...... A few days ago, he was the boss of a fleet with three thousand-material Cantonese tea boats.

As the eldest son and head of the seafaring family, he is the pillar of the Xue family.

It is said that the ancestors of the Xue family have been begging for a living at sea since the time when the Three Treasure eunuchs went to the West.

Because Xue Laixiang's ancestor was a distant relative of the Three Treasure Eunuchs, he had followed the fleet to the Western Ocean to the distant Great Food Country, so navigation became the inheritance of the family and became an ancestral business of the Xue family that was almost uninterrupted.

Later, although the Ming Dynasty had a sea ban, it gradually became a dead letter, as the Xue family of the Jiaodong Jimo navigation family, the family elders had already established a channel for collusion with the official eunuchs.

The Xue family is a leader in the Jimo maritime merchant group.

Jimo maritime merchants, this group was actually the cash cow and money bag of the northern eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty at that time, and it was also a maritime power of the Ming Dynasty in eastern Ludong.

At that time, the Jimo maritime merchants had almost monopolized the maritime trade with Dongying, Ryukyu, and Korea along the coast of Damyeongludi, and their Daifuku ships were frequent visitors to the ports of Naha in the Ryukyus, Pusan and Pohang in Samhan, and Nagasaki in Dongying.

Every year from July to August, at the beginning of the autumn wind, the fleet departs from Nugu Port in Jiaodong and rides the wind to Samhan, and then turns to Dongying, Ryukyu and Dayuan Island.

At that time, the business of maritime merchants was very prosperous, and there was never any empty load in the sealed waterproof hold.

Silk, tea, porcelain, ironware, spirits, medicinal herbs, and cloth from the mainland were shipped to these ports for Korean ginseng, wood, lacquerware, and fur, as well as sulfur, raw silk, swords, copper ingots, and silverware from Toei, as well as tortoiseshell and pearls from the Ryukyus, and cane sugar and deer skins from Oyuan Island, which the world calls "Beautiful Island."

And, of course, there are red hair-making clocks, firearms, and all sorts of intricate gadgets.

In the spring of the following year, when the spring was bright, the fleet finally returned to its hometown, when it first went to sea, each ship was full of goods, and after this trip to the five corners and three sides of the business ran down, in addition to the full load of overseas goods, each ship can give birth to a small half of the silver!

And this silver eventually became the wealth circulating in the hands of the people of the Ming Dynasty and the taxes of the government.

It's trade that makes this world......

……

However, the cycle of heaven, the changes of the world, the Ming Dynasty finally became yesterday's yellow flower, replacing the old dynasty, is the new dynasty that forced the people to shave their hair and change clothes, it has a new atmosphere different from the previous dynasty, the law is strict, and the order is forbidden - the ban on the sea is the real ban on the sea, and there is no discount to play.

Just a few years ago, Xue Laixiang, who was just in his early twenties, will never forget the last time his elderly father rushed to the port of Pohang in Samhan with a fleet and forcibly took him away from the gentle village of a Goryeo concubine.

On that day, in the ancestral hall of the family annex in Puxiang City, Xue Laixiang knelt in front of the ancestral tablet, and the old father solemnly told the eldest son of the Xue family that the ban on the sea had made it impossible for the ships of his hometown to go to sea again, and in order to avoid the family's fleet from being dismantled and burned by the government, the old father brought the fleet out in advance.

So, in this overseas family ancestral hall, the elders and men of the Xue family began to discuss the future of the family: either they would return to their roots and return to their hometown to farm; Or, like duckweed, go overseas and continue the maritime trade business handed down from our ancestors......

However, it is normal for people to be difficult to leave their homeland, and it is difficult for many uncles and brothers to accept the reality of leaving their homeland forever.

In the midst of the men's discussions, looking at the slightly cloudy and distracted eyes of the old father, the Xue family was full of pride at this time, and he took on the burden of continuing the ancestral business.

He took over the fleet from his old father and became the head of the Xue family's overseas business.

However, the price of this is that he will probably not be able to set foot on his homeland for the rest of his life.

When the old father handed over the fleet to Xue Laixiang, he couldn't help but burst into tears, he knew that this might be the last time the father and son met, and before parting, the father and son talked all night.

The old father told Xue Laixiang that just over 20 years ago, when you were still in infancy, the old father befriended a monk who had attained the Tao - the Tibetan Bon master, who once took the Xue family ship and traveled east to Japan.

On the boat, the master pointed out the future for his father, who had just become the head of the Xue family, and the master said that there will be great changes in the world, and the next few decades will be the time when the world is changing, saying that there is a dragon out of the South China Sea, and the future of the Xue family should be in the hot south.

Facts have proved that the master's words of great changes in the world are indeed true, and later heard that the master has bought a boat from Dongying and gone south, and has escaped to the South Seas without a trace, but the old father still remembers the master's words vividly.

Therefore, his father asked him to go to the south, saying that there were business partners of the Xue family there, who could open up new routes, so that the Xue family's business could continue, and he should also allow his eldest son to spread overseas and continue the family's incense......

In this way, Xue Laixiang, who was in his early twenties, broke away from the family's cuteness and began to roam the rivers and lakes alone with several of his brothers and partners, while the old father and most of the other uncles and brothers returned to their hometown in a flat boat, abandoning the last business and weaving heirlooms......

In the years that followed, the eldest son of the Xue family took the ship as his home, and began a difficult pioneering journey with the fleet and men handed over to him by his father.

Fortunately, the Xue family's business in Pohang, Naha and Nagasaki was still there, and the Xue family's inextricable ties with the Ming officialdom finally allowed Xue Laixiang to find a trade route in the south of the mainland.

He once ran a grain business for the Ming Lu King who insisted on resisting the Qing Dynasty, once sold Japanese knives and iron tools to the anti-Qing rebels along the coast of Zhejiang, and also did the business of Franc machine guns with the Ming soldiers and civilians of the Zhoushan Islands, and also sold medicinal materials and Hongyi bronze cannons to Zhang Huangyan's generals, and he also once transported people and food to the Zheng family in Jinxia.

The Zheng family, yes, the Zheng family, who had a surprising Ming surname, was a turning point in Xue Laixiang's fate.

For the Xue family, the Zheng family in Jinxia is powerful and can provide shelter for Xue Laixiang's small fleet, so Xue Laixiang has become a "semicolon" of the Zheng family, of course, only in name, only need to pay 6,000 taels of silver to the Zheng family every year, and you can fly the Zheng family's flag at sea and do business on the sea in relative safety.

Since then, Xue Laixiang's business has become more and more south, and at this time, Xue Laixiang has replaced his traditional fortune boat with a sharp-bottomed tea boat that is more suitable for deep-sea voyages.

These three Cantonese tea boats with hard sails are six points similar to the sea boats of Hung Maoyi, but they are stronger and faster than most sea boats.

He also purchased excellent muskets and quick-core guns from the Dutch.

It was a bronze cannon that could be extracted with a barrel sleeve on the barrel, and whenever the shot was finished, the inner sleeve was pulled out and replaced with a new barrel that had been loaded to continue firing, although the range of this cannon was not long, but it greatly increased the rate of fire, and it was a sharp firearm to defend against pirates at close range.

All of this is the capital that he relies on to gallop all over the world.

At this time, Xue Laixiang's fleet not only had the endorsement of the Zheng family in the business field, but also enough to protect himself on the sea, so he could do business relatively smoothly whether it was in Liangguang Jinxia or in Annan Luzon.

Of course, he also had to accept the Zheng family's business arrangements from time to time, and once, in the process of buying Hongyi cannons for the Zheng family in Manila, Luzon, he learned about the Kingdom of Sulu, which is said to be at a war with the Spaniards, and that it was a prosperous place in the extreme south of the South Seas.

The Xue family has never been willing to live under people for a long time, and Xue Laixiang immediately smelled a business opportunity from it.

Later, he shipped the muskets he had purchased from the Franco-Robot in Macau to the port of Holo and sold them.

Sure enough, there he was revered by some of the nobles of the Sulu Kingdom, but what he didn't know was that the infighting among the nobles of the Sulu Kingdom also put him in danger.

By this time, however, the smooth sailing of business and conceit had made him forget about the dangers, and he dared to take advantage of the pirates, even though he knew that the surprisingly cheap goods he had bought from the shops of Hollow Harbor were the booty of the pirates.

With his strong ships and rich sailing experience, he has repeatedly escaped the raids and pursuits of pirates, so he can always taste the sweetness of huge profits

He knew that this kind of business was extremely dangerous, however, the Xue family's son, who was born with the family's adventurous blood, had always enjoyed it......