From Luzon, the further south you go, the weaker the influence of the trade winds. All the sails of the fleet were open, but the faint monsoon breeze could only propel the ships slowly.

In the days when there was no power, it was completely dependent on the wind, and within five degrees on both sides of the equator was simply a no-go zone for sailboats.

Unfortunately, the technology of the steam engine is still in the experimental stage and cannot be applied to daily life, so it can only endure the slow speed.

In addition to the influence of wind, the equatorial windless zone produces an equatorial low pressure zone due to the high temperature and the decrease in ground pressure. The convergence of trade winds from the subtropical high to the equatorial low strengthens the vertical movement of the air, but the updraft does not feel windy on the ground.

The weather under its control is characterized by low air pressure, high humidity, cloudy and thunderstorms, and is an area to be avoided for sea navigation.

Zhu Zhanji has a full understanding of this climatic characteristic, and it can even be said that no one in the entire fleet can know better than him.

In the first two lifetimes, he was a captain for several decades, and he has a very clear understanding of the climate characteristics of the world, the influence of monsoons, and the conditions of ocean currents.

In particular, as the captain of a salvage vessel, he collected ocean currents and climate impacts in every ocean region of the world.

However, this understanding of his did not translate directly into orders, and everything needed to be guided by the guides who were most familiar with the local sea conditions in this era.

Zhu Zhanji paid close attention to every navigation order, he did not need to give orders personally, he only needed to correct some small mistakes at some time.

Although these guides do not know as much about the world's oceans as Zhu Zhanji, they do not know less than Zhu Zhanji in terms of regional location, or even know better.

For example, the reefs and shipping routes in the Philippines, Zhu Zhanji certainly did not know as carefully as they did.

After mastering the new style of mapping, every soldier in the fleet who had learned from Yu Linwei drew a standard scale chart.

Three days later, the fleet finally broke through the reef area in the western Visayas. This is the most complicated navigation route between southern Luzon and the Palawan Islands, and there is no guide to guide it, and even Zhu Zhanji does not know about the branch of the reef.

However, after entering the Sulu Sea, the mood of the fleet not only did not relax, but became more nervous, because after entering the equatorial depression zone, many soldiers were physically uncomfortable.

The soldiers were rarely sick because of their strong bodies, but those civil officials, female dependents, and clansmen fell ill hundreds at once.

The hot climate made many people unbearable, which also made the princes of the five countries worried, for fear that Zhu Zhanji would cancel his trip to Sulu and Boni.

When the Ming fleet arrived in Luzon, in addition to the envoys who had returned with the fleet from Yingtianfu, the Sulu and Boni kingdoms, including the Majapahit kingdom and the Maluku king, and the kingdom of Jima Thornlang all sent princes to meet Zhu Zhanji and his party.

The state of Sulu is a maritime state in the southern Luzon archipelago, and their territory roughly includes the Palawan Islands, the eastern part of Borneo, and the Sulu archipelago and some islands in the east.

The country is like a federation, with three kings in coalition, with the king of the east as the honor.

The Bo Ni Kingdom is the area of Brunei in later generations, they were originally a subject country of Majapahit, but later became independent and became a country of their own.

The king of this country, Mana Jagana, admired the Ming Dynasty the most, and in the sixth year of Yongle with the queen, the prince and his party of more than 150 people came to visit across the sea, and were warmly entertained by Ming Chengzu.

After Mana Jagana arrived in Yingtianfu, he saw that the Ming Dynasty was so prosperous, it was like the whole country taking refuge in the Ming Dynasty, but Zhu Di and the Wenchen thought that the Bo Ni Country was too poor and didn't want it.

Mana Jagana visited Nanjing for more than a month, and finally contracted the disease due to misfortune, although carefully adjusted by the imperial doctor, he finally died of illness due to serious illness in the Nanjing Huitong Hall.

Before he died, he left his last words: I hope that my body will be buried in China. It means that you can't be a Ming person in life, and you have to be a Ming ghost in death.

After Zhu Di knew that, in accordance with the wishes of the king of Boni, he buried the king of Boni in Shizigang in the south of Nanjing with the ceremony of funeral of the princes, and became a naturalized Chinese grave household as a native of the southwest, guarded the tomb for generations, and erected a monument for the mausoleum.

And he appointed Ahmed, the son of Mana Jakananai, to succeed him to the throne and sent for him to be escorted back to the kingdom. Before leaving, Emperor Zhu Di of the Ming Dynasty set up a banquet for him, and gave him gold and silver.

Ahmad asked Zhu Di to give him the surname to express his respect for the Ming Dynasty, and Zhu Di took their king Sultan as his surname, so he gave him the surname Su.

The Kingdom of Jima Thorn Lang is a general term for some tribes based in Mindanao in later generations, which did not have a complete state system and was still in a slave society, which was very backward.

They sent people to greet them, and they also wanted the Ming fleet to take some trade ships over and trade with them. Their country is unusually backward, except for the abundance of copper mines, which allows them to have some copper products, not even iron knives.

The Maluku Kingdom was the area of the Spice Islands in later generations, and they are also the country with the closest trade with the Ming Dynasty today. Because of the weakness of the country, they could not resist the aggression of other countries, and over the years, they have been seeking to throw themselves into the arms of the Ming Dynasty and get the protection of the Ming Dynasty.

The Majapahit, on the other hand, were once the most powerful countries in the South Seas, and although they had been expelled from Sumatra and Borneo by the rise of the Manjapahit and other states, they still occupied the rich eastern part of Java.

They were also the only nation that did not send a prince to greet them, but the envoys who followed them in the fleet.

Their worries are actually unnecessary, because Zhu Zhanji knows that he does not have much opportunity to go abroad, and this may also be the only time he goes to the West, so no matter which country he is, he will go. Even if these countries cannot be brought into the arms of the Ming Dynasty now, this foundation must be laid.

However, this intention should not be too obvious to let these countries know his intentions and show a more urgent mentality.

This is mainly because of today's Da Ming, who just regards them as a burden and doesn't want to deal with them at all.

Zhu Zhanji was accompanied by hundreds of scholars and thousands of literati, who also opposed the accession of these countries to the Ming Dynasty and increased the burden on the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Zhanji was not in charge of politics at this time, and he did not have much say in this regard, let alone come with them.

After entering the Sulu Sea, Ma Xin and Shen Daier both fell ill. This low pressure, combined with the heat and humidity, is unaccustomed to most people living in the north.

To make matters worse, many soldiers suffered from severe ringworm.

The cabins they live in are very hot and unhygienic, and this minor illness cannot be avoided.

Now the third and fourth floors of the stern of the flagship where Zhu Zhanji lived have all been surrounded by curtains, and all the female dependents are only enclosed on the fourth floor, and then those soldiers can sleep on the deck when they rest.

In this regard, with the experience of four voyages to the Western Ocean, the Ming fleet has accumulated a wealth of experience. A lot of medicines were prepared to treat various scabies and skin diseases, so although there were many sick soldiers, it did not affect morale.

The most demoralizing thing is the slow speed of the ship, the previous fleet was galloping, the current fleet is like climbing.

From Luzon to the country of Sulu. It's only 2,000 miles, which is about the same distance from Quanzhou to Luzon. But it took less than five days to get from Quanzhou to Luzon, and now the five days are not halfway there.

At this time, Zhu Zhanji and Wang Jinghong and the sailing masters also discussed the use of soft sails, but a word with Wang Jinghong made him dispel his plan to test soft sails.

Since the Tang and Song dynasties, there have been no small exchanges between the East and the West. The hard sails of the East and the soft sails of the West have their own merits, and they are not without reference to each other.

The advantages of Chinese hard sail are: easy to operate, can be lifted with a pulley, the number of people required is small, the sail time is short, especially suitable for offshore and river trade. The second is that the hard sail is suitable for large ships, and the soft sail cannot be carried at all on large ships.

The disadvantages are: since there is only one support point, the area of the sail is limited, and the extensive use of wooden skeleton also limits its draft, so the speed is very slow, and it is inefficient when sailing across the ocean. Then the hard sail can only be raised to the top, and the sail power cannot be adjusted according to the situation, which is not good for naval battles and crossing island groups.

The advantages of Western-style soft sails: the wind is large, the support points are more, so the area can be larger, the speed and load have great advantages, and even if the soft sail on the same mast is a section, the sail force can be adjusted according to the situation, so the advantage is that it is conducive to naval battles and avoiding reefs, and the second is that it can also be safely slow when encountering smaller storms.

The disadvantages are: complex operation, large crew required, long sail hoisting time. Since the 16th century, the sail of Western ships is composed of three parts: cross sail, Latin sail and oblique truss sail, with many modules and cumbersome procedures, and the pulley can only be used to adjust the rope and cannot directly raise the sail. In addition, the number of crew members required to operate the soft sail is at least three times that of the hard sail, which is the biggest disadvantage compared to the hard sail.

If you want to mix soft and hard sails, you need to carry out various tests and have to reset the mast, which is not ripe at the moment.

At least wait until you arrive in the old port, first use a few ships to refit and try to find the best combination, before you can try it out on a large scale.

After this task was assigned, Zhu Zhanji no longer worked on the axe, and hid on the small deck behind the flagship every day to escape the heat in the shade.

Sailing life is extremely boring, especially when the speed of the ship is so slow. Everyone's mood is a little low, and even mahjong and poker can only alleviate this depression.

These women, in particular, have no freedom at all on the ship and can only live in a small world.

It was also at this time that the fleet held a series of competitive competitions, including combat, knife formation, spear formation, shield formation, shooting, artillery and other events.

Although it is still in the preliminary stage, various events are enthusiastically sought after by fighters, especially the fighting competition, and even the preliminary round has attracted countless soldiers who want to watch.

A fleet of 600 warships, sailing for hundreds of miles. In order not to disrupt the sailing formation, every day the herald ship had to pick up the soldiers watching the battle from each battleship, and then they spread the results of the game to the entire fleet.

In order to compete for two places to watch the battle every day, the soldiers on each ship are also competing with each other, which makes the morale of the ship much higher.

In this warm atmosphere, the fleet finally arrived on the island of Holo, the capital of the Sulu state.

Situated halfway between Borneo and Mindanao, Jolo is a small island of less than 1,000 square kilometres, but it holds the throat of the entire Sulu archipelago.

What's more, the island is made up of ash deposited by extinct volcanoes, and apart from a few extinct volcanoes, the entire island is a large area of fertile farmland.

Due to its location in the equatorial windless zone, there are no strong winds, no natural or man-made disasters, and almost daily rain can nourish this fertile island.

As a result, the island is small in size, but it can support countless people, and since the ninth century, it has been the center of the Sulu archipelago

When the Ming fleet arrived here, the fleet was welcomed by the three kings of Sulu and almost all the people, and when Zhu Zhanji saw the people here kneeling on the shore below like worshipping gods on the flagship, he couldn't help but think of Magellan a hundred years later.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Magellan in Spain was stormed to Cebu by a typhoon. He was warmly welcomed by the chief of Humabang with eight hundred natives.

They were warmly welcomed by the natives and volunteered to be baptized by the Spaniards as one of the first Filipino Christians.

Seeing that these natives were so well-behaved, he had to coerce the local chiefs in the area to submit to Spain and pay tribute to the king of Spain.

Lapu-Lapu, the leader of Mactan Island, a coral island near Cebu, firmly refused. After receiving the report, Magellan personally led the iron-clad Spanish army to attack Mactan Island.

Lapu-Lapu led the islanders to rise up against the Spanish colonizers and killed Magellan.

The inhabitants of the small islands throughout Southeast Asia are almost all peace-loving, docile by nature, and always accept outsiders with a studious and friendly attitude, as long as they do not really harm their interests.

Because they did not have their own culture, they genuinely embraced the Green Religion when the Arabs came to them, and later when the Spaniards conquered them, they genuinely embraced Christianity.

They don't actually have faith, they just learn about foreign cultures with the mentality of a small country and a widow.

Today's green religion has not yet become the state religion of Southeast Asian countries, and at this time, the Ming Dynasty should strengthen its influence on them and let them truly become the citizens of the Ming Dynasty.

With so many of their population, they have become the labor force of the Ming Dynasty, which can bring more benefits to the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Zhanji walked down the high gangway with his head held high, and everyone kneeling on the shore kowtowed three times in a row under the guidance of the officials of the Ministry of Rites, and then stood up under the command of the officials.

The three kings of the Sulu archipelago, the king of the east, the king of the east, the king of the west, the king of the west, the king of the king, the king of the country, the king of the island, the king of the island, the king of the Sulu Islands, the king of the Sulu Islands, the king of the east of

Today's Sulu is not a real country.

They still belong to the alliance system, and the management system is also three sets instead of one. In terms of state system, they are not as good as the smaller Bo Ni country, like a centralized state.

In history, that is, this year, the three kings led a delegation of more than 300 people, and after Zheng He passed through the West, they went to the Ming Dynasty to worship.

At that time, Zhu Di was in Beiping, and after they arrived at Yingtianfu, they were shocked by the prosperity of the Ming Dynasty, and later went to Beiping to pay homage to the emperor and was ceremoniously received by the Yongle Emperor.

The Three Kings stayed happily in Beijing for nearly a month, and then returned home by boat along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. On the way back to China via Shandong, the king of the east unfortunately contracted an illness and died in Dezhou on September 13, the fifteenth year of Yongle.

When Emperor Yongle heard the obituary, he was deeply mourned, so he sent Lang Zhongqi of the Ministry of Rites to rush to Dezhou with a sacrificial text to bury the king of the east with the gift of the vassal king.

The eldest son of the king of the east, Du Ma Han, led the people to return to China to inherit the throne, and the princess Ge Muning, the second son Wen Hara, the third son Andulu and more than ten attendants stayed in Dezhou to guard the tomb.

His descendants acquired Chinese nationality in the Qing Dynasty and took the surnames An and Wen. Later, due to several major natural disasters in history, many descendants of the Eastern King left Texas and were distributed in many places.

Later, the descendants of the Eastern King have long been integrated into China and become a part of China.

Zhu Zhanji developed in Southeast Asia in his previous life, and he has a very clear understanding of the history, ethnicity, and mineral resources of Southeast Asian countries.

He now knew that in the vicinity of Cebu in the later world, there was a world-class mega gold and copper mine. And the whole of Mindanao, 40% of the land, under all kinds of gold and copper mines, the whole island, almost a mine.

How to guide the economic development here, in fact, he already has a general framework in his heart, but all this will have to wait until he really becomes the emperor.

If he wants to change the foreign policy of the Ming Dynasty, it is not something that he, the grandson who has not yet been in power, can do.

The purpose of his current trip to the West is to sort out the complex relations between the entire Southeast Asian countries, become an arbiter between the islands of Southeast Asia, and control the entire situation in his own hands.

Whether these areas are included in the territory of the Ming Dynasty in the future, or whether they become vassals like Dongying and Korea, there is no need to rush to decide.

Because there is also a question of religious belief involved.

Nowadays, Southeast Asian countries, such as Sumatra and Java, have determined the development system of green religion as the state religion. Manraka and Boni were also profoundly influenced by the Green Religion.

The Battle of Talas between the Tang Dynasty and the Arabians was a far-reaching battle. In that battle, the Arabs captured some inconspicuous craftsmen from the Tang Dynasty, but it was these craftsmen who brought papermaking to the Arabs.

Paper mills were established in Samarkand and Baghdad a hundred years later, hundreds of shops in Baghdad employed scribes and bookbinders, and even public libraries were established, including the first to open a library for book rental.

Subsequently, papermaking spread from Arabia to North Africa, Al-Andalus, and to Europe in the 13th century.

The unification and division of the Arab world allowed the Arabs to expand from South Asia to the west to Africa, Europe, and east to the entire Southeast Asian region.

In the 700 years from the end of the 8th century to the 15th century, the Arab world produced artists, engineers, scholars, poets, philosophers, geographers, and merchants.

On the basis of traditional scholarship, the development of art, agriculture, economy, industry, law, literature, navigation, philosophy, science, sociology, science and technology has been preserved and promoted, and on the basis of these aspects of reform and innovation.

Their artists, scientists, luminaries and workers have come together to create a unique culture that has directly and indirectly influenced the social fabric of every continent.

This was the world-famous golden age of Islam, and until the 21st century, the cultural territory of the whole world was left over from this era.

On the contrary, because the Ming Dynasty gave up Cochin, the Ming Dynasty lost control of Southeast Asia. The only area that the Eastern civilization can influence is Northeast Asia, which is far inferior to the Christian civilization and the Islamic civilization.

If Zhu Zhanji wants to bring these islands in Southeast Asia into the territory of the Ming Dynasty, the first thing to do is to expel the influence of other civilizations on Southeast Asia, which is a very difficult task.

Today's Eastern King Batu Ge Lang Hara and they have actually been influenced by the Green Religion, but they have not yet set the Green Religion as the state religion, which will happen more than a hundred years later.

Because today's Ming Dynasty is far stronger than the civilization represented by the Green Religion.

In the face of Zhu Zhanji, the grandson of the Ming Dynasty, they were all very humble, and the three kings almost bowed down to Zhu Zhanji and asked Zhu Zhanji for peace.

When Zhu Zhanji's dragon chariot that needed to be pulled by eight horses was lifted from the ship by a crane, dozens of mighty horses were pulled down, and there were thousands of heroic honor guards, and they all prostrated under the strong civilization of the Ming Dynasty.

All this is something they can't imagine.

Zhu Zhanji invited the three kings to sit on the dragon chariot with him, and the three of them trembled, but they couldn't push it, so they sat down at the skirt and waved to their subjects with some pride.

The horse's hooves ticked, and the huge dragon chariot slowly drove towards the city of Holo.

Because the wooden city gate was too narrow, the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty demolished the gate of Huoluo City in a simple and rude manner, and the three princes not only did not feel surprised at all, but also apologized to Zhu Zhanji repeatedly, thinking that their city was too stingy.

The city is indeed stingy, the walls are only more than a meter high earthen walls, and above them is a row of wooden fences, such protection is simply pitiful.

And their army is even more pitiful, most of them have copper spears in their hands, and only a few generals have an iron sword.

The carriage came to the Three Kings' Mansion, which was actually three large mansions, still mainly wooden structures, with only a low earthen wall. The three houses are arranged in a zigzag pattern, and in the middle is a square.

Zhu Zhanji did not "look strange", but comforted them softly and invited them to Daming to have a look. And promised them that the Ming was willing to help the Sulu State in all aspects such as construction and agriculture.

The three kings couldn't help but be overjoyed, and their attitude towards Zhu Zhanji became even more groveling.

The meeting between Zhu Zhanji and the Three Kings unfolded in such an unequal and friendly atmosphere, but all this was so natural.

The civil and military officials of the Ming Dynasty looked down on such a small country one by one, while the subjects of Sulu took it for granted.

They saw the fleet of the Ming Dynasty, saw the might of the Celestial Empire, and civilization, and they had fallen for it.