Daming Yinghua

Chapter 23 Opening the Stone Gate
The midday sun brought the sea surface temperature to a high.

Mao Wenlong and his entourage stood on the reef, and they could still smell the disgusting pungent smell from a distance of several feet.

Yan Siqi's people told him that it was fish medicine, and they made a paste by mixing the rotten shark viscera with rice wine and stinky wormwood juice, and threw it into the sea, so that nearby sharks would never swim over.

"It's fucking stinking. The pirate's livelihood is the same as our frontier soldiers begging for food in the sea of ​​corpses and blood. It is not done by humans."

Mao Wenlong pulled his bitter face, frowned and muttered.

The brothers around him also covered their noses.

They were Liaodong soldiers who were familiar with killing, and they were no strangers to the wounded and dead bodies when fighting the Mongols or the Jurchens, but the pure smell of blood and the extremely fermented and rotten smell in front of them were completely incomprehensible. Compare.

Mao Wenlong glanced at the appearance of the entourage, and scolded with a smile: "Counsel, look at that Zheng girl, a cute little girl, she doesn't think it's too smelly."

The Liaodong soldiers followed Mao Wenlong's fingers, and saw Zheng Haizhu next to Yan Siqi on the fishing boat under the reef, also standing tall and straight, with the usual expression on his face.

The little lady did not look weak, juxtaposed with the tall Yan Siqi, like green bamboo and sycamore.

"Plop, plop" a few times, three strong men in fish skin swimsuits jumped into the water, and then took the turpentine torch from a young man on the side of the boat.

Now, Zheng Haizhu knows that this young man surnamed Li who picked up Mao Wenlong off the coast of Songjiang is Li Dan's eldest son, Li Guozhu.

Li Dan is an older stateless sea merchant. He made a fortune in Hirado Port, Japan, and dominated the route from Dongying to Nanyang Luzon. He has a relationship with the Dutch who have risen recently and have shown signs of replacing Spain and Portugal. Not bad.

After Yan Siqi arrived in Hirado, Li Dan gradually valued him for his ability.Now, Yan Siqi led the fleet to go to sea, Li Dan asked him to bring Li Guozhu to experience the experience, don't call the Li family's sea country, the second generation died.

"Master Yan, there is really something in the cave, it seems to be a box!"

Yan Siqi's men shouted excitedly after shining a torch through the cracks in the stone slabs, and then continued to observe.

Immediately afterwards, they seemed to be discussing something, and they inserted the torches into the cracks in the surrounding rocks. All three of them freed up their hands, squeezed in front of the stone slab, and yelled back.

Not long after, one of them swam back and reported: "But there is a strip on the back of the stone slab, which seems to be a reef. It looks thin, but the three of us pushed it together, and it couldn't be pushed."

"Can't you push it?" After listening to the report, Li Guozhu looked at the cave again, turned to Yan Siqi and said, "Brother, it's not easy, just use our turtledove blunderbuss to blast it away?"

Zheng Haizhu looked at him: "Turtledove blunderbuss? Is it a big fire blunderbuss filled with lead bullets?"

"Hey, you also know?" Li Guozhu was a little surprised.

Zheng Haizhu vaguely remembered that the turtledove blunderbuss was widely used by the Ming Dynasty to fight against the later Jin army during the Chongzhen period. He did not expect to hear this name from a half-merchant and half-pirate fleet in the last year of Wanli.

As soon as she thought about it, she made up the story: "There are Franji people (referring to the Portuguese) in Songjiang Prefecture who preach. They said that the firecrackers in Macau are very big, and the base is like a bird's long feet, so they are called turtledove blunderbusses."

Li Guozhu said "hmm" and said triumphantly, "The turtledove gun on my boat was bought from Hongmaofan (referring to the Dutchman), and it is better than Franji."

Zheng Haizhu looked at Yan Siqi and said, "The more fierce the firepower, the more you can't use firecrackers. If the rocks above are shaken and the entire rock wall is overturned, the seabed here is not that deep, and the entrance of the cave will be covered by fire." How can we dig it out in the sea when the boulders are buried?"

Yan Siqi raised his eyes to look at the cliff, felt that what Zheng Haizhu said was reasonable, so he nodded.

Li Guozhu's face darkened.

He had dealt with Mao Wenlong several times with Yan Siqi before, and he didn't like Mao Wenlong who treated him like a child. He didn't expect that the woman Mao Wenlong sent this time was actually Brother Yan's old friend.But at noon today, the news that Big Brother Yan told him was even more unexpected. This woman actually said that her ancestors had worked for the great pirate Wang Zhi and knew a treasure place.

It's a beautiful thing to stick to her body and money. It's no wonder that Brother Yan looks at her like a demon.

Li Guozhu didn't dare to offend Yan Siqi, his father's right-hand man, so he suppressed his embarrassment and asked Zheng Haizhu coldly: "Then what do you say?"

Zheng Haizhu walked to the side of the boat and asked the caver: "Brother, how thick is the rock you saw?"

The man in the water made gestures: "It's only half a foot wide. How can you be completely motionless if you see a ghost."

"Most of the stone slab is underwater, have you dived down to see it? Can you see the condition of the lower part of the stone strip? Is it attached to the stone slab?"

"I saw that there seems to be a gap under the stone bar and between the stone slabs, but the top is firmly supported."

A smile appeared on Zheng Haizhu's face. She turned around, looked up at Mao Wenlong on the reef and shouted, "General Mao, you have to give me back General Ma's chisel!"

……

After half a stick of incense, Mao Wenlong, who brought the things, also jumped onto the fishing boat.

When he handed over the fine steel chisel that Ma Xianglin gave to Zheng Haizhu for self-defense, he explained to Yan Siqi with some embarrassment: "Master Yan, you daughter-in-law, you have some skills, and you used this thing to kill people in the bandit's den. So along the way, I was afraid that she would stab me while she was asleep, so I must hide the knife, right. Hehe, hehe."

Then he turned to Zheng Haizhu with a smile: "In the end, when I went to the island to see that you were finally able to worship, I forgot about it as soon as I was happy. I didn't intend to win people's love. Miss Zheng, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Yan Siqi's expression darkened slightly.

When Mao Wenlong received the news yesterday, he had already heard about the people and things that Zheng Haizhu encountered in the bandit den.

It is unavoidable that the generals who fought in the fighting years felt sympathetic to each other, so when Mao Wenlong mentioned Ma Xianglin, he said a few more words about the bravery of the Sichuan army to Yan Siqi, who had been away from home for a long time and did not know the affairs of his home country.

Today Yan Siqi heard the word "General Ma" again, and a strange feeling that was difficult to dismantle passed over his heart, but after all, there was something serious in front of him, so he frowned, and said to Zheng Haizhu gently: "It's up to you to do tricks."

Zheng Haizhu took over the fine steel chisel.

After killing Xu Aliu in the bandit's den, she discovered that Ma Xianglin's dagger-shaped chisel had a hole in the front of the blade, similar to the police melee daggers of later generations.

Now, she passes a thick iron wire that Yan Siqi ordered her men to find from Fu Chuan through the round hole of the chisel. Tie twine in the hole.

After completing the first step, she said lightly to Yan Siqi: "I have to go into the water, and I can only explain clearly by gesturing with a few brothers."

(End of this chapter)