……

East China Sea, Langya County.

On the beach outside Langya County, ten brand-new huge sea ships have been completed, tens of thousands of craftsmen and people are nervously carrying out the final repairs, and a large number of food, clothes and medicinal materials are constantly being carried to the ship.

In a secluded bay a few dozen miles northeast of the beach, a huge ship had also been built, but unlike the ten ships, it had a pointed bottom and three masts, and the bilge had no oar holes, and the whole hull was completely enclosed.

At this time, there were thousands of people on the construction site, and there were craftsmen and soldiers back and forth.

The ship was held in the dock by more than a dozen thick cables, and the swinging booms on both sides were still lifting heavy guns to the ship, and boxes and boxes of gunpowder and food were constantly being hoisted up before being lifted into the bilge for storage.

The construction time of this big ship was very hasty, less than fifty days in total, but after Chen Xu threw a lot of money down, all the craftsmen and people were as excited as if they had been beaten with chicken blood, and they were building this big ship almost day and night, and the total number of craftsmen and people used exceeded 1,000 people, and the big ship was densely surrounded like ants almost every day, so in this time that seemed unlikely to be successfully built, the big ship was almost completed on schedule.

In addition to the keel, mast, waterproofing of the three most critical parts of the keel, mast and waterproofing, the decoration of the deck and the inner cabin is almost completely absent, all of them are rough planks or even directly made of logs, and several lifeboats that should have been hung on the side of the ship are directly tied to the deck with ropes, so the appearance of the big ship looks okay, but as long as you climb on the boat to see, everything is miserable.

But Chen Xu couldn't take care of it.

Because under his advice, the Langya County Decree has been three times with Lu Sheng and others to shirk the fact that the sea ship has not yet been built, and finally left Chen Xu with nearly two months of construction time to build this big ship, and now it has to speed up the completion, and even the inner cabin and deck have not been urgently installed before they test the water and sail once, just verify that the big ship is not leaking.

Two days later, Lu Sheng and a group of Fang Shi would go to Langya Shipyard to receive ten large sea ships and prepare to go to sea, and Chen Xu must also ensure that he can keep up and smoothly bring the water back.

As for how long the big ship would last, it was not in his mind, he needed to be able to come and go safely this time.

The last time he saw the water gentle, even if Chen Xu had ten thousand thoughts and reasons for not being willing to back down in front of Huang Shigong, he knew that Huang Shigong was ruthless, which he knew from the last time he casually broke the neck of the monkey Wukong in Xiapi, so he could only temporarily back down.

People in this era are very barbaric, from the emperor and the secretary to the common people, civilians fight and brawl are commonplace, the prince and the prince bury people is similar to burying stones, Huang Shi Gong is even more disdainful of ordinary people, including Yu Wuya, when it comes to killing people, if you eat and drink water, you completely regard human life as a mustard, not to mention that this is related to the life and death of hundreds of disciples of the Mo family, if Huang Shigong is forced into a corner, he will definitely kill the killer Shui Qing, this result is absolutely unbearable for Chen Xu.

As long as people are there, everything is easy to say, and if people are gone, then there is nothing.

And this time, Chen Xu has to take the water back gently no matter what, if Huang Shigong goes back on his word again, even if he chases all the way to Japan, he will definitely do everything to kill him at all costs.

Two days passed in a flash, and ten sea ships of Langya Shipyard were undocked and entered the sea.

Ten ships were filled with enough food and drink for thousands of people for two years, and five hundred boys and girls who had been re-searched among the people, and under the leadership of Mo Tu and Fang Shi led by Lu Sheng and Han Zhong, this huge sea ship once again broke through the waves and headed for the depths of the East China Sea.

"Master Hou, that group of Fang Shi has set off!" The guards who had been monitoring the movements of Lu Sheng and the others near the shipyard hurried to report it.

"Let's go!" Chen Xu stood on the deck at the bow of the ship and yelled.

"Set sail, untie the cable~"

With Zhang Cang's order, a group of boatmen shouted the horn to push the winch, and in the crunching sound, the huge sail supported by the crossbar on three sides slowly rose, and soon swayed against the northwest wind of early autumn, and the big ship began to leave the dock under the impetus of the wind.

"Thirty degrees to turn the rudder right~"

"Thirty degrees to turn the rudder right~"

"Mainsail due north~"

"Mainsail due north~"

"The sail rudder is tilted to the left fifteen degrees~"

"The sail rudder is tilted to the left fifteen degrees~"

……

As Zhang Cang, who was standing at the bow of the ship, held a guide compass newly developed by the Academy of Sciences in his hand and kept issuing orders, Hu Kuan, who operated the steering wheel, and the boatman who operated the main sail and sidesail kept correcting the sail rudder and the main rudder, and the galleon left the dock crookedly in the bay for two or three miles, and finally slowly corrected its course and headed towards the exit of the bay.

After autumn, the sea is no longer as violent and turbulent as in summer, the blue sea and blue sky are sparkling, and the vast sea seems to have never been so quiet.

On the lookout, two large-aperture telescopes search the entire sea under the swing of two craftsmen.

These two telescopes can observe the situation twenty miles away, which is almost the farthest distance that can be observed by sea surface navigation, but although these two telescopes can see far away, because the casting and polishing of the lenses are not precise enough, even if they see the target twenty miles away, it is very vague, but this is enough for Chen Xu.

Chen Xu stood on the top of the highest cabin on the deck, holding a monocular and constantly searching for the junction of the sea and sky in the east, and Yu Wuya and Xia Zijin standing beside him with swords on their backs, and the monkey Wukong climbed to the top of the main mast, which was ten zhang high, and sat on the top scratching his ears and squeaks, and was a mess of excitement.

It had been half an hour since I left the bay, but I only saw some large and small islands in the coastal waters, and I didn't see the shadows of the ten big sea ships that had left in advance.

However, Chen Xu is not worried, the sea ship controlled by Lu Sheng and others needs to be paddled by boatmen, and the speed is not fast, he has roughly estimated the last time he took the boat, the speed will not exceed seven kilometers per hour, it is more than a hundred miles from Langya to the island, which is converted to almost forty kilometers, and it takes at least six hours to go back and forth, that is, twelve hours.

At present, the size of the sailboat he built according to the gourd painting scoop is about the same size as the sea boat that Lu Sheng and others are riding, but because of the structure of the pointed head and pointed bottom, the draft depth is more than three meters, and the center of gravity sinks, which not only makes the big ship run more smoothly, but also the resistance of the water flow is less than that of the flat-bottomed boat, plus the wind is enough at this time and it happens to be a northwest wind, so the speed is much faster than paddling, and this speed has increased significantly, according to the time, Chen Xu estimated that the speed was almost ten kilometers.

This is still data obtained under the command of a group of half-lifted craftsmen and boatmen who do not know how to operate a sailboat, and if it is a group of sailors who are skilled in handling sailboats, this speed can be increased a lot.

Because the construction time of this sailboat is too short, there are many problems, especially the sails, almost all of which are designed according to Chen Xu's drawings, using a hard sail with a crossbar, because the material of the canvas is not good, a full three layers of burlap are used, but it is still necessary to increase the density of the support rod, otherwise the wind is too strong It is estimated that it will be torn, but at the moment Chen Xu's purpose is not to sail around the world, even if he chases to Japan, as long as the course is good, and it will take ten days at most if he does not encounter a storm.

However, Chen Xu was curious about how Huang Shigong would know the nautical chart leading to Yingzhou.

Huangshi Gong claimed to have a chart to go to Yingzhou, and the legend of Yingzhou is unpredictable, only recorded in the books left by the Classic of Mountains and Seas and Liezi, but Chen Xu, who knows the knowledge of the earth's geography, will not agree that there is really Yingzhou Immortal Mountain overseas, and there is only one Japan called Dongying.

That is to say, later generations will associate Japan with the legendary Yingzhou in China, and many people in Japan believe that their ancestors are Xu Fu and others who crossed east to find Yingzhou Xianshan, but this does not mean that there was no one on the island of Japan earlier, but the life is relatively primitive, the biggest possibility is that Xu Fu and others arrived with the advanced technology and higher civilization of Daqin, so that Japan quickly developed and rose.

However, according to the speculation of many historians on the earth in later generations, Daqin's flat-bottomed sea boats that relied on manpower to paddle were unable to resist the huge currents and wind and waves of the Pacific Ocean, and the possibility of reaching Japan was very small, and the biggest possibility was that Xu Fu arrived in South Korea first, and according to the direction, if he sailed from Qingdao to the east, it was Korea, even if he deviated to the southeast, the most likely was to reach Jeju Island, and once he crossed Jeju Island, he sailed out of the scope of Bohai Bay and entered the Japan Strait. The wind and waves in the Strait of Japan are not something that ordinary flat-bottomed ships can resist, and if the course continues to deviate to the southeast, it may not reach Japan at all, but will be carried along the Strait of Japan by the Pacific Ocean Current to an unknown place, and once it falls into the vast Pacific Ocean, it will really become a god without a trace.

Therefore, is Yingzhou in Huangshigong's mouth Japan, South Korea or Jeju Island? Chen Xu was very puzzled.

And once Huangshi Gong leaves early, if the target is Japan, then it is very likely that it will be washed away by the Pacific Ocean Current without a trace.

Therefore, Chen Xu must gently pick up the water before Huang Shigong leaves, as for chasing Yingzhou, Chen Xu is just scaring Huang Shigong, Nima is in the vast sea, there are hundreds and thousands of islands near South Korea and Japan, and it is unlikely to be found one by one for a lifetime.

Because at this time, Korea and Japan were still barren and wild, not to mention the desert islands along the coast.

An hour later, the sailboat had left Langya far behind and could not see the shadow, and according to the judgment of the boatmen and ink disciples who led the way, they were now more than halfway to the island.

The sea was still calm, the sails on three sides swayed in the breeze, and the thick ropes pulled the rudder and winch with a creaking sound.

All the craftsmen and shipwrights were excited, they had never been on such a smooth ship, and they could hardly feel much turbulence, while more than a hundred teenagers with muskets stood or sat on the deck with calm and serious faces to check and sort out the gunpowder of the muskets, and many of them also practiced the shooting maneuvers repeatedly on the shooting holes.

"I saw it, I saw those big ships~"

Suddenly, the craftsmen who were standing on the watchtower and observing shouted excitedly.

"Where?" Chen Xu hurriedly asked loudly.

The craftsman gestured with his hand and said, "About ten degrees south-east, twenty miles away!" ”

Chen Xu raised the monocular in his hand and searched the direction pointed by the craftsman, but he still didn't see anything, so he simply climbed the rope ladder to the watchtower to look at the big telescope, and sure enough, he quickly found the sea ship of Lu Sheng and others in front.

Call!

Chen Xu finally breathed a long sigh of relief.

In fact, he was a little worried that Huang Shi Gong would gently transfer the water to the place in advance, but at the moment, as long as he kept up with these ten sea ships, he would definitely be able to find Huang Shi Gong, because many of the old sea ships of Huang Shi Gong and the others were already in tatters, and several of them were completely useless, so he had to use these new sea ships to go to sea.

"Corrected course, 10 degrees south-east~"

"Corrected course, 10 degrees south-east~"

"Left rudder ten degrees~"

"Left rudder ten degrees~"

"Lowering Half Sail~"

"Lowering Half Sail~"

As a series of orders were passed on, the sailboat slowly turned its rudder and followed behind Lu Sheng's big ship in the rapid movement, and the central mainsail was lowered by half, and the speed of the big ship slowly slowed down.

This distance is invisible to the naked eye no matter what, and it has to stand high enough to do it, Chen Xu is not worried that the sea ship in front of him will find that he has followed it.

Falling far behind the fleet of Lu Sheng and others, and after nearly two hours of sailing, a small island in front of it was gradually revealed in the telescope, and the big boats of Lu Sheng and others in front of them were also close to the island, and through the telescope, there were already sixteen big boats on the beach outside the camp where Huang Shigong and others gathered, and the beach was densely packed with people, running back and forth to carry goods, and they should be ready to pack up and leave.

"Master Hou, what should I do next?"

Zhang Cang took the compass to the roof of the building and asked.

"Get close to the island and let Huangshi know that we've arrived!" Chen Xu thought for a moment and said.

"Good!" Zhang Cang's order was immediately issued, the mainsail was quickly raised, and the big ship cut through the waves and headed straight for the island.