Chapter 235: Long-Range Exploration Team
Seeing the flourishing scene of grand industrial construction everywhere, the members of the Executive Committee felt quite gratified; things were finally on the right track. A few days ago, the first Lancashire boiler was also fired up experimentally, running in good condition—except for slightly leaking some air; Zhou Bili's craftsmanship was evidently not as good as he had bragged. They were just waiting for it to run in coordination with the Mozi Type I steam engine.
Regrettably, coal stocks were also running low. Getting coal from Vietnam was like getting iron from Guangdong: the cycle was too long. It seemed they needed to open up the Vietnam coal channel as soon as possible. Lingao itself produced no coal. In the other timeline, the nearest place producing coal was Haikou—that is, the local Qiongshan County, the seat of the prefecture.
The Long-Range Exploration Team's several surveys had not penetrated deep into Qiongshan County, so the specific situation was unknown. From the merchants who came to trade, they hadn't heard any news of coal in Qiongshan County either—probably because the scale was too small and there was no local demand, so it hadn't been developed.
Walking into the next workshop, they saw indigenous workers carefully installing sections of ceramic pipes under the direction of transmigrators from the Machinery Plant. The pipes were fixed to the roof and walls by hangers rolled from wrought iron. Ma Qianzhu asked and learned that these were pipes for collecting and transporting waste heat. The waste heat generated in the glass workshop and other places, besides being recycled for use in its own workshop, could also supply the needs of other workshops—adopting a unified piping system to achieve centralized collection and practical use of waste heat.
As for the wastewater produced by industry, the transmigrators currently had no good way to treat it. They simply adopted the method of direct discharge. Because the Wenlan River was the main water source for the Transmigration Group and there was also the Bopu base at the river mouth, they naturally couldn't pollute themselves. In the end, they decided to spend great effort to dig a hidden drainage canal along the road to discharge industrial sewage into the outer sea of Lingao Cape—as for what ecological problems might arise, the transmigrators couldn't worry about that for now.
"It's not that there's no way to treat sewage, but equipment conditions are limited right now," Tian Jiujiu introduced. "After we have the equipment, we'll build a simple sewage treatment plant in Bopu to conduct centralized treatment of industrial sewage."
"This... we don't have chemical agents, ion membranes, or the like. Can we treat industrial sewage?" Ma Qianzhu asked.
Tian Jiujiu said, "We can; it's just a matter of how good the treatment effect is. Anyway, we are the only family in the world with large-scale industrial pollution in this timeline. It doesn't matter if we pollute a little."
Ma Qianzhu said, "It seems we are still continuing down the old road of polluting first and treating later."
The industrial crowd laughed off Ma Dugong's lament. To these madmen, the more chimneys in this timeline, the more beautiful it was; who cared about pollution?
After a round of inspection, they returned to the office and held a small meeting. The bureaucratic machine of the Executive Committee began to turn again.
Before the sky was bright, a strange-looking small detachment emerged silently from the morning mist. All of them wore camouflage, mosquito net hats, and carried field backpacks, advancing cautiously at specific intervals. From time to time, someone would pick up or chip off a piece of rock from the ground to collect, or take out some odd-shaped instruments from their backpacks to measure something. They were the Long-Range Exploration Squad under the Resource Department.
Back in the preparatory meetings before the crossing, some individuals with strategic vision had already proposed: a small county seat would be difficult to satisfy the needs of future development, so detailed resource reconnaissance must be conducted on other areas of Hainan, especially the core areas, to lay a good intelligence foundation for construction after unifying Hainan in the future. Thus, a secret Long-Range Exploration Squad was established not long after the landing.
In terms of personnel composition, it was established based on the following principles: composed of young people with field work experience. Therefore, transmigrators specializing in forestry, geology, and surveying naturally became the main force, along with several individuals proficient in wilderness survival. Since veterans were the main force of the military department, this exploration team was not equipped with them—security during operations would be assisted by special reconnaissance personnel drawn from the military department—in actual operation, many long-range reconnaissance actions were conducted jointly by both sides.
The squad was organized with 6-7 people. In terms of equipment, they mainly had three shotguns/five-round hunting rifles—these things were much easier to use than precision rifles in the deep grass and dense forest environment of Hainan—each person had a pistol: a Glock 17 or S&W revolver, three walkie-talkies, 1:50,000 contour maps, compasses, portable summer tents, mosquito hats, insect repellent, compressed biscuits, water purification tablets, and other wilderness survival items. Someone had even dizzyingly brought a GPS unit—naturally, it was useless.
The exploration reconnaissance team utilized the characteristic that Hainan was sparsely populated in the Ming Dynasty to travel through jungles and wilderness as much as possible, avoiding contact with natives. They executed the collection of various natural resource information and also incidentally collected various military and civil administration intelligence; thus, they were also under the dual leadership of the Intelligence Committee. Except for a few core personnel, no one knew of their departure and return each time—the Transmigration Group did not wish for the locals outside Lingao to know that a group of "Kun" was quietly active among them.
The Resource Department to which they belonged was the most mysterious place in Bairren City—just as most transmigrators didn't know where the Great Library under the Resource Department was located, the Exploration Team Headquarters was a small courtyard without signs, possessing an independent equipment depot and radio station, with a wired telephone line direct to the Executive Committee. Besides this office, the Exploration Team Headquarters also possessed independent forward bases several kilometers outside Bairren City and at Bopu Bay. To avoid attracting attention, the exploration squad set out from these bases every time they mobilized. Ordinary transmigrators had almost no chance to see their appearance upon departure and return. The members of the Long-Range Exploration Squad also had one point of greatest pride—they enjoyed the same unlimited right of self-defense as the intelligence department and special reconnaissance squad, tantamount to a "license to kill." Not only did they have the right to self-defense when under attack, but in any situation they felt "necessary," they had the right to kill local natives without needing to offer any explanation.
Liu Zheng walked in the middle of the formation. After walking for about half an hour, he looked back; the forest was no longer visible, and he felt slightly more at ease. There hadn't been any particularly dangerous sections on this trip. Although they suffered the harassment of various insects along the way, the journey was considered smooth. Feeling he should do something, he picked up the walkie-talkie and said softly: "Point man, maintain speed, don't be too fast, pay attention to searching, over."
"Roger," the walkie-talkie responded.
Liu Zheng holstered the walkie-talkie and stretched his body under the large backpack. Half of this exploration route was already completed: the investigation results of the Danzhou oil shale mine were not very satisfactory. The oil shale was covered by about 7-8 meters of soil and rock; without machinery, it would probably be very difficult to mine. However, he had no interest in this: after being out for a week, he could finally go home. Thinking of his wife, Liu Shuixin, his lower body couldn't help but stir. Leaving his wife alone in the residential area really made him uneasy—thinking of those lecherous otaku men in the neighboring residential groups who wandered outside Group 6 every day, and some even sang with broken-gong voices. It made sense; they ate a healthy diet high in protein and low in fat all day long and performed high-intensity labor for over 10 hours a day—it would be strange if their libido wasn't vigorous. Thinking about it, his own life could be considered too happy; not to mention anything else, someone washed his clothes when he went home, unlike the bachelors whose dirty clothes piled up until they stank before being washed together. No wonder this group of bachelors clamored every day for the distribution of life secretaries—both physiological and life needs were very demanding.
It seemed he wouldn't have this fortune; having a wife by one's side had its gains and losses—the few with wives and girlfriends collectively went silent whenever everyone talked nonsense and boasted about life secretaries.
The destination of this long-range detachment was Danzhou, and the focus of exploration was Danzhou's oil shale mines. Zhong Lishi provided a full set of data accumulated from designing oil shale projects in the other timeline—their mission was to find and verify these mineral deposits.
After the New Year, the entire squad hadn't participated in physical labor, just resting quietly in the camp to build up strength. As a senior explorer with relatively rich field experience plus a useless degree, Liu Zheng was selected as the captain.
"Captain, hold on a moment, I want to collect a specimen." The voice of Bai Guoshi, a master's student from the Forestry University, came through the walkie-talkie.
Liu Zheng hurriedly called: "All units attention! Stop advancing!"
"What's the fuss? Stop, stop, stop all day long, do you guys have any planning!" Ye Mengyan's complaint came from the walkie-talkie—he was sent from the Special Reconnaissance Team to support this operation.
"What do you know? We aren't doing military reconnaissance; we're doing biological and mineral surveys. Of course we look as we go." Bai Guoshi had collected quite a few plant specimens along the way—his biology had now reached the level of "practical biology" that university professors once severely criticized: "Seeing a plant or an animal, the first thought is what use it has, can it be eaten, does it have economic value!"
"Don't quarrel, keep quiet!" Liu Zheng hurriedly called out.
Bai Guoshi put down his backpack and walked carefully into a patch of woods; Huang Zhuazi, who was with him, followed behind.
"Found something?"
"Hehe, good stuff."
"What good stuff?" Huang Zhuazi only saw him carefully digging up a small shrub. He was also considered someone with rich outdoor experience, but he couldn't tell what it was.
"This is called Yi Zhi," Bai Guoshi explained. "It's an important Traditional Chinese Medicine."
"An herb," Huang Zhuazi was somewhat disappointed. This thing looked like it was everywhere in the forest, not rare at all.
"Don't look down on it. If we want to live comfortably here, it will be very useful," Bai Guoshi said. Yi Zhi (Sharpleaf Galangal fruit) was a necessary drug for formulating summer patent medicines, such as Rendan, Qianjin Ding, Qingxin Dan, and the like. Historically, it was one of the main tributes from Hainan Island.
(End of Chapter)