Chapter 1269: A Bold Idea

Baifeng did not know that Changle had brought him such a big surprise; for now, he was still busy with other matters.

The Leaders who had come over from the Suiren Clan had already stayed in Huaxia for several days. After these few days of touring, they truly felt the goodness of Huaxia; even the hardliners were moved, no longer resistant to joining Huaxia, and even harbored a faint sense of anticipation in their hearts.

Baifeng also listed out everything that Huaxia officials needed to do within the Suiren Clan, and arranged for the Artisans and officials prepared to be sent over, ready to have them depart immediately.

The Artisans were mainly smelting Workers; they knew how to build blast furnaces and could forge blast furnaces for smelting Bronze in the Suiren Clan to accelerate their smelting speed.

However, they were still using wood for now. Under the action of bellows, there was sufficient oxygen, and it was possible to reach the temperature for smelting Bronze, but to use a blast furnace to smelt Iron, it was best to find coal—high-quality coal.

Baifeng knew that on the territory of the Suiren Clan, high-quality coal was far more abundant than in Huaxia. In many places, there was no need to dig; it was already on Coal Mountain, and they only needed to search a bit more, and they would eventually find it.

Although time was a bit tight, it was not as if it had to be settled immediately.

If it were eventually discovered that the origin of the Bronze ore and the origin of the coal were too far apart, then it would be better to smelt it on the spot. After all, just transporting the coal from far away and then smelting it would be a bit too costly.

Huaxia was lucky; the Coal Mine and Iron ore were together. Baifeng's theory was too poor, and he did not know if this belonged to a symbiotic deposit or an associated deposit, but anyway, as long as it could be used, that was fine.

Moreover, coal-iron symbiosis was not a rare thing; many golden dots on coal were thought to be gold, but they were actually a type of pyrite, ferrous sulfide.

According to the national products Baifeng had seen on maps back in the day, the territory of the Suiren Clan was extremely rich in various mineral resources, but Baifeng was not a professional in this field, nor could he personally dive into the mountains and forests to search for various different minerals, piece of land by piece of land.

There was no need.

The bit of Iron ore he had in his hands right now was enough for him to build a powerful country for this era. As for their annual mining and smelting volume, he did not know how many years it would take to finish mining and using it all.

By the time the current Huaxia could reach the point of mining a small deposit, it would long since have the ability to find more and better mines elsewhere.

The Suiren Clan's mines had also been mined for many years, so the routes and processes were already very mature. A large amount of ore had already been mined and stored; if it were not smelted and transported over, it would really be a bit of a loss. If it were left to other tribes in the future, it would be an even greater loss.

There was nothing else too important to arrange for the Suiren Clan; for now, they should just continue to develop and live as usual. If the Suiren Clan had difficulties, they could submit a request to Huaxia at any time.

Another thing was to have them expand the roads of the Suiren Clan further. Although it was difficult for Huaxia to stably control the entire territory of the Suiren Clan under the pressure of huge struggles, he still wanted to do his best to expand his eastern territory a bit more; after all, it was territory that had already been delivered to his doorstep.

He was even planning to build a real military fortress in front of Huaxia City to resist the future aggression of the Xuanyuan Tribe and the Jiuli. Placing such an important city as Huaxia at the very front was truly irrational.

That city did not need to possess other capabilities, but the city walls had to be wide and high, and the Weapons had to be the best, to block the enemy's attack and hold the invaders at the front.

This was on the land level. The Xuanyuan Tribe and Huaxia currently communicated basically by water, but Baifeng felt that if the Xuanyuan Tribe were wise enough, they should not choose to attack Huaxia by water. After all, the Xuanyuan Tribe definitely had no way to compare with Huaxia's current naval warfare capabilities.

But Baifeng could not be so careless. He wanted to build a city toward the eastern land, and he also wanted to build a city toward the downstream Xuanyuan Tribe. However, the city on the riverbank should have its city walls built along the direction of the Dahe, so that ultimate defense could be achieved.

But these were all just Baifeng's plans. Right now, Huaxia's stride could not be too large; if it were too large, it would be easy to pull a muscle.

Development toward the west was definitely the top priority. This had been planned for many years, and it was impossible to just give it up because of the current changes in the situation.

However, what made Baifeng have such thoughts was also because of the situation. Previously, Huaxia did not have that many people, so all the people of Huaxia had to be gathered around Huaxia City. Now, a tribe with a population completely larger than Huaxia, and a tribe where adult labor force made up the main part, was about to join Huaxia, so the trouble regarding population had completely disappeared.

What Baifeng needed to worry about was not that there was no one to develop Huaxia's territory, but how to settle so many people.

On the Shennong Clan Battlefield, a considerable number of Slaves were sent every year; there were thousands this year, and there might be tens of thousands next year. These were all labor forces, all population.

If the city were built according to this new idea of Baifeng's, there would be even more benefits, which was that it would be closer to Huaxia City, and communication would also be very convenient.

Although it was not like Lema City, where one could make two round trips in a day, the journey could also be compressed to within a few days.

Baifeng thought to himself about this bold idea he had suddenly come up with. The more he thought about it, the more feasible he felt it was, and he even had the urge to start planning it right now.

So he impatiently opened the map and began to plan on it. The maps of these places around Huaxia City were different from those in the west; the maps here were more accurate and more perfect. Within the borders of the entire Huaxia territory, it could be said that they were drawn very meticulously.

Baifeng looked at the map. If he were to build it, the eastern city could be as far east as possible, preferably being able to directly occupy the territory of the Suiren Clan. Even if it were just on the border between Huaxia and the Suiren Clan's territory, the territory it could extend its control over would be much larger.

As for the territory downstream, it was still best to keep as far away from the river channel as possible and maintain a certain distance. Even if it was still the upper reaches of the Dahe and there were few floods or levee breaches, once one occurred, it would be an extremely major hazard. The location of Huaxia City was very dangerous; he had not thought back then that it could be built so large.