Lu Ming

Chapter 228: The Completion of Qun Xian ([-])

The sea breeze is blowing, the blue sky is thousands of miles, and the ocean is full of the smell of water vapor after the storm-this thing is called negative oxygen ion in later generations, and it is an ion that sub-healthy people in the city need to spend money to inhale.
Time: On the morning of July 1628, 7.Coordinates: Zhongzuosuo Wharf outside the city in the southwest corner of Xiamen Island.

Du Dewei, who is dressed in a blue short robe, with a short knife across his waist, has a muscular body and thick eyebrows, is standing with his arms on the bow of the slow-moving boat at this moment, his hairband is still being blown by the sea wind, but his face is expressionless .

Du Dewei is 27 years old and is from Xianyou, Fujian.Du's family was born as a small maritime merchant, and his father's family business was not bad when he went to sea in his early years, so Du Dewei was able to study in elementary school run by a local academy when he was young.

However, when he was 15 years old, his father died in a shipwreck, and the Du family fell into ruin. Du Dewei was also forced to follow his father's old path: running to sea.

After more than 10 years of hard work on the ocean, Du Dewei has now worked hard to pull together a small team of 20 ships, and he has become the shopkeeper himself.Today, the place he is going to go by boat is the large tent of the Chinese army outside the center left.

Since Shopkeeper Zheng Da defeated the Guanjun and Hongyi in a row, and captured Tongshansuo and Zhongzuo, a large number of small pirates from Fujian and Guangdong have come to vote, and the momentum has been the same for a while.And the shopkeeper Du Dewei Du is naturally not exempt from the custom: gathering and dispersing is the normal state of pirates. The powerful ones raise the flag, while the weak ones follow suit.

And not long after joining the group with the crowd, Du Dewei suddenly heard a rumor: Mr. Zheng is going to recruit again.

To be honest, he himself is still full of longing for this old joke about recruiting security: since the first day he was a pirate 10 years ago, he has had a dream of recruiting security.Du Dewei, who went to a private school since he was a child and is proficient in writing, can never forget that his family is a decent person. If it weren't for the business of murder and robbery for the sake of his widowed mother and his younger siblings, he would not have done it from the bottom of his heart.

To his surprise, the rumor this time turned out to be true: one day not long ago, the young Zheng Dalong summoned all the shopkeepers, big and small, in the Zhongjun tent, and announced a big event in public—he was going to Fuzhou and The elders of the government discuss the matter of recruitment in person.

Not to mention that shopkeepers from all walks of life made noises after the incident, as far as Du Dewei himself was concerned, this was indeed good news.So, two days later in the early morning, he made a special trip to send the shopkeeper off by boat.

Unexpectedly, the big shopkeeper just went away and never came back.

From the day the news came from the spies who were ambushing in Fuzhou from various shopkeepers, the pirate camp near Zhongzuo began to become chaotic. During those few days, I took a boat from Fuzhou Wharf to return to Zhongzuo Institute.

The straight-line distance between Fuzhou and Xiamen is only 200 kilometers, which is more than 100 nautical miles in conversion. Even the slow fleet can climb back after 3 days. However, until the spies who set off later came back one after another, no one saw them. To the traces of Zheng's fleet.

After July 7th, all kinds of rumors could no longer be suppressed—because a large number of people who were frantically spread out by the shopkeepers, after sneaking around from Fuzhou City, there was still no trace of the Zheng family fleet .
Pirates have no concept of information control, so when a large number of spies came back this time, the public opinion market suddenly boiled over, and all kinds of true and false news began to spread.

It is said that Xiong Wencan sealed off the inner and outer cities of Fuzhou on the occasion of seeing him off, and secretly mobilized Fubiao elites to surround and kill Zheng Zhilong and his gang outside the city of Fuzhou.

It is also said that the shopkeeper was first introduced into the Marshal's Mansion by Xiong Wencan, and then Xiong threw a cup as a sign. The shopkeeper was immediately bound by the ambush soldiers who rushed out from the hatchback. The sword given by Shang Fang cut off the head of the big shopkeeper on the spot.

A group of storytellers are vivid, and those who listen to the story are engrossed, as if they were there in person.

A rumor that is closest to the truth is: Zheng's fleet was ambushed and killed by a brigade of government troops in the open sea, and the entire army was wiped out.

However, this rumor has the least market among the pirate executives.You must know that the treasurers who can have a high-ranking position in the Chinese military tent these days are all leaders of large gangs with more than a hundred ships in their hands. These people are well-informed, shrewd and capable, so they will never believe such rumors.

The shopkeepers of the big gang, who have the most authentic first-hand information, are now generally inclined to the most insipid answer: Zheng's fleet encountered a strong wind in the open sea, and the entire army was wiped out.

Zhu Baba said that after removing all impossible answers, the remaining one is the truth, no matter how incredible it is.

The shopkeepers thought so too—although the possibility of the gust of wind blowing away all 5 people on the 800 big fortune boats sounds a bit low, but in their opinion, this ending is the only reasonable answer right now.

Because they knew that Xiong Wencan was innocent: the shopkeepers knew very well the scene where Xiong Dafu went out of the city and Yiyi bid farewell to Zhilong.Still the same sentence, Xiong Wencan didn't make a move in the dominant city of Fuzhou, so the possibility of making a move in the ocean is zero.
Therefore, for the shopkeepers who have first-hand information, the logic is very clear: the Zheng family fleet was shipwrecked, and there is no other explanation.

Time passed day by day, and while there was still no news about Zheng's fleet, the situation became clear: Zheng Zhilong was dead, and most people had already confirmed this.At this time, if the big and small shopkeepers who are still gathered in the Zhongzuo Office don't know how to find a way out for their brothers, they will be mentally handicapped.

As a result, the Zhongjun Tent, which originally symbolized the prestige, has become a vegetable market since the beginning of July, and shopkeepers from all walks of life are arguing endlessly every day.And as time went by, when Zheng Dalong's hope of surviving was completely extinguished, it was time for a showdown in recent days-people completely lost patience.

"Huh..." Thinking of this, Du Dewei, who was standing on the bow of the boat and sailing towards the Zhongjun tent, couldn't help but let out a long sigh—the death of Zheng Zhilong shattered the dream of Du Dewei, a small pirate boss, to go public through a backdoor, and it really made him sad .

Before Zheng Zhilong accepted the recruitment, Xiamen Island in the 17th century was just an ordinary island. There were some fishermen and guard slaves living on the island as usual, and it was not prosperous.

In history, after Zheng Zhilong became a coastal defense guerrilla, by occupying Zhongzuo City, cracking down on the import and export trade of Yuegang, and forcing merchant ships to come here for trade, he built Xiamen Island into the center of Fujian's foreign trade in a short period of time. At that time, Xiamen The island began to flourish.

But today's Xiamen Island is much more desolate than usual: some time ago, the repeated battles between officials and bandits caused the remaining residents on the island to flee.And the Acropolis of Zhongzuo, which is located in the southwest corner of Xiamen, has long been deserted at this moment, and the door is just there half open.

Before this, many pirates lived in the city directly after the war.However, before Zheng Zhilong set off for Fuzhou, in order to show a little humility, he ordered all the pirates in the city to be driven out at that time, creating a scene where the government has not lost the city, which can be regarded as saving some face for the officials.

Of course, with Zheng Zhilong's accident, his previous ban gradually became useless.However, the situation changed again at this time: Since the shopkeepers were confronting coldly in the Chinese military tent every day, naturally, the subordinates could no longer go to the Weisuo City, which is a few miles away from the pier, to station.Now tens of thousands of pirates entrenched outside Zhongzuo's wharf all spend the night on their own boats - this is called combat readiness duty.

The boat that Du Dewei was riding on was slowly heading towards the pier.Passing by along the way are a large number of Fuchuan, Cantonese, Bird Boats, fishing boats and other miscellaneous boats.Many of these boats are cooking breakfast, so there is smoke from the cooking along the way.A large number of tattered pirates were fighting and making noise for a bowl of food, and some of them who had already eaten were sitting on the bow of the ship, with their dirty chests shining, roaring some local tunes.

Not long after, Du Dewei's boat arrived at the pier.After nimbly jumping onto the pier, Du Dewei took only one confidant, and walked to the Chinese military tent not far from the pier.

At this moment, there are quite a few shopkeepers who are outside the tent of the Chinese army. Du Dewei walked all the way, smiling all over his face, and while greeting his brothers, he went straight to the door of the big cowhide tent filled with flags of various houses. , opened the leather curtain and walked in.

A small shopkeeper like Du Dewei with only 20 ships has no seats in the Chinese military tent.Because pirates are not an army, most gangsters don't have many main ships that can go into battle, and most of them are scrap fishing boats and the like.

Those who really have high positions in the Chinese military tent are the big shopkeepers who can pull out hundreds of large ships at any time.

After Du Dewei entered the tent, his eyes darkened habitually, and then he hastily clasped his fists around and bowed around, then walked to a corner with a grin.But at this moment, the few people who were already sitting in the two rows of high chairs in the middle of the big tent didn't pay any attention to him.

"How? Is there a result?" After Du Dewei stood where he should be, he turned his head and asked in a low voice to a tall, fat man with stubble on his face.

This man's name is Hu Ba, and he is also the leader of a gang of bandits.This person and Du Dewei have similar identities, and they talk speculatively. The two have looked at each other since the day they met, and they take care of each other on weekdays.

"I'm already thinking about the Liangtai." Seeing that he was an old friend, Hu Ba lowered his head, with a sneer on his face, and said to Du Dewei in a low voice: "I'm afraid we have to make a decision today, you and my brother should be careful." .”

Before Hu Ba could finish his sentence, a Cantonese voice came out from the top chair: "Now that you are staying here, the sons and daughters are still sitting and eating. It's not convenient to put silver rice on the grain table these days, I'm afraid I don't know what kind of blind thoughts some people have. It's better to leave early, and it's okay for the brothers to gather again when Zheng Dazhang returns from his home in the future."

(End of this chapter)