The salt from the Shining Plains is transported to the Desolate Land by sea.
It is difficult to travel by land. The terrain along the way is very changeable, and there are many ancient races' territories to pass through. A large caravan can't complete the journey in a year, and it is possible to die on the way.
Therefore, all the salt must be boarded in Ratchet City, and then take the sea route from the north of Kalimdor, bypassing an entire continent and reaching the west coast of the continent, in order to deliver the salt to the Desolate Land—the hands of the centaurs and tauren.
.
Now Hot Sand has hinted that you always have to give the other party some face, and the road to Ratchet City is destined to be dead.
So is it possible to leave this business to the Hanhai Protector himself? The answer is no.
The Hanhai Protectorate does not have enough merchant ships, so it is impossible to spend three months traveling back and forth, traveling such a long distance just for a rock salt business. The funds are withdrawn too slowly, and it will be a loss no matter how you calculate it.
So the road to the north is difficult, but can the road to the south be taken? From the map, it appears that the fleet departs from Tanaris and follows the southern coastline of the continent to the other side of the continent, which is much closer.
But in fact, the road to the south is impassable at all, because not long after setting off from Tanaris to the south, after arriving at a sea area, all navigation equipment such as the compass and sextant failed. There seemed to be something blocking the way.
General sailing ahead.
Noggenfogg had sent ships to explore southward before, several times, but in the end they did not dare to go deep into the sea for fear of losing their way and never returning.
The current sea area in the south is called the Hand of the Devil in the mouths of Noggenfogg and others, which means that there is a devil stretching out its hand and waiting for the ship to fall into its trap.
In fact, Li De certainly understood the reason for this incident.
There is a ruined city of Titans in the south: Uldum. The ultimate weapon of Titans is stored there, which emits huge energy and interferes with navigation equipment. The entrance to this ruined city is in Tanari.
Deep in the southern part of the Great Desert.
If you can enter Uldum and close the things inside, the southern route will naturally be open. But just think about it, Uldum is full of dangers. As far as Li De is concerned, he can protect himself after entering.
Big problem.
Therefore, in a short period of time, the only route in front of the Hanhai Commandery was the northern route.
However, the northern route is equally dangerous. The fleet sent out by Nogfogg and Gazlowe last time encountered a large number of Nagas at sea a week after the voyage began. Three of the fleet's frigates were completely left behind.
Got there.
When they came back, the fleet deliberately took a detour to avoid the waters where Nagas appeared, and spent a lot of time doing so.
The fleet sailed for a long time and lost several ships. These were Gazlowe's losses. He would not choose to bear them alone, and deducted a lot from the profits of the Hanhai Protector.
This is why Noggenfogg said that the cost was too high, even with Gazlowe sharing the cost. If the Hanhai Protector was responsible for its own profits and losses, it would not be able to withstand such a huge loss.
After hearing what Nogfogg said, Dai Lin, who had originally shown interest in the rock salt business, immediately stopped thinking.
Table salt is indeed the lifeblood of the business, and if it is run properly, it will surely make a lot of money. But now it sounds like, if it is transported to a desolate place like this, the price may not be much lower than the well salt of a venture capital company, and more importantly, the cost of other people's well salt is low.
The reason why venture capital companies dare to sell at such a high price is that they have realized that the market has high entry barriers and can form a long-term monopoly. In fact, the cost of local mining will not be too high.
The mining cost of rock salt in the Shimmering Plains is lower, but the transportation cost is horribly high. It has no advantage in the Desolate Land. Kul Tiras has a strong navy, but it dare not spend so much money. Besides, there is a more important yarn business.
To operate.
Now Nogfogg wants to do this business, but he doesn’t have the ability to continue doing it; Dai Lin has the ability to do it, but he doesn’t want to do it at all; and here at Li De, he wants to do it like crazy.
Venture capital companies rely on monopoly to purchase local medicinal materials and other raw materials at very low prices. Li De does not value the small profits from raw materials at all. What he really values is the large kodo beasts there!
There are no large animals in Tanaris, the biggest ones are lizards and bugs. Bugs cannot be domesticated, and they can only provide ore pellets apart from being used as feed.
But as the Hanhai Protectorate mines mineral deposits, the biggest role of insects is as feed.
As for the performance of the lizards, it can only be said that they are the best among the dwarfs. It is good for passenger transportation, but when it comes to freight transportation, it is barely enough. When building new cities in the future, it is destined that these lizards will not be able to pull things.
Desolation has the largest kodos in the world. In comparison, they have higher intelligence than lizards and are more docile than lizards. They can be said to be the most suitable animals for domestication.
Therefore, for future development, the Desolate Land must be taken down. It’s just that the current problem before Li De is so big that he doesn’t know how to solve it for a while.
But even if he doesn't know how to solve the specific problem at hand, Li De also knows what needs to be done in the next stage:
Develop population, develop navy, and open up new routes!
Of course, the above issues are too far away to discuss now. The top priority is to sort out the general situation of the Hanhai Protector. Nogfogg and the others are developing much faster than Li De expected, so he decided to stay at home for a longer time.
Li De had previously formulated a dual-circulation strategy, that is, recycling internal technology, manpower, money, and ores, and then using the produced industrial products to purchase grain and other daily necessities from Kezan, and now cotton is also included.
With the emergence of the Jenny machine, the ultra-large production capacity of 100,000 ingots has not only achieved a double cycle, but also created new problems. Hanhaidu protects the current situation of serious overcapacity.
Except for the early days of the construction of the cotton mill, when workers reached a high intensity of working twelve hours a day, the current factory operates only eight hours a day.
But even so, the workers still found that they couldn't spend the money they had. The population of the Hanhai Protectorate was too small, and domestic demand could easily be met. As a result, Nogfogg even began to import fruits.
In the past, during times of material scarcity, fruit was an absolute luxury in the desert. But now, thanks to the new production model's dimensionality reduction in traditional industries, even ordinary workers are guaranteed to eat fruit once every two days.
Faced with this situation, Li De issued the first order: build a prison.
Although it may seem that this matter has nothing to do with increasing domestic demand, providing new jobs can be regarded as a means of increasing domestic demand.
Moreover, the current Hanhai Protectorate does need a formal prison. This is not to say that the security of the Hanhai Protectorate is poor. Soon there will be an influx of a large number of new people. Once there are more people, it will be difficult to maintain internal security and problems will arise.
But what made Li De realize this was the crew of the Bilgewater Fleet captured that day. They violated the Vast Sea Protector and must be punished.
But in the final analysis, those guys are just a group of employees, so it is naturally impossible to kill them all. Moreover, these are all mature navy, and Li De also thinks that if he can successfully transform them, he will absorb them into his navy.
As a result, many sailors were sentenced to imprisonment ranging from six months to three years by Haggard. However, when the sentencing was over, everyone was embarrassed to find that the Hanhai Protector had no prison and did not even know where to imprison these guys?
At that time, he had no choice but to choose an empty warehouse as a temporary prison to imprison these guys. Only then did Li De realize that he really needed a prison.
However, before building this prison, Reed had a long discussion with Van Cleef. His request for this prison was that it should not be built into a traditional dark and damp dark cell.
The prison in Li De's mind is a place to reform people, not a place to torture them.
For those criminals, putting them in prison is punishment. For those who commit heinous crimes, they should be directly sentenced to death. There is no need to put prisoners in cells and torture them. In addition to creating a group of cruel and vicious jailers, it will not have any effect at all.
To the point of educating people in any way.
Van Cleef must have resolutely implemented Li De's request. He spent three nights, exhausted two large boxes of cigars and a millimeter of hairline, and finally handed over a design drawing that satisfied Li De.
According to this drawing, the construction of Hanhai No. 1 Prison was officially started in the northern suburbs outside Gadgetzan. And the most ingenious thing is that Van Cleef designed it to be built against the mountain, so that the prison can see the city of Gadgetzan.
After leaving the prison and going down the mountain, you can walk a short distance eastward to the birthplace of the light of civilization: Stonehenge.
In order to increase domestic demand, the construction period of the prison was deliberately extended, with only eight hours of work per day. At the same time, Li De also officially appointed William, the leader of the theater troupe, as the director of culture, affiliated with Haggard's Ministry of Civil Affairs.
The requirement is that William form a capable theatrical performance team, enter the factory regularly every week, and perform for workers in their free time. Moreover, during this period, outstanding workers must also be recruited into the performance team, so that in a true sense, literature and art can
Reflect the true voice of the people.
Of course, if in addition to the regular weekly performances, the factory also wants to organize additional performances, it will need to raise funds to invite the performance team to the factory, which is also considered manufacturing consumption.
The purpose of introducing the history and culture of Zandalari is not to make everyone a historian, but to enrich people's spiritual world. A series of service industries can also be derived around spiritual construction.
But after doing all this, Li De understood that it was just a temporary solution. This model, taken to the extreme, was just a small and exquisite construction of the Hanhai Protectorate. If a powerful enemy invaded, it would not be able to withstand it.
impact.
Therefore, the population must be developed. Only when the population reaches a certain order of magnitude can we have a stronger economy, and then have enough money to develop the navy and truly protect our own security.
In this way, Li De stayed at his post for two months. During this period, Dailin even returned to Kul Tiras once, bringing a batch of yarn as samples.
It was during these two months that the Imperial Guard of the Hanhai Sea completed the repairs of the third-class ship captured from the Bilgewater Conglomerate and incorporated it into its own battle order. Li De named this new capital ship "
"Zhenhai".
At the end of two months, Li De finally decided to leave and return to the Kingdom Continent. And Dai Lin also came to Tanaris again in time. The difference from last time was that this time in addition to Dai Lin's ship, there were two other ships.
Merchant ships and a fleet.
It was a super fleet with three third-class ships and eight sixth-class ships. Li De used the favorable conditions of selling out these two ships and paying for them to rent a third-class ship and two from Dai Lin's fleet.
Two sixth-rate ships.
In this way, the Hanhai Protectorate has two third-rate ships and four sixth-rate ships, not counting several frigates. With such a fleet, coupled with Grohl's protection, I believe that the Hanhai Protectorate can ensure that the Hanhai Protectorate can protect the Hanhai Protectorate before they return home next time.