The winter of the 16th year of the Wanli reign was even colder than the previous year. The south of the Yangtze River was frozen over again, and even Lingnan, which was known for its warm weather, had snow.

The north was freezing cold, and it hadn't rained since winter began. The poor people who had hoped to get some relief this year now had no hope. Many people packed up their blankets and headed for the nearest county town right after the New Year, bringing along the elderly and children.

The two capitals and thirteen provinces of the Ming Dynasty had 140 prefectures, 193 states, and 1,138 counties in Yingtian and Shuntian. In addition, there were 493 guards and 359 stations under the jurisdiction of the provincial governors. Among them, there were more than 1,200 cities with Jiangnan Group Immigration Offices.

Basically, except for counties with too small populations and too remote areas and those garrisons that existed in name only, the Jiangnan Group has set up two offices - an immigration office and a sales office.

The two offices were a team with two names. They were responsible for recruiting local people to settle overseas, and they were also responsible for connecting with local government officials and contacting wealthy families. As for what other activities they were doing in secret, it was unknown.

In the eyes of the poor people, these immigration offices scattered in counties across the country are their saviors in times of despair and their hope when the whole family can no longer make ends meet.

In the past, when they encountered famine, or could not pay taxes imposed by the government, or were forced out of their livelihood by the wealthy, they could only flee the famine and become refugees, or sell their children or themselves into slavery. No matter what choice they made, they could not escape the tragic fate of having their families torn apart and their wives and children torn apart.

Now, if ordinary people really want to get by, they can just go to the immigration office to register, pass a simple physical examination and review, and put their fingerprints on the immigration contract, and the immigration office will start to provide food. Naturally, no one will starve to death anymore. There is no need to sell your children or yourself...

Although they still have to leave their homes and go to a distant overseas country, the immigration officials have spared no effort in promoting it over the past decade, and the people have already known that they no longer have to worry about food when they go overseas, and they can get land, a house to live in, and their children can even go to school, and they can have meat every meal at home!

And most importantly, there are no more local tyrants and government officials oppressing them! This is simply a paradise! No matter where it is, no matter how far it is, they will go...

~~

Shaanxi Provincial Administration, Lintao Prefecture, Lanzhou City.

This is the Jiangnan Group’s most northwestern immigration office.

On the sixth day of the first lunar month in the seventeenth year of the Wanli reign, the Lanzhou Immigration Office opened early for business.

There was no other way. Last year, Shaanxi suffered a severe drought, and many places had no harvest. However, the landlords refused to reduce rent or postpone payment. The grain jars of the common people were drier than their faces. The whole family was starving, so how could they care about staying at home for the New Year? Many people rushed to the immigration office with their families to line up at the end of the year.

Firstly, the office has a porridge stall, which serves porridge twice a day, and the porridge is so thick that you can stand chopsticks in it. During the New Year holidays, minced meat and mixed vegetables are added to the porridge, along with salt, making it delicious.

More importantly, there is a quota for immigration. On the one hand, the Jiangnan Group has limited immigration capacity, and the biggest resistance comes from the obstruction of the princes and royal families. Especially for immigration points far away from the Jiangnan Group's sphere of influence, even if the office has the protection of local officials, it cannot afford to offend the royal family.

There are many more lawless military leaders in Shaanxi, who also regard the military households as free tenants. How can they sit back and watch these free laborers go away? If they get angry, they will do anything.

In the 12th year of the Wanli reign, Harlin, the commander of Pingliang Guard, instructed his men to disguise themselves as bandits and massacre the Pingliang Immigration Office, resulting in the beheading of four group clerks and eight security personnel. More than one hundred immigrants in the Immigration Office were also brutally killed, causing the Pingliang Massacre that shocked Jiangnan.

Zhao Hao was furious when he heard the news, and the consequences were naturally very serious. At the imperial court, the governors-general of the three borders, the governor of Shaanxi, the general and deputy general of Guyuan, the prefect and county magistrate of Pingliang were all dismissed.

After the Special Operations Department identified Ha Lin as the culprit of the Pingliang Massacre, the newly appointed General of Guyuan, Ma Gui, immediately led a large army to surround Baimiao Township, Pingliang, and completely wiped out the Ha family, which had occupied Pingliang for more than three hundred years.

It is said that the battle was not fought by General Ma himself. The troops of Guyuan Town were closely connected with the Ha family, so they were only responsible for building fences outside.

The armed forces from Jiangnan were responsible for clearing out Baimiao Township and exterminating thousands of Ha's family members. However, the villagers in the northwest did not believe it, because the Ha family had been operating in Baimiao Township for a long time, the camp was strong, and the Hui people were all soldiers, fierce and good at fighting. The outcome of the attack by the imperial army was unpredictable, so how could the Jiangnan Group, a business company, have the ability to destroy the Ha family?

They would rather believe that it was because the Ha family killed the Bodhisattva of the Immigration Office who saved people from suffering, which angered the heavens, who sent down gods to punish and destroy the Ha family...

Anyway, no one in Shaanxi dared to touch the immigration office after that. However, Jiangnan Group also learned its lesson and announced the immigration quota for the following year in advance every twelfth month of the lunar calendar.

In this way, if the local royal family, wealthy families, or military leaders feel that the number of people is too large, they can come to the office to negotiate. If the negotiation goes well, perhaps the quota can be reduced in the next year.

This is called creating an issue. No one knows better than Boss Zhao how to create something out of nothing and turn it into a bargaining chip.

After the quotas have been announced for several years in a row, they will get used to the fact that so many people leave every year and take it for granted. The rebound will naturally be much smaller.

Moreover, the immigration quota in the northwest is originally small. For example, a Class C immigration office like Lanzhou originally only had 700 places per year.

In the 16th year of Wanli, the Jiangnan Group increased the immigration population to 3 million people per year, and the quota of the Lanzhou Immigration Office was just over 1,000.

Last year, before March, all the immigration quotas were taken up. With nine months left, people who wanted to immigrate could only wait and hope that the year would pass quickly.

Because after the New Year's Eve, the immigration quota will be reset. From the first day of the first lunar month, the quota for the new year will be calculated!

So people came to line up in the twelfth month of last year, fearing that the quota would be taken up again at the beginning of the new year.

~~

Fortunately, there were a total of seven or eight hundred people queuing on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, and the number of places available this year was twelve hundred, so everyone got a chance.

Their emotions were naturally more stable, and the line was well-organized... They had queued up to eat porridge at the porridge factory every day before, and they already knew that the people in the immigration office hated people who broke the rules, cut in line, and bullied others the most.

Security guards who maintain order will immediately kick out such troublemakers and disqualify their applications.

Of course, it is inevitable that there will be crying children and noisy kids in the queue. The security guards are not unsympathetic, as immigrants usually come with their families.

This is normal. If the family is full of old and young people, it is easy to have trouble making ends meet. Fortunately, Jiangnan Group not only does not care, but also welcomes such family immigration.

On the contrary, men who apply for immigration alone are easily rejected. It is not that the group discriminates against singles, but that young people are unstable, have no family to support them, work less hard, and are more likely to run away. Moreover, most of the spies found are from this group.

So the brothers Li Shouzhong and Li Shouxiao, who were in the middle of the team, were a little nervous.

Because they are two single men, and they are also spies...

In fact, they are not brothers. It is true that Li Shouzhong is called Li Shouzhong, but Li Shouxiao is not called Li Shouxiao. His actual name is Gaoda. He is Li Shouzhong's brother-in-law and nephew.

The two were from Li Jiqian Village, Huaiyuan Fort, Mizhi, Yulin, Shaanxi, and both were military households.

Li Shouzhong's family had been a single-line family for five generations, and the pressure to continue the family line was quite great, so he secretly fell in love with Gaoda's sister. Gaoda also happened to be attracted to Li Shouzhong's sister. In the impoverished northern Shaanxi, exchange marriages were a basic practice. The two families were extremely poor, so naturally they planned that you marry my sister and I marry your sister, and the bride price was waived for both parties.

However, the exchange marriage can only exempt the betrothal gift, but the bridal sedan chair and wedding banquet cannot be exempted. Who doesn't want to be glorious and splendid for such a once-in-a-lifetime event? But the years have been bad, and both families have been struggling to make ends meet, and they can't even afford the betrothal gift.

At this critical moment, someone introduced them to a job, saying that an official wanted to hire someone to do an errand, and that they would have to travel far away. It would take a year to go back and forth, and each person would receive 20 taels of silver.

The two had never seen silver in their lives. In Mizhi, twenty taels of silver could buy a cow, ten acres of good land, and build five houses. Naturally, they agreed and said they would do it.

But as they say, the government doesn't want everyone. You have to choose, and only those who are chosen can be accepted.

Now the two of them believed it even more, so they said goodbye to their families and followed them to the provincial capital.

As a result, I was immediately attracted to her and stayed...

The two were very proud at the time and felt that Mr. Shen had good taste.

Little did they know that Shen Yingkui was looking for Hanhan...

~~

Last year, after receiving the full support of the factory owner, Shen Yingkui began to secretly select hundreds of honest-looking, loyal and reliable people from all over the country to be trained as secret agents to be sent overseas.

He gathered these people in several isolated villages in Shaanxi, Shanxi and Henan for special training. In addition to imparting the necessary spy skills, the focus was to make them no different from ordinary farmers.

Shen Yingkui's method was to force them to work hard day after day, and to whip them if they slacked off. They were only given bran and vegetables to eat, and they were not given food if they did not finish their work.

The poor fools complained bitterly and wanted to quit, but it was impossible. Escape? If they were caught, they would be beaten to death. If they couldn't be caught, their parents would be arrested directly...

Secret agents understand human nature best, and they know that people without any ties are not good undercover agents. Therefore, the people Shen Yingkui found were all those whose parents were still alive, or who were married and had children. Because they had hostages in their hands, they could manipulate them without restraint.

After several months of hard work, poor Li Shouzhong and Gaoda had darker skin, hunched backs, calluses on their hands, feet and shoulders, their expressions became numb, and their eyes became dim...The only thing they gained was that they became experts in farm work.

He looks like an old farmer who is overwhelmed by life. If he tells people that he is a spy from the Eastern Depot, they will laugh at him.

After the special training, only about 100 people passed the final assessment. The rest all died...

Shen Yingkui took great pains to arrange identities for them and fabricated their life stories in detail. Then he sent them to different immigration stations to register...

ps. Sorry, it takes time to come up with the idea. Write another chapter.