"If I don't go to sea myself..."
Hearing Xu Shi's words, Xia Ke'an blinked and said thoughtfully, "So you're planning to send people out to explore?"
She didn't want to play those "What is it?" or "You're so amazing!" games with Xu Shi; those little tricks to satisfy a man's vanity were for children.
But she's in her mature, sophisticated form now, so she has no interest in doing that kind of thing.
Regardless of what she thought, Xu Shi simply smiled and nodded.
His trip to the Hualan Empire was more about being a pioneer, setting an example for future development. He himself would not be willing to spend the rest of his life on continuous overseas expansion.
This person is inherently lazy, and no matter what, he is a ruler of a region. It's not a problem for him to personally lead an expedition once or twice, but it's not quite appropriate to always leave the rear base empty.
Now that we have experience, we naturally need to adjust our methods and approaches.
While stabilizing and improving navigation technology, we should continuously send out fleets to explore overseas.
He only needs to oversee and command from headquarters, which is much more efficient.
"really."
Xia Wuyou echoed her sentiment, knowing that everyone had gained a lot from this voyage.
At least this model has been established, from setting up signal nodes along the way to building overseas bases, then establishing diplomatic relations with other regions and conducting trade according to needs... If it can continue, a global network can be developed in just a few years.
However...
"One issue to be aware of is how to determine the overall strength of the other city-states?"
Xia Xiaomao reminded her again, "We must be vigilant about this."
This is a major problem that cannot be ignored.
In other words, this is the embodiment of the Dark Forest Theory.
Each experimental area is an independent entity, and they are all different from one another. It cannot be guaranteed that all places will be as friendly as the Hualan Empire.
Or rather, the Hualan Empire did not initially have a friendly attitude towards the arrival of outsiders—it was Silver Pine Island that had a friendly attitude, and that was only because everyone had saved Pan Cheng's family's life by chance.
The empire was initially quite resistant to these outsiders. Although the obstacles they faced were not enough to truly stop Xu Shi's progress, they still provided resistance.
This was to be expected, since "natural law" itself separates each region very much and hopes to see city-states operate independently.
Put yourself in their shoes: if someone had landed in Night City before Xu Shi set sail, their reaction probably wouldn't have been much better.
Under such circumstances, sea exploration is inherently a risky endeavor. The relatively smooth journey of the Hualan Empire was mostly due to their superior technology, or rather, their overwhelming overall strength, which allowed them to thoroughly defeat the primitive people.
But what if other regions are stronger than them? Then the outcome might be different.
Taking the risk of exposure and letting the other side know that there are other forces besides themselves could very well backfire on them, just like what happened to the Hualan Empire.
Conquest, establishing diplomatic relations, and being conquered are all possibilities. We cannot always plan for the best; we should always plan for the worst.
Thinking about it, Xia Wuyou felt a little scared. Luckily, her first voyage was on easy mode, otherwise she didn't know what would have happened to her now.
Xu Shi neither confirmed nor denied it, but he only offered some words of comfort to the other party.
"I've thought it over. If we're going to cast the net wide, we need to focus on restraint."
He said in a deep voice, "In other words, we should temporarily lower our stance at the beginning, for example, by trying to explore and contact other city-states under the guise of a caravan. Once we have a clear understanding of their situation, we can make adjustments accordingly."
Yes, since it's a dark forest, they need to learn something.
Appearing before the hunter as prey.
The caravan trade model was obviously more acceptable to most people, and exchanging goods was also the easiest way to know the strength of the other party.
As for whether there will be a significant disparity in strength, he is quite confident about that.
"First of all, the overall strength of Night Sin City is by no means bad."
He analyzed, "We can't say we're the strongest, but we're at least in the upper-middle range."
This is still a very conservative estimate.
"Secondly, the method of planning each region according to 'natural law' would absolutely prevent any significant discrepancies from occurring."
He said earnestly, "Because doing so would undoubtedly run counter to their ultimate goal."
The reasoning is simple: it is perfectly normal for city-states to have differences, but this is only to ensure the diversity of the experimental areas, so as to accumulate more samples for them and make it easier to find ways to remove the "rust fog".
However, if the upper and lower limits are too large, a fundamental problem will arise. To give a simple example, if there really is a region that controls some kind of heaven-defying technology like two-dimensional foil, then there is no need for it to go through all the trouble of doing these things. This one city-state is enough to crush the others and then become the king.
But in this way, the number of samples that "Tianli" can collect will continue to decrease. Will they eventually have to rely on this one place?
It was clearly not a risk they could take.
Therefore, in the initial planning stage, "Heavenly Principles" must have already defined all regions within a certain range, with varying strengths among them, but there would never be a significant imbalance.
Even between the City of Night Sin and the Hualan Empire, the same applies—although they claim to have a crushing advantage, the key to victory lies in the software advantages such as ideology and information gap.
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