Ming Zuo

Batavia.

Xu Erjue was wearing a floral shirt, floral pants, and flip-flops, and walked on the pier with a figure-of-eight gait.

Hold a big coconut in your hand, take a sip and sigh.

Looking at the sight of many fewer ships in the pier than before, I was full of sadness.

Since Zheng raised the toll, the business here has been difficult.

In order to make up for the loss, Xia Guolai's merchants had no choice but to raise prices.

And this has become a burden for local consumers, causing transaction volume to plummet.

How to break the situation, he, the chief commercial representative of Xia Kingdom in Batavia, really has gray hair in a hurry.

"What did Ambassador Lu say? Is there an explanation in China?"

The secretary next to him answered quickly.

"There is no news in China. Ambassador Lu has been communicating with the Governor of Batavia, hoping to find a solution."

"Oh, it's hard to do!"

Xu Er felt a headache, and at the same time hated Mrs. Zheng.

This side was annoyed, and the pier suddenly became lively.

I saw six or seven lucky boats entering the port one after another, crowding the waterway to the brim.

"There's a boat coming!"

Seeing this scene, Xu Erjue was both surprised and excited, and ran over quickly.

When he saw the people coming off the boat, he laughed and grabbed them.

"Wang Monkey, why are you here?"

Seeing him, the man paused for a moment.After carefully looking at it for a long time, he shook his head.

"Master Xu, why do you look like this?"

Xu Erjue didn't feel that there was anything wrong with his appearance.

"It's hot here all year round. If you don't dress like this, you can't stand it at all."

After he came here, he really suffered a lot because of the hot and humid weather at the beginning, and even wrote a letter to the country to complain.

After Zuo Menggeng saw it, he asked someone to make new clothes and sent them to him.

At first, Xu Erjue resisted such clothes.

Coming from a scholarly family, he couldn't let go of his demeanor.

But as the days passed, the heat became more and more unbearable, and many of the natives here were naked, so he gradually got used to being in it.

After putting on new clothes, there are only two words to describe it.

Really fragrant!

Seeing a domestic ship coming, Xu Erjue couldn't care less about chatting.

"In the current situation, why do you come here by boat? Aren't you afraid of losing money?"

That "Wangshan Gong" was named Chen Zhiyuan, and he was a well-known wealthy businessman in Songjiang, and he had a very close relationship with the Xu family.

"I have good news for you. We have discovered a new route, and we don't need to pay Zheng any more."

"Really?"

Xu Erjue was taken aback, but of course he was also overjoyed.

"Tell me, what's going on?"

In fact, the new route discovered by Chen Zhiyuan and others is exactly the same as that of Lin Jiahui.

As a native of Xia, as long as you learn new geographical knowledge, everyone knows that the area east of Taiwan Island is navigable.

One of the most important reasons why no ships took this route in the past is that the voyage has increased by thousands of kilometers.

As a result, the food and drinking water carried are not enough.

And compared to the land on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, the width of the Bashi Strait can be said to be invisible at a glance.

Walking in such a place, because there is no reference, it is easy to get lost.

These are taboos for sailing.

But now it's different.

Xiaguo's navigation technology has begun to be fully popularized, and determining the direction is an essential skill for all people who walk on the sea.

As for food and water...

"After we decided to try this new route, we deliberately brought an extra boat to load food and drinking water. It turned out to pass smoothly and there was no problem at all."

Not only that, Chen Zhiyuan and others also calculated the time.

I found that taking the bus channel to reach Batavia is actually almost the same as taking the Taiwan Strait.

"You don't need to pay Zheng Shi an extra five hundred taels of silver, and our goods can be sold again."

Xia Guo's merchant ships began to unload.

All kinds of cotton, leather, ceramics, glass and other products piled up at the wharf, and the falling prices stimulated the enthusiasm of local consumers.

Almost in the blink of an eye, the originally deserted Batavia port returned to its former bustle.

Lu Guangzhai and Anthony Van Diemen came together, and after hearing the introduction from Chen Zhiyuan and others, they were equally pleasantly surprised.

"Since we have a new route, we don't need to worry about him anymore. He wants to make money from us, so let's dream."

Both the Xia people and the Dutch were very annoyed at Zheng's way of raising tolls.

Now that Zheng could be bypassed, everyone took active actions.

Three days later, a combined Xiahe convoy set sail from Batavia and headed for Xia Kingdom under the leadership of Chen Zhiyuan and others.

On the Batavia side, a Han man walked into a roadside shop.

"How do you sell this kind of cloth?"

He recognized it at a glance, it was the cloth produced by Xia Guo.

In the past, there were a lot of this kind of cloth in Batavia, but since Zheng raised the toll, all of them disappeared.

Unexpectedly, it appears again now.

The shopkeeper was very happy to see someone buying cloth.

"This is the finest cotton cloth, thirty-five cents per foot."

When the man heard this, he was inevitably surprised.

"Why is it so cheap? Wasn't it sixty cents per foot before?"

The shopkeeper was in a good mood, so he said everything.

"I heard that a new route has been discovered. There is no need to pay Zheng's anymore, and the price will naturally drop."

The man was flustered, knowing that something serious had happened.He asked the shopkeeper to cut two feet of cloth carelessly, and left quickly.

In a short while, a fast ship left Batavia and headed north rapidly.

Guide to the sea.

The morning mist will linger.

A sailboat sailed comfortably on the water, approaching the Shimabara Peninsula.

The people on the boat were very calm, as if they were traveling.

But in fact, the ship is full of guns and artillery.

It was the weapon Xia Guo provided to the Shimahara Rebels.

In the past, doing such a thing would have risked a narrow escape.

But it is different now.

Xia Guo's navy has already controlled the nearby sea, and the navy of the Satsuma domain has been driven back.

Although Xia Guo claimed that he had never provided weapons to the Shimahara Rebels, since the Dongying people couldn't catch it, what else could they say?

Gradually, the courage to transport weapons became stronger.Even with the twilight like now, they dared to move out.

The sailboat broke through layer after layer of fog, but still could not see the shadow of the shore.But it doesn't matter, what surprises can there be in such a place?

There was a sharp piercing sound suddenly, and without giving the people on board any time to prepare, an arrow was seen in the neck of a crew member.He tilted his body and fell overboard.

"Enemy attack!"

The serene atmosphere was suddenly broken, and the people on the boat were unavoidably flustered and took up their weapons one after another.

Almost in the blink of an eye, seven or eight small early boats from Dongpu rushed towards them.The Japanese warriors above screamed, and at the same time completely enveloped the sailboat with bows and arrows.

Several people on board were shot to death immediately, and the rest could only look for cover in embarrassment.

"This is not the arrow of the Japanese!"

Almost at the moment of the fight, the captain on the sailboat realized something was wrong.

But he didn't give him much time to think.

The boats of the Dongying people rammed into one after another.

Those Dongying warriors brandished their sabers, yelling meaninglessly as they hurt the killer.

There were not many people on board, and the casualties were heavy in the first confrontation.

The team leader was struggling left and right, with multiple injuries on his body, and Qingzhi was inevitable.

Suddenly a knife stabbed from behind and pierced his stomach.

He exhausted his last strength, and when he turned around, he saw a ferocious and proud face.

But what really caught his attention was the other party's strange call.

It seems to be Japanese, but it doesn't seem to be.