After the anniversary of his training in early October, Alexander did not stop his activities in Portugal, on the contrary, his activities became more frequent.

He had heard about Manuel in history, and after seeing this king with his own eyes, he also had a new understanding of the character of Manuel I.

Portugal has always seemed to be a suppressed younger brother on the side of Spain after the later unification, and even before the era of the two kings, Castile has always been firmly pressed on the head of Portugal.

This made the successive Portuguese kings have a feeling of breathlessness, and even Portugal will become a seafaring power, Prince Enrique will be so obsessed with opening up sea routes, mostly because Portugal is surrounded by Castile on three sides on the Atlantic Ocean, it can be said that if there is no passage from the sea to the outside world, Portugal will be completely blocked by Castile from the land in a corner of the Iberian Peninsula.

This is obviously unbearable for any country, successive Portuguese kings have worked to break the siege of Castile, but on land this idea is obviously not easy to achieve, compared to his large neighbor, Portugal is too small and too weak, in this case a group of Portuguese represented by Prince Enrique will spare no effort to try to break the passive situation of being sealed on the peninsula by opening up overseas worlds.

In this respect, Manuel I was no different from the kings before him, but there was something special about him that no other king had, and that was an almost blind confidence in himself, and even a staggering self-aggrandizement that he once boasted that he was the chosen one by God.

If his queen Mary was an anachronistic religious fanatic, Manuel took her luck as a kind of messenger who came to fulfill some kind of mission that God had given to the world, because she was unexpectedly given the throne.

He was convinced that Portugal would rise in his own hands, and not only that, but he even believed that the mission of saving Christendom was to be fulfilled by him, and in this respect he did not even take the Vatican so seriously in his heart, because he felt that the attitude of the Holy See towards the infidels was too soft, and that the infidels in the far East should be treated not by polite emissaries but only by cold, sharp swords and spears.

And if it were to form a crusading army against the infidels, Manuel felt that he was the rightful commander of that army.

It was at the Château of St. John that Alexander saw Manuel's incredible belief and was invited to the castle to watch a performance, which was actually a small military exercise, and when he saw the troops in armor, banners and hoods embroidered with the striking cross on the castle's martial arts grounds, Alexander was stunned at first, and then had the illusion that he had gone back two centuries.

With the defeat of King Louis IX of France in his expedition to Tunis, the vigorous crusade came to an end at the end of the 13th century, and although there were several such crusades that followed, the scale of the crusade could not be compared with the scale of the nearly a century and a half from the beginning of the 12th century to the end of the 13th century, and by the 15th century, the crusade had become a distant event, even the Battle of Varna in 1444, which was claimed to have decided the alternation of Ottoman and European offensive and defensive lines, was no longer comparable to that era.

Now, however, Alexander seems to have the illusion that a crusader has pierced through the curtain of history, carrying with it the smell of decay emanating from the dried corpses, and then a horde of undead armoured and cross-bearing crucasses are coming at him.

"That's the greatest act, isn't it, the Duke, the Crusade is the greatest feat in the history of Europeans," Manuel I said in a slightly ostentatious tone to the army that stood with him and watched the martial arts arena below running back and forth, raising bits of smoke and dust, "Please don't mind me saying this, if possible I would prefer to suggest that the Holy See focus on more practical aspects rather than just paying attention to holy miracles." ”

"Your Majesty, what you say is more practical......" Alexander looked at the field below, and he saw a small group of cavalry rushing out from behind a wooden fence that symbolized the castle, and the knight in front of him held a spear of an ancient style in his hand, "I beg your pardon, that can't be ......"

"Yes, Holy Lance," Manuel I nodded, "this is a miracle of the crusade again. ”

Alexander nodded slowly, at this time he could be sure that Manuel was serious, because the kind of fanaticism in his eyes really couldn't be pretended, which made Alexander suddenly feel that maybe compared to Maria's blind faith, Manuel was really a person who had gone crazy because of his self-righteousness.

"Duke, you should tell the Vatican everything you see here," Manuel suddenly lowered his voice and said, "I think a lot of things here are abnormal, at least not what I want to see." ”

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty, can I ask you what you think everything here should look like?"

"Of course, I know that our army, nobles and people are religious, but now this is not normal, in Portugal people are only concerned about how to have a more solemn Mass and build bigger churches, while in other places people are simply concerned about their own affairs, this is not right, you must know that with the money and manpower, we can build a new crusade army, but now those precious resources are wasted on this kind of thing, of course I am not saying that Mass and building churches are wrong, But it's not that important compared to building an army that can fight the infidels, is it? ”

Manuel seemed a little excited, he spread his hands and kept talking to Alexander, and then he tried to calm his tone again, and after lowering his voice again, he added: "That's right, I want you to prove everything here to the Vatican, I mean here we are too far away from the Holy See, so many things are not clear to the Vatican, the queen's mother is a very wise queen, but she also seems to be too keen to find those miracles in her country, She seems to have some obsession with making Castile a holy place in her mind, and it is said that she even named villages that in some places seem plausible in some places after the biblical names of places where Jesus was born, and I think you should be able to notice this slightly if you were going to Valladotus. ”

Alexander nodded slightly, he had almost slowly understood the meaning of Manuel's words.

Manuel had apparently always been very wary of his parents-in-law, even though he had married their two daughters in succession, but this wariness had not diminished slightly, but seemed to have become stronger.

That's why Manuel took advantage of this invitation to say these things to him.

Isabella's ambitions were so obvious that her attempts to establish a new shrine in Iberia were so obvious that they seemed to be completely undisguised, and it was no wonder that Manuel was uneasy, for if one day his mother-in-law suddenly decided to unite all of Iberia in the name of the secular monarch of the heavenly kingdom on earth, he could face a catastrophe.

Thinking of this, a strange thought crossed Alexander's mind, that Manuel's fanaticism for trying to reorganize the crusaders might also be an excuse, and that he wanted to prove that he was equally pious, if not more crazy, so that he could have a reason to contend with Isabella, who was becoming more and more ambitious.

Alexander was fascinated by the thought, and once it came to mind, he felt inexplicably plausible about Manuel's actions.

Perhaps the impression of the Portuguese as a trading empire on the seas was so entrenched that Alexander always equated them with cunning merchants and greedy colonizers, which in his view was always more concerned with the pursuit of wealth, and in this respect they were no different from any nation that was keen to open up territory and plunder it.

"Your Majesty, I may certainly report your opinion to the Vatican, and it is indeed my task, but before that I think you should also listen to my advice," Alexander said to a somewhat puzzled Manuel, "and you should already know that Columbus had discovered new lands through his routes." ”

"India, we all know that he went to the east coast of India, duke, so what do you recommend?" Manuel frowned slightly, he did already know this, and he had personally summoned da Gama not long ago, although the prospect of Da Gama and the new route that James Columbus had shown him was extremely good, but Manuel still rejected them in his excitement, and now he heard Alexander repeat the old words, which made him a little unhappy, "We have a clear line, you should know this better." ”

"The World Dividing Line as Decreed by His Holiness the Pope."

"Yes, it is because of this that I can live in peace with the queen's parents, otherwise maybe our fleets will fight to the death for territory overseas, but now we are all safe, isn't it, that Columbus may have made a lot of money on his route, but I don't lose anything."

Manuel said with a slight expression, and at the same time he looked at Alexander a little strangely, although the Pope was born in Valencia, but he didn't think that Alexander VI would necessarily favor the couple so much, after all, the Vatican is complex, and he is not without a spokesman there.

So Manuel was not very worried about the justice of the pope, but even then he would not think that Alexander VI would turn against the couple, so what is the matter with the "good son-in-law" of the pope now so encouraging him to pay attention to Columbus's route?

Sensing Manuel's skeptical look, Alexander felt it was time to say something that would really move him.

"Your Majesty, I will remind you of this, because there is a rumor that may be a little absurd, but if it is true, it would be too incredible," Alexander leaned forward slightly, and whispered in the king's ear, "I don't know if you have heard of a navigator named Amerigo Vespsy, I think that the chief officer of your navigation office, Eleodore Don Antonio, can tell you about this man, and I will say that this man must have been exploring near the so-called coasts and islands of India discovered by Columbus, According to his speculation, it is likely that Columbus did not arrive in India. ”

"It's not India, it's somewhere?" Manuel asked, surprised.

"Amerigo Vespsy thought that Columbus had discovered a place that no explorer had ever visited before, and that it had never been marked on any map, that is, it was a completely new area, something that no one had ever known before, and that it was a large place."

Manuel's face finally changed.

"You mean, it's a place where no one knows even before the Lord?" The king asked cautiously, after all, in this era, many people think that this world has been completely explored, and it can be said that there is no place in the world that is not known, but now Alexander's words made Manuel a little unable to sit still.

A place that has gone completely undiscovered and has great wealth, what does it mean that Manuel is clear: "That place, big? ”

"It's not clear yet." Alexander knew that it was impossible to say everything in full detail at once, and even Amerigo Vespsy's speculation about the New World had not yet appeared, and according to the time, Amerigo Vespsy should indeed be exploring the New World at this time, but he officially questioned Columbus's discovery until a few years later.

But it doesn't matter, Amerigo Wispucci couldn't have known that someone was cheering him on in advance, or that there might never be that chance.

"But according to the speculation of that Amerigo Vespsy, perhaps Columbus completely underestimated the size of the land he had discovered, which was surprisingly large," Alexander continued, listening to Manuel's breathing slowly become heavier, "and the places where Columbus arrived were warm and even a little hot, and according to his description, the climate of those places was similar to those in Africa, and according to Amerigo Vespsie's research, he found that there seemed to be a long coastline in the north or further south of that land." It's even a little cold in those places, which means it's probably a much bigger land than we think, a real new world. Your Majesty, I think you know better than anyone what it means to have such a land. ”

Manuel nodded silently and slowly, his eyes had already stopped paying attention to the knights who were still running back and forth in the field below, but looked at the railing in front of him fixedly.

After a while, he suddenly turned back to Alexander and said, "Let your Columbus come to me." ”

"I'm sorry Your Majesty, but James went to Castile," Alexander continued, seeing the look of annoyance on Manuel's face, "and in fact he rushed there because he had heard that his brother Christopher Columbus seemed to be in trouble, but as far as I can tell, he seems to have told da Gama something he knew about the new route. ”

"Is that so?" Manuel could not help but show a hint of joy again, and he grasped the wooden railing in front of him with great force, sometimes grasping and sometimes releasing it, and after a while he seemed to have made up his mind, and turned to his attendant not far away, and ordered, "Go and call da Gama and let him come to me, now." ”