In January 1230, Hong Tao completed his journey to the Strait of Malacca, and the new route was extended to the western exit of the Strait of Malacca, and he wrote and painted everything he saw and mapped along the way, and painted on a large pile of whale skin paper, and now he is more and more fond of using this kind of fish skin that is thicker and more yellow than ordinary paper, and they are simply 13th-century water guards with the dyes of the Li family, as long as the dye can be dried thoroughly, even if the fish skin is soaked in seawater, the notes on it will not change in the slightest.

The empire of Sri Buddha, the only government that Hong Tao had contact with in the Straits of Malacca, ruled the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, which were largely part of what would become Malaysia and Indonesia. However, the structure of this empire is relatively loose, and it is still a kind of alliance of tribes, the most powerful of which is the emperor, and the other tribes are more like vassal states.

Hong Tao led a ship to visit their capital, and if he guessed correctly, the temple-strewn capital was later known as Palembang, Indonesia. Here, Hong Tao was warmly welcomed by the monks and temples as he brought with him whale oil and candles to light bright flames, which were useful for illuminating the sprawling temples. It's a pity that Hong Tao left only some samples, he came to explore, not to do business, and there were not so many goods on board. Even so, a small golden Buddha was regarded as a reward for the Buddha's light, and it was included in Hong Tao's pocket, so Hong Tao also wrote a sentence in his whale skin notebook: Palembang City has a lot of gold!

The route of the return voyage was deliberately changed, also to add a little more burden to the sailors. They are now sailors for themselves and Karl, but when they return, half of them will be trained as captains, and the remaining half will either be unsuitable or too young, either to be navigators or to go to school. In the direction proposed by Hong Tao, the two sailing ships sailed north along the Malay Peninsula and entered the Gulf of Thailand, visiting several port cities known as Chenla and Siam. This area is probably a combination of Cambodia, Thailand, part of Laos and part of Myanmar in the later generations, and in some places there are also maritime merchants of the Southern Song Dynasty, and it seems that these ports should also be trading countries of the Southern Song Dynasty.

After making supplies from a port in southern Vietnam, and replacing the last two pours of whale oil and a few candles for a large pile of rice and cotton seeds, the two sailing ships sailed eastward, and Hong Tao wrote down the words Champa rice in his small notebook. This thing has a very high yield, is drought-tolerant and does not pick the land, although it is not very tasty, but it can mature in more than 50 days to make up for all its shortcomings.

At this time, Vietnam was still two countries, the south was called Champa and the north was called Da Viet. Hong Tao didn't want to go north to Dayue to see, that area was of little use to him, this voyage was not only to improve the charts and train sailors, but also a field trip, he wanted to see what the trade goods of various countries were, in addition to whale oil, candles, soap, there are any things that are relatively easy to make and are not available in this era to toss. Now he has a definite goal in mind, and that is sugar. In addition, he has to find a few supply ports, the port cities of this era are very different from later generations, there are many ports that have not yet appeared, and they must be seen on the spot to understand.

If you want to open up new routes, the sea route is one thing, and the supply point in the middle is also very important, although your own ship can not walk along the coast, but it is still necessary to set up a supply point every 1,000 kilometers or so. Not only can it supply slower cargo ships, but it can also be used as its own eyes and ears, through which it can be used to more accurately grasp the local situation, and if necessary, it can also be used as a bridgehead. It was only by capturing most of the supply points from Europe to Asia that the British controlled the entire ocean. Hong Tao does not have any unique talent for macro strategy, he is now following the path that his predecessors have walked and is very successful, and the only originality is to integrate the experience of different eras and different countries, which is also the only place where he is higher than his contemporaries. If you don't have an advantage, you don't have to fight for personal quality with those businessmen and politicians, and you're not a fool.

As for white sugar, he, a modern person, has never had this word in his mind, it's so ordinary that he can't even think of it. But this kind of sugar is not available at present, whether it is in the Great Song Dynasty or Southeast Asia, there are only three kinds of sugar, one is honey, one is brown sugar, and caramel. Not only in Asia, Carl, a European turtle nobleman, even had brown sugar very valuable, and it is said that sugar was still a very, very precious material in Europe at this time. They don't produce sugar cane, they don't grow sugar beets to extract sugar, and if they want to eat something sweet, they can only pick honeycombs and rely on honey to satisfy their hunger. Europeans also did not keep bees at home, and they were generally raised in churches or monasteries, so sweets became a relatively luxurious aristocratic food. The Arabs do have sugar, but now Europe is at war with the Arabs, and the Arabian sugar is also very expensive, like the Great Song Dynasty, it is all brown sugar.

In this way, Hong Tao has found a second industry suitable for the operation of Jinhe Marine Resources Management Co., Ltd., the sugar industry!

In the later years, there were many large sugar cane farms in the southern United States, and the farmers would get a set of sugar pressing and brewing equipment in their own homes, which meant a bit of self-sufficiency. It was also there that Hong Tao learned how to make white sugar and brown sugar, the method is very simple, and it can also complement the whaling industry, which is simply a pair made in heaven.

How can sugar extraction be complementary to whaling? No matter how you think about these two industries, there is no technology that can be used together! Indeed, in terms of technology, the two industries are very different and completely unreliable. However, there is a kind of waste produced by the whaling industry that can be used to filter the sugar solution, adsorb the pigment in it, and then crystallize it, which is white sugar like snowflakes and rock sugar like crystals, and this waste is whale bones!

So far, Hong Tao has not found a suitable source for the whale bones, and the shipyard can only use a small part of them to boil bone glue, most of which are crushed with mills and buried in the ground as fertilizer. Now they can finally use their residual heat, calcining these fish bones at high temperatures like burning bricks, and then grinding them into powder, which is good bone char. When the sugar is pressed, the bone char is put into the syrup that has just been squeezed from the sugar cane, and they will adsorb all the pigments and impurities in the syrup on themselves like activated charcoal, and finally settle to the bottom, leaving the transparent syrup on top. The sugar boiled out of transparent syrup is white sugar and rock sugar, which is equivalent to using whale bones that have no use value to turn brown sugar into white sugar, and the cost is very low. If it weren't for the whaling industry, Hong Tao really couldn't think of where he could get so many animal bones to calcine the bone char. Therefore, Hong Tao plans to build a temple for whales after he grows stronger, and they are simply his saviors.

"Ah Jiao, it seems that our village is still there, they have seen us, go and hang our flag, and by the way, tell Carl that the front is safe." When the two sailboats had just arrived at the sea a few nautical miles outside the mouth of the Golden River, Hong Tao saw that there was something on the hill on the left side of the estuary reflecting the sun's rays, which was someone peeking at him with a telescope, so he also picked up his telescope and looked over there, and then he was happy, and the two figures were standing on the top of the mountain and waving at the sailboat.

"Yes! Raising the Hong Kong flag...... "Ah Jiao is no longer a 14-year-old child, he has become a qualified ocean-going captain after two years of training, meticulous in his work, and his face is no longer the silly smile of a child, a pair of black eyes are no longer smart, but flashing in the depths from time to time.

Soon, a string of white flags was raised on the front sail line, which was Hong Tao's original flag language for the fleet, and there were only a few simple changes, such as safe docking, full speed, preparing for battle, evacuation, etc., all for the purpose of communicating with each other when sailing in formation at sea. Hong Tao hasn't figured out the too complicated flag language yet, he just learned this thing briefly in his later life, and basically didn't use it much, he doesn't remember it very clearly, and he has to slowly summarize and supplement.

"This bastard! Go back and teach him a good lesson, let him teach him a long lesson! I saw that Hong Tao's boat hung a flag, and the sailboat behind also responded on the front sailline, which was also a string of small white flags, but Hong Tao looked at it with a telescope, and his nose was crooked. There were still a few pairs of underwear in those flags, and Carl's skin was itchy again, and he went to the house to uncover the tiles after three days without fighting.

"Hey, hey, hey...... Uncle, next time you go to sea, let me replace Carl, he is still suitable for you. "Bojiao is a little gloating, this voyage has made Carl the captain of the Whaler, and he has not been very happy.

"Don't worry, next time you go out with him." Hong Tao is basically satisfied with the captain he taught, except for being a little younger, he is excellent in other aspects.

"What about you?" Bo Jiao just wanted to compete with Carl, and he didn't plan to squeeze Hong Tao away, with this uncle here, he was not afraid of how far he went, and he was not afraid of any wind and waves.

"Me? Hey, hey, hey...... I have a bigger boat, hahahahaha......" Hong Tao said a reason for Bo Jiao's envy and jealousy, the new ship has been built for almost 5 months, and Wen Lao Er once boasted that Hong Tao would be able to launch when he came back. Hong Tao has also been looking forward to this day, compared with the first three small sailing ships, it is a real ocean-going sailing ship, or an ocean-going warship with combat effectiveness, endurance, and landing capabilities. Whether or not you can go into the water smoothly is related to whether your two years have been in vain, and whether your plan to dominate the ocean will be delayed. Without such a warship, a small sailing ship like the Predator alone could only be a pirate, not a sea overlord.