Chapter 34: The Five Major Forces Enter the Qi (Part II)

Vladivostok, known as Vladivostok in Russian, is the most important city in the Russian Far East and the largest port in the northern part of the Sea of Japan.

From the real-time satellite images taken by the advanced technology of the 22nd century, one can distinguish the reinforced concrete factories, the tall chimneys, the trestle that stretches into the harbor, the roaring trains, and the towering giant freighters...... In addition, there are many rough wooden houses scattered around, as well as large fields that have been manually leveled under the snow. Sickle-and-hammer flags flutter from the tops of some buildings, like the era of red passion when thousands of Komsomol members were mobilized by the Soviets to rush into the Siberian wilderness and fight against the harsh nature - but the wheel of history has only reached the first half of the seventeenth century.

According to the "correct" history, there should still be only a few fishing and hunting tribes roaming Vladivostok at this time, and there will be no traces of civilization.

“…… It seems that the situation has become very clear, and the gang of people from the Far Eastern Company in Vladivostok have indeed come, and they are in Vladivostok in this time and space. It also saves us from thinking endlessly...... But...... Tsk, this group of people is really strong enough."

Looking at the northern city that has begun to take shape on the satellite pictures, Guo Yi couldn't help but say with some envy - compared with the "poor" of Lingao who only brought a thousand-ton freighter to cross, the crossing group in Vladivostok is a super big guy with real strong capital. Satellite images alone show so many factories, ships and trains. There are also Russian landing ships, field guns, armored vehicles that do not know where...... As long as they recruit enough people, they can instantly become invincible opponents in Northeast Asia.

Of course, in front of a certain law enforcement agency with the power of the state and the support of black technology in the 22nd century, this qiē is nothing more than scum.

Thinking of this, Guo Yi couldn't help but rejoice in his multiple identities.

After photographing and archiving the "Far East Company" traverser stronghold in Vladivostok, Wang Qiu pointed his satellite camera at Dengzhou, at the tip of the Shandong Peninsula, but he did not see anything that was clearly different from the times—the farmland, roads, cities, villages, fortresses, and even the style of the houses were no different from the rest of the Ming Dynasty. Obviously, even if the ruling class, as a traverser, brought any changes beyond the times to this land and the people living on it, for the time being, it is not yet conspicuous enough to be seen from the reconnaissance satellite pictures.

Of course, at least from the satellite photos, there are no obvious signs of dilapidation and desolation, and it was not easy in this chaotic era at the end of the Ming Dynasty -- in fact, just a few hundred kilometers south of Dengzhou Town, the Huaibei Plain, was already full of fighting and riots. Hungry and red-eyed homeless people besieged the fort, and the landlords and gentry organized the family Ding to fight endlessly, and in order to fight for a miserable way to live, the earth was stained red with blood.

In this tragic era, the landlords and gentry almost had to rely on cannibalism to survive, while the common people were left with only two choices: rebellion and starvation to death -- although such a chaotic gang of rogues had no future at all, if they had to die if they didn't die, why didn't they die a big death?

Then, Wang Qiu pulled the camera sharply, and suddenly jumped to the wild and desolate Australian continent -- judging from the satellite pictures, Australia in this time and space is still sleeping in ignorance and barbarism on the whole, and the famous cities of the southern hemisphere, such as Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra, are still nowhere to be seen, and only in the northwest corner of the Australian continent, near the arid and desert Port Derby, have some more eye-catching traces of human civilization appeared: if there are scattered fortresses, stone houses and wooden houses, small dikes and trestle bridges, There are also a few humble pits, reminiscent of the American West during the Gold Rush era.

“…… Is this the Australian time-traveling stronghold of this plane? 'COSCO Astro, the sailing ship's traverser doesn't look very well built."

Looking at the few traces of civilization scattered in the Australian wilderness, Guo Yi pouted with some disdain, "...... That's the size of a village......"

“…… It's not easy to do that. Comrade Xiao Guo, they are not the Far East Company of Vladivostok, which organized huge amounts of materials and more than 2,000 people in one go, nor is it the Hainan Island Crossing Group, which is backed by the Ming Dynasty and is easy to absorb a large number of displaced people. Even from a certain point of view, it is not as good as Dengzhou Town, which has been mixed into the Ming Dynasty government system and can use the imperial court channels to obtain human resources. ”

Wang Meiling pursed her lips and said, "On the contrary, according to what you said before, there are only more than 100 unprepared and delicate traversers on the Australian side, more than 100 Poles who inexplicably ran to the southern hemisphere to play the Great Voyage, and more than 100 Stone Age Australian aborigines captured by them." Even if they later got the support of the South American Crossing Group, which was the 'East Coast country' of that Uruguayan region, how much labor would they be able to bring in across the sea route? It's good to be able to make this famous hall and not sleep in a cave like a wild man, but then again, what is the way for these Poles who ran to Australia? In my impression, although this Pole has a lot of strange attributes, it has nothing to do with the Great Voyage, and the Poles also come to play seafaring colonization, which is just like the African black people engaged in the industrial revolution."

“…… Well, I seem to have forgotten that there is always a lack of population and no place to introduce the unsolved problem of Australia. Well, not to mention manpower, they don't even seem to have the animal power of livestock, after all, no one knows how to domesticate kangaroos and koalas until modern times......"

Guo Yi rubbed his forehead and sighed, "...... As for why there were Poles running to Australia in the XVII century...... Even I wonder about this, I'm afraid I can only say that any nation in this world will have strange and unusual kinds - there are also fascists among the Jews."

Next, the shooting area of the [Mini Reconnaissance Satellite] has drifted a lot and has been adjusted to the Uruguay region of South America, allowing everyone to peek at the true face of the "East Coast Country" - this country has now completed the feat of circumnavigating the world, which feels quite bullish.

According to satellite maps, this eastern republic is roughly located in what is later Uruguay, or the area east of the lower reaches of the Uruguay River, hence its name. Later, many inland areas of Uruguay were still wild under the view of the satellite, and even Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay in another world, was only a sparsely populated small village at this time. In the entire Eastern Coast Republic, only the coastal strip along the Atlantic Ocean has been initially developed, and traces of civilization such as ports and towns have appeared. But even so, its strength is impressive enough.

-- Port Vostochny, the capital of the Eastern Coast Republic, is a striking place even on satellite images. It is a majestic city located on the shores of the Cte d'Azur, and it has a huge city wall with a circumference of nearly ten kilometers, a height of more than six meters, and several sharp protruding forts, and many cannons placed on the walls, which invisibly give people a sense of majesty and solemnity.

At the foot of the city walls, there are neat and sturdy trestles and breakwaters, majestic shore forts, striking lighthouses, and towering pulley booms, all the time telling people that this is a well-equipped and excellent port. There are many ships moored in the harbor, some are trading merchant ships, some are warships, and some are fishing boats, and these ships are neatly moored in their own special docks, and they all appear to be in good order. The sturdy breakwater in the port area of Gongwei keeps the turbulent waters of the South Atlantic out of the embankment, and the swells inside the embankment are gentle and the water is very clean. Unlike most of the ports of the Old World, there are tons of garbage, rotten wood and even corpses floating on the water. The port is also bustling. A large number of two- and three-storey brick buildings have been erected on the edge of the dockyard, including retail shops, commercial hotels, pubs, restaurants, pawnshops, etc. Overall, it's a beautiful, clean and tidy port. At least at this time, there was no other port in South America that could match it in these respects.

Outside the city walls, there was a vast open field of abundance—the green grasslands outside the city were stocked with horses, sheep, and beef cattle; The rippling artificial reservoir is home to a large number of birds; The cute otter plays freely among the aquatic plants, and from time to time grabs a fat big fish and puts it in its mouth to chew and eat; On the shore of the reservoir, foxes stare at the waterfowl floating on the water......

Such a rich scenery full of life, wind blowing grass and low cattle and sheep can indeed be proudly called "Brave New World" by ⊥ people.

However, in this fascinating and beautiful new world, there are not only beautiful lakes and mountains, abundant natural products, but also undisguised iron and gunpowder - the entire territory of the Eastern Republic is full of fortresses and forts, and all cities and villages are literal fortresses of war. The Republic of the East Coast seems to have an ideology of all the people, and wherever a settlement is set up, it must be fortified and fortressed, and countless bastions of various sizes have been built. Even the smallest village can find a few cold cannons and rotting corpses dangling from the gallows...... Of course, in Europe, which is currently in the midst of the Thirty Years' War, there are only a few more similar cruelties.

“…… It looks like a country of iron and blood with a strong atmosphere of war, no wonder you describe them as militaristic ......"

Observing the dense array of military facilities on the satellite map, as well as the sparse population that was not proportional to the number of these tools of war, Wang Qiu couldn't help but sigh and said, "...... The whole country looks like a big fortress, and this militarization is probably higher than that of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but it seems to me that it is almost like a complex of the Manchurian Pioneer Regiment and the North China Artillery Tower Group in the Japanese militarist era, is it necessary for them to be belligerent? ”

“…… Who made their situation too sinister? Uruguay is not a terra nullius today, and from the very beginning, the country was digging meat from the Spanish American colonies. They were both pagan and yellow, and either of them could arouse the fanatical hostility of the Spanish Catholics, who were forced to bathe in the smoke of gunpowder almost from the very beginning of the crossing. As for the local Indians, they also regarded them as invaders and enemies, and had no intention of building any anti-imperialist and free united front. Moreover, the Indians themselves were divided into many tribes that fought each other incessantly, and a considerable number of them even converted to Catholicism and became the thugs of the Spaniards and Portuguese

Therefore, they must rely on their limited strength to win one war after another, deter the greedy Spaniards, the ill-intentioned Portuguese and Dutch, and suppress the resistance of the indigenous Indians, in order to barely win the minimum living space. And as long as the table is a little cowardly, then under the siege of the wolves, it is destined to embark on the road of no return to death and slavery. ”

Guo Yi also touched his chin and said his opinion, "...... According to the information obtained by the Lingao side from the Batavia talks, what is even worse is that the East Coast Group not only does not have a strong home country behind it, but also does not have any scale advantage in terms of human and financial resources when facing the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and even French. Moreover, the North American traverser group, China and the United States, out of consideration of their own interests, also formed an alliance with Spain against Britain and France for a long time, which was invisibly equivalent to making enemies of the East Coast countries, and the East Coast countries even lost a large part of their technological superiority on the battlefield -- at least they provided the Spaniards with a lot of arms to fight the East Coast, and the war pressure of the East Coast Army was unprecedentedly strong......

Although Lingao's side also has to face many enemies, after all, the neighbors are all compatriots of the same country and the same species, and it is relatively easy to transform it into their own strength on a large scale. But the East Coast Group, which is in a foreign part of the Americas, cannot even do this -- whether it is European immigrants, African slaves, or American Indians, they may have enough identification with the East Coast Group. The small number of Ming immigrants who traveled thousands of miles from Macao by the Portuguese was really a drop in the bucket, and they couldn't even catch up with the attrition of the war. And in this era of backward medical care, sometimes a plague can destroy thousands of people. Faced with such a desperate situation of facing enemies on all sides and dying if you don't fight, even peace-loving people will be forced to become militaristic madmen...... What else could they do but squeeze every ounce of war potential out of the country and put every ounce of capital they could muster into the war? ”

“…… If they really can't hold on, they can also give up the little bit they have run in South America and go to North America to join another group of fellow traversers, I think, the traversal group in North America should not be cold-blooded enough to close their doors," Ma Tong pouted and said.

“…… Alas, this is difficult to say, first of all, in terms of human nature, as the so-called would rather be the head of a chicken than a cow, all those who become leaders, unless there is really no way, are unwilling to send people under the fence - those traversers in the East Coast Country, even if they are in a more dangerous situation, can be regarded as a privileged class on their territory. But if you run to North America, it's that the fluffy phoenix is not as good as a chicken, and the traversers over there may not necessarily regard them as their own people, and those ordinary traversers and technical experts at the bottom are just that, what about the heads of the government and the army at the top? Could it be that the government on the North American side will still make room for them? In case the government leadership on the Huamei side is mean, they directly treat them as ordinary immigrants, on the same level as the Ming Dynasty and European immigrants, and even add a very systematic and tight spell...... I'm afraid few people can stand it

Secondly, the relationship between these two groups of traversers in the Americas has not been very good in recent years. The Huamei side attacked the east coast with reckless force, imitating the Japanese militarist madmen to make enemies everywhere, and in the end they were afraid that they would bring about their own destruction; On the east coast, they attacked the Chinese and foreigners, and became the yellow-skinned and white-hearted 'Five Cents', which actually helped the European colonizers deal with their compatriots...... As far as we know, these two cross-border groups in the Americas have come close to fighting in South Africa before. At the just-concluded Batavia talks, the representatives of the two groups also quarreled all day long. The negotiators sent by Lingao and the group of Australian crossers all listened to the first two big ...... Therefore, as long as there is a glimmer of hope for survival, it is impossible to imagine that the East Coast travelers will give up the foundation they have painstakingly built and go into exile in North America to become refugees."

Guo Yi shook his head and commented on Ma Tong's bad idea, "...... Although they once came from the same society and had similar concepts and modes of thinking, the reality is that the two groups of crossers have formed two completely different countries, and the differences are at least no less than those of the United States and the United Kingdom...... This is not the Long March of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and under the leadership of a party organization, the military and political organs can be transferred from one base area to another -- even if it is the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, isn't it because the situation is so bad that it can no longer hold on, so it finally gives up the ⊥ capital, Ruijin? ”

“…… That's right, it's not as comfortable as being a refugee on someone else's territory than being the master of your own territory."

Wang Qiu also echoed and said, "...... Although in the eyes of those of us pessimists, the East Coast Group is a strong enemy in South America. But on the other hand, from the eyes of optimists, they are fighting one after another, slashing the enemy, and roaming South America all the way to South America, and we subjectively think that they may be afraid and tired of endless wars, but in fact they can get their present fortune from continuous wars, and perhaps they also think that this kind of war life of licking blood, killing decisively, and being happy with revenge is very cool

After all, deep in the blood of every man on Earth, there is a hidden element of violence. Although the Eastern Republic had to deal with so many modern European armed forces that were not easy to deal with, on the whole, they had so far won victories on the battlefield and expanded their territory again and again -- it is hard to imagine what war-weariness such a triumphant new power would have. Not to mention abandoning their existing homeland and land in order to escape the war, and traveling to the north, 9,000 kilometers away, to join another cross-cutting force that has also been created for a long time."

“…… I think so too. However, if you are born in the world, you must fight with the heavens, the earth, and people, and you must constantly strive to survive and develop in the struggle. Wang Meiling also nodded, and added, "...... Nations, states, and religions are essentially social tools for human beings to divide themselves and form multiple groups to compete in an all-round way. As long as there are many people who want to share resources and wealth, and the resources and wealth are insufficient or relatively insufficient, such as those that the ruling class feels insufficient, then there will be strife. When there is a fight, you have to divide the enemy from your own people, and you have to draw a circle, and you have to divide 'us in the circle' and 'them outside the circle,' and you have to divide them outside the circle. One set of rules is applied to insiders and another is applied to outsiders. Then plunder and destroy the enemy, leaving resources and wealth for your own people.

This is the result of biological evolution, and it is also the basic instinct that is deeply hidden in the hearts of every living being, especially group creatures, and this instinct accompanies the evolution of group animals, just like the lust for lust accompanies each of us. Those in power can suppress this instinct temporarily, but at a terrible cost - remember, those who go against basic human instincts will end up with nothing good even if they are happy for a while.

When drawing circles, some people will put all of humanity into their own circle. Some people will put all the animals in their circle. These people are the so-called 'Virgin, Party'. But neither the harsh nature nor history allows the 'Virgin, we to scribble. There will come a day or a time when the world's resources (or capacity) will decline. At that time, only those who draw circles well, only those who are good at drawing circles, and only those who are good at falling out of circles and those who are outside competitors, can continue their groups in this endless competition.

For example, when spreading religion and revolutionary beliefs, you can call on people to temporarily abandon the estrangement between the nation and the state. But as long as someone starts to draw circles under the traditional banner of a nation, a state, and so on, there will be more people who are instinctively driven to enter the 'circle mode' -- under the same conditions, those who have circles and organizations will inevitably defeat those who have no circles and those who are not organized.

You yourself can choose not to draw circles, but you can't stop others from drawing circles. And the circle of others will eventually fall or swallow you up. If you don't want to be dropped or swallowed up, start drawing your own circle. Of course, you can choose not to draw circles and die. In addition, if the circle is drawn so small that it cannot beat the other circles outside, then there is only death - this is the cold law of human historical evolution......"

On the other side, when Wang Meiling was talking to everyone, Wang Qiu had already remotely controlled the [Mini Reconnaissance Satellite] and transferred the subject to the east coast of North America, where the "Huamei Republic" is located......