The room goes through the late Ming Dynasty, and the back door leads to North America at the beginni

Although Guan Cheng was a boy student, he had read some miscellaneous books and had quite a lot of knowledge.

Hearing this, he said: "Shandong has six prefectures: Jinan, Dongchang, Yanzhou, Qingzhou, Laizhou, and Dengzhou. The provincial capital is in Licheng, the capital of Jinan Prefecture."

"Qingzhou, Dengzhou, and Laizhou are all in the east, covering quite a large area. If the pirates can occupy these three prefectures, they really have taken over half of Shandong."

The dark-skinned young man couldn't help but say, "Mr. Guan is indeed a scholar, he knows a lot. Now that we are surrounded by the imperial army and have nowhere to go, why don't we go to Qingzhou and seek refuge with the pirates?"

Mr. Guan frowned slightly and said, "Although this pirate is also against the imperial court, he may not be the same as us."

"Ah, why?" The dark and thin young man was puzzled.

In his opinion, since they all opposed the imperial court, they were all the same kind of people.

Mr. Guan said: "We were all common people originally. We were forced to live unsustainably by the imperial court, so we rose up and resisted the tyranny."

"You have been with me for a few months, you should have seen that we kill corrupt officials and landlords who are rich and unkind. We can't say that we do not harm ordinary people, but we rarely harass them, and we will never take the initiative to harm them."

"The pirates have always had a bad reputation. I heard that they specialize in robbing merchant ships and fishing boats at sea. Occasionally, they will go ashore to rob ordinary people. Most of them are evil."

"If the pirates who occupy half of Shandong are like this, do you want to go along with them?"

The dark-skinned young man scratched his head and said, "If the Shandong pirates are really as vicious as Mr. Guan said, I naturally don't want to join them."

Then he suddenly thought of something and said quickly, "Oh, right, I heard in the city today that those pirates called themselves the pirate army and had a lot of guns and cannons, so they defeated the government army several times. It seems that they are not ordinary pirates."

Calling yourself a member of the Lai Army?

And lots of guns?

Hearing this, Guan Cheng also became curious about this pirate group.

I thought that since this group of pirates had landed and occupied three prefectures, they must have seen the war raging in the Chu State and were planning to attack it.

This pirate group is undoubtedly very powerful, but I don't know what kind of person its leader is...

There were many ambitious leaders of the Nong Ming Army and even landlords and gentry in Hebei and Henan, like Mr. Guan, who were overjoyed when they heard the news that the Wei Army had seized half of Shandong.

But everyone has different ideas.

Most of the peasant army leaders, who were not very knowledgeable and had simple minds, thought this was a good thing. At least part of the Chu imperial court's troops would be tied up in the rebel army, which would relieve their pressure.

Those who were more thoughtful were thinking, why would a pirate come ashore and occupy three prefectures? Could it be that he really wanted to take over the world?

Although the chaos in the Great Chu has become apparent and the country is clearly unstable, it still seems a long way from being destroyed.

But most people, after hearing about this, did not think that the Hui army could really overthrow the Great Chu - in their view, the reason why the Hui army was able to occupy half of Shandong was simply because the Great Chu did not send border troops or imperial troops to suppress it. Once the Great Chu court was determined to suppress the Hui army, it would definitely be able to do it.

Of course, there were also those who were truly knowledgeable and wise. They saw the fact that the Chu court was weak internally from the fact that it had been slow to send border troops and imperial guards to suppress the Hui army.

If these people are loyal to the Great Chu, they will naturally be very worried and want to offer advice to the court.

If someone is already dissatisfied with the court or has ambitions, they will be even more restless.

For a while, undercurrents surged throughout the Chu State.

···
Dengzhou.

The former governor's office, now Liu Sheng's palace.

"Hahaha." Liu Sheng held the telegram and laughed happily.

However, news came from Nanjing that Liu Rui's eldest son and grandson were born.

Liu Rui asked the telecommunications office to send him a telegram to announce the good news and also asked him to name his eldest grandson.

After laughing, Liu Sheng thought for a moment and said, "Since my sons are all named with characters starting with the character 王, then Rui'er's sons should be named with characters starting with 宝盖头."

Li Xiangyun is now with Liu Sheng, responsible for supervising the affairs of the telegraph group. This telegram was sent by her.

Hearing this, she smiled and said, "Your Majesty, if that's what you said, then do the other princes' sons have different naming rules?"

Liu Sheng said, "Of course - I have already given birth to 10 to 20 sons and more than 10 daughters. There are not enough characters next to the character 王."

"In the future, my sons will surely have many children. If we use the same naming rules again, it will be difficult to name them."

"Therefore, it would be better if each son could come up with a naming rule for his descendants."

As far as Liu Sheng knew, this was what the Ming royal family did.

The most praised of these is the naming according to the radicals of gold, wood, water, fire and earth, which created most of the periodic table for future generations.

Coming back to his senses, Liu Sheng said, "Let's name my grandson Wang Xian, the Xian of Constitution. Dalai will definitely be more and more inclined towards the rule of law in the future, which is also one of my expectations for him."

There is a secretariat staff member next to you who will record everything Liu Sheng says. Finally, you write it down in a telegram and give it to Liu Sheng for his reading.

Liu Sheng looked at it and thought there was no problem, so he printed it and sent it to the telecommunications group to send the message.

Seeing Liu Sheng happy, Li Xiangyun said, "Kang Kang and Ling You are almost eighteen years old now. Your Majesty, should you consider finding wives for them?"

Liu Sheng said: "You, Lingfei and Haizhu can pay attention to this matter - since they want to make achievements here, their wives can choose people from here."

"But there is no need to rush this matter. Even if they are eighteen years old, they are still young. I was twenty-seven when I married the Queen."

Li Xiangyun said: "Your Majesty didn't look like he was 26 or 27 years old. He looked like he was only in his early 20s."

Thinking back to the time when Liu Sheng bought her from the market, Li Xiangyun felt quite sad for a moment.

At that time, she could never have imagined that one day Liu Sheng would become the founding emperor and she would become the imperial concubine.

I can only say that life is truly mysterious and unpredictable...
In a blink of an eye, it was May of the third year of Yongxing in Dalai.

It has been two or three months since the Hui army captured Qingzhou, but the Chu court has still not taken any action.

Seeing this, Liu Sheng was certain that the Chu court might not be able to provide enough money, food, and troops to attack him at the moment.

Since Da Chu was weaker than he expected, Liu Sheng was not going to be polite.

He immediately dispatched a squadron of more than a dozen 3,000-ton warships into the Yangtze River to bombard Nanjing.

At the same time, they prepared to send troops to capture Jiangbei.

May 25th, morning.

The sun was already quite hot, and Zhou Sanshui, a fisherman from Chongming Island, was fishing at the mouth of the river with his two sons.

Fishermen have a hard time these days, because the Great Chu court and local government have increased taxes in all aspects in recent years, and fishing taxes are naturally among them. If it were just an increase in taxes, it would be fine, but the key is that they will also be oppressed by fishing tyrants and local tyrants. Even if they work hard to catch fish, they can't sell them for a good price.

What's more, the population of Da Chu now exceeds 100 million, and there are also many fishermen, so it's very crowded.

Even at this time, there were hundreds of large and small fishing boats of Zhou Sanshui's family fishing in the waters of Jiangkou!

There were also many fishermen in other places that were not visible on Wednesday. Although there were many fish in this area, everyone came to fish, so naturally each person could catch less fish.

He cast down another fishing net and saw that his two sons were a little absent-minded. Zhou Sanshui could not help but scold them, "You two are distracted. If you don't catch enough fish today, you may have no food to eat at night!"

His two sons are both in their twenties, but neither of them is married.

It’s not that I don’t want to get married, but my family is too poor. I can’t find a wife and I can’t afford the bride price.

Speaking of which, when Zhou Sanshui got married decades ago, the total amount of various gifts was only two or three strings of money.

But now that life is hard, the bride price has doubled. Now, if you don't have seven or eight strings of cash, don't even think about getting married.

There is not much difference in age between his two sons, the eldest is only two years older than the second. If they both get married, it will probably cost 10 to 20 strings of cash.

His family was extremely poor, and all their property added up was estimated to be worth less than five strings of cash, so his two sons had to remain single.

As the two sons grew older, they paid less and less attention to fishing and often slacked off these days.

However, some time ago, news came from the north that a large pirate group had occupied half of Shandong and declared themselves the king.

These coastal fishermen have always attached great importance to various news concerning pirates.

Upon hearing the news, some fishermen were scared, but some were excited.

Because these days, many fishermen couldn't make a living or couldn't stand the poverty and became pirates.

His two sons were the ones who were secretly excited after hearing the news about the pirates.

At this time, hearing Zhou Dahai's scolding, the more rebellious second brother Zhou Dahai couldn't help but retort: ​​"If you don't want to eat, then don't eat. At worst, I can become a pirate and eat delicious food and drink spicy drinks all day long!"

Zhou Sanshui laughed angrily when he heard this. "With your idiotic appearance, you still want to be a pirate? If you really become a pirate, I'm afraid you will be killed as soon as you see a war. You still want to enjoy the good life? I think you'd be eating knives!"

Zhou Dahai said unconvincedly: "I am more stable on the boat than a person standing on the ground. I can also hold my breath in the water for a long time and swim as fast as a fish! If I become a pirate, I will definitely make a name for myself!"

Zhou Sanshui was really angry and said, "Yes, you are awesome! If you really dare to become a pirate, don't even think about being in the Zhou family's ancestral hall after you die!"

The father and son were arguing when Zhou Dajiang, who was standing by, suddenly exclaimed, "Dad, second son, look what's over there!"

Upon hearing this, the two looked to the east and saw a sail appear on the sea with black smoke coming out!

Zhou Sanshui said: "Is there a dozen or so large ships? No merchant fleet is this big. And merchant ships would never enter the Yangtze River from here. Could it be a tribute fleet from some foreign vassal state?"

Zhou Sanshui is in his forties. He started fishing at sea with his father when he was a few years old. He has been a fisherman for nearly forty years and has gained a lot of experience.

That's why he was confused.

Zhou Dahai said excitedly: "These large ships are all smoking. Maybe they were attacked by pirates and had to come here!"

Zhou Sanshui didn't want to continue scolding Lao Er, and said, "No matter who they are or what happened, it's none of our business. Let's get this one out and go home!"

Zhou Dahai said: "Dad, can't we watch for a while longer to see what happened?"

"Be careful or you'll lose your life! Hurry up and go home!"

After Zhou Sanshui's stern rebuke, the two sons finally cooperated in closing the net.

By the time they collected their nets and returned to Chongming Island, the large ships were already much closer.

The father and his two sons then discovered that those large ships were even bigger than they had expected, and there were more than ten gun ports on one side of the ship!
In addition, the black smoke rising into the sky was not caused by a fire on the ship, but was caused by a large amount of smoke rising from a ship, which looked extremely strange.

Seeing this, Zhou Dahai became afraid and dared not argue with his father anymore. He helped speed up the return trip.

The Great Chu did not have a customs office at the mouth of the Yangtze River, so foreign ships were not allowed to enter the Yangtze River without the permission of the Great Chu court.

In order to enforce this regulation and guard against pirates, the Chu State established three or four garrisons on Chongming Island and the north and south banks. It also stationed a naval battalion on Jingjiang Island, with more than 5,000 soldiers led by a deputy general.

Not to mention the corruption of several garrisons at the mouth of the Yangtze River, the Jingjiang Water Camp also had many problems.

However, the Jingjiang Water Camp is classified as a border army after all. It still has three warships of more than 1,000 tons, dozens of warships of 700 to 800 tons, and even smaller warships.

Every day, several warships were dispatched to cruise at the mouth of the Yangtze River, nominally to patrol the river mouth and local pirates, but in reality, they were doing so to extort merchant ships and fishermen and earn some extra money for the water camp.

The boats from Shuiying arrived late, and when most of the fishermen had gone home, they saw the Hailongwei squadron entering the Yangtze River estuary.

Seeing that the other side had more than a dozen warships of more than 3,000 tons, the patrol boats of Jingjiang Water Camp were so scared that they quickly ran back.

Because of the long distance, although the patrol boats were running slowly, they still ran back to the navy camp on Jingjiang Island first.

Deputy General Luo Zhen did not live in the navy camp, but had a villa on the island, where he lived with his two concubines on a daily basis.

He had worked too hard last night, so when several of his generals hurried over to ask for a meeting, he had not yet gotten up.

"General, something bad has happened. A dozen or so large ships have arrived on the sea, flying a flag with the Chinese character '崋' on it. They seem to be a group of pirates who have taken over half of Shandong!"

Hearing the shouting coming from the yard, Luo Zhen sat up with a start.

The flag with the word "崋" on it?
A big pirate from Shandong?
How did they think of entering the Yangtze River?
Could it be that... they want to attack Nanjing?!

Although Luo Zhen has fallen now, he did have some real skills in his early years. Therefore, with a little reasoning, he was able to guess the possible purpose of the enemy.

Then he got up quickly, put on his casual clothes in a hurry, and went to the yard to meet several generals who came to report the news.

"How many ships are there? How big is the largest ship? Are you sure they are pirates from Shandong?"

Several lieutenant generals and guerrillas looked at each other, and then one of them said, "The people below didn't see exactly how many ships there were, but they only said there were about 10 to 20."

"Also, they say there are a lot of gun ports, and it seems that they are all warships with a capacity of more than 3,000 tons!"

More than a dozen warships with a capacity of more than 3,000 tons?
Luo Zhen felt dizzy.

I thought, how can I intercept this?

Thinking of this, he suddenly came up with a plan. He put his hand on his forehead and said with a distracted look, "Why do I feel a little dizzy? Is it because of a headache?"

After saying that, he fainted on the ground.

Several lieutenant generals and guerrillas were all dumbfounded when they saw this. (End of this chapter)