At dawn, hundreds of merchant ships moved forward in an orderly and fast manner on the river, and hundreds of speedboats accompanied the fleet.
With the technology of this year, there is no need to worry about collision accidents. In fact, the speed of the fleet is limited only because the several speedboats in the vanguard need to drive away the ships going upstream.
On the first merchant ship at the head of the fleet, Captain Ling Feng was sitting on the captain's throne in the captain's cabin, looking ahead with a solemn expression. He had not slept all night, but his energy was still high.
No way, this operation is related to the future of the entire Tangqiao garrison area, and even more importantly to the future of hundreds of people in my own Ling family. I have been in a state of excitement since I led the troops and set off. I have worked hard for so long.
, not feeling sleepy at all.
I can't help but be excited. As long as the Zhangxia garrison is captured, the Ling family will be able to carve up a large amount of benefits. This benefit is so huge that it only takes a few years for their village-level family to become a town-level family.
family!
The division of village-level families, town-level families, and county-level families is actually very simple. It depends on the radiation range of your family's influence.
Your family’s power cannot extend beyond a single neighborhood, so at most, you can refer to your family as such-and-such neighborhood.
Blocks in big cities have many benefits, so they are naturally noticed by others, but in other small places, you would be embarrassed to put the name of the block in front of your family name.
No one family can dominate a place. It’s all about you and me.
The reason for this is that one is lack of ability and the other is the need to avoid suspicion.
After all, even if you are a military and political boss in a place, you still have deputies and political opponents. Taking over a place is tantamount to setting up a target for others to attack.
The Ling family is a hereditary soldier family in the Tangqiao garrison area for hundreds of years. There are at least ten families with his strength in the entire Tangqiao garrison area.
The slightly lower ones are tens or hundreds, and the lower ones are definitely hundreds or thousands.
With the existence of so many hereditary soldier families, the interests of Tangqiao garrison area have been almost divided up, and there are no new points of interest.
The top hereditary soldier family like the Ling family is even more anxious to find opportunities and ways to break through the bottleneck of village-level families.
All the families that can be called village-level families in Tangqiao Township have extended their tentacles to towns outside the township.
There is no need to wonder how they dare to leave the guarded area. The regulations are that outsiders are not allowed to enter the guarded area at will, and people in the guarded area are not allowed to go out at will. However, there are many ways to circumvent this "not at will" statement.
After all, the garrison area is such a big village, and it is such a special village that has stood on a piece of land for hundreds of years. If you want to say that the people inside have not penetrated outwards, and the people outside have not penetrated inward, that would be a lie.
No matter how strict the rules are, they can't stop this from happening.
So as a village-level family, the Ling family will of course extend its tentacles outside.
However, due to the special nature of the garrison area, it is difficult for the Ling family to borrow power from outside to maintain and strengthen themselves, and they can only rely on money to invest in connections.
After spending many years and a lot of money, I managed to gain a foothold in the towns outside the garrison area, but it was extremely difficult to go further.
To put it simply, money is not enough!
There is no way to spend enough money to build a golden avenue, and there is no way to spend enough money to buy more allies and more backers.
So the helpless Ling family, like other village-level families from the garrison area, could only work quietly, hoping to encounter an opportunity that would allow their family to become a town-level family.
What are the benefits of becoming a town-level family?
Let’s not talk about money, just that you can participate in the military and political activities of the township, and you may be able to get a job in the military and political department of the township, and your descendants will not have to choose to serve in the garrison area. That is a super generous benefit!
It can be said that no one wants to be trapped in a guarded area for generations. All caged birds long for freedom!
It’s not that the whole family has left the garrison area because of this, it’s just that the next generation will have more choices, which is enough for the whole family to try their best to fight for it.
Nearly all village-level families in the garrison area are working hard towards this goal.
Therefore, when the newly arrived Tangqiao Shou expressed his intention to capture the Zhangxia garrison area, many of the soldier families who had originally wanted to give the new Tangqiao Shou the power, immediately changed their minds and expressed their willingness to obey Tangqiao Shou's orders and went out.
People work hard towards this goal.
Captain Ling Feng could serve as the vanguard commander of this war, but he also gave many benefits to Tangqiao Shou and other families in the garrison area.
Of course, these expenses, concessions in all aspects, and favors owed are all worth it.
Because the Ling family can get a generous share of the benefits with this military exploit, and thus step into the status of a town-level family, then they can look down on the families in the guarding area calmly, and fight for that little bit.
The interests continue to be fought over between you and me.
As for failure? I never considered that.
Everyone thinks that the Zhangxia garrison will surrender obediently when the army arrives, including Ling Feng.
It’s not that I am arrogant, but that everyone has already done enough work.
It was the soldiers and families like them who sent men to set up companies in the Zhangxia garrison to make money. After knowing that Zhangxia Village was to be attacked, they naturally immediately sent these men to investigate the situation in Zhangxia Village and bribe the powerful people in Zhangxia Village.
It was only after receiving the information from the subordinates of these transferred spies, and even some family bosses changed their identities and came to Zhangxia Village to visit those bosses in person, and obtained accurate information, that they dared to place such a heavy bet.
So this war can be said to be a sure win.
This is also the reason why Ling Feng is relaxed and energetic even though he is physically tired.
“Sir, we have entered the boundary of the Zhangxia garrison area and will pass through Yijian Gorge in half an hour!” his subordinates suddenly reported.
“Order the forward speedboat to quickly pass through Yijian Gorge, go ten kilometers ahead to stop the countercurrent boats, and order the rear speedboat to stop the boats following the fleet! The entire fleet begins to slow down!” Ling Feng gave the order quickly.
“Yes!” The subordinate immediately conveyed the order.
The speed of the fleet began to slow down, and the speedboat exploring the path at the front immediately rushed forward with its engine at full speed. The speedboat at the rear of the fleet simply stopped the ship sideways, blocking the ships following the fleet and prohibiting them from continuing to move forward.
For all this, everyone in the fleet, including the blocked ships, took it for granted.
Because it’s very simple, Yijian Gorge, which is only half an hour’s sail away, is a river canyon with cliffs on both sides, and the river is about a hundred meters wide.
This distance is exactly equal to the range of an ancient bow and arrow, so it is also called Yijian Gorge.
In ancient times, the river with a width of more than 100 meters was actually very spacious, and several ships could pass through it at the same time.
But these days, the width of any standard merchant ship on the river is tens of meters wide. This Yijian Gorge, which is only a hundred meters wide, can only pass through one ship in a queue.
It can be said that along the thousands of miles of river from Tangqiao Township to Zhangxia Township, it is in this Arrow Gorge that accidents may occur.
People who have been sailing back and forth on this river for many years certainly know that they need to slow down and queue up when they come here, so Ling Feng's response seems to be a matter of course.