By mid-March, willow catkins were already fluttering in the streets of Shengjing.
Since the four major districts and the central district began to remove the barbed wire fences to allow people from each district to move freely in October last year, more than four months have passed. After the initial chaos, a new order has been formed. Moreover, in these four months, factories, shops, etc. have sprung up in several major areas like mushrooms after rain.
The biggest changes occurred in the Black Mountain Concession area.
Today, Shengjing is mainly divided into five major areas: Central District, Longbei District, Anshan District, Beijiang District, and Haixi District, and there are two concessions: the Japanese Concession District and the Montenegro Concession District.
The Heishan Concession was established in November last year when Longbei District and Anshan District each leased a small portion of their land to the Heishan people. The total area is not large, less than half of the Japanese Concession, and is not much different from a small county town. Originally it was all wasteland and shanty towns, but in more than three months, many buildings have been built, and even a soda factory and a flour mill have been built.
However, the Japanese Concession had representatives who entered the Municipal Council, but the Montenegro Concession did not have this status.
Shengjing Public Affairs Board, full name is Public Affairs Board.
It has always been controlled by Westerners.
In fact, a hundred years ago, the Shengjing Free Trade Zone was an agreement reached under the mediation of Westerners. It can be seen as a microcosm of Western merchants' control over the northern region's economy. They set up factories here and their products can be distributed to four provinces, eliminating many customs barriers between provinces.
Of course, most of the Western factories in Shengjing are cloth factories, because cloth has low technical content and can be mass-produced by recruiting cheap workers. At the same time, no matter how poor the people in the Northern Territory are, it is a tradition to buy cloth to make new clothes during the New Year or when they have some spare money. Cloth is also a commodity that can truly be dumped in the four provinces of the Northern Territory.
The chief director of the Shengjing Municipal Council, or the chairman, Baron Rodson, was the cotton spinning king of Shengjing.
In the past, the Municipal Council had seven directors, three of whom were Westerners. In addition, there was one representative each from Longbei, Anshan, Beijiang and Haixi.
In this way, it has broad representation and coordinates the management of public affairs within Shengjing.
Today, there are eight directors, with the addition of a representative from the Japanese Concession.
After all, Montenegro has not yet reached the administrative status of one of the four provinces or even the Kingdom of Japan. Its concessions were privately leased from the two provinces of Longbei and Anshan.
The Westerners, who mainly live in the central area, naturally agreed wholeheartedly to the idea of removing barriers and integrating the various districts of Shengjing.
In fact, the Westerners represented by Rodson originally hoped that the public board of directors would be expanded to nine people, with the addition of one more Western representative.
But unfortunately, due to the civil unrest in the kingdom, the Westerners lost some of their deterrent power in the eyes of the warlords in the four provinces of the northern region.
Even the northern provinces, which had been most economically penetrated by Westerners, had seen a surge in appointing local judges.
When Lu Ming escaped from Northern Xinjiang, the county-level courts in Northern Xinjiang Province were all headed by Western judges.
Of course, in Shengjing, Westerners have been operating for many years, and their power structure and economic influence are unmatched.
Therefore, under the insistence of Rodson and others, the Shengjing Central District Court still obtained the power to serve as the highest court in the Shengjing region.
…
In the rickshaw, Lu Ming looked at the street scenes on both sides. He had just arrived in Shengjing yesterday and took a short rest. Today was a good opportunity to stroll around the streets and alleys of Shengjing.
Next to Lu Ming sat Erika, who was beautifully dressed in a cherry blossom kimono. In the rickshaw behind him sat Granny Tuolong and Da Guo and Xiao Guo.
Looking at the burly man pulling the rickshaw in front of him, Lu Ming shook his head. In fact, the so-called long-bread rickshaw drivers in his family were also workers of the Bureau of Secrets. Although they were called workers, they actually carried guns on their waists.
My current name is Zhang Aming, and I’m a student at Shengjing University of Economics.
And his secret new identity is the chief of the secret service, the chairman of the Public Security Affairs Committee of the Montenegro Concession, commonly known as the director of the Security Bureau.
In fact, he can also be regarded as the top military, political and economic figure in the Montenegro Concession.
Because the armed police battalion stationed in the Montenegro Concession area reports directly to the Security Committee, the battalion commander is the director of the Second Department, which is the Operations Department, under the committee.
The Chief Inspector of the Montenegro Concession Police Station and the Deputy Director of the Operations Department.
The chief member of the Public Affairs Committee of the Black Mountain Concession, he secretly served as the vice chairman of the Security Committee.
Moreover, he also serves as the chairman of the Shengjing branch of Black Mountain Investment Company, but the daily affairs are decided by the general manager.
The Armed Police Brigade is actually a company allocated from the Special Service Battalion directly under the 325th Army Headquarters, which has been expanded to a total of about 500 people, and is organized at the battalion level.
Montenegro Investment Company is actually a subsidiary of the Montenegro Special Region Finance Committee, which invests overseas for fiscal surplus.
Lu Ming certainly doesn't like this model where the ruling body has a lot of money. Apart from bringing monopoly and corruption, it doesn't have much benefit. However, in today's special period, the whole world is in chaos, and it's not bad to make money with Montenegro's money.
Even so, if you don't keep an eye on all this, it's hard to say for sure that there won't be any problems.
Of course, the reason I came to Shengjing was not only because it was the center of four provinces, but also because I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain a foothold here.
The most important thing is that deep in my heart, there seems to be a voice calling me.
Even when talking about Shengjing with Hanzhu, Bizhu suddenly appeared with red eyes, and then disappeared.
When I asked Liuli, she just said faintly, "Tianshanwei, that's the ancestor of Baozhu Palace..."
Thinking about it now, maybe those legends are not all nonsense.
The most elite legion of the empire - Tianshan Guard, has always been the mainstay of the empire. Probably, it was composed of extraordinary people thousands of years ago.
Usually, the prince would lead the army himself to fight against powerful barbarians in the northern region.
Biju's inheritance comes from Tianshan Guard. Are the lost warriors the descendants of Tianshan Guard
How about those warriors who fought bloody battles against giant barbarians, fought for dozens of days, left countless corpses, defeated the barbarian army that had not been seen for hundreds of years, and then returned to the imperial capital with their broken and exhausted troops, but were defeated by the Western sorcerer legion that was well-rested and the Japanese legion that stabbed them in the back, and were ultimately powerless to turn the tide
Pictures flashed through his mind, and Lu Ming's eyes suddenly became wet.
When I arrived in Shengjing, I suddenly seemed to have some feelings.
It seemed as if I could see it, as the sun set, the tattered flags looked like blood, and outside the imperial capital, dozens of brave warriors who stood guard to protect the prince were shot through by countless crossbow arrows and eventually disappeared in the flames.
On the walls of the imperial capital Dragon City, when the Westerners and Japanese finally realized that they had truly defeated the powerful Tianshan Guards that had once terrified them to the core, there broke out thunderous cheers and strange roars of pride after hundreds of years of enslavement.
It seemed as if I saw several warriors wiping their tears, holding their tiny babies, and becoming one with the darkness of the night.
Queen Alice, grateful to the Crown Prince and the Tianshan Guards for knowing that the imperial capital was under attack but still persisting until the barbarian army was crushed and all the barbarians were killed before rushing back with their broken troops to save the people of the world from suffering, issued an edict to treat the people of Central Continent well, as their own people, and turned the imperial capital into the East China Sea, and she personally took the title of Duke of the East China Sea.
These scenes seemed to flash before my eyes.
But time flies, and now everything is no longer the same as it used to be.
Looking at this long street lined with shops, gradually, it seemed as if the asphalt road turned into a bluestone street, and the crisp sound of horse hooves of the Tianshan Guards patrolling the street came to my ears.
Lu Ming slowly closed his eyes, feeling empty inside, with an inexplicable loneliness and sadness.