The fleet carrying tens of thousands of Canton civilians set sail from Hong Kong Island, and the ships intercepted by Hong Xu, Zhou Rui, and Chen Kai all set off from the Guangzhou wharf, temporarily transplanting these hopes of restoration and development to the hot land of Chaozhou, waiting for a better time.

Chen Kai's efforts in Guangzhou have received huge rewards, but all this, just like this large fleet of more than 1,000 large and small ships, is still drifting in the waters south of Huizhou Prefecture, and is not known to the people of southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong for the time being.

However, for Chen Kai, Zheng Chenggong after the first acquaintance of the small eye, the view has already undergone earth-shaking changes, even if Chen Kai's strategy is far more risky than the outwitting of Chaozhou City, but Zheng Chenggong is still full of confidence in him, so after Chen Kai initially reached a trade with Du Yonghe, he sent Zhou Rui to assist, so when Zheng Chenggong won the victory in Xiamen, he immediately sent Hong Xu to the west to increase the weight of this operation.

Zheng Chenggong was no longer interested in thinking about the matter in Guangzhou, and was just waiting for Chen Kai's report to be returned. In recent months, since the capture of Xiamen, Zheng Lian's troops were first subdued on Xiamen Island, and in September, Zheng Cai's generals, such as Yang Chaodong, Wang Sheng, Cai Xin, Yang Quan, and others, also came with their troops to join them, and Zheng Cai, who had lost his base area, was able to command only Zhang Yunfei, Cai Xing, Jiang Meiao and other generals, and the speed of shrinking strength was unimaginable.

Like Zheng Lian's generals, Zheng Chenggong did not seize the military power of Zheng Cai's generals, but only purged them according to the establishment of Zheng Chenggong's troops, and then granted them the post of town. Among them, such as Yang Chaodong awarded the chief military officer of Yiwu Town, Wang Sheng, Cai Xin, Yang Quan and other generals to lead Shuishi Town, which was incorporated into the organizational system of Zheng Chenggong's department.

Regarding the violent expansion of Zheng Chenggong's strength, especially Zheng Chenggong's revenge for killing his brother Zheng Lian, Zheng Cai had no intention of swallowing his anger. In the past few months, Zheng Cai's department and Zheng Chenggong have clashed several times, and they have not taken advantage of the slightest advantage, and there are quite some losses, as a result, he led the army to Wenzhou Sanpan, intending to contact the forces of the Lu Jianguo Dynasty to counterattack again, but was attacked by the Ming army of the Lu Jianguo system, and since then he has been in a slump, and even the strength to come back to Zheng Chenggong for trouble is gone.

However, Zheng Chenggong did not choose to kill Zheng Cai, on the one hand, his grandmother Mrs. Huang was dissatisfied, which made Zheng Chenggong have to return Zheng Cai's family; On the other hand, Chen Kai mentioned in his early years that he should be lenient with others, although he killed Zheng Lian, he did not intend to continue to make things desperate, so he let him drift at sea and ignore it for the time being.

After seizing Xiamen Island and holding the maritime trade center that Zheng Group had operated for many years, Zheng Chenggong's maritime trade capacity quickly made a qualitative leap.

Originally, Zheng Chenggong's maritime trade was in charge of Hong Xu, who started by robbing a batch of goods from his own house, building trade channels little by little, purchasing, transshipment, and sales, and then purchasing goods from the local area and transshipment them to other places, relying on earning the price difference to achieve the ultimate goal of raising soldiers. Later, Chen Kai made a breakthrough in Chaozhou, and Zheng Chenggong's department focused on running Chaozhou. In addition to the original source of goods, there are more local production in Chaozhou, especially in the first year, the goods collected from the inventory of local tyrants in various places really made Zheng Chenggong make a lot of money, so that year and the following year, the expansion speed of the army will be greatly improved.

This speed of development is much faster than that of Zheng Chenggong in history, but even so, it is still a huge difference compared to the growth of sea trade after the capture of Xiamen.

Xiamen Island's maritime trade, Zheng Group has been operating for many years, not like Chaozhou, but also the tentacles of the Zheng family personally go down to the counties, even towns and towns to receive goods, here is the transit center, every year there will be a batch of maritime merchants from Guangdong, from northern Fujian, from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, from Japan and the Ryukyus, and even from Dayuan and Nanyang and other places to come, the goods from all over the place are sold here, and the goods are purchased and returned at the same time.

One is that you need to actively acquire, and the other can be actively acquired on your own, and you can also earn passively, which is very different. More importantly, after the capture of Xiamen, the signal of the reunification of the Zheng group was sent, and the restoration of the old system of collecting taxes through the Taiwan Strait in the Zheng Zhilong era could also be carried out more effectively.

Zheng Chenggong had already transferred the maritime trade matters that Hong Xu was in charge of to his cousin, Zheng Tai, who was also the adopted son of his father Zheng Zhilong. Although this person is a civil official, he is already the title of Marquis of Jianping in the Longwu Dynasty, and he is better than Zheng Zhibao, Zheng Cai and Zheng Lian, who are military leaders in power, which shows his status within the Zheng group.

Zheng Tai was in charge of maritime trade, and those old trade channels could be used by Zheng Chenggong. According to Zheng Tai's calculations, next year's sea trade income should not be less than 1.5 million taels of silver, and this is still without calculating Chaozhou production, because this year Chen Kai took a large amount of Chaozhou production to Guangzhou as bait, so that he couldn't make a good estimate for a while.

The benefits of maritime trade will be shown next year, and Zheng Chenggong's troops will also achieve further expansion after annexing most of Zheng Cai and Zheng Lian's troops.

So far, Zheng Chenggong's naval division has put aside the original Lin Cha, Zhou Rui, Lin Xishan and other departments, and the fleets of Zheng Cai and Zheng Lian have also been merged into it, and the size of the ships alone is not less than 1,000, and the number of sailors together is as high as nearly 30,000, which is the largest in the southeast coast. And this is still not the case of the water that Chen Kai got from Guangzhou.

In terms of land divisions, not counting the garrisons in various parts of Chaozhou, the towns under his command alone include Rongqi Town, Qinding Town, Left Pioneer Town, Right Pioneer Town, Aid Suppression Left Town, Aid Suppression Right Town, Zhongchong Town, Qianchong Town, Houchong Town, Zuochong Town, Right Chong Town, Qianfeng Town, Houjin Town, Yiwu Town, Tieqi Town, and the Zhengbing Battalion that is about to be expanded into Zhengbing Town, the newly built reinforcement and suppression rear town with the former deputy general Lan Deng as the chief military officer, and the former town of Huang Dazhen, the general who has just been transferred from the national flag of Lu Jian, a total of 18 towns. Each town ranged from two to five associations, each of which was five hundred soldiers per battalion, and an army of up to twenty-two thousand soldiers.

From the second year of Longwu to today, after nearly five years of hard work, Zheng Chenggong's department is finally close to the total strength of Shang Kexi's siege of Guangzhou, and these troops have been screened, excluding some of the old and weak, Zheng Chenggong is also training a new tactic, combat effectiveness does not decrease but increases, although it still cannot be compared with those feudal soldiers who came out of Liaodong, but it can be regarded as having a certain ability to protect itself.

It's a pity that the city of Guangzhou fell, and since it chose to seize Xiamen to reduce the difference in strength between the two sides, it was inevitable to lose the favorable opportunity to cut into the Guangzhou battlefield. But for the Zheng Group, even if Chen Kai's harvest is not counted, with his original strength, he can't achieve too good results among the allies who are full of infighting, which is already the best result.

However, the general environment of the enemy's strength and weakness still exists, and the Southern Ming Dynasty lost most of the world to the Manchu Qing Dynasty in the past few years, and it is not easy to turn it around. Zheng Chenggong's strength had just been greatly improved, and a series of bad news came from Chaozhou, where a large number of troops had been transferred and there was an inevitable emptiness, forcing him to seize all the time to deal with it.