The waves were crashing on the beach, and at this time, Shi Qingyi and Mrs. Dongming were slowly walking on the soft and wet beach. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

The banquet and martial arts performance on the first day, because of the intervention of Mrs. Dongming, resolved the conflict between Shi Qingyi and Shang Ming, so it can be regarded as a successful ending, but as a guest, Shi Qingyi has never had the slightest interest in visiting, so naturally he will not continue to talk with the host, so after that, the owners of this Ryukyu Islands immediately arranged accommodation for Shi Qingyi, and then tacitly agreed not to disturb the rest of the guests.

So some important things were put by Shi Qingyi on the next day to deal with.

So she made an appointment with Mrs. Dongming and asked her to be her guide to explore the exotic scenery of this overseas archipelago......

I have to say that the beach scenery on the Ryukyu Islands is indeed beautiful and unusual, with a warm sea breeze and a warm but not dazzling sun, but it is indescribably comfortable to step on the wet, soft and delicate sand...... It's just a pity that such a fairyland on earth is outside the East China Sea thousands of miles away from the mainland, so that although the scenery is extremely beautiful and not like the world, the vast majority of people in Middle-earth are rare to see.

On the beach, Shi Qingyi and Mrs. Dongming are talking seemingly without a match, but although they seem to be chatting, what the two of them are talking about the economy and humanities on the Dongtu Continent, and among them, Shi Qingyi will also ask Mrs. Dongming about the customs of the Ryukyu Islands by chance, and Mrs. Dongming knows everything about Shi Qingyi and says everything.

So soon, Shi Qingyi already knew the customs, specialties and culture of the islanders in the Ryukyu Islands, so unconsciously, the seemingly relaxed conversation between the two gradually disappeared, this is because the two of them have ended their temptation to each other, and the next thing is the time to negotiate.

Yes, it is negotiation, after all, with the status that Shi Qingyi has now, he will definitely not leave the mainland and go deep into the depths of the ocean because he wants to appreciate the natural beauty of the depths of the sea, which is a forbidden area for human life, because although Shi Qingyi at this time has long been well-informed, and his cultivation realm is also unfathomable, but just the different scenery on the land is enough to make Shi Qingyi exhaust the rest of his life in exploration. Entering a dangerous ocean that she was unfamiliar with.

――In other words, a year ago, Shi Qingyi didn't start her journey in the far Western Regions, and she was gradually moving away from her hometown at that time, how could she have thought that she would change her mind and return to the east soon, and finally go straight to sea to the depths of the East China Sea...

However, there is no way to do it, now the north of the Tang Empire is suffering from a severe drought, which has already made Li Shimin tired of coping, and the invasion of the Turks, the old enemy in the north, is even worse, without witnessing it with his own eyes, Shi Qingyi can guess that in the past year or so, he and his subordinates must have aged a lot, as the price of overdrawing too much energy!

So Shi Qingyi relented, so she came back, planning to use her own means to solve the problem from the bottom up.

There is no way, within two years, just after the drought, locusts rose again, this continuous famine has seriously affected the normal operation of the empire, so that although Li Shimin has done his best, but the effect that can be achieved is still minimal, in addition to a large number of people dying every day, a large number of people in the north are still struggling on the death line.

Compared with the disaster in the north, the south of the Yangtze River is vast and sparsely populated, and the climate is hot and the land is fertile, so the food and material reserves are actually very sufficient, but limited by the transportation capacity, it is impossible to transport a large number of them to the north to alleviate the disaster, Li Shimin did not think about the compulsory requisition of manpower in the south, but even so, it is still a drop in the bucket, and that kind of Linze and fishing, not to mention how much benefit the north can receive, is that the south of the Yangtze River, which has just recovered from the war in the near future, is afraid that it will also enter the footsteps of the northern famine.

Shi Qingyi has begun to lay out since the Western Regions have not yet returned to Middle-earth, using all the forces she can influence, including the Demon Gate and the court, to fully expand the north-south traffic problem, including the large-scale renovation of the plank road in Shuzhong and the dredging of the Grand Canal project, but for more than a year, little has been achieved, and the grain in the south of the Yangtze River can be transported to the end of the Central Plains at most, and after that, it is no longer able to go west or north, reaching Guanzhong and Hedong, where the disaster is more serious.

After the Qin and Han dynasties, the population of Guanzhong decreased sharply, and as the center of the empire, the government operated rapidly, so as early as the beginning of the famine, the people had already been evacuated by the imperial court to eat, so in the second year, the pressure on food was not great, but in Hedong and in Hebei, Shandong and other places in the east of Hedong, because this place has always been prosperous, the population is large, so when the extremely serious drought and locust plague arise together, the loss is also the most serious, and the country because of the sharp reduction in fiscal revenue, Relief for the hungry can only be a drop in the bucket!

At this time, Shi Qingyi looked at the more eastern sea, because in that more vast sea, there is undoubtedly more abundant food than on land, so what Shi Qingyi has to do is to contact the powerful forces rooted in the sea as quickly as possible, and through various means, soft and hard, coercion and temptation, let the other party provide him with supplies.

The materials of the sea are almost infinite compared to the land, even if they cannot be transported to farther places due to the lack of capacity, but even so, the disaster will inevitably be greatly alleviated for the Hebei and Shandong regions that the capacity of the ocean can radiate.

Therefore, this is the reason why Shi Qingyi will be in the Ryukyu Islands at this time and meet Mrs. Dongming! After all, the Dongming faction is now the overlord of the East China Sea, and if Shi Qingyi wants to fully use the resources of the sea, he will inevitably be unable to avoid the support of the Dongming faction headed by Mrs. Dongming......

If it is under the rule of the Middle-earth Empire, then no matter how huge that sect is, even the four sects of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Demons with amazing strength, after embracing the moral high ground of helping the victims, the court can force the other party to bow their heads with both soft and hard, and obediently cooperate with the country to make every effort to relieve the disaster, but this set has no effect on the Dongming faction at all, because the foundation of the Dongming faction is rooted in the depths of the East China Sea, not within the empire, as the saying goes, the emperor is far away, so the empire's influence on this sect can only be minimal!

Shi Qingyi did have deep concerns about this before going to sea, worried that Mrs. Dongming would reject her intention, however, without arriving in the Ryukyu Islands, just a few months of wandering life at sea had already made Shi Qingyi completely regain her confidence, because she believed that for Mrs. Dongming, her arrival was not only what she was happy to see, but also what Mrs. Dongming and the Dongming faction she represented urgently needed, so Shi Qingyi believed, Mrs. Dongming will definitely agree to this win-win deal with her.

Most of the inhabitants living on land are unaware of the hardships of life in the sea, because in fact, although in the vast sea, the abundant products produced are dozens of times that of the land, however, in any case, the vast and boundless depths of the sea are still a forbidden area that human beings cannot set foot in, and the natural environment here changes so drastically that the danger is far beyond the inland, so that even if the fleet of the Dongming faction is so eager to move the inland population, it only dares to ride the trade winds back and forth once a year. And they didn't dare to do anything against nature-even so, the disciples of the Dongming Sect who had died in the ****** in the past twenty years were still close to more than a thousand people.

The sea has such a magical charm that it will not only attract unruly adventurers in times of peace, but also the most docile farmers in turbulent times, and become gamblers who gamble with their lives......

These people may never have recognized the fact that the ocean has never been a place for human beings to live, or perhaps, they actually recognize, but they don't care, because human life is nothing compared to the strange charm of the ocean.

The vast ocean, like the forbidden area of human life, does not know how many ancestors have swallowed up the lives and bodies of their ancestors, but the progress of human beings cannot be contained after all, and after all, human beings are still on one island after another in the ocean, and civilization has taken root in the ocean!

However, such a marine civilization has been doomed to be fragile from the first day of its birth - if there is no continuous investment of manpower on land, let alone continue to forge ahead, it is almost impossible to rely on the existing manpower and material resources to defend the marine resources occupied at this time, without a large amount of manpower and material support on land, the stronghold of island civilization that human beings can barely occupy in the sea will eventually come to naught in the face of the harsh attack of the ocean.

After all, as terrestrial life, human beings still need more resources on land to survive, not just food, but more - and indispensable, large-scale exchanges between human populations, and this need is inherently limited by the environment of the sea and islands, so even the islands of the Ryukyu Islands, which are rarely suitable for human survival like a paradise, will not be an exception, after losing the support and connection on the mainland. The civilization of this island will continue to degrade until it returns to the primitive age of ignorance......

Therefore, at least since the ancestors of the Dongming faction left Dongtu and crossed to the east to find the Ryukyu Islands, a fairyland on earth, it is impossible for the Dongming faction to break off the connection with Dongtu, and Shi Qingyi did not know the history of the Dongming faction, but before coming, Shi Qingyi still knew through investigation that at least, before the Tang Empire fully ended the war in the interior, Mrs. Dongming would follow the direction of the wind every spring when the trade winds arrived, and take a tall sea ship back to the coastal area of the mainland to conduct business transactions. The various materials produced by the Dongming faction in the sea every year were exchanged for various goods that could not be self-sufficient on the islands, as well as the purchase of people to be transported back to the Ryukyu Islands.

Because this annual fleet trade was crucial to the development of the Dongming faction, every time the fleet of the Dongming faction went to the eastern lands, Mrs. Dongming, who was the first master of the Dongming faction, would even personally sit in the fleet to try her best to avoid any accidents.

Shi Qingyi clearly knew that the time when Mrs. Dongming really became the master of the Dongming faction was twenty years ago, and in the past twenty years, it was also the twenty years when the Dongtu Continent was plunged into turmoil and strife, with the collapse of the prosperous Sui Empire in the hands of Yang Guang, the emperor of the Great Cause, and the ensuing mutual attacks between various warlords and rebels, and the later rise of the Tang Empire was constantly attacking the city to expand the scope of its rule. Originally, the Dongming faction, which was far away from overseas and no one cared about, has become a pure land of bliss away from war and strife.

Therefore, in the annual voyage trade of the Dongming faction, through the extremely large voyage fleet of the Dongming faction, countless mainland residents abandoned their hometowns and went to the Ryukyus far on the sea, and in twenty years, even if Shi Qingyi is only a rough estimate, it will be concluded that during this period of time, the population of the Dongming faction migrating from the mainland to the Ryukyu Islands will definitely not be less than 100,000, and due to the inconvenience of sea transportation and out of consideration for future development, these 100,000 people, They will inevitably be dominated by young children and young and healthy young men and women.

During the reign of the Sui Empire, there were more than 60 million registered people under the rule of the empire, so although these 100,000 young people and children were already a lot of demographic wealth, they were certainly not worth mentioning for the Sui Empire.

However, the problem is that with the great chaos in the world, the population of the Central Plains is also rapidly decreasing by an astonishing number, and by the time the emerging Tang Empire reunified the country, the number of the whole country was no longer one in ten, and because of the lack of young and middle-aged labor in the remaining population, as the main force of social production, the Tang Empire was trying to recover at this time, and there were countless difficulties and the recovery was extremely slow.

As a result, the population that was previously handed over to people that the previous dynasty did not care about has become a demographic wealth that cannot be easily discarded no matter what.

Therefore, this kind of human trafficking, which has been invisible to the ruling class for 20 years, was immediately completely banned by the empire, and not only that, but the administrative departments at all levels of the empire also quickly operated, intending to recover the lost population.

Under such circumstances, the Dongming faction, which originally seemed to be detached and unregulated, encountered a huge existential crisis because of this.

Don't get me wrong, it is not because of the population problem that led to the empire's complete blockade of the Dongming faction entrenched in the depths of the East China Sea, because although the population problem is indeed a problem that plagues Li Shimin's monarchs and ministers at this time, however, after all, Mrs. Dongming has an old friend with Li Yuan, Li Shimin and his son for more than 20 years, not to mention the friendship, at the beginning of Li Yuan's father and son's rebellion against the Sui Dynasty, they took a huge risk to give great help to the emerging Tang Dynasty!

It can be said that in the process of the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, the Dongming faction was the benefactor of Li Shimin's father and son, so although for the development of the empire itself, Li Shimin would never let the people of the Dongming faction take away even the residents of any country, but the blockade of the economy to put pressure on the Dongming faction is such a thing, and Li Shimin, who wants to take care of the old feelings, can't do it.

In fact, the complete blockade of the trade activities between the empire and the Dongming faction, thus forcing the Dongming faction to return the Dongtu residents who were transported to the Ryukyu Islands by these people, was not without discussion in the court of the Tang Dynasty, but firstly, Li Shimin cared about the old feelings after all, so he did not agree from the beginning, and secondly, the Ryukyu Islands where the Dongming faction was stationed were far overseas, and the power of the empire was beyond the reach of the whip, so the important ministers of the imperial court would be happy to sell well, just cut off the population trade of the Dongming faction, and other business activities were as usual, And in order to express my apologies to the Dongming faction, a lot of preferential conditions have been added.

However, even if more preferential conditions were given to the Dongming faction, for the Dongming faction entrenched overseas, it would never be able to compensate for the huge loss caused by the lack of foreign residents to expand the population of the Ryukyu Islands.

It turns out that although the Ryukyu Islands are indeed a paradise that is very suitable for human habitation, because they live far overseas, the original people who lived on this island were out-and-out primitive people, and the number was extremely rare.

As a result, for the first few hundred years, the Ryukyu Islands were extremely sparsely populated, and the islanders barely maintained their self-sufficiency, so they lost contact with the mainland.

The real change came from twenty years ago, when the very young Lady Dongming came to this archipelago in the depths of the East China Sea, since then, under the leadership of Lady Dongming, and with the support of the mainland background behind her, the Dongming faction began to develop and change rapidly, and Lady Dongming took advantage of the war in Middle-earth to transport a large number of people to this island, thus greatly changing the appearance of this island.

If, twenty years ago, when the Lady of the Ryukyu Islands first came to the Ryukyu Islands, the island was still composed of a few island villages that had migrated from the Middle-earth people who had migrated earlier, then twenty years later, under the construction of the Lady of the Oriental, the Lady of the Orient had undoubtedly become a highly autonomous and civilized ruling power. And because most of the inhabitants of the island were actually composed of residents of Middle-earth who had been transported here in the past 20 years, culturally, the Ryukyu Islands at this time were highly unified with the Chinese civilization on the mainland.

However, for the Dongming faction and Mrs. Dongming, even in the past twenty years, through shipping, the Dongming faction has expanded the mainland population to the Ryukyu Islands by more than 100,000, but whether it is for the Ryukyu Islands themselves or the surrounding vast and boundless sea, these hundreds of thousands of people are still only equivalent to a drop in the ocean, too weak, and without the support of human resources on the mainland, even if the Tang Dynasty created a better trade environment for the Dongming faction, If they want to continue to maintain rapid development as they have done in the past two decades, the Dongming faction is inevitably unable to do so.

For the overlord Dongming faction entrenched in the East China Sea at this time, the real challenger and strong enemy is from the north, a country composed of four large islands, Japan, the Japanese archipelago has long had traces of human existence, but in a long time, the culture in this vast overseas island is quite primitive, or in the passage of time, there are constantly immigrants from the mainland, so that this wild land gradually has signs of civilization.

It was under the influence of mainland civilization, after years of development, and it was also when the Dongtu mainland fell into the war of dynastic change, that this archipelago of the original tribal neighborhood finally completed the initial unification, and after the unification was completed, this emerging Japanese country immediately began its own process of outward expansion, thus immediately, forming a huge threat to the Dongming faction, the overlord of the East China Sea at this time.

It is true that due to the distance from the mainland, it has brought great difficulties in communication between civilizations, and the level of civilization on the Japanese archipelago is extremely primitive and backward compared with that of the mainland, so that it cannot be compared with the highly civilized Ryukyu Islands, and this has led to many examples of wars in which the Japanese faction, with its tall and sturdy ships, were able to easily slaughter the large number of small ships in the Japanese naval conflict.

However, the gap in civilization cannot make up for the absolute difference in the number of populations on both sides. It is important to know that although the four major archipelago of Japan are far from the mainland, because of their vast area, there are many inhabitants on them, at least in the millions, but what about the Ryukyus? Therefore, even if the inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands can rely on more advanced civilizations to defeat all of them, as long as Japan is determined to compete with the Dongming faction for hegemony in the East China Sea, then they will definitely rely on their own background far beyond the Dongming faction, and continue to use their population advantage to eventually destroy the Dongming faction and the Ryukyu Islands where the Dongming faction is entrenched.

At this time, the Dongming faction was clearly able to feel the tremendous pressure from Japan, so the continuous migration of people from the mainland to expand the strength of the Ryukyu Islands became the only choice that the Dongming faction had to make in order to avoid its own destruction.

However, in order to do its best to restore social order, the Tang Dynasty categorically cut off the trade of the Dongming faction to migrate the mainland population, thus making the Dongming faction's desire to use the mainland population to expand itself to resist the Japanese challenge came to naught...... (To be continued.) )