"Mr. Cen, don't worry, this time, in addition to the twenty caravans organized by the Xu family, the navy itself has taken out almost thirty supply ships of various types to sail with the fleet, so what we have to do now is to find a way to build the port wharf of Xihai County as soon as possible." Xu Tianxiang said with a smile: "So sir, please rest assured, Guo Chongtao has made careful calculations over there." ”

"When is he going to set sail?" Li Xuanqing thought for a while and asked. After all, it is already the beginning of October, and the direction of the monsoon has changed since the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, although the steam ships do not need the direction of the wind, but the difference between sailing against the wind and the downwind is not ordinary, and there is also the influence of the Western monsoon when entering the Western Ocean.

"On the tenth day of October, we set off on National Day, and now the accompanying fleet has been assembled and is waiting for the time to go south." Xu Tianxiang smiled casually: "Originally, Guo Chongtao planned to set off after the National Day, but I wanted to let them set off on the same day." ”

Li Xuanqing nodded, the matter of the navy's voyage had been operated several times, and there was nothing to worry about, so he didn't say anything more, turned around and began to discuss the construction of Xihai County with Cen Tianshi. At this time, Guo Chongtao, who was far away in Shantou Port, took Qu Chengxing to look at the pennant in the distance, waving one giant ship after another, and was full of emotion. Qu Chengxing went directly to Tianjin Naval Academy to study after he joined the Tiance Army, and he was regarded as a rising star of the Navy in recent years, and after Luo Dahai and others took over the general system of the fleet, he finally successfully survived to the position of the general system of the Western Fleet.

"What's wrong? Still thinking about your brother? Others are serving as political envoys in Anxi, and it is probably too difficult for you two brothers to meet. Qu Chengmei was also transferred to the northwest by the cabinet to serve as the political envoy of Anxibu after Qu Chengxing was transferred to the Western Fleet, which can be regarded as an adjustment for his next promotion. But it's not very good for Qu Chengxing, it's not easy for him to be in the West Sea, and his brother is in Jiaozhou, so it's still closer, but all of a sudden, one Tiannan and one Haibei are really far away.

"The Western Fleet has a long way to go, and it is a completely new world over there, so it is a serious challenge but also an opportunity, at least over there our navy can still exist as a front-line combat force." Guo Chongtao said that he showed a trace of envy here, there is no way that the navy has not fought a few battles in recent years, and it is impossible to say that he is not envious of watching the army units win one battle after another, so this time the formation of the Western Fleet Guo Chongtao poured his greatest efforts, all the Western Fleets from personnel to warships and even logistics supplies are selected from the best and best in the whole army, just to find a way to fight a battle over there for the captain of the navy, if it weren't for the port and wharf in Xihai County, I am afraid that Chen Mingzheng's marines will be transferred by Guo Chongtao.

After several people continued to check other matters of the voyage, and waited until the beginning of October, when the ten ships of the Navy's Western Fleet and the ten Izumo-class warships all sounded their whistles to salute Chang'an, they took the lead in sailing out of the port amid the cheers of tens of thousands of people in the port, and then the merchant fleet and logistics supply fleet jointly established by the Logistics Department and the Xu family, and more than 50 large and small cargo ships went to sea one after another. The entire Shantou Port, full of moored ships, left the wharf in half a day, and then formed a huge formation on the sea, and headed south, opening the first large-scale journey to the west in the history of the Tang Dynasty.

The first stop of the expedition was to Yazhou, where it departed south for the port of Yanzhou in the south of Jiaozhou Province, where it made its first replenishment on the road, and then continued south along the coastline for about 500 miles. The routes of the Nanyang generation are already very mature and detailed, so along the way, both warships and merchant ships are very familiar with route mapping and destinations, and the Nanyang Fleet on the side of Dandan Port will send two warships to meet at that time, so neither Qu Chengxing himself nor ordinary sailors or sailors care too much. What really needs their attention is the sea route to the northwest to Xihai County after passing Dandan Port, this section of the road has not been walked by anyone except a few people before, so the route is also very small, only the charts left by Western merchants can be used as a reference.

Qu Chengxing almost as soon as he got on the ship, he began to plunge into the charts, constantly comparing the charts on the Western side and then re-marking all the differences along the way, after Li Xuanqing implemented the kind of map making method of later generations, the previous maps could not be directly copied, they needed to be compared and modified multiple times, and they also needed to use various tools to re-measure, so several staff officers of the Western Fleet were caught by Qu Chengxing on the flagship Dejing.

During the stay in Yanzhou, in addition to some of the crew members who chose to go ashore for a short repair, some merchant ships and warships refueled a small amount of fuel, and then the fleet went south on October 20, the fifth year of the Apocalypse, and entered the real Nanyang region. The fleet sailed along the coastline to Cape Nabei, the sharpest point of the eastern part of the Gulf of Thailand in the Indochina Peninsula, and then headed directly south and began to reach the port of Dandan as fast as possible. The Nanyang Fleet joined Qu Chengxing at Nabei Point, and then took the lead as a pilot ship to cross south to the vicinity of Dandan Harbor, and then went north through the Manraga Strait, and Luo Zhiluo went to the shore of Kogok and went north. Because it was not clear what the coastline of this sea route was, Qu Chengxing changed his previous routine of driving along the coastline, and began to travel according to the original western route and then turned back to the north halfway. In order to ensure success, Qu Chengxing decisively asked all the fleets to measure their positions according to the army's transoceanic star map and armillary sphere, and took out the longitude and latitude map drawn by Li Xuanqing for comparison, and finally arrived at Xihai County and the waters near the southern country of Pi 20 days later, that is, at the beginning of November of the fifth year of the Apocalypse. This bold attempt at sea also finally took out the most accurate route from Dandan Port to Xihai County, laying a solid foundation for future commercial development. However, the change of his route also led to the discovery of the Andaman Islands in the Western Ocean for several years, but after all, Qu Chengxing only tried the reliability of the navigation positioning technology in his hand, so after the Andaman Islands, which were later named the Western Islands, were discovered and directly incorporated into the imperial territory, the more mature Western routes finally approached directly with later generations, but at that time, the Western cities led by the West Sea County had developed rapidly. Both routes eventually became important sea routes for the empire to develop Western trade.

However, when Qu Chengxing arrived in Xihai County at this time, only one port terminal in Xihai County was completely built, and the others were still in a hurry. However, Qu Chengxing also expected this, and immediately unloaded a large number of building materials from the ship and participated in the construction on the spot after the ship of the logistics department docked, which greatly accelerated the speed. However, after the building materials were unloaded, a large amount of charcoal stored in the port was loaded onto the empty ships, and along with all the ships approaching the dock one after another to change supplies, dozens of warships and merchant ships began to set sail from Xihai County towards the depths of the Western Ocean. At the same time, when the fleet set sail, the land Xuan Yingwei also sent a message to Chang'an as quickly as possible, on the one hand, to report the news that the fleet had successfully departed from Xihai County, and on the other hand, it was also urgent to ask the base camp to inform the Safar side in the northwest to prepare to receive the fleet in the Persian Governorate. The Persian Governorate was the Persian Gulf region in later generations, and in addition to organizing people to dig simple docks there, it was more important to prepare coal supplies. Fortunately, the coal is abundant in the territory of Safar, and many of them are still open-pit mined, although in terms of quality, they are naturally not as good as the high-quality coal brought from China, but at least they will not let the naval warships collectively anchor. The Persian Governorate was originally abandoned, and the Safarid Dynasty did not have the heart to rebuild it over the years, but Sima Daoxin not only built a decent port after mobilizing tens of thousands of people to work day and night, but also built a direct road from Xiliuzhou, there were not enough cement building materials, Sima Daoxin took the technology of Sanhe soil to the Safar side, and further carried it forward, and the quality of the road built was not much worse than the cement pavement. This later led to a rapid increase in the speed of road construction in Safar, and the development speed was faster than that of Khotan, relying on the port advantages of the Persian governorate.

However, at this time, whether it was Qu Chengxing on the vast sea, Li Xuanqing and others in the Chang'an base camp, they did not know that Sima Daoxin, who was far away in the northwest, carried out the reconstruction of the Persian Governorate one step ahead of time without specific instructions from the rear. In fact, this guy was also helpless by the tens of thousands of captives of the Great Food Empire sent from the north. These people are all fanatics of the Tianfang Sect, even if they use Buddhism to baptize, it is definitely not a day's work that can be changed, so thinking about it, only the complicated labor can make these people have no energy to think about things that are unfavorable to the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, after discussing with Song Lingxun, Sima Daoxin decided to directly send these people to the Persian Governor's Mansion to repair roads, and directly mobilized a whole battalion of the National Guard to supervise on the spot, and asked the new assassin of the Persian Governor's Mansion to increase the amount of labor, and must make these tens of thousands of prisoners of war tired and half dead every day, so as to ensure the smooth completion of the project and avoid these prisoners of war from making trouble. Sima Daoxin didn't have any mercy at this time, he himself was almost annoyed by the current situation of the Celestial Sect in Safar, so this inhumane order was faithfully carried out by this new generation of civil affairs officials named Guo Wei from the School of Administration, and the result was that the construction progress of the Persian Governorate was greatly accelerated, and it was even completed before the arrival of the fleet.

The northwest side naturally didn't know if he started the fleet in advance, Qu Chengxing's trip in addition to going to the Persian Governor's Mansion had another thing, that is, he was ready to follow Guo Chongtao's intention to find a way to find the legendary lion country in Buddhism, but neither Guo Chongtao nor Qu Chengxing had the consciousness of believing in Buddhism, but just planned to see if he could take this piece of the place in Li Xuanqing's mouth, which was known as the crossroads of the West. Since Li Xuanqing let Kong and others establish the Tang Religious Association, Buddhism has gradually declined in Middle Earth, and the new generation of people have become less and less aware of religion, although they are always in their hearts, but on the whole, it should be proved that the people's demand for religion in Taiping time is much lower, and the comprehensive development of industry and commerce in the Tang Dynasty has made the people of the Central Plains live almost a step a year, and the improvement of living standards has made the people transfer their expectations for gods and Buddhas to the imperial government. However, what Qu Chengxing may not know is that his fate with this lion country is really not shallow, he needs to come here almost once a year for the next ten years, and the Tang Empire has completely turned the lion country into its own overseas territory in the following time, and used it as a base to become an outpost to enter the West.

After the fleet set sail, the construction of Xihai County also began to enter the fast lane, with the navigation chart of the fleet's first voyage as an indication, the subsequent second wave of ships with a large number of materials and building materials and a large number of machinery and equipment from Guangzhou and Shantou and other places set off all the way to the south to bypass the Dandan Port of Manraka and then arrived in Xihai County later, relying on the uninterrupted supply of materials by landing and waterway, the huge wharf port of Xihai County was built before the Western Fleet led the team to return, And the passage with the rear is also gradually opening up, the early straight road in Nanzhao, southern Yunnan and Guangdong provinces have been through, in and out of the West finally has a stable channel, which also makes the construction of the Lingnan Railway speed up, the early stage from Guangzhou City along Zhaozhou and other places to the south to Lianzhou Port after turning north into the territory of southern Yunnan, the later period is mainly focused on the main section from southern Yunnan to Nanzhao. The construction time of the Lingnan Railway has been very long, but due to the complex terrain along the line, not only the mountains are blocked, there are countless rivers in the middle, the construction team has revised the construction road map several times before and after and the Railway Division, but many places can not be avoided, and the railway traffic can not use other building materials on the bridge, in addition to the cement can be obtained in the vicinity of the Guangzhou cement plant, other required steel and other materials need to be transported from the nearest Luzhou Iron and Steel Plant to the Guangzhou Port for unloading, Then it can be dragged to the construction site step by step, in this situation, even if the prisoner of war team is used to use the tactics of the sea of people, the speed is still very slow, and there is basically no large flat land in the Lingnan area, that is to say, there is no rapid period after repairing this section, and after entering southern Yunnan, it is still a plateau area.

However, this railway has allowed the railway department and the railway company to accumulate rich experience in the construction of railways in the southern region, and these experiences have undoubtedly helped the railway construction into a period of rapid development in other railway construction.

The large-scale construction of the Lingnan Railway and Xihai County, as well as the departure of a large-scale fleet of ships led by the Western Fleet from Nanyang, showed everyone that Datang had shifted the goal of economic development to the Western Front. The huge sunset resources began to be gradually activated, and then provided a boost for the industrial and commercial development of Datang.