By the end of November, everything in Liujiacun had been prepared, all the battleships had completed artillery modifications, and the Fubo Division had also completed training and reequipment.

The entire fleet now has a total of 10,000 soldiers and 48 warships, including 9 third-class battleships, 12 cruisers, 24 frigates, and 3 Zheng's bird ships.

Battleships had 74 guns each, cruisers 48 guns and frigates 28.

Such a powerful armament can be called one of the best even in the South China Sea, which has brought Liu Ximing and a group of Fubo soldiers infinite confidence.

It's just that although the Fubo Division has been trained for more than a year, after all, it is only training in the lake, and how much combat power it can exert on the rough sea still needs to be tested.

General You Degao is full of confidence, in order to prepare for this sea opening, Fubo Division can be said to have brought the subjective initiative of training to the extreme.

In the past year, the group of soldiers has hardly ever disembarked from the ship.

After more than a year of preparation, a lot of various grain and grass materials, stone slurry and steel bars prepared for the southward fleet were also hoarded, which was enough for Liu Ximing to arrive in the South China Sea and build a new base.

Considering the construction of the base and the safety of personnel, Liu Ximing also specially dispatched dozens of personnel from the workshop, medical room, commercial housing and other departments to go south with him.

This southward movement is related to whether the export of cotton cloth, the largest business of the Liu family, can be successfully opened up to trade routes, so there is no room for sloppiness.

At the beginning of December, the last link of navigation was finally cracked by Liu Ximing, Ren Yuanjia and others.

This is the problem of positioning during sea navigation.

At this time, Europe had already begun to use the sextant as a maritime positioning, but Manuela and others were only willing to sell a sextant to the Liu family, but were unwilling to teach the specific use method.

In desperation, Liu Ximing could only ask Ren Yuanjia and a group of other scholars to figure out how to use instruments such as sextants and compasses.

After reading a large number of ancient books, combined with the experience of Yi Xin and others, Liu Ximing finally figured out the usable astrological technique.

In this way, there will be no hindrance to the south.

On the second day of the twelfth month of December, staring at the murderous gaze of Liu Chen, the wife of Zhengsipin's command, Liu Ximing kissed his daughter-in-law Xie Chunxi in front of everyone, and gave Li Xiangjun and Dong Xiaowan a bear hug, and stepped on the big ship to the south in the eyes of the resentful eyes of the women.

The goal of 10,000 people in the Fubo division was too big, so it was divided into several roads early and rode down the river to ride the wind, and Liu Ximing only brought 500 personal guard battalions with him.

The group had to enter the Yangtze River from the Jialing River through Chongqing, then turn the Xiangjiang River all the way south to Guangxi at Yueyang, and then take a boat along the Pearl River to Guangzhou.

The journey along the way was thousands of miles, but fortunately, all of them were waterways, and with Liu Ximing as the captain of the transport brigade, it took only 20 days for the group to finally arrive in Guangzhou on December 23.

Liu Ximing thought that South China at this time had not experienced war and should be a scene of abundance, but to his surprise, Hunan, Guangxi, Guangdong and other places still seemed a little wild.

Undressed homeless people and all kinds of people with dark faces begging for a life were everywhere, and Liu Ximing and the guards were full of emotion.

In later generations, they loved the country as soon as they went abroad, but the people in Liujia Village loved the Liu family as soon as they left the village.

You must know that most of the Liu family's sphere of influence are dual-income workers, and the annual income of a family is at least 20 taels of silver, which is nearly twice as high as the current ordinary families in the Ming Dynasty.

In addition, the Liu family is self-sufficient in grain and cloth, and the cost of living is very low, and the people's living standards are very different from those of the Ming Dynasty.

This is also the reason why the house, the police room and the military intelligence bureau have not found that anyone has defected to the enemy and betrayed the reason, almost all of the people recruited by the Liu family are honest people, there is such a peaceful life to live, everyone is eager to give Liu Ximing an immortal tablet, who is willing to engage in those things.

Besides, the Liu family is not out of trouble, once it is discovered, it will really be buried alive.

To get back to the point, at this time, Guangdong was far from being one of the best in the country as it was in later generations, and in the eyes of most officials of the imperial court, although it was not a poor country, it was by no means a rich place.

In Daming, the real anointing place is still in Jiangnan.

Although Guangdong has always been an important node of South China's overseas trade, Guangdong at this time was still mired in the dispute between Turks and customers, resulting in local instability and difficult economic development.

In order to compete with the Tujia people for land, several villages can often fight to the death, and the true potential of this fertile land in Lingnan cannot be developed to the greatest extent.

On the way to Guangdong, Liu Ximing and others had already seen many disputes between the Turks, but fortunately, although the Fubo Division was divided into several roads, there were still many people, so they did not fall into it.

Second, at this moment, Jiangnan is the main production area of popular export goods such as cotton, silk, and porcelain in China, and with the Zheng family in Fujian controlling the sea routes, the decline of Guangdong is inevitable.

Of course, the decline is relative, after all, Guangdong still has a strong geographical advantage, and when he arrived in Guangzhou City, Liu Ximing was still bright.

The circumference of the city wall of Guangzhou is twenty-four miles, which is larger than that of Chengdu Mansion, and the business and travel are like weaving, and there are many people passing through it, and the degree of prosperity is far from being comparable to that of an inland city like Chengdu.

The Liu family has no foundation here, but the identity of the new Amber can still make him unimpeded.

After Heng Mei coldly twitched the guards at the gate of the city, Liu Ximing and his party of hundreds of people successfully entered Chengzhou, Guangzhou.

When he saw the white men and Arabs coming and going, dressed in robes or Western-style shirts, scurrying around the market, a feeling of the Age of Discovery came to Liu Ximing's face.

Standing on the street of the Xicheng business district, you can see the shadow of Xishan in the distance, and the tall figure of the Six Banyan Flower Pagoda is even more eye-catching.

Liu Ximing couldn't help but close his eyes and take a deep breath.

cough cough cough, a mouthful of mixed sweat smell fills the nose.

"Hahaha", followed by a group of guards covering their mouths and snickering.

Liu Ximing couldn't hold back on his face, and hurriedly continued to walk forward to meet the people who had already entered the city before.

It was impossible for 10,000 Fubo divisions to enter the city, so except for 2,000 people who sneaked into the city in batches, the rest of the people were camped in remote areas outside the city.

Even the more than 2,000 people who entered the city wanted to rely on the inns of this era to settle down, and the people who entered the city in the early stage had to rent a few large courtyards first, and everyone lived together temporarily.

After settling down slightly, Liu Ximing immediately called Shen Huai, the director of the commercial real estate who followed.

Shen Huai, who is thirty-seven years old at the age of Chinese New Year's Eve, was also a merchant who was coerced by thieves, and was selected to enter the business house because he was proficient in arithmetic and articulate, and before that, he had been training in Pengzhou for more than a year.

Liu Ximing was naturally most concerned about the problems of the merchants in the city at this moment, but fortunately, Shen Huai arrived five days in advance, and he had already taken the people from the business house to find out all the situation.

"Uncle, my subordinates have already asked, at present, most of the trade in Guangzhou City is concentrated near Xiguan, since the Longqing period, with the support of the government, a tooth shop organization called the Thirteen Lines has gradually emerged, and now it basically monopolizes foreign trade."

Seeing that Liu Ximing listened carefully, Shen Huai became even more energetic.

"But now the imperial court can't collect any positive taxes from the Thirteen Lines, all of them have been taken by the officials of the Guangzhou Mansion and the Guangdong Political Secretary, these people are greedy and blasphemous, if we trade from the Thirteen Lines, I'm afraid we will be stabbed."

"Another point, now ships crossing the ocean have to pay the Zheng family toll, only the ships that buy his family's passing flags can not be attacked by pirates, so the price of commerce and trade has been pushed down a little, muslin cloth only has five cents, coarse cloth nine cents, only a little higher than our family's price in the province."

"Grass", Liu Ximing directly burst into a foul language after hearing this.

Previously, Liu Ximing went to Jiangnan for a round, and he also knew about the cotton cloth produced in Jiangnan.

According to the loom, it is estimated that Jiangnan can produce hundreds of millions of pieces of cloth a year, worth tens of millions of taels of silver, and Songjiang alone can produce nearly 20 million pieces of cloth.

That's why Jiangnan can be extravagant.

Of course, not all of these are exported abroad, and a large part of them will be consumed in the mainland.

In this era, Japan, North Korea and other Southeast Asian countries basically need to rely on the cotton cloth of the Ming Dynasty to live, and even Europe has to buy a lot.

For example, in the Philippines and Mexico, the natives basically wear cotton cloth produced by the Ming Dynasty.

This situation was finally reversed at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and due to the destruction of Jiangnan by the Manchu Qing Dynasty, it did not recover until the Qianlong period.

At that time, the industrial revolution began in Britain, and the cotton market was completely occupied by Europeans.

It was precisely because of the large export of cotton, silk, porcelain and other materials that led to a huge influx of silver.

Domestic goods exports, a huge influx of silver, and the Ming Dynasty did not purchase the same amount of international trade goods from overseas, which inevitably led to violent inflation.

No matter in which society, inflation is a direct plunder of the poor, so in Liu Ximing's view, these problems in Chongzhennian are not only due to climate, government and other reasons, but also complex world environmental factors.