Although Zhu Yujian is the most noble vassal prince of the Ming Dynasty, before he was twenty-eight years old, his life was not as comfortable as that of ordinary people in the Ming Dynasty.

Even after years, he still remembers the days when he and his father were imprisoned in the Ministry of Worship after the age of 12.

In the cramped and cold room, if it were not for his father's care for him, Zhu Yujian felt that it would be difficult for him to survive the sixteen years of captivity. At that time, my grandfather tried to starve the father and son to death in the cage, so he did not even have food delivered for several days.

In order to make him forget about hunger, his father took him in his arms and taught him to read and write, trying to distract him with knowledge. Zhu Yujian can still remember that when he cried and asked his father for food, his father said to himself with a smile but a sad tone: "If you can't stand being hungry for a long time, close your eyes and sleep for a while, and when you fall asleep, you won't be hungry." ”

Seeing his father's sad expression, 12-year-old Zhu Yujian quickly matured, and since then he has stopped asking his father for food. Later, Zhang Shutang, the little eunuch who took care of the father and son in the department, couldn't stand the miserable situation of the father and son, and secretly sent two bowls of brown rice, so that the father and son survived.

These sixteen years of imprisonment not only made Zhu Yujian hate the illegal behavior of the children of the clan in his heart, but also made the relationship between the father and son extremely deep. And when the father and son survived their grandfather and were about to get out of the cage, the uncle poisoned his father.

Such a tragedy made Zhu Yujian almost crazy with grief, which is why he disregarded etiquette and killed his two uncles with a rod. After the news of this incident spread, the ministers of the court and the central government were tempted to look sideways and asked the emperor to punish him.

However, Chongzhen did not share his father's hatred, since the two Tang clan clans murdered their brother first, then Zhu Yujian and the two uncles are not relatives. Therefore, the emperor said: "The king of Tang did not kill his uncle with a rod, but killed his father's enemy with a rod." "Covered up the matter for Zhu Yujian.

Zhu Yujian's gratitude to Chongzhen for letting him inherit the throne of the Tang Dynasty is not as grateful as Chongzhen's affirmation of his revenge. After all, the former is the inheritance power given to him according to legal principles, while the latter is really out of Chongzhen's sympathy for his father and son's suffering.

Because of this, Zhu Yujian has always been the local vassal king in the sect who is most supportive of Chongzhen's reform. Even if Chongzhen ordered Tang Fan to hand over the feudal state, he did not hesitate to clean up the land and hand over the documents without any complaints.

And his loyalty to the emperor was greatly rewarded. As a distant branch of the clan, the Tang clan ranked quite low among the Ming clans, and had no say in the clan in the past.

However, under the successive promotions of the emperor, the Tang king had the second most power in the clan after the Fu king, and became the main person who controlled the illegal acts of the clans in various places and adjusted the affairs of the local vassal states to exchange land overseas.

The emperor's trust made the Tang King also do his best to repay him and take the resentment of the clan on himself. So this was further used by Chongzhen, who sent an envoy to the Indian mainland, visited the countries of South Asia, and prepared to establish the Governor's Office of the Indian mainland to manage the affairs of South Asia.

For Zhu Yujian, who has been imprisoned for 16 years, this kind of overseas mission is really a novel experience for him. Maybe he was imprisoned in a small room for too long, so Zhu Yujian, who is in his early 30s, is particularly fond of this kind of life of running around, being able to come into contact with different characters and see different scenery every day.

And the 16-year prison reading career also made Zhu Yujian live a simple life and like to read, which made him look more like a scholar than a vassal king of the Ming Dynasty. However, the experience of serving by the emperor's side also allowed Zhu Yujian to get rid of many literati problems with low eyesight and low skills, and he was more pragmatic in doing things.

So when he arrived in Malacca City with the visiting fleet, he met Liu Xiang, Yang Tiansheng, Zheng Cai and other pirate leaders who would serve under him in the future, and saw the submissive appearance of these unruly pirates in front of him.

But he immediately understood in his heart that these people were not afraid of his identity, nor did they respect him for his good reading, but they were afraid of the young supreme behind him. The Tang King sometimes felt that it was very rare in his heart how the emperor in the distant capital spread his majesty to this Malacca city.

You must know that these pirates have always had no taboos in their hearts, except for Mazu. Even if they wanted to follow Zheng Zhilong to accept the imperial court's recruitment, it was just to be able to go ashore to trade.

If they were really afraid of the court and the emperor, they would not have plundered the coastal areas of Fujian and Guangdong when His Majesty had just ascended the throne. Although Tang Wang was very curious, he also knew that the answer to this question could only rely on himself to find it slowly.

The Indian Ocean storms that the fleet faced soon soon made him lose the ability to think about problems. Although Zhu Yujian was imprisoned for 16 years, he still lived a life of fine clothes and food before the age of 12, and his physical foundation was not bad, so after he was released from the cage, his body quickly recovered.

And in order to divide the fields for the clans in Cambodia, Saigon and other places, he sailed between Shanghai, Guangzhou and Saigon on the sea. Except for the fainting and vomiting on the first voyage, after a foreign appearance, and then on the sea, he can be regarded as walking on the ground.

In Zhu Yujian's view, after experiencing the storms of the South China Sea, there is no place in the world that cannot be visited. So when the fleet entered the Indian Ocean, he realized that the world was so big, it was really strange.

Just across a strait, the South China Sea is calm compared to the waves in the Indian Ocean. So he began to experience seasickness again, and it was not until the fleet arrived at Chittagong that he slowly recovered.

However, although the Indian Ocean is stormy, the scenery of South Asia is quite impressive. The continuous mangrove forest that began in Chittagong makes people feel as if they have come to a labyrinth constructed by gods, and Zhu Yujian sometimes really can't imagine how these fishermen who haunt the mangroves prevent themselves from getting lost.

Huge lagoons on the northeast coast of India, exotic temples and sculptures, exquisite mosques, coastal landscapes of coconut groves, sandy beaches and rice paddies, offshore beaches covered with pearl oysters, lion kingdoms like sand with many gems, and so on. The scenery along the way really opened Zhu Yujian's eyes, and he regretted for a while that his princess couldn't come with him and couldn't see these strange scenery.

Of course, Zhu Yujian still remembers that he is not here to enjoy the mountains and rivers, and he is still shouldering political tasks during his visit to South Asia. It's just that several princely states in southern India didn't seem to be very positive about Daming's visit, but showed some indifference.

As for the Portuguese on the island of Ceylon, they were surprisingly enthusiastic about their arrival. With the help of the members of the Portuguese Restoration Committee in Macau, Zhu Yujian understood what kind of predicament Portugal was facing in India and its eastern colonies at this time.

As the future viceroy of India, Zhu Yujian quickly accepted the advice of several members of the Portuguese Restoration Council in the fleet, and did not focus on just one island of Ceylon, in fact, half of it, which the Dutch had already snatched from the Portuguese.

He decided to take advantage of the predicament faced by Goa to seize all Portuguese colonies in India and the East at once. In Goa, he was warmly received by local Portuguese merchants, but was snubbed by the Viceroy.

Although he was advised to simply unite with Goa's internal supporters and forcibly occupy Goa. But Zhu Yujian refused, he thought that since the Portuguese in Goa and all over India were trying to find a way out, then there was no need for the Ming to be so rude.

After all, the Portuguese have been operating in Goa for hundreds of years, and the majority of the local population is already Catholic, and the Ming forcibly occupy the area will only lay a hidden danger for the future. If Goa and other Portuguese colonies could be accepted in a peaceful way, then the Ming could almost skip the groping period into India.

In the southern Indian princely states he visited, Zhu Yujian had already seen the closed and xenophobic nature of these princely states, and if the Ming Dynasty showed violence when he first arrived, it would only make these princely states more wary of the arrival of the Ming Dynasty, which obviously did not meet the emperor's expectations.

Before Zhu Yujian set off, Chongzhen had already roughly told him about the strategy of running the Indian continent.

The first is to make Indians with Indians, that is, to let the Indians manage the Indians, but to try to make the Indian princely states as trivial and narrow, so that it is difficult for these princely states to independently resist the power of the Ming Dynasty in India. And let these princely states be hostile to each other, and prevent them from uniting.

For the Ming Dynasty, there is only one reason that hinders the Ming Dynasty from operating the Indian continent, and that is the emergence of a unified centralized kingdom on the Indian continent. Such a kingdom would not allow the Ming forces to enter the interior of the Indian mainland.

In this way, the Mughal dynasty, which occupied northern India, was the primary enemy of the Ming Dynasty. In order to subdue this enemy, it is not enough to rely on the Ming Dynasty's own strength, and uniting the hostile forces of the Mughal Dynasty to overthrow or weaken the rule of this dynasty is the primary strategy of the Ming Dynasty in mainland India.

If you want to gain the trust of the local princely states, the Ming can't show too much aggressiveness. The Ming can show force, but this force is meant to win the support of allies and not to cause fear among them.

Considering the emperor's entrustment and observing the vacillating attitude of the Portuguese in Goa, Zhu Yujian decided to leave the members of the Restoration Committee to win the hearts of the people in Goala, while he himself went to Surat first, and landed from Surat to Delhi to meet the Mughal monarch and take a look at the customs of the Mughal Dynasty by the way.

Without the presence of the Ming fleet in the port of Goa, it was undoubtedly easier for these Portuguese to show their true attitude towards the Ming, and it could also make the Restoration Committee look more like a representative of Princess Isabella than a subordinate of the Ming, which made it easier for the Portuguese in Goa to accept their proposals.

From Surat to Delhi, it was both a pleasant and unpleasant trip for Zhu.