group of ordinary bandits who raped and plundered for their own interests. Although some of them harbored a deep hatred for the people and government of Shandong, most of them were just for gold, silver, and women.

Such an army could bully the common people and fight a favorable battle against the corrupt and incompetent government troops. But when they encountered a hard bone like the heavily defended Laizhou city, no one would be willing to fight to the death. At that time, Laizhou had only a few thousand old and weak soldiers, but they held out against tens of thousands of rebels and a large number of firearms in a siege for more than half a year. It was all because of the spirit of “defending the homeland” of the people and gentry in the city, who fought with a common hatred.

As long as the rebels were hit hard and their initial momentum was blunted, their subsequent attacks would not be so fierce. The rebel generals, in order to maintain morale and the loyalty of their subordinates, would have no better way than to let their men run amok in the Laizhou area. This also gave the Senate more opportunities to recruit refugees.

Of course, the specific operational arrangements still had to be discussed with Xiong Qian Duo and his officers. Sun Yuanhua also had to be notified so that the two sides could coordinate their actions. This was tantamount to openly flexing their muscles under the noses of the Ming bureaucrats. If any “loyal and patriotic” person sent a memorial to the capital, it would inevitably cause trouble. This “unifying the caliber” work still required the help of Governor Sun.

So he decided to have as little contact with the local bureaucrats as possible, except for Sun Yuanhua. Even with Sun Yuanhua, it was better to see him less to avoid attracting attention. Especially Wang Daochun, this person had a very bad impression of Sun Yuanhua and believed that Sun was the main culprit for the great change in Dengzhou. In history, Wang Daochun had stated in a memorial on the eighteenth day of the first lunar month of the fifth year of Chongzhen that Kong Youde’s rebellion in Shandong had captured seven counties in less than six days, and Dengzhou had fallen on the tenth day. This was all caused by the treacherous minister Sun Yuanhua’s collusion with the outside and the bribery and indulgence of Governor Yu Dacheng. This statement was because when Dengzhou had just fallen, the rebels had stolen the governor’s seal and issued notices everywhere, demanding that the various prefectures and counties send grain and pay to Dengzhou. Everyone suspected that Sun Yuanhua had also rebelled.

Now, due to the intervention of the Senate, Sun Yuanhua had escaped in time and had also shown a positive attitude of suppression. Therefore, Wang Daochun had not submitted this memorial, which was crucial to Sun Yuanhua.