The reason why Zhen Qian first focused on overseas rather than the surrounding land of Datang was also to consider avoiding the important and light, starting from his own lack of strength.

There is a vast sea area around Datang that can be roamed by Zhen Qian, but the land around Datang is full of dangers, and the west has been as far as the Anxi Protectorate, and there is no room for stable development at all due to the continuous wars and chaos every year. In the southern Lingnan area, if they want to gain a foothold, they must use human lives to fill it, and there is no suitable space as a base at all.

Zhen Qian didn't think about the north of the Tang Dynasty at the beginning, a large area of Monan and Liaodong had long been occupied by the Hu people, and the rest of Mobei was still a group of more barbaric Hu people, although they could consider establishing their own bases, but the traffic was too far, and there were many tribes in between, so it was impossible not to be discovered.

In the east, there is no hidden worry about the land around Datang, of course, the risk of sea navigation must be removed, in addition, the island chain in the east is simply a beautiful woman without resistance, which can make Zhen Qian knead and dress up wantonly.

In this era, there was no navy in the real sense of the word, at most it was just cruising around the coastline of its own country, and the way of fighting at sea was also a gangplank battle, in a sense, there was not much difference between sailors and pirates at this time in many ways.

Zhen Qian weighed many aspects, military, political, cultural, economic, and even the possibility of future development, but sadly found that in addition to the sea, it was difficult to gain a firm foothold on the land around Datang, and I was afraid that the plan would die before he could take action to operate.

And indeed it is!

If it weren't for the extremely difficult sea navigation, the islands around the east of the Tang Dynasty would have been inhabited for a long time, of course, there is also a problem of understanding the islands, after all, an island is not too big, and the islands are also inconvenient to travel between them, which caused most of the ancients to be reluctant to live on the islands, so naturally the rulers did not pay much attention to the islands.

Except for a few large inhabited islands around the Tang Dynasty that have names, most of the islands are not marked on the map, let alone rule.

The same is true of the Wa Kingdom, the Silla Kingdom and the Balhae Kingdom, Zhen Qian checked their official and self-drawn maps, and found that the number of islands marked on it was pitiful, and even the local officials did not know that there was still an island on the coast of the sea under his jurisdiction?

Many of the islands are home to fishermen, pirates, fugitives, and so on, and most of them are not dangerous, but people are social and social animals, and even hermits cannot be truly isolated from the world, so most people never regard the islands as their home!

This is the absolute gap between Zhen Qian's thinking and the ancients!

When Zhen Qian asked Fujiwara for the Wufeng Islands, Fujiwara didn't know where the Wufeng Islands were, and when he heard that the Wufeng Islands were still 200 nautical miles away from Hizen Province, he didn't mention this matter again, and he didn't think that Zhen Qian would live in Nagasaki on the Wufeng Islands.

Shao Er Dongshang was willing to give the Osumi Islands to Zhen Qian and seek Zhen Qian's help, in fact, his thoughts were similar to those of Fujiwara Shuxiong, and his goal was not these islands, but to control other Linglu countries on the Saikaido, so Zhen Qian didn't care about the Osumi Islands at all.

Wang Lun brought a lot of people from the Bohai Sea this time, not only craftsmen, but also a large number of farmers, although there was not much land on the Wufeng Islands, but it was enough for these people to cultivate in a short time.

Wang Lun pointed to Nanpu on the map and said: "This is less than 200 miles away from Pyongyang, it is a large area of sand and gravel, but a large amount of iron ore is produced here, Pyongyang City levies a heavy tax of fifty percent here, but no one manages it, and no one mines here, we should send people to occupy Jiaodao by the sea in the future, first, we can collect a steady stream of iron ore from Nanpu, second, it can be used as a supply station between us and the Wufeng Islands, and third, it can be far away from the Shandong Peninsula in the south. It can also facilitate our continuous transportation of Tang people to the Wufeng Islands ...... in the future. ”

Zhen Qian knew that Nampo was actually a very large open-pit mine, but unfortunately the Xi people who managed Pyongyang did not have the technology to mine it, so they could only collect a heavy tax of 50% in Nampo, and whoever found iron ore in Nampo had to pay taxes to Pyongyang, which caused no one to want to open a mine in Nampo.

When Zhen Jiu went to the Wufeng Islands, he also passed through Nanpu and purchased more than 20,000 catties of iron ore, and this time Wang Lun also passed by Nanpu and purchased another 50,000 catties of iron ore, which is not a small amount in the eyes of the Tang people, but this cannot meet Zhen Qian's demand for iron at all.

Now that Zhen Qian is very satisfied with this situation, he finally has a fairly good base, even if he doesn't do anything now, after more than ten years of slow fermentation, it is only a matter of time before a large number of islands south of the Saikaido of the Japanese Kingdom fall into his hands, and his island plan has finally seen the light of day!

What is most urgently needed now is not the population, but a large number of ships and skilled sailors, if you want to gain a foothold on the sea, there is no room for development without ships and sailors, so I didn't care too much about Nanpu proposed by Wang Lun.

"Now there are five or six thousand people on the Wufeng Islands, we are not short of money, the shipyard on the island has also been preliminarily built, and the first of our own five-hundred-stone flyship will be launched to the sea for experiments in a month, and now we need to consider the issue of sailors, what do you have any good opinions?"

Skilled sailors have always been a factor restricting Zhen Qian's development, a 500-stone sea ship needs at least 30 skilled sailors to operate, and a 1000-stone sea ship needs 50 skilled sailors, and now as long as Zhen Qian is willing, he can build 10 500-stone sea ships within a month, but sailors cannot be trained within a month.

Even if Zhen Qian doesn't say it, others know that the most lacking thing in the Wufeng Islands is sailors!

"We can catch fishermen around Silla and Wakoku, and as long as they promise good treatment, these fishermen will be willing to join the Gobong Islands?"

Zhen Qian nodded, he had thought of this method himself, but unfortunately fishermen and sailors were still different, and they had to go through three months of training to become a qualified sailor.

"We can go to the coast of Liaodong to clear out the pirates, as long as we kill the pirate leaders who are the leader, the remaining pirates can be dispersed and used as sailors ......."

"These methods are good, are there any more?"

At this time, Zhen Seventy-two stood up and said: "Master, on my way to Sado Island this time, I found a lot of small islands on the coast of the Wa Kingdom, and there are also many small fishing villages on the seaside, most of the people there make a living by fishing at sea, why don't we directly pretend to be pirates and plunder all these people, first, to solve the problem of sailors, and secondly, to increase the population of the Wufeng Islands?" ”