We made you the chief, and now you've become the world's chief?

Chapter 157 Trade Control
A place that's all white?
Xia Minghao frowned upon hearing this single piece of information.

Listening to this so-called shaman's description, it feels so much like the legendary paradise?
Could it be that in this other world, people of Asian descent were once God?
The sudden thought made Xia Minghao laugh at himself.

Logically, that wouldn't be the case. Just like the God that foreigners talk about, they are all white people. People will only create a so-called God in their own image.

After reorganizing the information in my mind, I realized that the fear of yellow skin is quite ancient.

Even this shaman only knew the fear of yellow skin.

Another piece of information is that these yellow-skinned people live in a place where everything is white.

The information was so limited that Xia Minghao had no way to verify it, so he had to give up for the time being.

Regardless of whether they were actually of the same race as him, the fact that these large lake tribes had developed a deep-seated fear of people with yellow skin was, in Xia Minghao's eyes, a form of help.

But this is only the first step.

The next step is to find a way to obtain enough benefits from the Great Lakes tribe to strengthen the Xia tribe.

In terms of supplies, palm oil is naturally the best option, which was one of Xia Minghao's original goals.

Secondly, there is the issue of population, but it is clear that the Xia tribe at present does not have the conditions to control such a large population as the Great Lake tribe.

Moreover, they also have a core of power: the group of people in the heart of the Great Lakes who monopolize the means of production in the Great Lakes.

If we were to forcibly take over this vast lake tribe, it would create a conflict of interest with them, and such resistance would not only be difficult to bear in the short term but also completely unnecessary.

Anyway, they can't feed that many people; all Xia Minghao needs is palm oil.

Why not use trade to first gain benefits from the Great Lakes region, and at the same time establish trade hegemony?

"The Xia tribe can give you things, this, and this."

Xia Minghao displayed his items.

Red salt was still a valuable commodity. After taking a sip of the small ceramic bottle of red salt, Wu rarely showed any emotion in front of Xia Minghao.

Unfortunately, as a settled tribe for a long time, pottery has appeared within the Great Lakes tribe. Although the quality is poor and it is not cheap, its scarcity has been affected.

At this point, one truly useful hard currency was gone, leaving only red salt with limited production.

"I'd like to exchange this for palm fruit, the kind of tree whose leaves women use to cover their breasts, the kind that produces fruit."

"One bottle, exchange for 100 palm fruits."

A small bottle of salt, if it were Xia Minghao, would be used up in three or four servings after adding it to the soup.

As modern people, we inevitably waste a bit of salt, or perhaps we are not used to a low-salt diet, so our taste buds are much more eccentric than those of primitive people who had just started tasting salt.

Therefore, in Xia Minghao's view, if he could exchange such a small bottle for 100 palm fruits, it would be a huge profit.

How much oil can be extracted from 100 palm fruits?
Xia Minghao only had a rough estimate, and that estimate came from the bottle of palm oil he had bought back then.

It says "88 palm fruits, finely pressed".

Xia Minghao didn't know whether that 240ml bottle of palm oil was actually made from 88 palm fruits.

However, in such cases, it's usually possible to overstate the amount, not understate it, unless the company is completely incompetent.

Therefore, in theory, the oil extracted from these 100 palm fruits should be enough for one person to eat for about ten days.

Upon hearing Xia Minghao's words, Wu was stunned for a few seconds, then asked for instructions before getting up and walking towards a pile of hay beside him.

Immediately afterwards, Xia Minghao saw Wu take out a long string of things that looked like tree branches from under the haystack. On this string were hundreds of reddish-brown fruits, like little fireballs.

This is a palm fruit?!
This was the first time Xia Minghao had ever seen a real palm fruit. When Wu Jiangzhi pulled him over, he took one off and confirmed it.

"This is edible, right?"

The shaman looked a little strange. He nodded, hesitated for a moment, and then quickly said something when he saw that Xia Minghao wanted to eat.

"It doesn't taste good, it's not as good as meat, the meat you gave us."

"Not as good as meat, that's for sure."

Xia Minghao thought to himself, "Isn't that obvious? What fruit can taste better than dried meat with salt?"

After taking a bite, Xia Minghao immediately understood what it meant.

The shaman didn't mean that it wasn't as tasty as meat, but rather that it was unpalatable.

This stuff is so awful. One bite and you're immediately struck by its astringency, followed by its greasiness.

It felt like eating a big, half-cooked, fatty piece of meat covered in mud.

After taking that bite, Xia Minghao couldn't help but spit it out.

Upon seeing the furrowed brow, the shaman knelt down in fear and began kowtowing again.

"It's okay, I just think it doesn't taste good, I won't get angry at you."

Seeing that the witch's "habitual yellow-skin phobia" had been triggered again, Xia Minghao quickly helped her up. Then he asked.

"What are you going to do with this?"

"what is it used for?"

Stunned by this question, she looked at the palm fruit with a bite taken out of it, and then at Xia Minghao.

"We'll eat this."

Is it really food?
I initially thought it had some other use, but it turns out it really is something to eat.

"This came from the heart of the Great Lakes? You give them what you hunt, and you're still keeping watch out for the hairy people outside, and this is what they give you to eat?"

Xia Minghao asked.

“Yes, Chief Xia. Besides this, there were some other things that tasted better than palm fruit, but they were scarce and all of them were eaten. Now only palm fruit is left.”

"The next time we go to the interior to get food, we'll have to wait until the full moon."

After hearing the shaman's explanation, Xia Minghao pondered for a moment, and then began to ask the shaman if the Great Lake tribe had any kind of deity worship.

Xia Minghao was somewhat surprised after hearing Wu's explanation.

There was no worship of any deity, and the obedience to the people in the heartland was merely a result of the inertia brought about by the war.

This is still a rather immature tribe, and a rather immature group of rulers. They have not yet developed any control over people's thoughts, nor have they treated most of the other people kindly.

It is conceivable that once the Maoist people are no longer a problem, internal strife will inevitably occur.

Perhaps it will take one or two such power shifts caused by internal strife before true theocratic rule can emerge and the rudiments of civilization can be formed.

Just because it doesn't exist now doesn't mean it didn't exist in the past.

This shaman was actually the representative of the divine authority before the Mao people migrated here.

According to the shaman, there were once dozens of tribes in the Great Lakes region, each with its own worship, which led to the emergence of their own shamans.

But then war came, and everyone found that praying to the gods they had imagined was useless, so they gave up on their fantasies, abandoned the gods, and began to fight.

Having gained a general understanding of the ideological development situation in the Great Lakes region, Xia Minghao already had a brilliant plan in mind: to completely subdue the Great Lakes tribe without engaging in direct combat, but rather by creating internal conflict.

That is, to first use trade to make the six tribes on the outer defense line lose their dependence on the hinterland, thus forming an encirclement of the hinterland.

Then, the hinterland is isolated, which will cause chaos within the hinterland that is being ruled by the inertia of war.

With such a psychological maneuver, winning them over will be a piece of cake.

The only problem is that the only hard currency nowadays is red salt, which is too scarce to facilitate trade and circulation, thus creating a resource dependency for the Xia tribe.

We'll just have to send over more things then, and see if there are any other commodities that can be used as the main products for distribution.

"Chief of the Xia tribe, this, one hundred in exchange for one bottle, shall I give you one hundred now?"

At this moment, Wu's voice rang in Xia Minghao's ears again.

It turns out he wanted to pay for the salt he gave me.

Xia Minghao smiled faintly. When it came time to conduct trade with the hinterland and contact the other outlying tribes, he would have to rely on Xia Minghao for a great deal of help.

What's the big deal about such a small bottle of experiment?

"No need to give me palm fruit, here you go, I don't want anything else."

"Also, I misspoke earlier. It wasn't 100 palm fruits, it was 500."

"500!"

Before the witch could even express her gratitude, she was startled when she heard the number.

"Yes, five hundred."

It was thanks to the shaman showing him the palm fruit that Xia Minghao realized how worthless it was.

Conditions did not allow for a longer stay in the Great Lakes tribe, or even to venture into the heartland for a detailed understanding.

Therefore, inaccurate guesses are inevitable.

I don't know how many tribes I will come into contact with in the future. Even if I can't go there myself, the information inside is still very important.

Otherwise, it is very likely that a misjudgment will occur, like today.

what can we do about it?

or……

To establish an intelligence agency?

(End of this chapter)