The islands in this part of the South Sea, they should be the largest treasure house of the empire except for the Japanese Islands, but because of the current scientific and technological constraints, many islands in the South Ocean are actually not very well developed.

In the future, the empire's focus will be tilted towards the development of the sea, and interest in continuing to go to the Gobi, grasslands, and other regions that seem to have few resources and are not rich in minerals is constantly decreasing.

Many times Lu Zhe feels worried, if his generation does not set foot in Central Asia, he really needs to worry that the next generation will not have to flow through the Gobi, swamps, and deserts, and continue to expand without much benefit no matter how you look at it, and it will even be a loss-making business.

It's really going to lose money, after all, Central Asia is too far away from the empire, and it costs a lot of money to maintain a large army in a distant place. Once the cost of maintaining the army far outweighs the gain, the dismantling of the army becomes inevitable. Without enough troops, it is estimated that it will be useless to continue to open up, and whether the expanded army can hold on will become a problem.

Don't look at the appearance of the steam engine now, the train is also there, the railway is being built, let's see what era it is now, what is the productivity, the empire wants to cultivate a railway to Central Asia? Put it on the desk in 180 years!

In fact, the situation is really like that, Tsarist Russia built the railway from Moscow to Siberia in modern times, according to the industrial technology at that time, it should not be too difficult, at least the construction of railways in Western Europe has been built throughout the country, even across the country. Tsarist Russia, which received technical support from Western Europe, and even did not lack labor, how many years did they build railways? It's twenty-five years.

Build a railway? Building a railway in such a mountainous area as China is much more difficult than that of Lao Maozi, who is mostly plain. If you want to build a railway, in fact, the best plan is to follow the old path of Tsarist Russia, not choose to start from the Western Regions. In this way, the empire will first take the grassland, drive the Xiongnu tribes to the west, and expand behind these locusts, so that the road can be considered to be opened. However, it is estimated that it will be a hundred years away.

There is no luxury in building a railway to Central Asia for the time being, so it has become a feasible plan to advance from the sea. In the future, the empire will tilt its development center to the sea, and the benefits are not ordinary in many ways.

The exploration of many islands in the South China Sea is imperative, and the development of the empire itself requires resources from outside, and although the navy will not gain any experience in naval warfare in the process, it is certainly beneficial to the development of the nation to train a large number of seafarers.

And then, what are the islands of the South Sea? It can be said that everything is actually available, and as long as the empire builds up a series of plundering facilities, there will be no shortage of resources for hundreds of years to come.

It has always been Lu Zhe's wish to turn the Pacific Ocean into the "inner lake" of the empire, but it requires a primary premise, that is, to toss all the surrounding races and countries that can threaten the empire to death, so that the killing of those countries in Central Asia, including the Mauryan Empire on the South Asian subcontinent, cannot be avoided.

In order to achieve the goal of exterminating the surrounding races and countries, the cost of land expansion is extremely large, and it is difficult for the empire to support it. The so-called difficult to support, mainly on the cost of transportation, after all, even how to feed the enemy needs to have a stable supply in the rear to support, and the expansion method that completely relies on robbery is not without effect, but the lack of necessary interaction with the rear, is it to cultivate warlords, split, or plan to capture and grab and withdraw the army?

Discover access to the Indian Ocean...... Well, now that ocean has no name at all, what will it be called in the future, let's make do with the Indian Ocean now.

The empire must find a strait that can lead to the Indian Ocean, as long as it finds the strait, it means that the empire is no longer restricted by the complex land terrain such as the Gobi, deserts, swamps, etc., and can happily "stand and stab" with those countries in Central Asia, and can also have happy contact with the Mauryan Empire. Well, it's the empire that's happy, and if the Mauryan Empire feels happy when it's invaded, it's that they're happy with each other.

Naturally, the invasion of the Mauryan Empire will not be carried out at the beginning, and it will not even be rushed to occupy the land at all, occupying the land at the beginning is definitely a brain-dead act, how to show a friendly business side, first find out the political situation of the Mauryan Dynasty, the terrain or something, and then do some robbery and plundering is the right way. It doesn't matter how many years, the most important thing is to happily spend the national strength of the Mauryan Dynasty or something, and when you are weak and tossed, it is time to show your real fangs.

If you want to "stand and poke" with the countries of Central Asia, or play happily with the Mauryan Empire, the premise of everything is the discovery of the strait, and if you don't find the strait for a day, everything can only be a plan on paper.

"It's raining again!"

"This sea area is such a ghost weather, one moment it is still a beautiful wind, the next moment it is a downpour, or the kind of strange weather that rains when you can't see dark clouds!"

Who says that if it rains, it has to be cloudy! It may not be common in inland areas, but in coastal areas, especially on some islands in the sea, heavy rain is a relatively common phenomenon when the sky is clear, especially on islands in the sea.

"Some students from colleges who come to graduate school say that it is because the water on the ocean has evaporated and has not entered the stratosphere. I don't remember what the stratosphere was, but it evaporated halfway through and didn't form clouds, and it fell down again, making it rain. ”

Student? In the seventh year of the Imperial calendar, the center passed a bill to encourage students to walk around during the holidays, usually on outings on the empire itself, and Taixue would organize them to go to the frontier. However, since this time it is a postgraduate entrance examination, it is not a pure outing, but a field trip with some academic questions.

The propaganda department of the empire is already carrying out instructive propaganda on the future development of the South Seas, and the various departments of the center will also issue some tasks to each academy, for example, this time the appearance of students from the Nanyang Fleet is a task about recording the climate of the South Seas.

Most of the reconnaissance ships have been dispersed, and the 5,200-ton steamship and two conventional ships and transport ships are parked near the coastline. Not far from them is actually not an island, but they can't get a bird's-eye view from above, and they haven't yet explored this area, so naturally they don't know this.

Most of the sailors and soldiers were on deck, some of them were doing things like cleaning the decks, and more often they were lying on the railing and looking at the continent in the distance.

In fact, there is nothing to see on the mainland, except for the messy plants, that is, some strange animals. By the way, they even passed a narrow route full of crocodiles, and at that time, standing on the edge of the railing and watching the crocodiles scurrying around, that visual senses were so exciting.

The rain on a sunny day is actually not long in coming, and it usually ends in a few minutes. Rainbows appear when it rains on a sunny day, and the rainbow picture in mid-air between green water and blue waves is beautiful, but if you see too much, it's actually just like that, so only those students who are rare and weird will talk nonsense.

There were not many students accompanying Nanling Academy, but there were forty students in a class, and eleven girls among them. When they were all young, seventeen or eighteen-year-old boys and girls wore uniform summer school uniforms, and most of their youthful faces were tanned to wheat.

"Look! Look over there! ”

"What, what?"

"Looks like someone is running!"

"There are wild people everywhere here, so it's so strange to see people running."

The Empire's slave catchers were very active in the South Seas, but they were active in Luzon, such as the Malaysian archipelago or the Indonesian archipelago.

To say that Luzon Island has been discovered for seven or eight years, after repeated development by the Nanyang Fleet, not to mention what is the inland situation, at least there are no traces of primeval forests in the southern part of the coast, and even market towns have appeared because of the frequent visits of slave catchers.

The South Sea Fleet still welcomes people from the empire to come over, not to mention adding some popularity to the desolate islands, and those more people are active means that the environment will change.

In the beginning, even the shores of the islands were covered with snakes, mosquitoes, and poisonous insects, and a piece of land was slowly cleared, and then a larger open space was appropriately burned with fire. The reason why it is burned with fire is because there is almost no change to the environment caused by chopping or something, and it is only useful to clean up the rhizomes after burning. This shabby place is full of sunshine and rain, and if you don't treat the roots and stems of the plants, even if you cut out a clearing, you should return to a green environment after a rainy season.

It wasn't the first time he had seen a wild man, but he just glanced at it and vaguely noticed that the wild man was a little different.

"Those wild people have a lot of tattoos on them. I don't think they're chasing animals, they're a group of people. "A young man who looks like a little Sven, but has tanned skin, his name is Huang An. He is not a singer, he is a student in the second grade of Nanling Taixue, and he is still an honor student.

One of the sailors, who heard the blind babbling, leaned over and said, "Tattoos, chasing another group of people?" ”

Huang An shook his head: "Yes, I'm definitely not mistaken." ”

The sailor first said, "Ha! He said, "Those guys with tattoos are headhunters, or the cannibals we're more familiar with." ”

There are really too many savages in this broken place in the South Seas, and it is common for a village to be a race, among which cannibals account for the majority, but the more docile savages are basically about to become extinct.

It has been until modern times, there are still many wild people in this ruined place, and even most of them are cannibals, and later Western colonists came here, and most of the cannibals were exterminated, and those who were not extinct were also hiding in the deep mountains and old forests, or migrating to the islands around Australia.

It is now 202 B.C., and it is not without civilization to say that there is no civilization in this ruined place in the South Seas, there is a part of the Mayan civilization, but the main body of the Mayan civilization is in the Caribbean Islands and South America, and the broken place in the South Ocean is relatively rare. To put it bluntly, the Mayan civilization is also a Stone Age civilization, and the basic thing that can float on the water is a boat, and if you want to find a boat, you can't find it.

"Look! See! They're out! ”

Many people followed the direction of Huang An's finger to look over, and some of the people who were looking forward to the telescope were picking up and watching.

There were a few people on the shore, and then many more, and they were all really tattooed, most of them clutching a bloody head in their hands, and then they didn't know what they were yelling at the fleet on the sea.

It's a **** savage, the little girls from the academy didn't feel shy, and they weren't even frightened by the human head that was still dripping blood.

"Those uncivilized animals, it's disgusting to watch." Looking at Si Swenwen, although her skin is dark, she can see that she is a beauty, her name is Lin Wen. She was just disgusted by the tattoos, but the bloody human head was ignored.

Not only Lin Wen, but none of the girls were afraid when they saw the head dripping blood.

So, what's going on? To put it bluntly, some people must be scared in their hearts, but as students of the academy, an indescribable self-esteem supports them not to scream. Other reasons are...... The problem of militaristic education in the empire, the more developed the place in these years, the more slaves, some slaves are not very docile, for the undocile slaves are usually killed, and in public, unless it is deliberately avoided, otherwise at least it will be seen more or less a few times.

They watched the excitement, but the captain of the steam battleship was giving orders.

"What kind of are those savages screaming~ bastard? The funniest thing is that he actually took people's heads to demonstrate against us, don't you know that all the people who did this last time were killed by artillery? "The captain is also surnamed Lin, his name is Lin Zeng, and he is still Lin Wen's uncle. He said to his first mate, "Adjust the hull and bombard the fuck with a flower." ”

The captain's orders should naturally be carried out faithfully, and as for hitting the savages with cannons, no one said a word about wasting shells or anything. How long have they been at sea, and they have been going around for so long, and if they don't listen to it again, they will really go crazy.

Soon, a series of orders were shouted by the officers on the boat, and the group of students were specially reminded to stay away from the railing, saying that the cannon was about to be fired, but not to shake it down, there seemed to be sharks in this water.

The wildlings were still yelling and screaming, and they even grabbed their bloody heads and drank the blood, and some of them even began to gnaw on their heads or the bodies of other troops on the spot.

It's nothing to see the bloody head, but it's really disgusting to watch cannibalism, but soon you don't have to see that disgusting scene again, with the first bang, a cannonball smashed a little, and when the flowering bomb hits the ground, it explodes again, splashing a burst of sand and wood on the shore.

The first shot was calibrated and the shooting was adjusted, and after the second shot, it was a direct hit, and then a violent explosion directly covered the area of the savages who were blown up.

"What's wrong with provoking the Imperial fleet? Deserved to be blasted to the ground! ”

………………

It's already in the end, I've finished writing what should be written, and I've explained what I should have explained, and then I'm done. In addition, the writing of the expedition is broken, and I am considering a major change, or tidying up and rewriting. (To be continued.) )