If there are those around who don’t comply, the two hundred young men newly summoned by Lin Wanwan are just right to subdue them.

With Lin Wanwan backing the young men, they all feel as excited as if they’ve been energized.

They estimate that when the Tang army comes, they’ll even dare to wrestle with them. Whether they can win or not is another matter, but at least they won’t lose in momentum.

As for the prisoner from yesterday, Lin Wanwan promptly bandaged his wound to stop the bleeding, removed the bullet, and applied anti-infection medicine.

He was lucky to survive, without even a fever.

This indicates that the wound did not get infected due to the hot weather, and his physique is quite strong.

Yesterday, too much happened in the village, there were children bitten by snakes, medicine taken from the Heavenly Court, the Phoenix manifesting a miracle, food and meat distribution, and group barbecuing; everyone was too busy to pay attention to the prisoner.

Therefore, he was hungry all night.

Already injured and having lost a lot of blood, being hungry made him completely listless today.

When Lin Wanwan saw him, she almost thought his wound was infected. Fortunately, after checking, she found it wasn’t; it was just hypoglycemia caused by blood loss and hunger.

Lin Wanwan had someone make some food for him, and she fed him a piece of chocolate. As for specific food, she didn’t care, but it certainly couldn’t be last night’s white rice.

While the prisoner was having breakfast, Lin Wanwan also returned to the village chief’s home for breakfast.

The village chief’s wife and Du Zhengya prepared her breakfast, white rice porridge with dried shrimp and squid, along with a bowl of cooked pine vegetables soup.

Lin Wanwan was quite satisfied. Even though the boiled pine vegetables weren’t to her taste, they were nutritious, and the dried shrimp and squid were premium items, not something money could buy in modern times.

The rice used to make the white rice porridge was, of course, purchased by Lin Wanwan in modern times. In this world, even the nobility haven’t enjoyed such well-processed rice yet.

Currently, people only mill rice through one process, unwilling to mill it multiple times. It’ll take a few more years before nobles gradually raise their demand for refined rice.

After breakfast, two people from the village carried the prisoner on a simple stretcher.

Lin Wanwan, carrying a gun and a backpack, led the village’s young men to sweep the surrounding countryside.

Joining them was Du Zhengya, who seemed to position herself as Lin Wanwan’s personal maid, eagerly helping her carry the backpack.

The backpack primarily contained wilderness survival tools and a first-aid kit, while the powerful sleeve crossbow and pistol were equipped on Lin Wanwan.

Therefore, with Du Zhengya eager to carry it, Lin Wanwan let her.

The outcome of the sweep was as Lin Wanwan expected. She led the group, first visiting the village of the prisoner and having him come clean with his clan leader.

Without needing to shed a single soldier, the other side surrendered after hearing their clan warrior’s descriptions.

The people living on this island inherently didn’t have strong fighting capabilities.

Once an envoy from the Great Tang visited India, and when he encountered a rebellion, instead of thinking of returning home, he directly borrowed a few thousand soldiers from a neighboring country and successfully initiated a regime change in India.

With just a civil servant envoy, he was that fierce. The abundance of talent in the Great Tang is evident.

Of course, the weak combat strength of the southern countries was one of the reasons.

In short, now Lin Wanwan, leading only around two hundred young men—who were mostly just a mob—was managing to easily overrun places, thanks to their faith in the "gods," instilling great morale. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Lin Wanwan sighed, is this what it means to win wars without battles?

Anyone who had witnessed the Fire Phoenix last night surrendered without a fight.

Now, only one pier remains in this area to be captured.

The pier represents great benefits, so resistance will undoubtedly be stronger. Lin Wanwan plans to prepare before taking action.

She’s not in a rush to expand further but prefers to stabilize her current influence first. Right now, she doesn’t have any direct lineage under her, only the locals she gathered.

The Du family are also Chinese, barely counting as her closest relations.

But to say Lin Wanwan trusts them greatly, that’s not the case yet.

For now, Lin Wanwan is using money to win people over, but it’s uncertain how much loyalty will remain once she leaves.

After a round of sweeping outside, by the time they returned to the village at the mountain’s foot, it was already past noon.

Even though the morning didn’t involve much fighting, just the traveling and accepting the surrender of villages took considerable time. After all, Lin Wanwan was leading a temporarily assembled group of "infantry" with low capabilities.

This island, bustling with high rises in the future, is currently full of undeveloped green mountains and wildlands.

Not to mention skyscrapers of reinforced concrete; along the way, seeing a few bamboo houses already counts as a wealthy village, with no decent town formed yet.

Lin Wanwan asked Du Zhengya, and it turns out now people only spontaneously form a market every fifteenth to exchange a few items.

The island doesn’t have a unified currency, with a lot of bartering, and then there’s the Great Sui’s legal currency Sui Five Zhu, the Great Tang’s Kaiyuan Tongbao, which recently started circulating due to ships engaging in international trade passing by.

Pepper on the island has no market. First, there are few nobles, second, it’s locally grown as well.

Pepper naturally grows in tropical regions like India, Jiao State, and Lion City. It had to be transported thousands of miles by merchants to the Great Tang or Europe before it could be sold at a high price, making it worthless locally.

International merchants suppress the purchase price of pepper, as "those clad in silk are not the silk producers." Once it reaches the Great Tang and Europe, its price compares with gold, factoring in the travel cost, losses, and tolls along the way.

Fortunately, Lin Wanwan doesn’t solely rely on pepper to get rich in the ancient times. She can make money from anything, buying a few glass ornaments could mean a fortune.

The pearls and glass beads she gives away are hard currency in the market.

Now, all populated areas in the surrounding countryside have submitted to Lin Wanwan, so she needs to start working on infrastructure.

However, there are quite a few difficulties; there’s enough manpower but insufficient materials.

Though Lin Wanwan has no shortage of money, this impoverished island currently lacks resources; there’s truly nothing available. There are no mature mining sites for iron or stone, and even the brickstalls are tiny. It’s hard to purchase the necessary items even if she has the funds.

Apart from spending money, the plan is to organize personnel to extract stones and purchase bricks and wood, working together to first transform a fort.

Luckily, Lin Wanwan herself has already experienced managing two to three hundred subordinates. If it were when she first traveled to the Great Tang, she wouldn’t be able to manage all these people who suddenly sought refuge with her, managing logistics alone would be a headache.

As for the Du family, since their ancestors were landlords, they have quite a few literate members, saving Lin Wanwan a lot of effort.

Anyone literate was pulled out for management and accounting tasks.

Du Zhengya recognized a few words but, being a girl and an orphan, hadn’t been taught by her tribe. It was all self-taught from overhearing some family private school sessions.

Lin Wanwan took out the literacy textbook she used at Lin Family Manor and began by teaching Du Zhengya Arabic numerals, followed by addition and subtraction. She plans to groom her to be a housekeeper,

Du Zhengya didn’t disappoint her expectations, demonstrating strong learning ability, picking things up quickly since ultimately she was already a sixteen-year-old girl.

This pleasantly surprised Lin Wanwan; the biggest fear in teaching is encountering dumb students who repeatedly make mistakes, instantly fanning the flames of frustration.