Chapter 9 Outside the Mouth's Special Features

  Struggling to write, making time to code every day outside of work. The first time I found out that writing is hard, before I thought it was nothing but now I know how tiring it is, even during working hours I have to take time to think about the plot. Persevere! Besides this, I really don't know how to encourage myself.

  In the early days of the Republic, although there were no bandits on every mountain like after the Central Plains War, there had been bandits in places where merchants traveled for hundreds of years. This place had been a commercial route from inland China to Mongolia for centuries, so it was natural that many bandits survived and thrived here. At the end of the Qing dynasty, the Hebei Revolutionary Party once gathered over 50,000 bandits and strongmen outside the pass to plan an uprising against the Qing and formed the Iron-Blooded Army. However, before they could fire a shot, the revolution "succeeded" and President Yuan easily disbanded the Iron-Blooded Army, which was mainly composed of bandits from outside the pass, citing reasons such as the non-revolutionary province of Outer Mongolia.

  The government's betrayal thoroughly enraged the Green Lin bandits in the three provinces outside the pass. Last year, the horse bandits outside the pass gathered troops and besieged Zhangjiakou three times, repeatedly repelling the advancing Northern Army. The bandits active in the Taihang and Yanshan mountains of Hebei also moved to Outer Mongolia due to the Northern Army's suppression, causing the number of bandits outside the pass to surge to tens of thousands.

  These horse bandits divided their territory and made a living by robbing merchants and extorting protection fees from villages and towns. Their power had reached the point where government orders could not be carried out outside the city.

  Simar listened to Gao Chuanliang's introduction, feeling a bit numb in his scalp. Although he clearly knew that bandits were rampant, he didn't expect it to be this serious. Dividing territory and collecting taxes was not what bandits did; they were essentially an underground government. Moreover, people like them wouldn't care about reason or law as long as there were enough benefits. If they produced watches here, eight out of ten would probably go into the hands of these people, equivalent to putting up a sign saying "come and rob us". However, if they didn't build a factory here, it would be hard to conceal the suspicious nature of building an independent warehouse. If someone else discovered the anomaly in time, it would only cause more worry. Simar thought about this and felt a wave of headache.

  "Are the government troops not coming to suppress the bandits?" Sima asked, frowning. If the government troops were to suppress the bandits, Sima wouldn't mind spending money to bribe the military officers to send soldiers to suppress the bandits.

  "When the government troops arrive, those bandits would have already run away to who-knows-where. The government troops can't stay here all year round waiting for them to make a move, and once they leave, those bandits will come back again. Even if the government troops try to eliminate them again, it's useless." Gao Chuanliang thought of the previous times when the government troops had asked each household for assistance with supplies, and he felt a fire burning in his heart - all they wanted was silver, without seeing any actual results.

  "Damn it! The whole guerrilla war!" As soon as Sima heard Gao Chuanliang say this, he remembered a phrase said by the so-called "great man" in history: "The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue." Moreover, those bandits were all mounted on horses and roaming freely on this vast grassland, making it difficult for ordinary government troops to cope. It seems that this is a big trouble, even if he spends his own money to hire government troops to suppress the bandits, the final result will probably be the same as now, or even worse.

  "Then... isn't there anyone outside who can deal with these bandits?" Sima asked, not giving up. As long as they were human, they must have their weaknesses. Sima really couldn't believe that these bandits could be so rampant that no one could control them. There must be someone who could subdue them! Otherwise, this place would have been the bandits' domain a long time ago.

  "These bandits, apart from not provoking those large colonial companies outside the pass, almost nothing else is off-limits to them. This spring, just after the Qingming Festival, one of the leaders of a group of bandits in Qingshan was caught by the patrol team while visiting prostitutes in Baotou and was put away, but before he could be executed, tens of thousands of bandits surrounded the city of Baotou. In the end, that leader was released by the patrol team after the Chamber of Commerce in Baotou paid a ransom of 10,000 yuan and 10,000 dan of high-grade millet." Gao Chuanliang thought for a moment before saying this. Even the government tries to avoid provoking them as much as possible, let alone ordinary civilians!

  "Huh? Why don't those bandits go and bother those colonization companies?" Sima hastily asked. He said that most of these colonization companies were outsiders, so logically speaking, they should be the ones that the bandits would target, but why didn't they? There must be something fishy going on here.

  "Master, most of the people hired by these colonization companies are refugees from within the pass, and even if those bandits outside are called heroes of the green forest, wouldn't it tarnish their reputation to rob food from these refugees? Moreover, each colonization zone has a civilian militia, with dozens or hundreds of members, who rely on the company for their livelihood. If the colonization team is destroyed, they will all starve. So when they encounter bandits, they fight with their lives. Furthermore, although there may only be dozens of people in a single colonization company's militia, when gathered together, they number in the thousands. Those bandits can't swallow them whole, and if they try to attack together, they'll suffer heavy casualties. In the end, the companies will just set fire to their grain stores, and everything will be lost. Considering this, no one wants to mess with those colonization companies, it's not worth tarnishing their reputation." Gao Chuanliang, although he looked down on these colonization companies for taking advantage of others' land, had to admit that joining the company meant not having to worry about bandits, which was indeed a big draw.

  "I see." After hearing Gao's explanation, Sima couldn't help but look down on these bandits. They were just a group of bullies who only picked on the weak and feared the strong. As long as someone was stronger than them, they wouldn't dare to provoke or if the cost of provocation was too high, they would probably just surround Zhangjiakou and Baotou without attacking, letting the people inside worry themselves into agreeing to their demands. They were nothing but a bunch of bandits. Yet, Sima had to admit that he was indeed afraid of them, because they had guns and men, while he had nothing.

  "If we gather refugees from Guannei to build the factory here, won't those bandits come and rob us?" Sima asked after thinking for a moment. If all else fails, just build the house first and think about other things later. If all else fails, I'll also set up a civilian team here, otherwise, if someone breaks into the warehouse, it will be a trouble."

  "Hmm! This, this I'm not too sure about either. I think when they come, as long as we spend some money to find a middleman to talk things over, it should be more or less settled!" Gao Chuanliang himself wasn't clear on how to respond, after all he had never been in contact with these bandits before. He hadn't even done business with them, although doing pawnshop business inevitably meant taking in some stolen goods, but these kinds of bandits all had their own fixed buyers.

  "Hmm! Young master, if it doesn't work out, I'll get in touch with the Kong family. The grain that the Kong family village gives to the bandits every year is all handled by the Kong family, they should have some connection with the bandits." Gao Chuanliang thought for a moment and felt that apart from this, he probably wouldn't be able to help in any other way. Ordinary people would only get involved with bandits when they were being robbed, and even then it was just a matter of avoiding them, let alone having any connection with them.

  "Alright! You go and arrange it. If they can guarantee our safety here, we can consider paying them protection fees like Kong Family Village did. We can offer them food or money." Sima thought for a moment and felt that for now, it was still better to spend money to buy peace from those bandits. One step at a time, in this era where he was unfamiliar with the place, he could only do things this way. As for setting up his own militia to protect the factory, although it was feasible, buying safety with money wasn't a bad choice either when they had nothing.

  As soon as Sima returned to modern society, he began collecting information on factory construction online. Benefiting from the developed consulting industry in modern society, websites selling all kinds of factory design and matching drawings are everywhere, and even websites selling various drawings can be found. After joining the website membership, Sima contacted a seller who sold a set of factory drawings through QQ according to the contact method left above.

  "You're thinking too simply! Building a factory in a remote area like you said isn't just about the factory building itself, you also need to consider power distribution equipment, water supply equipment. And it needs to be divided into living areas, working areas and so on. The kind of enterprise planning we use in our country is still the same as when we first built military-industrial enterprises after the founding of the nation. If you want a complete set of drawings for this type of factory, just spend a few thousand yuan to buy a set of third-line factory drawings, including defensive fortifications drawings, guaranteed to meet your requirements. However, those factories are all brick-concrete structure constructions that take time and money.

  But now most factory buildings are steel structures, only a few use brick-concrete structures, which not only take time and money but also have high costs. And in places where there is no access to water or electricity, investing in building a factory is just two words: 'insane'."

  "I have other factory area planning and design drawings here, the price is not high, if you are willing to make a discount." The other party sent another sentence.

  "Thank you! If you have the construction drawings of that three-line factory's plant area, I'm willing to buy the whole set. At the same time, I'd also like to buy a steel structure warehouse with an area of around 3000 square meters.

  Of course, Sima knew that the cost of building a brick-concrete factory was a bit high, but in the space of 1915 AD, a color steel structure factory appearing on the barren land outside would be too eye-catching. The Russian-style red brick factory buildings from the early days of the country's founding were more suitable for that place."

  "Haha! As long as there's business to be done, that's all that matters. I have the construction drawings for the Qinghua Tool Factory of Shougang Corporation, a total of 8,465 sheets in electronic format on a CD. The warehouse layout you mentioned, around 3,000 square meters, is also available. For 6,500 yuan, I can mail the drawings to you or send them as a file over the internet."

  "Shougang Qinghua Tool Factory?" Sima looked unfamiliar with the name of the factory and didn't know what it did. Why was the other side emphasizing this factory?

  "Shougang Qinghua Tool Factory is a large military factory built in the 1950s in Beidahuang, our country. The plan includes self-sufficient power plants, self-sufficient water plants and worker dormitories, which should meet your requirements. You can search online for information and pictures of Shougang Qinghua Tool Factory to make a decision."