"Luzon has always been ours, why do they need to do this?" After reading Tang Baolu's report, Zhang Xiaojing also laughed out of anger.

"And they need to restore the trade of galleons. They are the ones who need trade the most. So they are so stingy, right?"

"Isn't there still one million pesos?" Zhao Hao said with a smile.

"One million? Are you sending away a beggar? We earned tens of millions when we robbed him!" Zhang Xiaojing said with a bandit-like aura as if Lin Feng had possessed him.

"Your Majesty, Fillet Mignon, is indeed a little confused. I couldn't bear to see them fail, so I offered such polite conditions, but I didn't expect that they would not appreciate it." Zhao Hao smiled bitterly and said, "It seems that the suffering I have suffered is not enough."

"My husband is absolutely right. When we dealt with these red-haired devils, we found that they were barbaric and unreasonable. If you tolerate them, they will push their limits; if you are polite to them, they will think you are easy to bully. In a word, if you can't get it on the battlefield, you can't expect to get it at the negotiation table. They are just a bunch of bitches who won't cry until they see the coffin!"

"I understand. Then let's wait until the British teach them a lesson." Zhao Hao smiled and picked up the pencil, quickly writing four words on the telegram paper: "Stop negotiations."

"Do you think the British can defeat the Spanish?" Zhang Xiaojing was a little puzzled. In her impression, Spain was the ruler of the North Atlantic, and those British pirates only dared to steal and run away after robbing a few things.

"Who knows?" Zhao Hao said with a nonchalant smile: "It's a dog-eat-dog fight, so it doesn't matter who wins or loses. But from our standpoint, of course we hope that the more reactionary and conservative side will win and suppress the more promising side."

"I see." Zhang Xiaojing nodded and said, "So we won't take North America first?"

"It's easy to take over North America, but it will take some time to keep it." Zhao Hao sighed and said:

"In the final analysis, the timing is not right yet. The chessboard is too big now, and there are too many places to place the pieces. But the more this is the case, the more we need to prioritize and not try to do everything at once. In the end, we will end up with a good hand scattered and all of our pieces will become negative assets."

In fact, Liu Yishou had traveled to North America several times over the years and had already figured out the routes, found the ports to dock, and even contacted the Indians to provide supplies... Oh no, it's my fellow villagers in Yindi.

Spain also has the same weakness as Portugal, that is, too few people. Although its population is several times larger than Portugal's, it is still less than 10 million. This population is simply not enough to support such a large empire, and Spain is also militaristic and has started wars everywhere.

Therefore, they only established some exploration bases on the west coast of North America. They did not have any formal military presence, let alone effective rule.

According to the staff's deduction, only an expeditionary force of two to three thousand people would be enough to flatten the Spanish strongholds on the west coast of America.

However, Spain had been operating in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean for a long time and was capable of organizing tens of thousands of troops to counterattack.

In order to gain a foothold in North America without being able to deploy too many troops, the expeditionary force needed to form an alliance with the Indians, upgrade the Spanish strongholds into fortresses, and then defend the Spanish army until they could no longer hold on. Therefore, it would take several years to determine the winner.

That's too hard, and there are too many unknowns...

After all, although North America is important, it is not the main contradiction at the moment. The group cannot invest too many resources and naturally cannot obtain positive returns.

"We still hope to gain North America in a more peaceful way." Zhao Hao said calmly, "America is big enough to accommodate two great powers. If Fillet Mignon doesn't believe it, let reality teach him a lesson!"

~~

The team headed south.

Wherever he passed along the way, the local governors, provincial governors, and inspectors of prefectures, states, and counties all led their subordinates in mourning clothes and knelt to welcome him. Even the princes and royal family members wore green robes and ribbons, went to the border to pay tribute, and cried on the road. No one was exempted.

The scenery is just like the journey home for Mr. Zhang’s burial.

But that time, Zhang Juzheng sat in a sedan chair carried by 32 people, but this time he was lying on a hearse pulled by eight horses...

The hearse arrived at Jingzhou City on the north bank of the Yangtze River on October 9th.

The whole city of Jingzhou was dressed in white mourning, and the elders came out for forty miles to welcome the Grand Tutor home, standing by the roadside.

Forty years ago, this surging Yangtze River and thousand-year-old ancient city watched the young scholar in blue shirt set out from here to go to Beijing for the imperial examination, and forged a glorious career that he was worthy of.

Forty years later, Jiang Cheng saw his child come back again, sleeping peacefully on the river waves, staying with this ancient city forever, leaving only the legend for people to comment on for thousands of years...

~~

Zhang Juzheng's coffin was kept in the Guandi Temple at the south gate of Jingzhou for seven days, allowing officials, gentry and people from Huguang to pay their respects.

This Guandi Temple was first built during the Hongwu period, but was destroyed several times by floods in the Yangtze River.

Jingzhou is located in the lower reaches of the Three Gorges, and floods are frequent, making the people miserable. It was not until Zhang Xianggong Longqing entered the cabinet that the situation improved greatly - the province paid much more attention to the river defense on the north bank than on the south bank. When flood diversion was needed during the flood season, floodwaters were discharged to the south bank as much as possible.

The reason is certainly not because they are afraid of flooding Zhang Xianggong’s ancestral tomb and houses, but because there is Dongting Lake on the south bank... Whether you believe it or not, the local officials believe it anyway.

Although the people on the south bank suffered, the people of Jingzhou remembered his kindness. The north bank of the river had not suffered a disaster for nearly 20 years, so the Guandi Temple was rebuilt a few years ago. Jingzhou officials temporarily buried the coffin of Master Zhang here to show his achievements in benefiting his hometown.

But life on the South Bank has been pretty good these years.

In the sixth year of Wanli, Zhang Juzheng arranged for the capable official Chen Rui to be the governor of Huguang to solve the flood problem in the Jianghan Plain.

Chen Rui found through research that the damage caused by the Yangtze River to Huguang mainly came from the Three Gorges. During the flood season, the surging floods rushed down from the Three Gorges, which could not be stopped by human power. At this time, conventional means such as building embankments and diverting floodwaters were ineffective, and other methods had to be found.

He pondered for a long time, and suddenly thought that since building a bridge over the river would slow down the flow of water, could he choose a location in the Three Gorges to set up rows of "bridge piles" to achieve the effect of blocking floods?

So he conducted a field survey of the Three Gorges and visited the people along the coast. He learned that he was not the first person to come up with this idea. In the past thousands of years, several local officials had done the same thing. But there was nothing left on the river. Those stone dams had been washed away by floods again and again...

Chen Rui still did not give up and asked Pan Jixun for advice. The answer he got was that building dams to prevent floods was indeed effective.

But the problem is that the Yangtze River floods are too fierce, and the stone dam cannot stand for long. It will fall apart in a few years... Once the dam that cost a lot of money and effort to build collapses, it will not only be a waste of effort, but also the local officials will be held accountable. At the very least, they will be dismissed from office, and at the worst, they will be prosecuted. Who can bear this?

So no one talks about building dams to reduce floods anymore.

But Pan Jixun told Chen Rui that Jiangnan Group had a magic weapon that could solve this problem. So Chen Rui took the opportunity when Zhao Hao accompanied Zhang Juzheng to the funeral to ask him for help.

Zhao Hao readily agreed and ordered Jiangnan Construction Corporation to take on the project.

In the spring of the ninth year of Wanli, all twenty reinforced concrete dams were completed.

Each dam is ten feet long, five feet wide and three feet high. Four or five dams are placed in a row at the narrowest part of the river, with eight to ten feet between each dam. From a distance, they look like a row of bridge piers.

There are five rows of dams in the Three Gorges. In normal times, the river flows normally through the gaps between the dams, and ships are not affected.

But during the flood season, when the raging floodwaters rush to a row of dams, they are blocked. The water turns back, accumulates inside the dams, and slowly flows down.

When rushing to the next row of dams, the flow rate slowed down again. This repeated five times, and most of the flood's momentum was relieved. A large amount of water was retained in the Three Gorges, and it would no longer surge and rush down like before the dams were built, and the pressure downstream was naturally greatly reduced.

Since the construction of these five dams, the embankments on both sides of the Yangtze River have been safe and sound without being breached by floods.

Moreover, because the flood was temporarily stored in the Three Gorges, it avoided the danger of merging with the peak of the Han River. Qianjiang, Mianyang, Wuchang, Hanyang and other places on the Jianghan Plain were also spared from flooding, and the entire Huguang region benefited greatly!

Chen Yongbin, the prefect of Jingzhou, who accompanied Zhao Hao to inspect the "Three Gorges Dam", excitedly told Zhao Hao that this year's flood season encountered a flood that occurs once every fifty years. In previous years, the dikes would have been destroyed and the fields would have been flooded, and hundreds of thousands of people would have been displaced. However, since the flood season, the river water has receded at any time, and the dikes have never overflowed, and the dikes have not collapsed.

"After the flood receded, the people enjoyed a good harvest and were extremely grateful to Master Zhang and Chen Zhongcheng." Chen Yongbin said with great emotion, "But without the cement concrete invented by our teacher, the dam would have been destroyed years ago. How could it be solved once and for all like it is now?"

He was a student of Phoenix Academy and a Jinshi in the fifth year of Wanli. He was also an outstanding pragmatist among Zhao Hao's students.

After entering the official career, he was first appointed as the magistrate of Changshu. He studied scientific management in Suzhou City, improved his administrative skills, and quickly grew into an outstanding magistrate.

During his tenure, Chen Yongbin treated people with respect, worked diligently and loved the people. He worked hard to get rid of old malpractices, and achieved equal taxes and cleaned up the prisons, with no cases left behind. In terms of collecting taxes, he had a lawful system, and the people were not annoyed, and his achievements were outstanding.

At the end of the term, he performed well in the examination and was summoned to Beijing to be an imperial censor. He inspected Hedong and did many good things to relieve the people's worries. In the 11th year of Wanli, he was transferred to Huaiyang and concurrently supervised the education. He was impartial in examinations, recommendations and impeachments. In the 14th year of Wanli, he was promoted to the prefect of Jingzhou and became the parent official of Master Zhang.

Less than ten years after he started his career, he was promoted to the rank of prefect of the fourth rank, a speed so fast that it was jaw-dropping. But wherever he went, no one disobeyed him and he was loved by everyone.

Such a talented person was naturally promoted by Zhao Hao to be his personal disciple and was given the name "Changchun".

Zhao Hao now has three thousand disciples, but there are less than a hundred of them who have been given titles as his personal disciples, which shows how much he values ​​Chen Yongbin.

"Changchun, don't be careless." Zhao Hao warned with a serious expression: "Although it is a concrete embankment, our technology is not foolproof. Regular inspections must be carried out carefully. Once cracks, sliding and concrete aging are found, they must be reported immediately. You can't just rely on the inspectors of Jiangnan Supervision. It's safer to have double insurance."

"Yes, disciple will remember the master's teachings - safety is above all else." Chen Yongbin helped him walk down the embankment and back to the boat.

"Work hard. Among the twenty or so brothers in the Chun Division, I have the most confidence in you." Zhao Hao looked at his disciple with satisfaction and said, "Find out more about the situation in Yunnan when you have time..."

"Yes, I'll remember it." Chen Yongbin nodded and wrote it down. He knew that his master's words meant that he would go to Yunnan in the near future...