Sousa Guedes, a Portuguese in earnest, is forty-six years old this year, an experienced captain, and as a sailor who has risen from the lowest level, he naturally cannot be of noble origin, but just an ordinary commoner.

When he was a child, he did everything he could, and at the age of fourteen he became a glorious pirate, serving as the most ordinary sailor on a ship.

During his more than 30 years of maritime career, he plundered ordinary merchant ships in the Mediterranean, robbed the Spanish great Galen ships full of gold and silver in the Atlantic, the Americas and the Caribbean, and even fought with the British and Spanish navies!

Eight years ago, he followed others to the Indian Ocean, and then came to Southeast Asia, and a few years ago, the first mate finally succeeded in killing the captain who taught him to sail, control ships, and plunder other merchant ships, and then became the captain of the Marie.

After becoming the captain of the Marie, he changed the old captain's style of only plundering, but not doing business, but took advantage of the high speed of his Marie, while doing the spice business in Southeast Asia, while plundering other maritime merchants, so as to change from a pirate to a maritime merchant, and by the way, part-time pirates.

And there are more captains/maritime merchants like him in the waters of Southeast Asia, but there are few pure pirates left, and these days, when doing business can make more cute gold coins, who the is willing to fight and kill.

But when he encounters other merchant ships with no protection and weak strength, he will also revisit his old business, after all, although he makes money in business, he can make more money in his hands, so why not do it.

In this way, over time, he has become a well-known maritime merchant in Southeast Asian waters, and even bought a mansion in Malacca, and has a very good relationship with the Portuguese colonial officials in Malacca.

This time he had only come to Guangzhou for trade, but before leaving, the Portuguese colonial officials in Malacca wanted him to escort an envoy and bring a so-called letter of state, and then establish formal diplomatic relations with the Tang Dynasty.

He didn't take this seriously at first, just by the way, but what he didn't expect was that after coming to Guangzhou, the stupid envoy actually spoke out and said that the envoy of the Portuguese emperor was not polite to him at all, and he was directly put under house arrest, and Guedes was also affected by the pond fish and was detained together.

After all, in the eyes of the people of the Tang Dynasty, Geddes and that stupid envoy both looked the same, and they couldn't tell the difference at all, and they directly regarded Geddes as a member of the mission.

A few days ago, this delegation finally received a notice that it could go to Zhaoqing to meet the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, and for this reason, even Geddes, who had been crisscrossing the sea for decades and had seen strong winds and waves, couldn't help but be a little excited.

This kind of opportunity to meet the Son of Heaven in China is not something that ordinary people can meet!

The ancient country of China, in the eyes of Europeans in this era, is full of coercion, everything is tall!

Especially when he first came to Guangzhou two years ago, which had just opened the port, Guedes was stunned by the scale of Guangzhou City, and then he was blinded by the various goods piled up at the wharf!

Silk and porcelain, which are more expensive than gold in Europe, can be seen everywhere here, and even a whole large warehouse is piled up, as long as there is money, it can be shipped back to Europe immediately, once it is successfully transported back to Europe, the profit is not one or two times, but dozens of times!

Of course, it is not easy to transport it back to Europe smoothly, and if you are not careful, the ship will sink and die, otherwise these silk, porcelain, spices and other Southeast Asian specialties that have been successfully transported back to Europe will not be so expensive.

Without such terrible profits, people would not be able to desperately cross such long distances and risk their lives to trade at sea.

Everything he saw in Guangzhou was very new to him, and when he learned that the Tang people allowed them to come to the sea to buy real estate and live in a specific port trade area, although the price was not cheap, he also bought a small mansion.

Guangzhou Port Trade Zone, Lianzhou Port Trade Zone, this is a special area for sea trade, whether it is Chinese or foreign businessmen, if they want to engage in sea trade, they can only be carried out in the port trade zone.

At the same time, it is also a place where foreigners are allowed to buy real estate to live and live, as well as to open a commercial bank.

Of course, Li Xuan is naturally not stupid enough to let this kind of trade area become some kind of leased land, this trade area is a unified mixed place for all foreigners, including the natives of Nanyang, and there are also a large number of Chinese businessmen, so as to avoid becoming a living place for a single country.

At the same time, a strict household registration management system is implemented, and foreign businessmen who want to enter the port trade need to obtain a customs entry permit before disembarking, and then they can enter the trade area through the customs, and this is only a temporary entry permit, which lasts only half a year, and must get out of the way after half a year!

If you want to live for a long time, you need to spend a lot of money to buy a property, pay a living fee, and then you can get a temporary residence permit for five years. If you want to live in five years, you will have to pay another living fee.

And after entering this place, it is necessary to abide by all the laws of Datang, if the law is violated, it will be dealt with in accordance with the laws of Datang, and they are not allowed to leave the scope of the business zone and enter the rest of Datang.

So this time, Guedes actually went deep into the land of China for the first time, and he was not curious about the scenery along the way, but after arriving in Zhaoqing, the prosperity of Zhaoqing shocked him.

There were a lot of ships, and there were a lot of buildings on the shore, and some of them were still billowing smoke, and I don't know if they were on fire or what, but Guedes guessed that it wasn't on fire.

If he could still accept all these things in front of him, then the strange-looking ship he saw now was directly beyond his understanding.

As an old pirate who has been roaming the seas for decades, he dare not say everything, but he has seen most of the types of ships, but he has never seen them, and he has never even heard of them, that there are ships that can walk without relying on sails or oars.

This is not going down the river, but up the river!

Weird, not normal!

It was his first feeling!

Not only was he curious, but the rest of the mission was also extremely surprised, and some even kept scratching the priest on their chests, saying what kind of devil was this!

"Devil, impossible, is this the magic of the Orientals?"

"You see, those two wheels are moving, and they must be driving the ship forward, but how do the wheels turn?"

"There must be a lot of people on this boat pushing these two wheels!"

"Someone pushing? There is this possibility! ”

"Yes, I guess that's the case!"

"But what's the deal with those weird sounds and smoke?"

"Maybe they're cooking, who knows!"

After feeling weird, they quickly used their brains and thought they had thought of the truth.

But they could never have known that although there were many people on the small steamer far away from them, there was no one to push the two paddle wheelers to turn.

The truth of the matter is very simple, that is, this ship is the Tang Dynasty, and it is also the world's first steamship powered by a steam engine and driven by paddle wheels: Bing6.

Since Lin Hui in the young military camp came up with a steam engine a few months ago, Li Xuan personally formulated the research and development plan for paddle steamers on the spot.

The steam engine is existing, and the paddle wheel is not a technical problem, the only problem is the linkage device and the transmission device, after a few months, a group of students in the young military camp finally designed a complete set of plans, and then delivered to the Zhaoqing Arsenal subordinate machinery to create a physical object, and modified a navy's inland river warship C16, the steam engine was moved to C16!

Today is the third and last voyage test of this ship, and it is also a blessing that Guedes and they can see it.

After being surprised, Guedes and the others began to disembark, and then they were taken by the officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to live in an independent courtyard, surrounded by soldiers of the Guards, and later, someone would come over to teach them the etiquette during the audience, as long as they learned and mastered the etiquette during the audience, they could really see Li Xuan.

Just when Guedes and the others began to learn Chinese etiquette, Li Xuan also met with several major engineers in the Ministry of Engineering and the Young Military Camp, and these engineers were the core technicians responsible for the design, construction, and testing of the first steamship of the Tang Dynasty.

Among them, Lin Hui, as the person in charge of the steam engine and the most important technician among the people, was saying to Li Xuan at this time: "Your Majesty, the steam engine on No. 16 uses an improved model of the previous test model, the volume and weight have been reduced a lot, the power is still maintained at five horsepower, and the manufacturing process is also more mature and simple, and it can be mass-produced."

This steam engine has already begun to be tested in a wide range of applications, and the tests in factories and mines have been successful, and this time we hit it on the C16, which also successfully drove the ship to sail! ”

At this time, Tang Jincai, a seventh-grade student in the young military camp who was the design of the ship, also spoke: "Your Majesty, although there were a lot of small troubles in the middle of the test of the C16 this time, it was generally successful, and in the three navigation tests, a total of 20 kilometers were sailed, during which the steam engine, transmission, and paddle wheel continued to operate stably.

The longest uptime was one and a half hours, and the top speed was five kilometers per hour!

Although there are still many failures and the speed is slower during the voyage, as long as there is continuous improvement, the students believe that these steamships can really sail on the sea! ”

Hearing these words, Li Xuan smiled: "I have never doubted this! ”