Chapter 460: The Star Fort Market

The next morning, the three met outside the Great East Gate and headed towards the Great World together.

They were not wealthy men and couldn’t afford sedan chairs or rickshaws, so they had to walk. Fortunately, it was already autumn, and the weather was much cooler than in summer. They set out early and the journey was pleasant.

The Australians’ Great World had been under construction since shortly after they withdrew from under the city walls of Guangzhou.

The area along the road from the Great East Gate to the Great World was originally just a mudflat formed by the silt of the riverbank. Not only were there no houses or fields, but there were not even many proper trees. The desolate landscape was dotted with a few wild graves. Since the Australians began building the Great World here three years ago, they had first built a wide road connecting it to the city of Guangzhou. Thus, even before the Great World opened, its connection to Guangzhou was already established.

The road, of course, was built in the Cropped-Hairs’ usual extravagant style, paved with a mixture of crushed stone and black coal cinder. It was wide and flat, with drainage ditches on both sides, and planted with kapok trees.

For more than three years, most of the materials for the Great World construction site that could be purchased from Guangzhou were transported along this road. Various craftsmen and laborers from the city also walked along this road to work. The residents near the Great East Gate had become accustomed to the sound of the steam whistle from the Great World construction site calling for work every morning.

At this moment, there were already many pedestrians on the road, most of them heading in the same direction. They were mostly the “short-shirted crowd,” laborers who did manual work. There were also some small vendors selling food, carrying poles on their shoulders or pushing carts, heading towards the construction site in an endless stream.

However, mixed in with the crowd were some sedan chairs, and also people who looked like businessmen, riding donkeys, with their young apprentices, slowly making their way to the Great World.

Huang Binkun was surprised to see that many of the vendors and laborers had cropped hair. Could it be that there were many “fake Cropped-Hairs” here too? But looking again, these people were still wearing Ming dynasty clothes, not like the “fake Cropped-Hairs.” He quietly asked Wu Ming what was going on.

“These are all local people. They’ve been working for the Cropped-Hairs for a long time and have learned to crop their hair like the Australians,” Wu Ming said. “They say it’s cleaner and easier to manage.”

“And the government doesn’t care?”

“The government thinks that less trouble is better than more. Who would want to offend the Australians over this?”

“Truly lawless!” Huang Binkun said angrily.

After walking for less than half a li, they saw workers embedding long iron bars into the road. Wu Ming said this was the Cropped-Hairs’ ox-drawn railway—many people had seen the Cropped-Hairs using oxen to pull carts full of building materials on the road. It was said that in the future, for just a few cash, one could take it to the Great World by the Pearl River. Besides the ox-drawn carts, there were also small iron carts running on the completed sections of the track. All it took was two people pumping up and down to make them fly.

“This is not a railway for ox-carts, but a track for the Cropped-Hair bandits’ steam trains,” Huang Binkun said with a worried look, watching the construction of the track. “Before long, the Cropped-Hair bandits’ little train will be able to reach the Great East Gate directly.”

“This is something I must experience,” Wu Ming said with great interest. “I’ve heard that their little train doesn’t use ox, horse, or human power, but runs by burning fire to boil water. I’ve never understood how it works, but now I can see it with my own eyes!”

Huang Binkun smiled wryly to himself. This train was certainly a very useful thing. Once the railway was completed, the Cropped-Hair bandits could reach the Great East Gate in an instant, not to mention that it would be easy to bring in cannons. Rather than a road to the Great World, it was more like an iron chain around the neck of Guangzhou city.

But what was the use of him saying this? The government dared not interfere, and the scholars of the Yuyuan Society were even less likely to do so.

The group continued on. After walking a short distance, they saw a pointed tower rising from the ground. Below the spire was an arched stone gate—according to Wu Ming, this was the main entrance to the Great World.

The people of the Yuyuan Society were interested in everything about the Australians and naturally wouldn’t miss this nearby specimen of the Great World. Every ten days or half a month, some members of the society would come here together to have a look—Wu Ming was one of the most frequent visitors.

“The style of this tower seems to be like that of the red-haired barbarians,” Wu Ming said. “But there’s one thing I don’t understand: the top floor. Why is it open on all four sides? Some say it’s for hanging a large bell, but this tower has been built for over a year, and I haven’t seen any bell being hung. Instead, they’ve enclosed the four sides with reed mats. I don’t know why.”

Huang Binkun, however, knew that this “bell” was not that kind of “bell.” He shook his head and said, “Brother Wu, this bell is not the large bell hung in the bell and drum towers of temples. It’s the Australians’ clock…” He thought for a moment about how to explain it. “There are probably some wealthy families in Guangzhou who also have them.”

“Could it be the grandfather clock in Young Master Liang’s house?” Wu Ming was a little skeptical. “I’ve seen that clock. It’s very novel. But it’s only the size of a wardrobe.”

“Australian clocks can be big or small. Small ones can be carried in one’s pocket, and large ones are installed in clock towers,” Huang Binkun shook his head. “There are several such clock towers in Lingao. They strike the bell every half an hour. The fact that this clock tower has no clock probably means it hasn’t been built yet. This large clock is very difficult to make. Even in Lingao, those clock towers were empty for several years.”

“I see.”

The three of them walked a little further along the track, and the Great World was right before them. The appearance of the Great World was very strange. It was said to be a business, but its scale was so grand that it was like a small city.

At this moment, they were standing on a small hill by the road, and they could roughly see that the Great World by the river was a huge pentagon. Huang Binkun remembered seeing it in Huang Ping’s math book: it was called a regular pentagon.

Each side was about a li long. Huang Binkun took a sharp breath: this scale was enough to be a county town in Hainan. The Cropped-Hair bandits called this opening a business? They were clearly building a city!

Huang Binkun had long been in battle, was familiar with military affairs, and knew a lot about the Australians’ defensive architecture. He could see at a glance that this Great World was built in the same way as the various military forts and camps the Cropped-Hair bandits had built on Hainan Island: they were all so-called “star forts.” The fortress was in the shape of a pentagon, with a small bastion at each salient angle. This so-called clock tower was one such bastion.

To his slight relief, the two wings extending from the clock tower were not city walls, but two open colonnades, which did not have a strong military feel. Some parts were still covered with bamboo scaffolding, but most were already completed. The sturdy stone pillars were carved with patterns, looking majestic and magnificent. Through the colonnade, one could see a large square inside. The ground had not yet been leveled and was piled with yellow sand, gravel, and various materials. In the center stood a sturdy and ferocious black iron tower, which had been the talk of Guangzhou for the past few years, among both the rich and the poor: a steam-powered crane.

The fact that this steam crane was sturdy, could lift heavy objects, and could rotate freely was one thing. What puzzled the citizens of Guangzhou—including the scholars of the Yuyuan Society who were dedicated to studying “Cropped-Hair studies”—the most was: how did this tower crane grow taller on its own?

The curious citizens had watched this iron tower machine grow from a height of more than one zhang to seven or eight zhang as the buildings of the Great World were built higher and higher.

How this crane was raised became a topic of constant discussion in many teahouses and restaurants throughout the city, and it was also a subject of endless debate in the Yuyuan Society. For this reason, Young Master Lin had even hired several highly skilled carpenters and coppersmiths to go to the site to observe the machine. But the construction area was off-limits, and after watching from a distance several times, they couldn’t figure it out.

They could only see that it was probably built and raised section by section. However, the tower was so tall, and each section of the iron frame was so huge and heavy, that it was obviously not lifted by human power or pulleys. Moreover, at the very top of the tower frame was a long boom and a small house of iron frames and glass. It seemed completely impossible to raise it layer by layer.

At this moment, none of them were in the mood to discuss this. They just followed the crowd into the Great World.

The construction site of the Great World was originally surrounded by a bamboo fence at a distance. Now, the fence gates were all open, with signs at the entrance: one for “Labor” and the other for “Business Recruitment.”

The group followed the sign towards “Business Recruitment.” The road was crowded with businessmen. The three of them followed the crowd through the colonnade and into the large square still piled with building materials. They were all stunned: what kind of building was this!

The main building before them was something that not only Zhang and Wu, who were from Guangzhou, had never seen, but even Huang Binkun, who came from the “Cropped-Hair bandits’ old nest,” had never seen before.

The building before them stood in the middle of the square, built entirely of stone. The magnificent stone exterior walls were fitted with tall, narrow windows, the glass glinting in the sun. This building was not only a five-story mansion, but each floor was also taller than the floors they were used to seeing. The grand main entrance was two stories high, supported by stone pillars. On either side of the high steps was a pair of stone lions of unusual appearance, with ferocious faces and wings on their ribs. Above the main entrance was another clock tower. Looking closely, the building was not square, but like the outer wall of the Great World, it was also a regular pentagonal building. There were towers at each of the five corners. Extending from the two wings like a pair of wings were two-story buildings that connected to the two towers on the outer wall of the Great World.

“So tall! It’s, it’s…” Zhang Yu stammered. He suddenly felt that his little walnut pastry shop was doomed, and that his coming here was a waste of effort.

“This height is almost like a pagoda,” Wu Ming said, trying to remain calm, looking up at the building. In ancient China, multi-story buildings were rare, and most were only two stories high. The only truly tall buildings were religious structures like pagodas. Although some pagodas could be as tall as a twenty or thirty-story building in later generations, their floor area was small and they had little practical value.

Amid his amazement, Huang Binkun’s heart suddenly sank: in Lingao, he had never seen the Cropped-Hair bandits build such a magnificent building. Why would they spare no expense to build such a magnificent structure just outside Guangzhou?

Xiang Zhuang’s sword dance was aimed at the Duke of Pei. This so-called Great World they were building was clearly a declaration of war against the court. This Great World was not some world of pleasure and Australian style, but an out-and-out formidable fortress!