It's almost dawn, and the night is still thick.

The light of oil lamps and torches from shops and houses along the street casts faintly on the gravel road.

There are also lights in the hotel, small restaurants and restaurants, and there are bursts of noise from time to time.

Lost the hyacinth, the merchants, stewards and sailors on the ships waiting for the monsoon in the winter are trapped in this remote "end of the earth" place, with nothing to do but spend their energy and time on wine and women.

Hu Xun wore a robe and a cloak, and despite the chill of the early morning, he walked proudly in the middle of the only street in Anyoule City, followed by a strange procession.

A handsome servant was holding a teapot with only a brocade cotton cover, and next to him was a man who looked like a master in a long shirt and a beard, and behind him, a housekeeper was holding a chair.

The other was holding a piece of bamboo, which was a torture instrument.

Then there was a team of Ding Zhuang armed with sticks, knives and guns.

Hu Xun is performing his duty as the guardian of the locality - night watch.

Cross-examine any suspicious person.

Although the city is not large, the problem of public security is very prominent.

It is often crowded with large groups of people who are begging for a living at sea, and they are free from the tiring and boring life at sea, and when they relax on land, theft, quarrels, brawls and even white-knives intersect are common.

At the height of the Dynasty, several people died in brawls every day.

Hu Xun did not report the matter of the dead to the county -- it was purely asking for trouble, and the county could not solve it.

This place is barren mountains and mountains out of the city, and dozens of miles away from the city is the territory of the Li people, where to go to chase the murderer.

But as the leader on the ground, at least order must be guaranteed.

Hu Xun personally led people to patrol the streets every night, and if he saw anyone who was drunk and noisy or armed with knives and sticks, he would detain them first.

By the way, there are also some expenses - the shipowner has to spend money to protect the release of people.

It doesn't matter if it's a poor bastard with no one to insure, and then sell people when the next wave of ships arrives - there are so many dead people on board that a third of the people die on a voyage is nothing, and the steward is happy to prepare more.

Today's Anyoule City is quiet, but quiet does not mean peaceful.

As a berthing in Zuihou before going to the South Seas, Anyule City is also very oily in the eyes of some people.

One of the most important things Hu Xun usually does to prevent theft is to check for suspicious people -- pirates are likely to send spies in to find an opportunity to "open the door".

Especially when the day is about to dawn, when it is dark, and the night watchman is sleepy, and he is most likely to be taken advantage of by sneak attacks.

So every time he came here, Hu Xun always had to come out to patrol the night in person.

From the end of the street to the street, he climbed the West Gate Gatehouse facing the bay, and several villagers stood sleepily, watching the sea surface of the Great East China Sea, and a few dead wind lamps swayed in the sea breeze.

Hu Xun leaned against the wooden wall and looked out, the lights on the pier under the wall were on, the wind lights on the boats were also on, the boats rose and fell with the sea, and only the sound of the sea hitting the reef and the waves of the ships could be heard.

On the opposite side of the bay, you can see a few lights, which were built by the Lingao maritime merchants who came here last year.

Although the two sides have been smiling at each other, they have always gotten along well, but secretly he is very vigilant, for fear that the other party will have other intentions.

However, for many days, there were no more than thirty people in the stockade.

Every day, I go out early and return late, either planting vegetables, raising chickens, and fishing, or picking coconuts and logging trees.

Their activities have brought vitality to the city, and many of the poor villagers in the city are hired by them to cut trees and pick coconuts to sell their labor and get paid daily.

From time to time, the village on the other side also came to Anyoule City to purchase goods and hire craftsmen.

However, Hu Xun is sure of one thing, the original shopkeeper Wang's statement that they were merchants specializing in the Nanyang trade was a lie.

Almost every week, boats dock at the pier in front of the "Lingao Village" to carry coconuts, logs and other local products, and bring in boxes of the same size.

Hu Xun has never been to Nanyang, but the merchants passing by have seen countless things, and he also knows a little about the situation in Nanyang.

The logs and coconuts in that place were even less valuable, and it was obvious that they were not shipped to the South Seas.

He was almost certain that the gang was doing a forbidden business, and he didn't care what it was - everyone was okay, what were they doing? "What's wrong?" Hu Xun asked the leader of the gatehouse.

"There is nothing unusual, and there is no trouble."

The sea breeze at night was a little cold, and Hu Xun couldn't help but tuck his cloak.

The moon was already about to go down, and the sea was on the surface of the sea, and the fire appeared and disappeared from time to time, and there seemed to be nothing unusual.

"Tell everyone to be careful, don't doze off again!" Hu Xun said that he came down from the gatehouse and went to sleep with his little wife.

Less than ten nautical miles away, Ruan Xiaowu, the captain of the "Yute O4" special agent, watched through the telescope at the long line of ships that were breaking the waves behind him.

There were fifty of them.

In front of him, there was a fast dhow, the light hull was tilted almost close to the water under the action of the wind and waves, and there were a few times when Ruan Xiaowu even thought that the ship was going to capsize, but at every critical moment, the bow would always turn.

Let people sweat all the time.

The dhow was piloted by the most daring and skilled men of the cadets and sailors, and they steered the fast and nimble boat at the front and on the wings of the fleet.

Always look for anomalies.

Behind the sloop was a long line of spy boats of various types, with cabins crammed with various supplies in addition to weapons and sailors.

Then there's the imposing five-masted galleon, the Sanya No. 1, whose five masts are filled with huge sails and stands out in the fleet, carrying thousands of laborers, soldiers, building materials, tools, vehicles and food along with other less spectacular sailing ships around it.

But it's not the core yet, the real core is at the back: the ships that are mysteriously anomalous among the natives in general, without sails or oars.

The self-propelled barge of the Swift Whale, the flat-deck barge of the Big Whale, the Type 67 landing craft and two 8154 fishing vessels.

The vast deck of the Swift Whale was filled with large, strangely shaped objects tightly wrapped in tarpaulins.

The landing headquarters was located on one of the fishing boats.

On the starboard side of all these ships was another formation, with the two ships Zhenhai and Fubo as the main ships, and six three-masted sail gunboats sailed in a column, the gun doors tightly closed.

Nguyen Xiaowu was proud to sail in such a spectacular fleet - yes, there are more sea owners who have more ships than Australian longships, but what are their ships? The tattered and dirty decks, the patchwork sails, and the rough cannons are pitifully few, and they are tied to the ship with ropes, and the cannons will even jump up and roll in the air when they fire! Gunpowder was piled up in a mess below deck, and scrap copper and rotten iron used as cannonballs were packed in baskets, and there were even stones and broken porcelain pieces inside! This is what the Navy cadets visited on the pirate ship that Tou Cheng came, and each cadet showed a contemptuous smile - a bun of dirt buns.

On the flagship, the main leaders of the future Sanya Special Economic Zone were crammed into a command room converted from the original refrigerated cabin, the displacement of the 8154 was not large, and the hull looked very bumpy in the wind and waves.

Zhuo Tianmin was so seasick that he simply lay on a bench for a meeting, and the few people were crowded around a small table, and in two hours it would be dawn, and the landing operation would officially begin.

Although it was not an enemy landing, and there were no artillery, minefields, or machine guns on the shore, coordinating a force of this size to land on an unfamiliar shore was still a daunting task.

The fleet was loaded with all kinds of supplies, equipment and personnel, and it was a complicated task to get them to land safely.

In order to prepare for this landing, which is very important, it is necessary to go all out, and the meticulous Jihua has been carried out for almost a month.

A joint group composed of the General Staff and the Planning Institute, under the direct leadership of Wang Luobin, worked out detailed steps for the landing of Jihua.

The problems they faced were incomparably complex - there were many military precedents for such landings, but the Crossing Group landed in the 17th century with extremely limited modern support capabilities.

It's even more complicated compared to D-Day.

On Day D, they were only 5oo people, and now they are going to let 3ooo people land! They have a whole bunch of questions to solve.

Where should I log in? When is it appropriate? How many people should be in the first landings? How many laborers, how many soldiers? How much transportation is needed to transport these people? How many days does it take to prepare a portion of dry food to support a mobile kitchen with adequate hot food? How many people landed by dinghy, how many people through the trestle, how to organize them to go ashore in batches? How many dinghies do you need to get down from the boat to the trestle or to the dinghy, how many dinghys are needed? How do I transport these dinghys? These are just a few of the large number of questions that the people who formulate jihua have to answer.

There are many, many more questions.

By the time Zuihou their plan was finalized, it had become a thick book, and every detail of the giant Jihua had been specified in detail, and the corresponding plans for the problems that might be encountered were also formulated.

"When formulating jihua, don't think about what to do if you win, and think about how to clean up the mess if you fail."

Wang Luobin asked for this at the group meeting.

"Who can defeat us?" The people who participated in the formulation of Jihua felt incredulous, "Could it be the Zhaiding of Anyule City?" "We have to take into account all possible scenarios," Mr. Wang said, "such as when the fleet is hit by a strong wind and half of the ships are sunk; Or we are landing, and Zheng Zhilong's fleet is coming to attack...... You have to think about how to deal with it. ”

"I'm really frustrated, I didn't start thinking about this ......" "Everything you do must take the worst possibility into account," Dongmen Blowing Rain expressed support for Wang Gong's view, "How to deal with sudden * situations is an important part of our formulation."

The more thoughtful you are, the better. ”