"That's only temporary." Zhao Hao said confidently, "We Chinese are full of martial virtues. As long as we practice and know why we are fighting, we will soon be invincible again like our ancestors in the Qin and Han dynasties!"

"My Lord, what a good idea!" Mr. Gao Er felt as if he had taken a betel nut pill, and all the depression he had been feeling for years was gone. He immediately echoed excitedly, "I have said long ago that we should organize everyone, form a militia, purchase weapons, and conduct regular drills. Let's see if those red-haired devils, foreigners, and Vietnamese monkeys dare to ride on our heads and pee and shit on us again. It's a pity that none of them are willing to take the lead! This matter must be handled by you, my Lord! We Fuqing people will absolutely obey your orders!"

"Hahaha, who are you praising for his brilliant idea?" Zhao Hao laughed out loud, and everyone else followed suit, sweeping away the gloom that had been on the island for days.

However, the next moment, a member of the Chen family came to report that President Chen was dying and wanted to see Master Zhao before he left...

"Lead the way." Zhao Hao put away his smile and walked quickly towards the leader of the overseas Chinese in Luzon, whom he had never met before, surrounded by the crowd.

~~

In a tent in the center of the camp, Zhao Hao saw Chen Mei who was on her deathbed.

Tang Baolu choked up as he introduced to Zhao Hao that although this president of the Luzon Overseas Chinese Chamber of Commerce knew no martial arts at all, he was the first to rush forward without hesitation when he saw that the defense line was about to collapse completely, so naturally there was no possibility of him escaping.

When the reinforcements arrived and people rescued him, they found that Chen Mei had more than a dozen wounds on his body, but all of them were in the front of his body, not a single one on his back!

This overseas Chinese leader is worthy of his status and is a true hero!

Zhao Hao walked to his low camp bed with full respect, saluted solemnly, then half-knelt down and gently held Chen Mei's raised hand.

A hand with only two fingers left.

"I am Zhao Hao. What does President Chen want me to do? I will definitely do it!" Zhao Hao said firmly.

For Zhao Hao today, the weight of this promise is beyond people's imagination.

Chen Mei was already in his last moments of life. He looked at Zhao Hao deeply and asked with difficulty, "Sir, are you willing to take the unowned land of Luzon?"

This question is really ridiculous!

However, several overseas Chinese leaders showed excitement in their eyes, as they were very happy to see Master Zhao establishing the foundation of his hegemony here!

Zhao Hao coughed lightly and asked someone to call Xu Kezheng in from outside the tent. He pointed at him and said to Chen Mei, "Chairman Chen, the imperial court has issued an order to re-establish the Governor-General's Office of Luzon. Once the invaders are driven out, Luzon will return to us Chinese! There will never be another Jiannei Massacre!"

The overseas Chinese leaders are all shrewd people. Who doesn't know that Xu Kezheng is just a cover for Mr. Zhao? It is obvious that Zhao Hao is planning to continue operating in Luzon!

And it was still within the system of the Ming Dynasty! This was better than the best case scenario they could have imagined!

But Chen Mei obviously thought deeper. He asked again: "Does the court send troops to the Governor's Office to pay them?"

He was worried that Zhao Hao would do what Zheng He did in the past, recruiting a bunch of overseas Chinese leaders in Southeast Asia, allowing them to set up governments and establish territories, but failing to provide them with the substantive support they demanded from the imperial court.

After Zheng He's death and the voyages to the West were stopped, the Chinese regimes disappeared one after another like trees without roots and water without a source.

The Chinese have become overseas Chinese without support, and are once again at the mercy of others...

"President, rest assured. Although the imperial court will not send troops or pay salaries to the Governor's Office, it allows us to set up our own militia. With the wealth of us Chinese, can't we afford to support a strong army?" Zhao Hao said to reassure him:

"In addition, the imperial court has fully entrusted all Nanyang affairs to the Nanhai Group. So we are one, and the Coast Guard Fleet will always protect the safety of Luzon!"

"Okay, then I'm relieved..." Chen Mei nodded with relief, and said to her son Chen Yongquan who was kneeling beside her: "You must always be loyal to me and to the Nanhai Group. Otherwise, I will not forgive you even in my grave!"

"Yes, son, I remember it!" Chen Yongquan nodded heavily with tears in his eyes.

Upon seeing this, Xu Kezheng, Liu Xuesheng and Gao Erye quickly knelt down and swore to be forever loyal to Zhao Hao and the Nanhai Group!

Chen Mei finally closed her eyes in relief, and in her last words she admonished:

"After driving away the red-haired devil, bury me in the stream, and watch the Chinese forever become the masters of Luzon..."

~~

The next day, Zhao Hao held a funeral for Chen Mei and her 3,000 dead compatriots, as well as the 25 Marines who died!

Although conditions limited it to a grand funeral, the three armies were in mourning and the ships’ guns were firing. This must be what the dead compatriots wanted to see the most, because it meant revenge!

At the funeral, Zhao Hao, as the Junior Minister of the Imperial Household, announced the court's decision to restore the Governor-General's Office of Luzon!

And brazenly announced that from this moment on, all Chinese in Luzon automatically lost their status as "overseas Chinese" and became the masters of this land!

Although cheering at a funeral was inappropriate, the 25,000 overseas Chinese who were in mourning for Chen Mei couldn't help but cheer...

They have waited for this moment for too long, especially after experiencing the previous hardships. No one knows better than them how important it is to have a regime of their own!

When everyone quieted down, Zhao Hao announced in the name of the Nanyang Group that he would select and train a group of "Chinese soldiers" from the Chinese who volunteered and were aged between 16 and 35 to defend the new Chinese regime!

This is more important than the Governor's Office. After the funeral, the Chinese people immediately signed up enthusiastically. Many of them who looked to be in their forties or fifties shamelessly said that they were only thirty-five and just grew up a little too fast.

Those 13 or 14-year-old children were also greatly inspired and insisted that their faces looked young, but in fact they were already 16...

Anyway, there is no evidence at the moment, so saying how old you are is just a mouth.

Pan Jinlian, the Marine Corps Police Commissioner in charge of recruiting soldiers, had no choice but to conduct a physical fitness test. If you pass, you are considered to be of the right age. If you fail, it is useless even if you are of the right age...

So Chinese men, young and old, actively participated in the test, doing frog jumps, lifting barbells, long-distance running, short-distance running... They also encouraged each other and cheered for their companions who successfully passed the test! If you don't know, you would think they were holding a beach sports meeting.

Zhao Hao stood on the newly built observation tower, looking at the lively scene of everyone competing, and felt sincerely gratified!

Look, our Chinese nation is not a nation founded on rites and ethics as those people say. Rites and ethics cannot establish a nation! They are just a ruling technique used by a minority to rule the majority!

We are a nation founded on farming and warfare! The innate skills of our nation are only farming and warfare!

It is just because the dynasty has been peaceful for a long time, and the use of military force has been abandoned, and the civil service group hates force and war the most, so they have been trying every means to erase the martial spirit of the Han people. But it is something engraved in the genes and can never be erased. Once the days are not peaceful and the restrictions are lifted, the Chinese will immediately regain their martial virtues, and quickly hone their unfamiliar martial arts to restore the original appearance of the war machine!

For example, when the Beiyang warlords were fighting, the soldiers would only shoot into the air, making it hard to tell whether they were setting off firecrackers or fighting. Just like the later black uncles, after a big battle, only a few people died on both sides, but a lot of ammunition was wasted. At that time, the foreign devils looked down on the Chinese in various ways, mocking us and suggesting that the Chinese should restore the tradition of killing the enemy with archery, so as to save some money on bullets.

But thirty years later on the Korean battlefield, the Chinese army was able to rely on millet and rifles to challenge the 18 warlords led by the United States, which had just won the Second World War!

So if the Russians are a fighting nation, then we Chinese are a warlike nation.

However, the domestic environment of the Ming Dynasty is now in a state of deterioration. Without a radical revolution, it is difficult to create space for the nation's martial spirit to grow wildly.

But it's OK overseas! Here, there are no restrictions of ethics, no civil servants to cause trouble, and there are red-haired devils coming one after another, as well as endless threats from pirates and natives. It is the best trial ground for Chinese people to temper their martial spirits!

Coupled with the strong control and influence of the Nanhai Group, I believe that within thirty years, the martial arts spirit of China can be completely rekindled in Southeast Asia!

Thinking of his grand goal and finally taking a crucial step, Zhao Hao couldn't help but smile.

"Why are you laughing, sir?" Tang Baolu, who was standing by, immediately asked.

"I just laugh at Gongjin's lack of strategy and Zhuge's lack of wisdom..." Zhao Hao cursed with a smile, kicked him on the butt and said, "You are outrageous! How dare you tease your uncle!"

Tang Baolu blinked aggrievedly, not knowing what the young master meant.

"I think it's a joke that the red-haired devils want to colonize. With their small population, they will have to spit out what they eat sooner or later." Zhao Hao said with high morale:

"The expansion of territory depends on our Ming Dynasty! Only we can rely on our large population, farming and warfare to ensure that the land we eat will always belong to China!"

~~

In the end, out of the 25,000 overseas Chinese, a full 10,000 passed the enlistment test for the children of the Chinese people.

The reason for such a high availability ratio is that the male to female ratio among Chinese is three to one, with a serious situation of more men than women.

This is normal, because those who went to Southeast Asia were all young people, and few of them brought their families with them. Even if they made a name for themselves, they would not bring their families to Southeast Asia to suffer. Wouldn't it be better to enjoy the good life in China? Of course, they would buy a maid or a concubine and bring them to Southeast Asia to serve them.

Only families like the Chen family, who have settled in Southeast Asia, have a mistress...

In addition to the fact that men are more powerful than women, there are very few elderly people and children among overseas Chinese. This is not difficult to understand. Without women, how can there be children?

The elderly always believe in returning to their roots, so they usually return to their homeland when they are old. Besides, the South Seas are too hot, and there are poisonous insects and miasma everywhere, so not many people can live to a ripe old age...

So it's not surprising that 10,000 people can pass the test.

Zhao Hao did not let them down. With a wave of his hand, he agreed that all of them could join the army!

He is not worried that this will affect the normal development of Luzon or impose a heavy economic burden on it.

Because the soldiers of the local troops adopted the system of fubing, which did not mean the soldiers of the governor's office, but the system of fubing that originated in the Northern Wei Dynasty and flourished in the Sui and Tang Dynasties!