Chapter 201: Fair Trade

Early the next morning, Lei Jian's team set out with several Ming guides to survey the surrounding mineral deposits. Meanwhile, Pan Mingzhong's side had already begun trading early on: a delegation from several native societies had started their journey in the latter half of the night.

Any village society under the Ketagalan Tribe with trade needs would come to the cluster to trade within these two days. So Pan Mingzhong dared not be careless; after assigning security and trade personnel, he carried his AK and began patrolling the entire grounds.

By noon, more and more natives were arriving to trade. When Pan Mingzhong saw wave after wave of major clients carrying bamboo baskets on their backs surging in, he ordered his men to bring out their signature product: glass balls.

The Transmigrators' glass balls were nothing like the junk the Dutch used to buy Manhattan.

The Transmigrators' glass balls: perfectly round in shape, smooth on the surface, clear inside, with high light transmittance, each one the size of a walnut. They were meticulously ground and polished from offcuts at the Kiln District glass factory, and some were even drilled and strung with cord using high-speed drill presses — rare, high-value-added glass ball treasures.

The natives certainly knew a good thing when they saw it.

Natives who had already traded the sulfur in their baskets and were preparing to go home now crowded around the glass ball display stand. When a fat native chieftain was dazzled by the sunlight reflecting off a large necklace of glass balls, he hung it around his neck like Sha Wujing, then from the bamboo tube on his back, he poured out an object with a clatter and handed it to Pan Mingzhong.

A gold nugget the size of a cigarette pack.

Pan Mingzhong was an honest man. After swiftly stuffing the gold nugget into his trouser pocket, he expressionlessly grabbed a few more glass balls from the large glass bowl in front of him and gave them to the chieftain as a bonus: he couldn't let comrades from the countryside take a loss! The Crossing Faction was high-class; they wouldn't take advantage over such a small thing.

The base exchange rate was set at that moment.

Later that evening, a certain someone who had been secretly laughing his head off in the stern cabin for ten minutes played with the gold nugget and gold sand before him while using the radio to give Lei Jian, ten li away, a thorough report on his achievements.

"The place you're at is called Jinshan District; in the Qing Dynasty it was called Jinbaoli. Why that name? Isn't it because Sulfon Stream has placer gold?" While Lei Jian used the most understated tone he could muster to show he didn't care, he simultaneously urged his team to dig sand faster — he also wanted to go back and see a real gold nugget. A geology student has a fixation on this stuff!

Liao Tianding had originally thought the people on the ship would bring out fine large iron woks to trade for gold; who knew they'd seal the deal with glass balls...

So Comrade Liao Tianding, the local comprador, was equally stunned at this moment. One had to understand, the natives here had been tempered by centuries of foreign trade; they knew very well what goods were valuable, and outsiders usually found it very difficult to trade for their gleaming placer gold.

Yet the Transmigrators had done it.

Not only had they done it, but afterward, the people on the ship also brought out several beautiful "big pictures" for everyone to see. At the same time, they also asked Liao Tianding to tell the natives that the items in the pictures could all be brought for trade in the future.

What the several large photographs displayed were pyrite, alunite, and volcanic ash.

Pyrite and alunite both have clearly documented production records in the Datun Volcano Group. Additionally, volcanic ash is a high-grade fine aggregate for cement. Volcanic ash, which has undergone nature's magmatic calcination and eruptive grinding, can be added to cement at up to 40%, forming silicate volcanic ash cement.

This type of cement is naturally suited for concrete projects in water and humid environments, making it the most needed construction material for a certain faction currently entrenched in the coastal warm-humid zone.

As the trade fair neared its close in the afternoon, the guests from afar put on an impromptu performance for the hosts.

A crewman standing two hundred meters away fired his rifle. Accompanied by white thick smoke, flame, and the crack of gunfire, bamboo tubes, wooden blocks, and loose stones on the stone platform at the center of the trade fair were shattered.

The natives sitting in the bamboo shed to the side were able to witness the power of firearms this time without paying a price in blood.

After the performance ended, watching the natives depart while engaged in heated discussion, Pan Mingzhong stood at the bow and let out a long sigh: he hoped these people would know their place in the future. He knew that once war broke out, it wouldn't be simple suppression. Knowing the Transmigrators' temperament, rooting them out completely was a given, followed by forced relocation — the Madou Society in Tainan was a ready example.

The Yuan Dou stayed in the river bend at the mouth of Sulfon Stream for three days. Because some of the "high-value-added" goods were relatively plentiful, exceeding the expectations of the nearby natives, quite a lot of goods remained with the representative staying at the Ming village when the Yuan Dou set sail for the return voyage.

These goods would gradually be traded for sulfur from the natives and then transported back to Dayuan by the next batch of ships.

Lei Jian's side had also completed their mission. The high-grade iron sand production areas near Sulfon Stream had now all been marked on his map; additionally, just like at the Xiuguluan River, the terrain around Sulfon Stream had been photographed by him. Once submitted to the Great Office, someone would naturally study how to establish a base there.

Three days later, before heading back, the Yuan Dou also made a trip to the Spanish fort and gave a simple notification about the situation at the Ming village. The subtext was: don't come around here much in the future if you have nothing to do.

... Rounding Cape Fugui at the top-left corner of Taiwan, the Yuan Dou began its southward return voyage.

When reaching the mouth of the Tamsui River, a certain ship deliberately slowed its speed and used a telescope to observe the fort the Spanish were building.

Since heading south meant sailing with the wind, the Yuan Dou was very fast and reached the mouth of Houlong Creek the next day.

Originating from the Jiali Mountain Range in Miaoli, Houlong River is Miaoli's largest river, with an average width exceeding sixty meters. In the present 17th century, Houlong River was the only path into the Miaosu Mountain Area. The Transmigrators' original purpose in choosing to root themselves in Taiwan was for the Miaoli Oil Field along the banks of Houlong River.

The Yuan Dou, eager to return, only conducted a brief survey at the mouth of Houlong Creek this time before turning around and leaving — prospecting for oil was different from prospecting for iron sand; the Yuan Dou needed to rest and refit before coming back.

Since the exploration team was about to return, the dried timber stored in the hold was no longer needed. On the final leg of the voyage, the Yuan Dou's coal gasifier furnace began operating at full load, sending the sand ship back to Dayuan at top speed.

Entering the Dayuan Channel after half a month away, and seeing the Seabed Scoop passing by still slowly dredging the sandbar as before, Pan Mingzhong and Lei Jian felt a bit stirred at this moment.

The gentlemen of the Great Office, upon learning that the survey ship had returned home, naturally dared not be negligent and convened a meeting that very day, swiftly arranging the results brought back by the exploration team.

After receiving the data, a preparatory group jointly formed by the mining and military sectors was to begin work immediately. The planned occupation of the Spanish fort in Taipei and the development and regulation of the Sulfon Stream watershed needed to be formed into contingency plans for use during development. As for the iron sand at the Xiuguluan River, that would have to wait for now: Taipei, which could yield both sulfur and iron, clearly had a higher development priority.

Of course, these tasks could not be implemented until after August at the earliest.

First, the upcoming summer, the period from June to August, was the time of year with the highest rainfall and concentrated typhoon activity in Tainan. Therefore, all the mines, factories, and residential areas under the Crossing Faction's jurisdiction had recently been undergoing disaster preparedness work like flood control, drainage reinforcement, and bundling. The entire faction was in a state of contraction, with no spare resources to go stir up trouble in Taipei.

Second, it was already mid-June. According to intelligence sent back from Fuzhou, Zheng Zhilong was currently on his way to pay respects to Xiong Wencan. It was foreseeable that a series of naval and land battles awaited the Crossing Army. Thus, this was currently the number-one event drawing the attention of most Transmigrators; everything else had to take a back seat.

At the end of the meeting, after Xia Xianze perfunctorily praised Pan Mingzhong with a couple of sentences, the topic quickly shifted: "When are you going to Miaoli?"

Pan Mingzhong swept a glance across the meeting hall at the various department heads blinking their big eyes at him and couldn't help swallowing a mouthful of saliva. "Seven... seven days of rest and refit, then we set out!"

"The African people are still eating grass, and here you are huffing and puffing. Five!"

"Fine, five..."

The hapless Pan Mingzhong and Lei Jian now had no choice but to compress their rest and refit time. They had originally planned to spend a couple more days wrapped up with their own sweethearts. Sigh, never mind capitalists — Transmigrators showed no mercy when squeezing their own subordinates either.

The sunlight was dazzling, the sky azure blue, sparse clouds drifted overhead, accompanied by gusts of refreshing sea wind — it was just another perfectly pleasant day on Dayuan Island.

The beach at the northwest corner of Dayuan Island, on the side facing the strait, was bustling with noise.

This stretch of beach held commemorative significance: it was from here that the Transmigrators on the Dog Eye had charged down onto the beach, fearlessly leading the charge at the front, and led the crewmen to seize the Dutch Shang Hall, beginning their great journey.

Now, this beach had been turned into a training ground.

Originally, the training ground was near the Shang Hall, but later some big shots complained about the noise, so the recruits were driven here. Although somewhat remote, the training ground's facilities were still quite complete; the beach was equipped with various obstacles and apparatus used for training in later eras.

What was being held at the training ground today was the 400-meter obstacle assessment, and the participants being assessed were the soldiers of the Army First Battalion First Company.

As the first batch of soldiers recruited by the Crossing Faction, these men of the First Company could be considered true-blue Imperial Household personal troops — although the Transmigrators had not yet raised the banner of the Empire, this was already a technical issue that would soon be resolved.

The one hundred soldiers sweating it out on the drill ground also held another identity: cadets.

These fellows were very fortunate; they were being trained as military academy students. As the ranks expanded in the future, these men would be the natural grassroots officers. Moreover, their graduation requirements were very lenient: they only needed to learn language and mathematics and be able to proficiently calculate battlefield data to graduate smoothly and receive their officer's certificate.

After a sharp "Tweet—" of a whistle, another row of soldiers began taking great strides, sprinting wildly along the track composed of eight sets of obstacles: hurdle posts, a moat, a low wall, a high-platform springboard, a scaling ladder, a single-log bridge, a high wall, and a low-barbed-wire net.