During the two days that the temporary miners were fighting in the field, the few people who stayed in the coastal camp were not idle, and they had to sort out a route from Fushuizhou Island to this port area according to their navigation diaries and charts. In addition, it is also necessary to produce a military-grade map of the port area, on the one hand, for the military and police department to use to study the defense deployment, and on the other hand, to provide the executive committee and the Ministry of Construction with a plan for the port area after returning home.

In the routine contact between the expedition team and the base camp that night, Tom Wang reported to the Executive Committee the conclusions of the two-day field trip and asked for instructions on the next steps. In fact, the expedition team has basically completed the scheduled tasks: the development of cross-sea routes, the exploration of the coastline of the mining area, the search for a suitable port environment, the field exploration of the mining area, the collection of ore samples, and the preparation of detailed maps. If the Executive Committee does not have a new mandate, then the expedition can prepare for the return trip.

Surprisingly, the Executive Committee did not make an immediate decision this time, and after a brief silence on the radio, the Executive Committee said it needed a little time to study it. After this conversation, everyone in the expedition team looked at each other and did not know what to do.

"What does this mean?" Tom Wang frowned, and said in his heart, could it be that we still have something missing, or is there something wrong with the base camp?

"We expect to have to wait a day or two on the Vietnamese side. Xie Chun seemed to have understood something: "The executive committee may send us to the west." ”

About 40 nautical miles west of Halong Bay is the Red River Delta, the largest grain-producing area in northern Vietnam, and the capital of the current Annam regime, later Hanoi, is located about 100 kilometers inland to the west of the Red River Delta. In view of the fact that the areas visited by the expedition team in the past few days are basically uninhabited and uninhabited, the large number of laborers required for the mining area in the future will probably be the main target of Hanoi and its eastern coastal area.

In terms of the location of the Hongji Coal Mine, Qinzhou and Beihai in Guangxi Province in the northeast are actually places that can be considered for the introduction of migrants, but the current capacity of the Executive Committee is still insufficient, and it is unable to send a large number of ships to transport people hundreds of nautical miles away. The Vietnamese direction is much more convenient, and most of the ships sailing from Shengli Port to Vietnam are empty, so they can dock in the Red River Delta area to load people before going to the port area.

But if the Executive Committee decides to do so, someone will have to look into the coastal areas of Vietnam and see how difficult it is to bring in immigrants. Whether for reasons of time or efficiency, it is unlikely that the Executive Committee will dedicate a team to do this. And the expedition team that was on standby in Ha Long Bay at this time was undoubtedly the best person to complete this task.

Sure enough, more than an hour later, the Executive Committee contacted the expedition again and gave them the task of searching for the areas where the migrants had been introduced.

"Let's all rest early today, everyone has to be refreshed for the next two days, and I don't want any accidents at the end of the journey. Tom Wang was very cautious about the new tasks assigned by the Executive Committee, and in his opinion, the area where people settled might be more dangerous than the no-man's land that had been explored these days.

Early the next morning, the expedition team packed up and boarded the ship and left the port area, where they had been stationed for two days. The fleet sailed west across Ha Long Bay, bypassing the huge island of Cat Ba, and arrived at the site of the city of Haiphong in the afternoon. It was the largest port in northern Vietnam and the third largest city in Vietnam after Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, with a population of more than two million.

But when the expedition team saw the scene with their own eyes, they only felt deep disappointment. Looking at the shore through the telescope, there were signs of inhabitation not far from the shore, but the scale was far from what the expedition had expected. There are only a few dozen families in the village, which is only a little larger than the original Yulin fishing village, and even small towns like Phoenix and Tianya can't compare.

If the expedition had consulted Ninh Ki about the historical situation of Hai Phong City in advance, they would not have come with such great hopes. Until the second half of the 19th century, the population of Hai Phong remained only the size of a fishing village. It was not until 1870 that the Nguyen Dynasty, under the coercion of France, opened a port here, built a wharf, a merchant house, a military station, etc., and embarked on the road of development as a port city. It will take more than 200 years for the coastal city in the impression of the expedition team to appear on this land.

"Is this too pitiful, isn't it? Do we really have to go up to Hanoi against the current?" Xie Chun couldn't help but complain as he looked at the dilapidated fishing village on the shore.

"No, we can't get to Hanoi by water. Wang Tom shook his head and rejected Xie Chun's idea: "Our two ships are not inland river boats, and it is difficult to sail on the winding inland rivers. In addition, the land distance from here to Hanoi is more than 100 kilometers, and the length of the river may have to be doubled by this distance, and it is basically impossible to walk by water. ”

It was obviously not a good idea to go overland, the expedition was limited in size, and at least seven or eight men had to be left behind to sail the two sailboats. It is definitely a very risky thing to have to go hundreds of kilometers deep into a strange country with a team of about a dozen people, and also to visit the capital of this country. What's more, Ning Qi said that the country is currently in the midst of a civil war between the north and the south, and it is difficult to say whether a guy in fancy clothes like Crossing Zhong will go to a densely populated area, and it is difficult to say whether he will be treated as a hostile force.

While the entire squad can be equipped with the best weapons of the era and can be said to protect themselves, they have to be subject to primitive transportation conditions. The expedition team didn't even have a mule or horse to carry a suit, and it was not impossible to carry supplies for hundreds of kilometers through the wilderness for several days by manpower, but once any accident occurred in the inland area, they could only rely on two legs to escape, and if they were unlucky, it was difficult to say whether they could return to the beach.

"Let's go ashore first and have a look with the local people before making further judgments. In the end, Tom Wang made up his mind: "I just don't know if I can communicate in language." ”

"Don't worry, you should be able to understand, there are many people in northern Vietnam who speak the same vernacular as the Liangguang area. Tian Yeyou comforted Tom Wang with confidence. Although he was unable to bring his girlfriend to Vietnam for work reasons before the crossing, he did a lot of related homework.

To the team's surprise, the fishermen were not as afraid of strangers as they were in the Yulin fishing village, perhaps because there were very few pirates in the coastal areas of the Beibu Gulf, and the fishermen had not been harmed by foreign invaders.

Although the people who lived by fishing were illiterate, they could recognize the refined salt that the expedition had brought out, which was much finer than the salt they had boiled in clay pots, and when they tasted it, they found that it did not have the bitter taste of homemade sea salt. Since the opening of the market for salt, the Executive Committee has realized that the use of this commodity as a stepping stone is simply invincible, even in the salt-producing areas, and the salt produced on a large scale in the salt works of this era cannot compete with the products of the Executive Committee in terms of quality and price.

The expedition team was also pleased to find that the language spoken by the people here was indeed the vernacular with a thick Liangguang accent, as Tian Yeyou expected. There were several people in the expedition team who could speak the vernacular, and Xie Chun, who had been tossing in countless lines, could barely deal with a few words, so that there were basically no communication barriers between the expedition team and the local fishermen.

According to what the expedition team learned, the living standards of the fishermen here are actually similar to those of the fishermen in Sanya and Yazhou, and they are only able to make ends meet, and they are not financially able to seek medical care and education. Compared with the Yazhou government's control over the nearby areas, the Annan regime's control over the local area seems to be smaller, and in this kind of coastal area, which is only one or two hundred miles away from the capital, there is no place to govern and no garrison, and the local people are completely managed by sheep, which is as incredible as Tianjin, which is completely undefended.

According to these immigrants, the nearest populated area was about thirty or forty miles inland, and from there there were large tracts of land occupied by some imperial relatives, most of which were used for rice cultivation. As the expedition had information, this area was the largest grain-producing region in northern Vietnam. In the vast alluvial plains between here and Hanoi, tens of thousands of peasants worked as tenant farmers for the aristocracy, cultivating the land and harvesting food for them.

During the conversation, the expedition team also learned very important information, that is, in recent months, a large number of people have begun to flee from Hue, Dong Hai, Vinh and other places in the south to the nearby areas. It is said that because the situation in the south became tense, the powerful people in the north and south began to recruit the people in the vicinity to serve as men or even directly as peasant soldiers, while some people who did not want to be involved in the war fled to the north with their families, far away from the war zone. This situation is exactly in line with what Ningsaki said about the political situation in Annam, and the large number of war refugees is undoubtedly the best candidate for labor migration.

"Looks like we're going to have to go a little south. Upon hearing the good news, Tom immediately ordered the expedition to continue south along the coast.

Before setting out, the expedition hired two bold young men from the fishing village as guides with salt and silver. An hour later, the fleet rounded the Tu Son Peninsula across the sea from Cat Ba Island, which was a famous scenic spot in later generations and the only legal location in Vietnam. In the evening of the same day, the fleet reached the mouth of the Red River at the southern end of the Red River Delta. The expedition team will rest here for the night, and after dawn they will visit Thanh Hoa, more than 40 nautical miles south of the site, one of the largest cities between the city of An Ninh and the war zone, where the expedition believes it is likely that a large number of war refugees have gathered.