Supplying hay was relatively easy.
Having even a small Steam Engine allowed for so much work.
It was finished in no time, as I used a hay baler imported from the United States to bundle the harvested and dried hay for delivery.
Once the hay bundling was done, I didn’t want to let the Steam Engine sit idle, so I used it for threshing.
The Joseon people, seeing a mechanical thresher for the first time, were once again amazed by the power of machinery as they watched it perform dozens or even hundreds of times more efficiently than their traditional flails.
And by the time the threshing was complete, winter finally arrived.
It felt terrible how winter set in just by crossing the Tuman River.
It wasn’t even November yet, but the ground was so hard that the sharp Reclamation Plow couldn’t penetrate it.
That was the same back in Joseon, so I could accept it.
But why did the sea have to freeze?
Of course, when I say the sea froze, it doesn’t mean it froze solid enough for sleds to pass over or for ice to crush ships.
In reality, the sea only freezes where the salinity is low, and if you go a bit further out, it’s fine.
Sidimi was positioned right on that edge.
While it wasn’t impossible to navigate, entering Vladivostok was difficult, and ice chunks occasionally drifted down.
I looked for ways to make money from the sea, but it wasn’t easy.
At first, I thought about catching fish that migrate to this region in winter, but I gave up on that idea after just one trip out to sea.
Experiencing the rough winter sea once made me realize it was not a task to be attempted without a motorized vessel.
Even though Fridolf Gek was such a skilled sailor that everyone in this region knew him as Skipper Gek, after one winter voyage on his Schooner, I never wanted to go out to sea again.
Instead, I thought that if I only had a motorized vessel, I could dominate the fishing industry in this region.
This meant I spent my time cooped up in my room, making various plans.
I had prepared plenty of firewood in advance, and if it ran low, I could just go gather more, so I stayed indoors without much worry, passing the time reading books that Adolf Dattan had procured for me.
I wondered what could be so great about 19th-century books, but they turned out to be quite interesting in their own way.
It was amusing to read about things they were curious about that would later be fully explained in the 20th or 21st centuries, and it was also quite fun to see them spin dreamlike fantasies based on theories that were eventually proven completely wrong.
It even made me think about writing a novel myself.
It’s not like I’m a bad writer, and my Foreign Language Translation skill automatically handles the language, so if I wrote a new genre of fiction, I could become the pioneer of that genre.
There was no reason I couldn’t do it.
While I was spending my time with such thoughts, the Honghuzi Ma-jeok bastards invaded Sidimi.
The incident began when I happened to witness Fridolf Gek and Mikhail Yankovsky trading with Chinese farmers who had come to the village to sell cattle.
The people living in Sidimi didn’t particularly want Chinese people moving here.
Since there were no laws prohibiting immigration, there was no way to stop them if they decided to move in and live here.
However, it is difficult to survive in this sparsely populated region unless one belongs to a group.
Our Joseon people settled here first, followed by the Russian trio.
Therefore, it was unlikely that Chinese people would move here in large groups.
But even if we didn’t want them moving in, it didn’t mean we didn’t interact with them.
We mainly engaged in trade; sometimes they brought livestock like they did today, and other times they brought Chinese cotton or silk.
Even though one might think these wouldn’t sell due to competition from Western fabrics, there was still a demand.
There were times like today when they brought cattle to sell.
Slaughtering a cow in the winter allowed even the Joseon people to eat for the duration of the season, and because everything was frozen, the meat wouldn’t spoil.
The Chinese man explained in stumbling Russian to Fridolf Gek that his cow was in good condition, and Fridolf Gek inspected various parts of the animal to ensure it wasn’t diseased.
I was looking down at the scene from my window, thinking about going down to help because the Chinese man’s Russian was so poor, when I heard the Chinese men who had come to sell the cow speaking in Chinese.
“That kid poking his head out of the window is the one, right?”
“Yeah, even though his hair and clothes are Russian style, I think he’s that Joseon kid.”
They were speaking in low voices, but I have quite sharp ears and could hear everything they said.
I felt something very suspicious at that moment.
I couldn’t explain it exactly, but I had a feeling they were plotting something involving me.
I immediately suspected they might be scouts for the Honghuzi Ma-jeok.
Rumors had already spread that I was wealthy, had bought agricultural machinery from Kunst and Albers to reclaim vast amounts of farmland, and had made a lot of money selling the hay grown there to the Russian Army.
Those Chinese men could have just been talking about that among themselves.
However, for some reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were targeting me.
But at that exact moment, one of the Chinese men asked about Mikhail Yankovsky.
“Is Mr. Yankovsky not here?”
“Why are you looking for him?”
“We thought that if we guided him on a hunt, we might be able to get a few small animals in return.”
“He’s out hunting deer right now, so he won’t be back for a few days.”
The Chinese men made disappointed expressions, but from my vantage point on the second floor, I saw one of them give a subtle smile.
Mikhail Yankovsky was a famous hunter and marksman in this region.
If the Honghuzi Ma-jeok were targeting Sidimi, the person who would stand in their way the most was Mikhail Yankovsky.
If the Honghuzi were to attack, it was no exaggeration to say that the success or failure of the raid depended on Mikhail Yankovsky’s presence.
Based on their question about Mikhail Yankovsky’s whereabouts and that smile, I was certain these men were scouts for the Honghuzi.
Once the Chinese men sold the cow and withdrew, Mikhail Yankovsky’s wife, Olga, came out and grabbed the cow’s halter.
“Should we slaughter this right now?”
“Would that be okay?”
“Well, there’s no reason not to.”
“Can you handle it alone?”
Even though Olga was Mikhail Yankovsky’s wife, she was only fifteen years old, so Fridolf Gek spoke to her casually.
“The Joseon people won’t even touch it, so I have to do it.”
The Joseon people, regardless of other chores, were terrified of slaughtering cattle, and no one would step forward.
In Joseon, cattle were slaughtered by the Baekjeong, and the Baekjeong were at the very bottom of the Joseon social hierarchy.
The Joseon people feared that if they helped with slaughtering, their status would drop to that of a Baekjeong, and under no circumstances would they ever help with slaughtering or processing cowhide.
Of course, they still enjoyed eating the beef.
So, when a cow was acquired like this, the task of butchering it was handled by Olga, who was of Buryat descent.
The Buryat people are nomads, so Olga had been slaughtering animals since she was a child and could easily handle a single cow even now.
I went down while the two were talking and said, “Skipper, let’s slaughter the cow later and talk with me for a bit.”
Fridolf Gek looked at me with a puzzled face.I led him toward Yuli Briner’s house and said to Olga, “Olga, let’s slaughter the cow tomorrow.I think something has come up.”
Even though I wasn’t the leader of this village, my voice carried quite a bit of weight, and no one ignored me just because I was a child.
Olga led the cow to the stable, and I went with Fridolf Gek to find Yuli Briner, who was idling at home.
“Those Chinese men who were just here—I think they’re scouts for the Honghuzi.”
Yuli Briner, who had been lounging on his bed when we entered, jumped up at those words, and Fridolf Gek also looked surprised.
Fridolf Gek said, “Those people have been trading with us for a long time. How could they.?”
He trailed off as he thought about the reality of the Honghuzi.
The Honghuzi aren’t originally born as Ma-jeok, distinct from other farmers.
Ordinary Chinese farmers simply become Honghuzi.
Fridolf Gek knew this fact well.
If a Chinese farmer living in Manchuria could become a Honghuzi, then a Chinese person who immigrated to Primorsky Krai could just as easily become one.
In the first place, the reason he had moved here to the Joseon settlement in Sidimi was that he couldn’t trust when a Chinese person might turn into a Honghuzi and had chosen a Joseon settlement that carried no such risk.
I told the silenced Fridolf Gek and Yuli Briner what I had heard from the second floor.
“So, as soon as they heard Mikhail wasn’t here, I saw one of them smile.I think they were happy because they definitely thought things would be easier without Mikhail.”
Fridolf Gek and Yuli Briner tried to say something in rebuttal but stopped.
In this region, the Honghuzi were too dangerous.
If such signs were felt, one shouldn’t just believe they wouldn’t come; one had to prepare to fight them.
Fridolf Gek asked, “Then what do you think we should do?”
“I think we should bring all the Joseon people inside the walls and prepare together.”
Yuli Briner asked, “When do you think they’ll come?”
“I think they’ll come tonight.”
“That fast?”
“If Chinese farmers grab the guns they have at home, mount their horses, and gather, they immediately become Honghuzi.If they want to exploit Mikhail’s absence, the sooner the better, so I think they’ll come tonight.”
The two nodded at my words.
“Then how should we deal with them?”
“We built the walls and bought guns for target practice precisely for times like this.
The Honghuzi likely lack modern rifles, so if we bring all the Joseon people inside and fight with modern guns, we can easily win.”
Since buying guns from Kunst and Albers, I had put not only the villagers who crossed the border with me but also the Joseon people who originally lived in Sidimi through marksmanship training.
Including the villagers from Joseon, the original Joseon residents, and the Russians here, we had nearly twenty modern rifles.
Furthermore, Seon-hui, Jeong-sun, Mikhail Yankovsky’s wife Olga, and Fridolf Gek’s wife Oksana also knew how to shoot.
Moreover, since we had modern Western rifles, we were at a much greater advantage.
It wasn’t that the Honghuzi never had modern Western guns, but at best, they would have only three or four.
Once the plan was decided, I immediately ran to the Joseon residential area, explained the situation, and told them they had to move inside the walls immediately.
“My house is quite large, so it’s enough for everyone to stay for a day or two.Besides, the hay barn is almost empty now, so people can stay there.So let’s go inside the walls right now.”
Taeseok said, “I agree with moving, but how much of our belongings should we take? Should we take all the grain we harvested this time too?”
The Joseon people here knew very well how vicious those Honghuzi bandits were.
They knew that if the bandits found the houses empty because everyone moved inside the walls, they might burn all the houses down before leaving.
So, they wanted to take all their household goods and grain if possible.
They all knew how to carry an A-frame carrier, even the women and children, but it was impossible to carry all their household goods that way.
“I’ll bring all my horses and carts, and we’ll take as much as we can.”
I still had the ten horses I brought from Joseon, and there were about ten Western Horses in Fridolf Gek’s stable, along with three wagons.
We quickly brought the horses and wagons and moved all the Joseon people’s goods and grain inside the walls.
During the process, the horses brought from Joseon caused a fuss trying to pick fights with the Western Horses.
The Joseon or Manchurian Horses were much smaller than the Western Horses, but it would be problematic if even those got hurt.
Furthermore, unlike Western Horses, when these ones got angry, they fought by biting with their teeth.
This was why Westerners often remarked that they couldn’t tell if they were horses or wild beasts, and even if the Western Horses ultimately won, they would surely sustain significant injuries during the fight.
In the end, I was able to stop the urgent fights by utilizing my Livestock Handling skill to the fullest, and we succeeded in moving all the cargo by evening that day.