Despite this, Xiao Pingguo still sent this telegram to the Red Mansion after waking up in the morning about the "ball lightning" plan, and at noon, Sun Lao called—and sure enough, Sun Lao commented on the operation as "too much assumption, too many uncertainties, so we can't act rashly."

However, Sun Lao did not kill this plan with a stick, he left a tail: suggesting that Xin'an City, you can ask the Luoka tribe to assist and conduct a careful reconnaissance of the Beilu tribe again, Sun Lao believes that if through reconnaissance, find out the activities of the Beilu tribe, then suddenly appear in front of the enemy at the most unexpected time and place, then it is possible to surprise and force the other party to fight a hasty decisive battle with me, in that case, this "ball lightning plan" still has merit.

Brother Xiao Pingguo's suggestion made Xiao Pingguo very excited, and they immediately asked Father Luoka to come to the Governor's Mansion to discuss the matter.

Today's Loka tribe is already the largest and richest tribe in the vicinity of Xin'an City, and the reason is not how good Daddy Loka is able to have children - of course, since Hou Xianglin met Daddy Luoka's family in the kitchen two years ago, the women around Daddy Loka have indeed become a lot, it is said that there are no less than thirty people.

The reason why the Luoka tribe has become strong and powerful is that in recent years, it has relied on various consignments and various annexations of the Australians, after all, the Luoka tribe is the indigenous people of the original land of Xin'an City, and it is the first indigenous tribe to cooperate with the Australians, and it has also obtained great wealth.

Nowadays, the Loka tribe has real estate in a prime location next to the governor's palace, and has opened shops and inns, and the former priests of the tribe are now the shopkeepers of the shops, and they are doing various businesses in Xin'an City.

The shops have a wide range of businesses, from department stores to bulk timber businesses, from small inns to food stalls, and there is a brothel, a former temporary shed converted into a brothel, located on the wooden wall south of the city, which is said to be very prosperous, and the natives in it are famous for their abundance and beauty (in the eyes of the locals).

In fact, the current Loka tribe has actually become a term, and now, the composition of the tribe is very complex, the tribe has indigenous people from all over the island of Timor, and the members of the Loka tribe are no longer strictly tribal people, they and most of them are working in Australian factories, and more than 400 men are garrison soldiers and junior officers.

As for Daddy Loka himself, of course, he enjoys a high prestige among the tribesmen, but it is only prestige, in terms of personal power, he has actually lost personal control over the tribesmen, however, there is no doubt that Daddy Loka still has appeal.

Now, more than a dozen of Daddy Loka's women work in the ammunition factory, the brick kiln, and the sugar factory, and several women work as stewards in the six naturalization battalions, and in addition, Daddy Loka's three daughters are married to officers of the garrison, and two sons who are only five years old and three daughters who are eight years old are sent to the bamboo garden and sunflower to study.

Regarding the "Ball Lightning Plan", Xiao Pingguo and the others naturally told Daddy Luoka, who accepted the task given by the Governor without hesitation, and he sent spies to Shannan on the same day.

Although the "Ball Lightning Plan" was actually vetoed by Sun Lao, the situation in the buffer zone of Xin'an City did make the Red Mansion side a little vigilant, so the various supports for Xin'an City gradually increased a lot, especially for Wei Hong's various requests to expand the garrison, the Red Mansion basically did not "discuss again", but tried to give priority to the arrangement.

With the support of the Red Mansion, Fang Linyou and his brothers made a lot of preparations for the "Ball Lightning Project" during this time.

In addition, Sun Lao's control of Wei Hong also has important changes, in the past, Sun Lao had a rule on Wei Hong: any action of the Xin'an City Garrison to go out of the city to clear the city must be approved in advance, and the military action of dispatching more than one company must be approved in advance.

Wei Hong, of course, they are happy to accept this state of affairs, and in the eyes of the brothers, carrying out this kind of military operation is a kind of sharpening of the knife - to train the army in order to hone its combat power.

It just so happens that the island of Timor is not very peaceful these days.

As a result, from the beginning of December, the small-scale military operations of the Sin'an garrison suddenly increased.

The military campaign was first directed at the security clearance of the eastern part of the island, which is considered to be the "big rear", particularly in the Chagan Basin and the Morro Bay area, and then extended to the southern mountainous areas of the basin, where new mineral deposits were discovered.

Recently, in order to fully control the coal and iron mines in the above-mentioned areas, Pimont has been contributing money and food to help the indigenous tribes who have returned to them to annex and expand to more remote areas in the south and east, according to the mineral information provided by Cao Limei, there are many minerals in those areas, although some of them have not even heard of the name, such as manganese-nickel ore, a heavy metal ore usually associated with iron ore, which is completely unknown to Pimont's naturalists, and it is no wonder, after all, in this era, the periodic table has not yet appeared.

However, the Australians have been emphasizing these things, and the prospecting manual sent by Cao Limei to the naturalists even drew a map of mineral specimens, so the naturalists finally found this mineral in the mountains south of the Chagan Basin, and these specimens were finally brought back to the Red House through the Nicole and handed over to Cao Limei for identification.

A few days after the specimens were in Cao's hands, the Governor's Office of Sin'an received a telegram that if the specimens were approved, they would be sent over for small-scale mining, and then they would be identified until large-scale mining was achieved.

The entire development process usually takes half a year – this time, Cao Limei has already identified manganese-nickel ore in the mountainous area of the southern Chagan Basin, where there is indeed a vein worth exploiting.

Thus, the Sin'an garrison began a clean-up operation - because after several negotiations, the local natives refused to allow outsiders to enter the jungle to mine, even if the Portuguese bribed the chief.

It is said that the priests of the tribe united with the tribe to drive out the previous chief, and the current leader was soon contacted by the Southern Mountain Tribes, and with the support of the Southern Mountain Tribes, the tribe was ready to kill anyone who entered their territory—according to reliable information, the warriors of this tribe had firearms, perhaps rather advanced Dutch flintlock muskets.

Wei Hong believes that this is a situation that must not be allowed, and if decisive action is not taken, then this situation will spread, and eventually, the Australians and Portuguese will gradually lose control of the eastern jungle and the jungle tribes.

Wei Hong immediately telegraphed to the Red Mansion that he planned to lead at least two infantry companies to the Chagan Basin to assist the Portuguese and the Guishun tribe in eliminating this rebel force.

There was no doubt that it was risky for Wei Hong, and Sun Lao didn't agree at the beginning, he was really worried about what happened to this young man in the jungle.