The new Spain in Acosta's eyes is indeed full of devastation, and whenever you look at it, it is full of internal and external troubles.

The West India Commission did not have the financial resources to pay the garrison salaries on time, and their maintenance costs were enormous, and the people could not do anything about it.

Everything here had to be supplied to the royal family, taxes had to be paid to the church, and they were exhausted by the arms competition brought about by the Ming army—this was already the result of all the output being in full swing.

It was imperative to give the Indians the power of 'man', the aborigines were slaves on the east side of the border, but once they crossed the border, they would become free people, the government issued farm tools to divide the land, and even shared the ploughing cattle with others, even if they did not want to be farmers, there were many jobs to do.

Over time, more indigenous tribes will move from one tribe to another, and once the army suppresses it, it will cause civil strife and further weaken New Spain's strength; It can be left unchecked, and it will bleed slowly.

Brother Acosta was well aware of the great potential of the Ming kingdom to absorb the indigenous peoples in the future.

There is no doubt that they will get more peasants, they will cultivate more land, they will recruit more soldiers, and they will make more tools.

Spain had to follow this path in the New World in order to have a chance to compete with the Ming - this competition was not to compete with the Ming for the ownership of a piece of land or to regain the scene in the war, and to be honest, no one would be naïve enough to think that the defeat of the two wars in the Ming and Western countries was the reason for their lack of troops.

No one was indifferent to the threat of the Ming Kingdom, but their power paled in the face of this great threat.

Peruvian Viceroy Francisco de Toledo even sent a captain back to Spain with his personal letter to meet the king two months earlier when Deng Zilong sent a fleet from Panama to the east coast passing through Lima.

In a personal letter to the governor of Peru, he expressed his concern for the Ming kingdom and advised King Philip to reconcile with Henry III of France and set about putting aside his differences and preparing for a coalition.

From the mouth of the Viceroy came a famous saying from the future: to lose the New World and trade with the West Indies, and to lose the Iberian Peninsula was to lose everything, so that Spain's relations with France depended on the distance of the Ming fleet from Gibraltar in a straight line.

Some people are preparing for war, and some are looking at self-improvement.

However, there was still no perfect way to deal with the aftermath, and it was infuriating that Acosta had been in Changsheng County for several months, and he did not see how the Ming people dealt with the problems of the garrison's salaries, the wages of the naturalized people, and the profits of the New World.

Because the Ming Kingdom does not have these problems, there are more than 100,000 Ming people entrenched in the three places of Changsheng, Jincheng, and Panama, counting the 200,000 people who belong to the aborigines and are still growing rapidly.

The strangest thing is that they value silver very much, silver is their currency, but instead of sending silver to the mainland, they send silver to the mainland.

It seems that as long as they can be self-sufficient, they have already met the highest requirements of the Ming Emperor for them.

It was as if the emperor they served had sent 100,000 men here simply to relieve the pressure of the population.

One of the arguments Acosta would have thought this was that he had heard that there was a drought in the country, so he sent ships, food, money, and so many people.

Drought is drought, is the emperor sick, what does it matter to you, you also take care of the drought?

Why don't you let it rain when you're so good?

Coincidentally, Wan Liye, who is far away in the Forbidden City, thinks the same as Acosta, he walked more than ten miles to the Temple of Heaven to pray for rain this year, and plans to come again next year, telling God that you can't do it if it doesn't rain.

With a very complicated state of mind, Brother Acosta crossed the border and continued on his way after a brief stop at Wangjiabao, feeling a little relieved about the development of events.

The Ming army was not stationed in Wangjiabao, and there was not much military force in the village, at least gunpowder and food were not hoarded in the village, and people did not show much hostility towards him, which made him breathe a sigh of relief.

In Acosta's heart, not only Chen Mu couldn't guess with common sense, but even the officers under him would do whatever he wanted.

When the county of Changsheng was still called Acapulco, the two Ming generals decided the beginning of a war by clapping their hands, turning the diplomatic strategy of military threat into practice, and the two generals were not punished afterwards, but both became high-ranking officers in the governor's place.

Of course, what Shao Tingda and Fu Yuan did was no different from Bernal's, the only difference was that they won the war, while Bernal was defeated.

If the winner is Bernal, Bernal will not be disposed of at this time, and will become the heroic governor of Spain in the New World.

But dealing with such people is very dangerous.

In addition to the worries brought about by the war, what he saw and heard along the way added to Acosta's jealousy.

In this new world, where iron ore was scarce, even though many of the slaves on the plantations were still using stone farming tools, the plantation owners were eager to let the slave workers work by hand, and it was more in their interest to buy a few more slaves than to buy farm tools.

But Acosta saw the Ming immigrants wielding iron sickles in the fields, and the women of the village pushing the corn into a strange machine with sticks to take out the seeds, as well as potatoes, wheat, sorghum, and cotton, and every village was full of prosperity.

Merchants from all walks of life drove donkey carts through the official roads, loaded with all kinds of flour, fruits, or air-dried bacon and all kinds of goods to transport to the county seat.

The contents of those clay pots are nervous, each clay pot has meat and rice, sealed with a special method, and the amount of food in each clay pot can make a small flag of the Ming army eat, obviously, this thing can be preserved for a long time.

Acosta didn't even have the energy to wonder how to make it, and all that was left in his heart was horror, this was military rations, and they were transporting them to Wangjiabao.

The monk wanted to go home—there was no hope of preaching here, and he was assigned as the chief emissary in dealing with the Ming army, unable to do research, and unprepared for the time when he would lose his life.

He didn't even want to go to Changsheng anymore, and if he could go back to Madrid, he would feel like waking up from a dream and waking up from a nightmare.

But he didn't expect that more than twenty miles away from Chang Sheng, Chen Mu had already sent someone to pick him up.

Even dinner was prepared at the Yamen of the Military Mansion of Changsheng County.

Acosta, who was forced to gallop for twenty miles, saw Chen Mu, who was rarely dressed in ordinary clothes, this big devil opened his arms and smiled: "I was too lazy to send someone to find you, so I sent some troops, knowing that you would come over, let me introduce you - this is the governor of New Spain, Yang Junzan." ”

Acosta kept blinking, looking at the young Ming ** official in front of him, who was a little familiar, until Yang Tingxiang, who was dressed in military uniform, handed the helmet under his ribs to his entourage and arched his hand, and said, "Monk, we have seen it in Lima." ”

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Note: The clay pot preserves food from the Northern Wei Dynasty Jia Siyi's "Qi Min Yaoshu Volume 8", which introduces a series of food production and storage methods, and the pot is only one of them.