Chapter 634: The Arrow

The island later generations would call Balabac Island, Zhenghe Island, is long and narrow in terrain. It lies slantwise across the Nanhai like a carrying pole, stretching 600 kilometers east to west, yet only 40 kilometers across at its widest point north to south.

The left and right ends of this carrying pole that is Zhenghe Island connect to what later generations would know as the Philippines and Brunei.

One key reason Great Yan chose to plant its Banner on Zhenghe Island this time is the rich nickel-chromium ore zone in the island's south.

In later generations, the mines on Zhenghe Island shipped nickel-iron ore of high, medium, and low grades, plus abundant chromium-iron ore, with the majority of the product exported to China.

The shipment volume from this place accounted for 16% of the Philippines' annual nickel ore shipments, making it one of the country's three major nickel mining zones.

——————————————————————————————

In the south of Zhenghe Island, in an unnamed bay at its tail end, the pioneer fleet lay quietly at anchor.

On the deck of the Yuan Dou, the ship closest to the shore, a group of people took turns observing the tropical-plant-covered coast through a telescope on a tripod.

Commander Wang Bo of the Pioneer Army, in charge of this landing, finished his look through the telescope, then bent over a table and began flipping through maps.

There were quite a few types of maps. Not only high-precision digital color maps at various scales brought from later generations, but also real-time seventeenth-century terrain maps produced by drone remote sensing when the Yuan Dou had previously come to explore.

Yet after studying them for a while, Wang Bo, who had been frowning all along, still made an extra request: "The difference from our time is still quite significant. Let's do this — first take us around to have a look, see the situation."

Pan Mingzhong, the Captain of the Exploration Team standing to the side, shrugged indifferently upon hearing this: "Whatever you say. If you, Commander Wang, want to go around, then we go around."

The Yuan Dou's Temporary Captain and Exploration Team Captain, Pan Mingzhong, was the early first-generation Exploration Team Captain of the Transmigrators. In fact, two years ago, Old Pan had already "taken off his armor and returned to the fields," taking an office job as Cabinet Minister of Environment, occupying a high position.

This time, had the mission not been important and required an experienced old hand to oversee it, he would not have temporarily come out of retirement to travel to the distant Nanhai and take up his old trade again.

Wang Bo's request was perfectly reasonable, but a trace of irritation could still be heard in Pan Mingzhong's tone just now.

The reason is a long story.

When the Yuan Dou previously came to survey the south of Zhenghe Island, it had actually already selected the most suitable location for a landing point — right in this very unnamed bay where the fleet now lay anchored.

From a safety perspective, the headlands on both sides extending deep into the coast could superbly block ocean storms, making it a naturally excellent harbor.

From a production perspective, one of the several large nickel-chromium mines on the island in later generations lay inland not far from the bay — and this didn't even count some mineral deposits not found in the data, which might be nearby.

Furthermore, inland not far from the bay, there were also several valleys beneath mountain ridges.

These several valleys all met the Agriculture Department's requirements: the initial rubber tree saplings, the Agriculture Department hoped, could be placed in areas sheltered from wind and rain.

Combining the above conditions, the Yuan Dou, which had come to survey in advance, had at that time confirmed the unnamed bay as the optimal location for establishing a bridgehead. After rendezvousing with the fleet later, the Yuan Dou had led the fleet to this place at the first moment.

Unfortunately, after Commander Wang arrived at the site today and made a round of observations, he ultimately still intended to "go around and have a look."

This "going around" was tantamount to implicitly casting a vote of no confidence in the landing point Pan Mingzhong had selected, an act that was bound to make Old Pan a bit irritated.

But Wang Bo was the person responsible for the landing, and the ones landing in the future would be the soldiers under his command; the final decision on the landing point still rested in Wang Bo's hands.

Moreover, even in a public setting, there was nothing at all wrong with Wang Bo's request: when first arriving at a place, taking a bit more of a look around is never a mistake.

So although Old Pan had some private grumblings, he still immediately ordered the Yuan Dou's Boiler to raise pressure, turn around, and head out to sea.

The fleet's current position was in the south of Zhenghe Island. The so-called "go around and have a look" naturally did not mean circling the entire island, but taking the shortest route, sailing along the southernmost tip of the main island, rounding the island's tail to look at the other side.

This one look took up three days.

Not until the evening of the third day did the Yuan Dou leisurely return to the bay it had departed from.

There was no helping this. Counting all the scattered reefs, the number of large and small islands around Zhenghe Island exceeded several thousand. If not for the steam power and advanced Electronic Instruments aboard the Yuan Dou, ordinary ships running wild around seventeenth-century Zhenghe Island would be certain to suffer shipwreck.

After the Yuan Dou returned from its voyage, the main force, which had been waiting quietly, finally lit their fires en masse and departed this tranquil, beautiful unnamed bay.

The landing point ultimately chosen by Wang Bo was actually not far from the unnamed bay, just 10 kilometers further south.

This place was also a bay, its location already near the island's tip.

Now that the location was confirmed, this bay received a new name that had been prearranged: Red Stone Bay.

The name Red Stone Bay was established to commemorate the fifth Transmigrator who had recently "died in the line of duty."

Speaking of which, in the seven years since the Crossing Over, in the dangerous, primitive seventeenth century, lacking medicine and doctors, the total number of Transmigrators who had died from various accidents and illnesses to date was only five people — this could be considered a minor miracle.

This point indirectly confirmed one truth: once a loser becomes a man above others, he instantly begins to cherish his life and fear death.

The recently deceased Transmigrator was named Zhang Hongshi. The cause of this gentleman's death in the line of duty was, during an internal drinking party two months prior, laughing uproariously and then suddenly suffering a myocardial infarction; rescue was too late, and thus he became the fifth unlucky soul.

In view of this, when the Yuan Dou set out, it had already received instructions from above: the bay where the landing point was located would be pre-named Red Stone Bay.

Compared to the previous unnamed bay, the freshly minted Red Stone Bay had only average wind-protection conditions. Moreover, its location was not ideal, being slightly too far from the mountain range at the island's center.

Generally speaking, mineral deposits are usually near mountain ranges. With the landing point a bit farther from the mountains, it might cost more in the future to build roads and other infrastructure. It would also face greater resource investment in terms of security.

Building roads on a tropical island in this era, even just a mine road, would require filling them with human lives. For every extra meter of road built, it might well cost one more human life.

In short, judging by the data at hand, whether from later generations or real-time data, Red Stone Bay's conditions were not as good as the previous unnamed harbor.

Yet there is a saying that hits the nail on the head: a single paleness conceals a hundred uglinesses.

Red Stone Bay might have a hundred flaws, but in Wang Bo's eyes, it possessed one unique feature that outweighed all other conditions: a mesa.

Yes, right by the shore of Red Stone Bay, there was a natural mesa rising six or seven meters above the ground.

This mesa was an irregular quadrilateral, its top surface covering about one mu or more. The pure natural mesa was covered in tropical forest. From some exposed rock piles, one could tell that the mesa was roughly stony, perhaps a Remaining Vein of some mountain system.

The natural camouflage of vegetation did not escape Wang Bo's eyes. When he passed by at sea the day before, he had spotted this mesa at a glance.

In Wang Bo's eyes, this was the most ideal bridgehead foundation imaginable. As soon as the vegetation atop the stratum was stripped away, walls could be raised and a stronghold built. At that point, a fortress with a natural 5+ meter foundation would have its defensive capability bursting through the charts.

Additionally, the mesa was right next to the sea. With this condition, when building a port in the future, wall-paths could be constructed along the outer perimeter, bringing the core structures within the range of the fortress's Cannon fire at minimal cost.

As for those other conditions — in Wang Bo's view, safety was always paramount at any time. Facing such a savage wilderness, only after first securing a firm foothold could one speak of anything else.

In the end, Wang Bo made the final call and selected the Red Stone Bay Mesa as the first stop for the landing.

As previously stated, since they themselves did not hold the final decision-making power, the other Transmigrators had no objections to Commander Wang's choice. Even if they did, no one showed it openly.

Next, it was time for Wu Sanye to make his entrance.

After a day of rest and preparation, on the morning of November 15, 164, as dawn was about to break, the fleet lowered several boats into the waters off Red Stone Bay.

Wu Meng, the newly promoted Squadron Leader of the Pioneer Army, was fully armed as usual this time. He personally boarded a boat and led his brothers to be the first to storm the beach and charge onto the shores of Zhenghe Island.

What Wu Sanye did not know was that he had inadvertently made history again — previously, on the Hongji Coast of Vietnam, the first step out of the nation's borders had also been his.

It was different from the coast of Vietnam. Starting right from the sandy beach at the shore of Zhenghe Island, all sorts of moss and algae plants grew. Just twenty or thirty meters inland from the coast, the explorers encountered dense tropical forest.

Trees and vines of every unclear name savagely filled every inch of space, brutish and abrupt, leaving outsiders with not even a place to set foot.

After a preliminary scouting ashore, Wu Sanye was secretly stunned by this tropical environment.

Drawing on his many years of "wilderness survival" experience, he quickly gave the order: establish a position on the beachhead and urgently dispatch construction personnel to begin "clearing the field of fire."

For the side that holds the advantage in long-range firepower, the field of fire is the most critical thing. The moment Third Lord came ashore, he keenly recognized that the tropical forest was the gravest immediate threat.

And so, the ships shuttling constantly across the open sea quickly adjusted their cargo and brought over engineering personnel wearing rattan helmets and carrying axes and saws.

These men were all long-term laborers for Cao Zong, and among them were no small number of criminals undergoing re-education through labor. Knowing their lives were worthless in a place like this, and further spurred by the promise of "labor for reduced sentences," every one of them was fierce and fearless. After coming ashore, they charged straight for the nearest woods to cut timber, and with the spirit of ants gnawing at an elephant, they began destroying the ecosystem bit by bit.

At the same time, the personnel garrisoned on the beach received standard squared lumber. These were all pre-cut short lengths of wood that could be assembled by two men.

Using this wood, along with Budai sacks filled with sand on the spot, the Pioneer Army Soldiers who had received prior training could quickly build several hexagonal defensive works on the beach.

Given time, these works could even be linked together to become tactical strongpoints.

This militarized landing procedure, which seemed to treat the situation as if facing a formidable enemy, was seen by certain Transmigrators in the fleet as pure overkill, utterly pointless.

However, that very afternoon, reality slapped the optimists hard across the face: a blood-curdling scream rang out, and a group of construction personnel burst panicked from the Dense Forest.

When Third Lord rushed into the forest with Manpower, he found a construction worker's Corpse — a short wooden arrow shaft was lodged in the man's forehead, driven straight into his skull.