In the middle of the night, the moonlight shines on the sea, giving off a sparkling light.

Five sailing ships, lined up in a rectangular array, escorted the three-masted ship in the center to break the waves, and the "Zheng" flag hanging on it fluttered high in the night sky.

The three-masted ship in the middle is about two feet long.

Zheng Yiguan leaned over the side of the boat, looking at the deep sea, quietly listening to the sound of the waves crashing on the bow of the boat, looking a little uneasy.

The current Zheng Yiguan is not as old as the Emperor of the Apocalypse, and his figure is not very strong, and he even looks a little thin compared to the pirates under him.

However, despite his young age, the experience of fighting against wind and waves since he was a child has made him resolute and more physically fit than the average eighteen-year-old.

Suddenly, there was a sound of footsteps.

A young man climbed out of the small cabin behind Zheng Yiguan, came behind him, patted him on the shoulder, and said softly:

"Yiguan, why don't you go back to sleep?"

Zheng Yiguan didn't even look back, and said lightly:

"I'm not sleepy, you can go back to sleep."

came is Zheng Yiguan's younger brother, and later changed his name to "Zheng Hongkui" Zheng Zhifeng.

He was not too surprised when he heard this.

He knows his brother's temperament best.

Zheng Zhifeng didn't plan to leave, so he removed a wooden plank that was in the way under his feet, lay down beside Zheng Yiguan, and asked:

"What's on your mind?"

"How did you promise Yu Zhigao today, he obviously wants to borrow the hands of our Zheng family to get the Dutchman's ship equipment, and kill multiple birds with one stone."

Zheng [ ] snorted and was noncommittal.

He knew in his heart that the Fujian sailors had received the emperor's clear order to annihilate the Dutch who had invaded Penghu in a short period of time, or at least to drive them away.

The main warship of the Fujian Navy Division was the Cangshan ship, which was inferior to the Dutchman's Galen ship in all aspects.

In Zheng Yiguan's view, the Cangshan ship met the Dutch merchant ship, and it may not be able to defeat it.

As for his Zheng family's fleet, although there is no power in the southeast sea now, there is no pressure to deal with so many Dutch.

Zheng Yiguan had been following his uncle Li Dan in trading between the Ming Dynasty and Japan.

But since last year, he began to break away from Li Dan intentionally or unintentionally, and took the Zheng family to fend for himself and develop his own power.

He could see that this was the year of competition for seafaring power.

His uncle Li Dan, although he was already the largest maritime merchant outside the imperial court, was staring at a small place in Japan.

Compared to the vast southeastern sea, the Sea of Japan is too small.

At present, the southeast sea area can be said to be a group of heroes, pirates, maritime merchants, Western colonizers, and various forces are mixed and attack each other, but none of them can be called the leading forces.

Either he was dragged to death by Li Dan, or he took the Zheng family out of the Sea of Japan and laid a world of his own in the vast southeast sea.

Zheng Yiguan decisively chose the latter.

If you want to develop your power, you must first have money, and if you have money, you can't do without running merchants to transport goods, so Zheng Zhilong's top priority is to get a formal business license from the imperial court.

Only then will he be able to move on to the next step of development.

As for the imperial court, it was to maintain the national prestige and drive away or annihilate the Dutch invaders, but the battle of the Zhongzuo Institute proved that the strength of the Fujian naval division was not enough.

Zheng Yiguan is not an impulsive person, and Gao Wenlu's attack is just a fuse for him.

With this fuse, he can justifiably go to the Fujian Navy Master to cooperate, and even if Li Dan knows about it, he has a rhetoric.

The current Zheng family can't break away from Li Dan and tear up their faces with the Li family.

"Cooperation with Yu Zhigao is a win-win situation." Zheng Yiguan said lightly:

"The Fujian Navy Division is not enough to repel the Dutch alone, if you want to develop independently from Li Dan, this opportunity cannot be missed."

"I understand." Zheng Zhifeng nodded without hesitation, then sighed again, and said:

"How easy is it to have a whole Galen ship with Dutch weapons?"

Speaking of this, Zheng Yiguan's expression became more determined.

He looked at the bow of the ship that was breaking through the waves under his feet, and said emotionlessly:

"If you want to do great things, there will definitely be sacrifices, our Zheng family wants to gain a foothold in the southeast sea, and even be the king and hegemon, this is just the beginning."

Zheng Zhilong sighed helplessly, looked at the vast sea, and his heart suddenly opened up, and he was relieved in an instant.

......

The scorching sunlight shone on the sky above the center and left, and the lively port was a little frightening at the moment.

Eight Dutch warships were moored around the port, and hundreds of ships of the Fujian Navy Division were so frightened that they did not dare to approach.

Admiral Gao Wenlu of the Royal Navy stood on the board of one of the Galen ships, carefully observing the movements of the yellow-skinned monkeys in the harbor with a telescope.

After a while, he put down his binoculars and smiled contemptuously:

"These people are all scared to death, and in broad daylight, there is not a single living person in the harbor."

"It seems that we have to reply to the king, and the Ming can develop into our colony!"

Looking at this confident admiral, the rest of the East India Company generals didn't say much.

It has been 20 years since the East India Company was founded.

In the nineties of the sixteenth century, the British fleet sailed into the Indian Ocean to challenge the unshakable Spanish control of trade.

As the Spanish Empire declined, global trade routes collapsed, and there was even a trade vacuum in the Far East.

The Ming Dynasty in the East did not trade with any Western countries.

The Ming Dynasty's huge territory and abundant resources made Westerners very eager to establish trade with it, even if they started a war.

After the Armada was defeated by the British, the Spanish Empire was no longer able to exercise autocratic rule over the Netherlands, and the Netherlands became independent.

After gaining independence, the Netherlands developed into a world power dominated by navigation and trade at an astonishing speed.

Today, the Netherlands has more ships than all other European countries combined, and it is for this reason that Westerners are called "coachmen of the sea".

In response to the "vacuum" phenomenon in the Far Eastern Seas, the Dutch established the East India Company twenty years ago, with the authorization of the United Provincial Council.

In fact, the East India Company was founded specifically to open up trade with the East.

Today, the East India Company has mastered a wide range of trade from the Indian Ocean in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, and even its headquarters are located in Batavia, far east.

After twenty years of strife, the Dutch and the English finally finished dividing the spoils and decided to monopolize the trade of the Spice Islands by two to one.

Not so long ago, during the war against England, the Dutch gained control of the Strait of Malacca and occupied Ceylon in the Indian Ocean.

Today, the Dutch East India Company was very successful in its trade in the East, but people were ambitious, and the ambitions of the Dutch were endless.

Cohen, who was elected by the United Provincial Assembly as the head of the East India Company, immediately set his sights on Daming after taking office.

Cohen sent a fleet of fifteen ships with Lei Yeshan as the commander-in-chief from the Spice Islands to invade the Penghu area of the Ming Dynasty again.

In fact, it is not the first time that the Dutch want to open the gate of the Ming Dynasty with strong ships and cannons.

In the third year of the establishment of the East India Company, their ships had sailed to the coast of Fujian in the Ming Dynasty, and even occupied Penghu for a time.

However, at that time, Penghu was not only coveted by the Dutch, but also by the Spaniards, Portuguese, and even the English.

The infighting among the Western colonists, combined with the intransigence of the Wanli Emperor, soon led them to abandon Penghu in favor of continuing to compete for the Spice Islands.

In the second year of the Apocalypse, due to the strength of Lei Yeshan, Zhu Youxiao, who was the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, was strongly dissatisfied, and issued a clear decree to safeguard territorial sovereignty at all costs.

For this reason, the Fujian Navy Division even directly launched a war.

The game between the East India Company and the Ming Dynasty has only been completely moved to the table since the beginning of Wanli.