Dragon Sea Empire

In July of the second year of Tianqi, another typhoon swept across the Qiongzhou Strait, and Qiongzhou Prefecture ushered in the hottest weather of the year.

The local parent officer Chen Dong was preparing to hold the first local meeting the day before, and had a whole day of talks with the local gentry and merchants in Qiongzhou in the government office of the town guard. The yamen said that he was unwell and was recuperating at home, so please don't bother me.

Qiongzhou Prefecture is not big. Compared with the state-level cities on the mainland, it is not even as large as some counties in the south of the Yangtze River. In recent years, businessmen from all over the world are keen on the island’s minerals, which makes Qiongzhou Prefecture develop rapidly on the seaside outside the city wall. A new urban area was formed with countless cargo warehouses, shipbuilding workshops, timber factories and small smelting workshops, noisy and chaotic but full of vitality.

The Chinese Army’s Hainan Guard House is nominally under the administration of the military and government, but in fact it only manages civil affairs. For the management of the local security team and Zhuangding team, only the Military Affairs Section and the Duzhi Section are under the jurisdiction of the local garrison of the Chinese Army, and their functions are limited to military logistics support.

During the initial construction of the tutelary mansion, government affairs, military affairs and judiciary were indeed taken care of, or it has been gradually transformed and reformed into the present situation in the past few years.

The town guards in various places are in charge of civil affairs, and their administrative agencies are different from the local governments of the Ming Dynasty. Local officials do not directly try civil and criminal cases, but are tried by circuit courts temporarily stationed in the local area selected by Taiwan's Zhonghua Palace, which rotates every five years. As the chief judge of the circuit court, the law department only plays a role in contacting the circuit court and documents and files. When the chief judge of the circuit court is not in the local area, he has the right to hear cases that do not involve the death penalty.

Such an approach limited the power of magistrates, and made it difficult for judges and local gentry to collude to oppress ordinary people.

Because Chen Dong is good at handling affairs and has a relatively good reputation in Hainan, he has been stationed in Qiongzhou for a relatively long time. When he chose his own government office, he did not choose the government office left for him by the former prefect of Qiongzhou Prefecture in the Ming Dynasty. , but chose to be outside the old city, close to the exclusive wharf warehouse of the Chinese company by the sea, in a secluded corner of the new city, and chose to build a new township government office here, which is not only convenient for dealing with a group of businessmen, but also timely understands the various aspects of the new city. movement of people.

On the other hand, Chen Dong intentionally or unintentionally took this action in his heart to express a clear line with the old Ming Dynasty officials. It's a pity that he wanted to say goodbye to the past, but this "past" still lingered on him.

In the hot weather, Chen Dong was sweating profusely in the study room of his mansion's back house, not because of the hot weather, but because of the three people standing in front of him.

Most of his family members are in Taiwan and Hong Kong. He has a 16-year-old son who is studying at the soon-to-be-established Zhonghua University Government Affairs Academy. He is accompanied by a local concubine in Hainan who is currently locked up in the inner house and under guard.

The three people standing in front of his desk represented the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the King of China, the Ministry of Military Supervision of the Chinese Army, and the Domestic Bureau of the Ministry of Military Intelligence.

The tall and handsome young man from the Ministry of Internal Affairs is Li Yu, deputy section chief, the son of Li Yue, director of the factory department of Zhonghua Company, and a lieutenant military judge from the Supervision Department, who will take over the Chinese Army's Hainan garrison He is a brigade supervisor officer, and another officer of the Military Intelligence Department is dressed in casual clothes. He is short and dark-skinned. His hair is disheveled by the sea breeze for many years.

After five days and nights of sea voyage, they arrived in Qiongzhou from Taiwan port last night. This group of people did not rest for a moment after landing. They sent people to contact the local Chinese army garrison. At the same time, they entered the Hainan guard house and Chen Donghou overnight In the house, accompanied by a sentry of the Taiwan Fleet Marine Corps of the Chinese Army, these more than a hundred Marine Corps soldiers in dark blue uniforms and wearing bamboo hats, led by the personnel of the Internal Affairs Bureau who had been lurking in Chen Dong's mansion for a long time, knew the way Quickly took control of the entire Hainan tutelary mansion, including Chen Dong's back house.

Headed by Li Yu from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, these people did not wake up Chen Dong and the others at first, but after the loud house search woke Chen Dong up, Li Yu and the others had already searched in his study room without hesitation. File letter.

If it wasn't for Yin Feng's repeated instructions to "be polite to Chen Dong" before leaving, Li Yu and the others would definitely break into the inner house and drag Chen Dong from the bed and the concubine.

For literati like Chen Dong, seniors of the China United Company like Li Yue, Lu Dahai, and Chen Zhongji, or the first batch of officers of the Chinese Army, such as Zhao Tie and Li Xing, would all show respect to them, and now they come to Hainan to guard These young people in the mansion grew up in the education system presided over by Yin Feng since they were young. They saw and heard the general trend of the world and learned the cultures of the East and the West. Therefore, they lacked a sense of respect for the traditional literati and scholars.

Now, Li Yu is speaking in a purely businesslike tone: "...Mr. Chen, the king has already given you a break. You'd better be aware of the current affairs, hand over all the relevant documents you have in hand, and report all the insiders you know. ,"

He looked at the lieutenant military judge of the military supervision department, and the military judge immediately took out a letter from his arms, held it in both hands and handed it to him.

Li Yu also took the letter with both hands, and said to Chen Dong with a sneer: "Here is the letter written by the king, the king is unparalleled in benevolence and righteousness, and will give your family a way to survive. Now, it depends on whether you can understand current affairs."

Chen Dong's face turned white and red, and his whole body was almost soaked in sweat.

He stood up, took Yin Feng's letter with trembling hands, opened it carefully, and read it slowly, wiping his sweat from time to time.

When Li Yu was reading the letter, he kept fanning himself with his sleeve, showing impatience.

Before Chen Dong could read the letter, Li Yu went on to say, "Your Majesty will also keep your shares in Zhonghua Company, your family can still manage the land allocated to you, and your official rank, your Majesty will also keep it for you. , just let you go to work in overseas colonies, and you are not allowed to return to the coast of the mainland until the Zhu family's court is destroyed, look, how the king treats you, it can be called the utmost benevolence, right?"

"Yes, yes, the great benevolence and righteousness of the captain of the ship owner, I will never forget it. The letter of the ship owner's king mentioned Xiao Ke's past, it is really... shameful," Chen Dong stood up behind the desk, bowed and cupped his hands to Yin Feng's letter , wryly smiled and said: "It's just that although I am an aide of General Shen, I really don't know his situation. ,"

The lieutenant military judge of the Ministry of Military Intelligence said in a stern tone: "Then, it is impossible for you to be the only one involved in the purchase of Western cannons by the imperial court. We have checked. At that time, you did not leave Hainan within five months. During this period, no one in the imperial court I only looked for you once, and the specific time was..."

Chen Dong raised his head and sighed bitterly: "Your Excellency is right, I was involved in the Western cannon matter, only this time, I just wrote a letter of recommendation to Jin Nige, the vice-bishop of the Western Jesuit Society in Taiwan. I was quite surprised..." The military judge turned his head to look at the military intelligence officer suspiciously, saw him nodding expressionlessly, then turned back and said: "We will check this matter to the end. , no one can shirk responsibility, do you have a draft of the letter you sent to Jinnige?"

"It's burned, it's burned," Chen Dong heard from the military judge's tone sensitively that they had actually mastered everything, and now interrogating him was just to hear an official confession from himself.

"As far as I know, you are definitely not the only one who was sent by General Shen Yourong to Taiwan. At least two other people came to Taiwan with you," Li Yu said with a sneer, "In addition, your old servant is also Shen Yourong. The subordinate of the general soldier, right, he left your mansion three years ago, so where is he now?"

"Old Chen is old, I sent him back to his hometown three years ago to take care of the elderly,"

"Yes, we have invited him back to Taiwan from his hometown of Jianning, so who is the person who came to Taiwan with you to make a hidden stake," Li Yu asked mercilessly.

Chen Dong sat down slowly, looked up to the sky and let out a long sigh. It took a long time before he said with a bitter face: "There are two people who came to Taiwan with me. They are... two brothers, Guo Yi and Guo Yan. People from Quanzhou,"

In order to protect himself, for his own family and his own interests, Chen Dong finally betrayed the Guo brothers.

……

Three days later, the Hainan tutelary office posted a notice announcing that the tutelary envoy Chen Dong was seriously ill and had taken a boat to Taiwan for treatment. At the same time, the new acting tutelary envoy Li Yu took office. The charge is embezzlement of company funds.

After Chen Dong confessed to his accomplices, detailed information was immediately sent to Taiwan by carrier pigeons and communication ships. Soon, the Military Supervision Department and the Military Intelligence Department found the whereabouts of Guo Yi and Guo Yan brothers. Family property, lived in Taiwan for many years, but still has contact with Shen Yourong, the general of Fujian. The elder brother Guo Yi of the Guo family brothers is now a helmsman of the third squadron of the Taiwan Fleet of the navy. The captain of one of the merchant ships belonged to the Nanyang fleet of the Han Ping family. The ship that transported Western artillery across the Strait of Malacca was indeed an internal ship of the Zhonghua Company, and it was the three-masted blessing ship commanded by Guo Yan who was responsible for the smuggling. The task of the cannon.

The two brothers happened to be in Taiwan at the moment, and they were arrested immediately. With the investigation activities in various places, more and more evidences made the members of the board of directors of China United Company look ashen. Ge was in Beijing at this time, and he also received a private warning from the staff of the Zhonghua Company. Yin Feng announced to the Jesuits that Jinnige must be resigned and sent to any jurisdiction of the Zhonghua Company to await interrogation.

Not long after, the chief director, Huang Cheng, was also found out that his family had secretly communicated with the Fujian government. However, he owns a big family, and soon found someone who claimed to have committed the crime and took the top of the tank for him.

The Western Cannon incident gradually came to light, but the cleaning activities did not stop. Instead, they began to inspect the financial situation of the branches and shops of the Chinese Company on a large scale on the grounds that the children of the Han family had embezzled public funds. It became an internal purge in the area ruled by the King of China,