Binhai District

"Attention, everyone! Five-kilometer loaded cross-country run, begin!"

The East African colony's new army, formed from Chinese immigrants, marched through the rain under heavy loads.

April in East Africa brought endless rain, but the colony's recruits still had to train. As time passed, the East African colony had begun laying out its plans across the entire interior.

After the advance group set off, development naturally did not grind to a halt in the area near Dar es Salaam. This was the first place immigrants arrived. First Town lived up to its name—every Chinese immigrant arriving in East Africa had to stop here before being reassigned and sent to the various new outposts.

Recently, the East African colony had begun planning new villages and towns, mainly expanding northward from First Town. The plains there were relatively broad, the finest stretch of the Tanzanian coastal plain.

Dar es Salaam belonged to the Sultanate of Zanzibar. With it as the core, the Sultanate stretched north and south along the entire East African coast. Yet the plains west of the coast, nearer the interior, were sparsely populated. The Sultanate of Zanzibar's main population was still concentrated on Zanzibar Island and across the water in Dar es Salaam; the other regions had few people.

That gave the East African colony an opportunity. To expand its land as much as possible, this time it did not plan to establish outposts around First Town. Instead, it would build three new towns farther away: Msuluwa, Pengui, and Manda.

Thus, starting from First Town (Mlandizi), passing through Msuluwa, Pengui, and Manda, then linking up with Second Town (Rufu), formed a huge circle. With Third Town (Kitonga) in the middle, nearly 3,500 square kilometers of land were gathered into its pocket. The East African colony decided to establish the East African Colony Coastal District over this vast tract.

Binhai District temporarily governed six towns, with its administrative seat in First Town. It was the colony's first district of any real scale.

Land could not appear out of thin air, so driving out the indigenous people living on it became important. After nearly a year of development, the Chinese immigrants in this area had already grown to more than eighteen thousand, concentrated around the three completed towns.

Therefore, the East African colony decided to field a two-thousand-man army to carry out a dragnet sweep of the indigenous tribes within Binhai District.

The weapons had long been prepared in the warehouses. After only a brief period of training, they could be issued to the soldiers, who would then set out to eradicate the indigenous tribes.

April was the rainy season, so the colonial soldiers' training often met with torrential rain. But the German instructors did not care about any of that. Everyone had to complete their training on time every day.

The recruits crawled forward painfully through the mud, with gunshots ringing out beside their ears from time to time to temper their courage.

The indigenous people the recruits would face were not particularly difficult opponents. They were mainly small tribes hiding in the mountains and forests. The slightly larger tribes were all in the west, and any hard-headed ones had long since been seized by the Sultanate of Zanzibar and sold to the Arab countries.

The Sultanate of Zanzibar could bully the indigenous people, but the East African colony, armed with real guns and live ammunition, was not easy to provoke. Thus, the two sides had remained at peace so far.

The East African colony also generally disposed of stolen goods through the Sultanate of Zanzibar. Now the Sultanate had begun to lie flat, sitting at home and waiting for the East African colony to deliver slaves and ivory to its doorstep.

The Sultanate of Zanzibar was responsible for selling these goods overseas through Arab merchants, so in its early days, the East African colony instead fueled the Sultanate's distorted prosperity.

A few days later.

Manda, the northernmost part of Binhai District.

"Chase them! Even if you can't catch them, don't let them run back! Open fire!"

Bang... Bang... Bang...

The panic-stricken indigenous people could only flee northward for their lives. It had to be said, they really could run. In no time at all, they had vanished without a trace.

"Alright, we'll stop chasing here! The north isn't our target yet. Everyone, rest for now."

"Captain, how did those black things run so fast? They disappeared in the blink of an eye!"

"That's because these indigenous people all live by hunting. Every day, they either chase all kinds of animals or get chased by animals. Think about it—lions, cheetahs, and wildebeests all run fast. If these indigenous people couldn't catch up or escape, wouldn't they starve to death or get eaten? We're different. For generations in the Far East, we've mainly farmed. All our strength goes into the fields, so naturally we can't outrun indigenous people who compete with wild beasts every day to see who runs faster."

The German commander Luo Xia was studying a map. At present, Yalman was responsible for all military affairs in the East African colony, while Luo Xia oversaw military affairs in Binhai District. Thus, within the colony's military forces, he could be considered the second-in-command.

Luo Xia personally led this mission to drive out the indigenous tribes of Binhai District. These recruits were led by German veterans rich in combat experience, with some students of Hechingen Military Academy mixed into the ranks as interpreters.

This Binhai District operation was the first large-scale coordinated operation, mobilizing a total of 2,321 men.

The completion of the operation meant that the plan to make large-scale military use of Chinese people was feasible. In this, Hechingen Military Academy played an important connecting role.

But this raised Ernst's vigilance. Although the students of Hechingen Military Academy had undergone indoctrination and education and were highly loyal to the House of Hohenzollern, he still had to guard against them forming a clique and becoming divided from the other Germans.

After all, these students of Hechingen Military Academy could directly contact and communicate with the soldiers of the Colonial Army, while the German commanders had to rely on the academy's students as interpreters.

From this, one could see just how great the influence of Hechingen Military Academy's students was over the colony's rank-and-file soldiers.

For Ernst, any uncontrollable factor had to be snuffed out while still in the bud. After pondering for a long time, he came up with a good solution.

Hechingen Military Academy could not have only Chinese students; it should also have white students. Ernst planned to find some orphans in Europe, especially in the German territories, teach them German and Chinese, and eventually have them develop alongside the Chinese students in the Colonial Army.

That way, the two sides could supervise and restrain each other. Studying at the same school would also allow them to interact and blend together.

In the future, the colony's army would have white people who could understand the speech of Chinese immigrants. They could learn the immigrants' true thoughts and report to Ernst at all times.

This was merely a delaying tactic. What truly needed to be done was establish German education in the colony. Once the entire colony spoke German, Ernst could relax a little.

Fortunately, the colony was not yet large, so Ernst did not need to worry about anyone trying to stir up trouble. The colony was heavily dependent on the Hohenzollern Conglomerate, which was also why Ernst could command the East African colony from afar.

At the same time, he continuously sent his own trusted confidants to the East African colony to hold key posts and split apart the colony's upper ranks. None of these measures that benefited his centralization of power had been set aside.