Chapter 128: New Dependents

The drones the military needs are certainly not civilian brands like DJI.

DJI's best model has a remote-control range of seven kilometers and a loiter time of half an hour. This "performance" is more than enough in the civilian sphere — half an hour is enough to locate every big-breasted girl on the beach, then hover and film a round in high definition; seven kilometers of remote-control range ensures you can escape after filming, and the cops won't find you.

What the Transmigrators need, however, is a military drone with a reconnaissance radius of two hundred kilometers, a loiter time of over three hours, and the ability to take precise photos from an altitude of three thousand meters using synthetic aperture radar.

A fixed-wing medium drone with a fuselage at least two meters across is a completely different concept from a foldable civilian model the size of a basketball.

According to the performance requirements set by Pacification Headquarters Commander Han Bo: a drone taking off from Dayuan Island must, in the future, be able to advance to the midline of the strait, or at least reach the One Line of the Penghu Archipelago, complete the mission of reconnoitering an incoming enemy fleet, and then return smoothly — only then would it meet the standard.

As for scouting the Madou Society natives thirty li away, that was just an incidental, trivial matter — a piece of cake, not even worth mentioning.

Just as Xia Xianze was about to probe these opportunistic military chiefs on exactly how much import quota the drone would require, Chief Executive Dong beside him smiled and waved a hand: "Don't ask — one crate isn't enough, it'll take a crate and a half."

Cao Chuan didn't understand steel bars and cement, because those kinds of goods couldn't affect his safety. But if he still hadn't figured out the situation regarding weapons and munitions — the kind that easily draw the gaze of certain powerful departments — after all this time, he'd have been finished long ago.

"What I can safely buy are only neutered versions — most likely export models from the Rabbit or Israel. This kind of crippled version can't be used against a major rogue power, because it has no electronic countermeasure or anti-electromagnetic interference capability, and the airframe structure is hard-limited — it can't be used to modify weapon systems."

"But that's just perfect." Cao Chuan shook his head self-deprecatingly at this point: "Zheng Zhilong doesn't understand electromagnetic interference either."

"Yeah — two airframes, shared by the army and navy, one set of electronic lines, one data-link transceiver system, plus some spare batteries and installation tools... yeah, a crate and a half should about do it." At this, Cao Chuan added with a touch of schadenfreude: "You'll also need a smooth dirt road — three hundred meters, make it as wide as you can."

"Tsk..." Xia Xianze's teeth ached just hearing these conditions. He shot a fierce glare at the soldiers, who all wore innocent expressions, and said irritably: "Anyone with objections, speak up now — this chance won't come again."

The 1628 New Year Expanded Meeting, which lasted an entire day, finally ended only when the moon had climbed above the branches.

Building the Imperial City, building the Shipyard, beginning preparations for rural pacification — these three projects would devour every bit of manpower and materiel for the foreseeable future.

Yet all of these were essential. When a power base develops to a certain stage, expansion is inevitable. In the future, whether drying salt or reclaiming farmland, the Transmigrators could no longer hold the field with just a few AKs — so large-scale rural pacification was imperative.

The Shipyard and the Imperial City were both projects that had to be started — one was an urgent need, the other a political necessity; there was simply no choice.

On the third day after the New Year Conference ended, a large delegation of Xingang Society natives arrived at the Chikan New District. The delegation numbered over one hundred fifty people, men and women alike, all wearing homespun shirts, cropped pants, and straw sandals.

As the earliest native tribes to submit to the Crossing Faction, the people of the Xingang and Damujiang societies had already traveled far down the road of civilization and assimilation, becoming a test template for the Transmigrators' transformation of the natives: the New Dependents.

Twenty-four years earlier, the Confucian scholar Chen Di, stranded in Taiwan for a year by a typhoon, returned to his old home in Fujian and wrote the first-ever written record detailing the lives of the Tainan Plain natives: the Eastern Savages Record.

"Winter and summer they wear no clothes; the women knot grass skirts, barely covering their lower bodies." This line needs no explanation — everyone understands it.

"The kind people of Zhang and Quan... occasionally leave behind old garments, which the savages joyfully hoard; they may wear them once when meeting a Chinese, then promptly remove them; cloth they acquire is also hoarded." What does this mean? Old clothes left behind by Fujian merchants were joyfully collected by the natives, worn only once when meeting someone, and cloth obtained through trade was also stored away.

... You see, the natives had the concept of shame as well — it was just that their impoverished lives limited their efforts to cover up their balls.

Ever since surrendering to the new yellow-skinned power at Dayuan, the New Dependents of Xingang Society and Damujiang Society had encountered a mode of rule completely different from that of the Dutch.

First, there was policy support: compared to other tribes, they could exchange the same deerskin for more goods, especially ready-made clothing — the moon-white ready-made clothes of the Moyun Guan Brand. On this foundation, the New Dependents then experienced another fierce and forceful policy: "distribution."

Distribute what? Straw sandals, cropped pants, bath tickets, haircut tickets...

In short, anything that could change the image of a savage — goods and services alike — was distributed in two rounds. Amidst bewilderment and happiness, the comrades got their first taste of the superiority of the great socialist family.

Next, it was time to experience the family's cruelty. Did they think the masters' things were so easy to take? — Anyone who continued to expose their balls and dick would be admonished the first time; the second time, they'd be tied up and thrown to the Overseer in the Wood Cutting area. After three months, we'd see if you still liked flashing your bird!

Before long, under this carrot-and-stick, half-administrative, half-encouraging push, the people in the New Dependent villages, caught between joy and helplessness, were forced to accept everything imposed upon them: they learned to dress daily before going out, learned to bathe in the Kiln District Bathhouse, and learned to get haircuts.

Most importantly, they learned to sell their labor in exchange for the things they wanted.

When the New Dependents were first conscripted away to the Kiln District Construction Site, they were very unwilling. But there was no helping it — since the tribe had already declared its submission, this was a price that had to be paid, just as it had been when the Dutch conscripted labor.

Things quickly became a big deal: because every seven days, those who went to work at the Construction Site, besides eating and drinking their fill, could also carry some sundry goods home for their families after work.

Salt packed in thin bamboo tubes, a few pairs of straw sandals, a set of pretty indigo clothes, an even prettier large bowl with red-glazed floral patterns...

Many Warriors, seeing this with envy, subsequently joined the Construction Site labor teams as well — after all, ever since the day the Kiln Area Base began belching thick black smoke, the powerful tribes on the north bank of Xingang Creek had never again come head-hunting — the New Dependents suddenly discovered that the greatest safety issue that had plagued the tribe for a thousand years had vanished without them noticing.

This was the true Great Killer: native villages still in a primitive commune stage, just like the feudal kingdoms once crushed by the industrial goods from cargo ships, were being destroyed at their very roots.

The natives' matrilineal inheritance system was completely incapable of handling this sudden influx of large resources; before long, conflicts began to surface in villages where the gap between rich and poor rapidly widened.