In the blink of an eye, it has reached the end of October, and it seems that winter is coming, and once the northwest monsoon rises, it is time to leave the Wa Kingdom and return to Zhoushan.

In the past few months, in addition to sending Fu Chun and Wu Ping to Liaodong and Shandong, Chen Yue has not been idle on Shengyue Island.

A large amount of red copper was purchased through Li Guozhu, which filled the holds of eight three-masted sea ships, and there were as many as 10,000 packs, which were the unit of measurement of the Wa Kingdom, and each pack was sold for five copper coins, and a total of 50,000 copper coins were spent.

The Wa Kingdom is a strange country, with many silver mines in the country, but the currency circulating in the market is not silver but copper coins, and it is a copper coin minted by the Ming Kingdom. In the Wa country, silver is cheap and copper, in the Ming Dynasty, one or two lines of silver can be exchanged for 850 copper coins, and in the Wa country, one or two pieces of silver can only be exchanged for more than 400 copper coins. Therefore, transporting copper coins from the Ming Dynasty to the Wa Kingdom in exchange for silver can earn twice the profit.

In view of the fact that Chen Yue did not carry copper coins on the ship, and was unwilling to pay in silver according to the price of copper coins and silver in the Wa Kingdom, according to the price of silver in the Wa Kingdom, 50,000 copper coins were worth 125,000 taels of silver, and if they arrived in the Ming Dynasty, the 50,000 copper coins were only worth less than 60,000 taels of silver. Therefore, Chen Yue and Li Guozhu agreed that this batch of red copper will be mortgaged by the raw silk of the previous year, and Chen Yue will offset the payment with raw silk next year, of course, the price of raw silk will be calculated according to the market next year.

10,000 packs of red copper, a total of 2.7 million catties, is enough to cast more than 300 Hongyi cannons mounted on warships. Of course, such a large-scale red copper can be purchased smoothly, and Li Guozhu has made a great contribution to it, and it took a lot of effort to run among the daimyo in various places in order to get this thing done. Red copper itself is the associated ore of silver ore, the Japanese people smelted silver ore by the way, because the country's minting level is very poor, the copper coins minted are far inferior to the quality of the Ming copper coins, so the value of copper ore in the Ming country is not too high. Now that the Tokugawa shogunate has unified the three islands of the Wakoku Kingdom, there are far fewer wars between the daimyo than usual, and there is not much desire to make cannons, which is why Li Guozhu was able to buy so much red copper in large quantities.

In addition to red copper, a large amount of sulfur and saltpeter were also purchased, which were indispensable substances for making gunpowder.

What surprised Chen Yue the most was that through Li Guozhu, he also got more than ten Dafu ships. There were not only two maritime merchants from Zhengjia and Zhoushan who came to trade with the Japanese Kingdom, but also many small maritime merchants, most of whom were supported by gentry from all over Fujian and Zhejiang. This year, there are about 50 ships that have come to trade with the Wa Kingdom, and after Chen Yue led the fleet to the Wa Kingdom, more than 10 maritime merchants came to the Wa Kingdom in a scattered manner.

For many small maritime merchants, it is still relatively difficult to maintain a sea boat, not to mention the wind and waves at sea, the salary of the crew on board is also a large amount. And there are not too many valuable goods to bring back to Daming from the Wa Kingdom, after all, the Wa Dao folding fan is not widely sold in Daming. There really wasn't anything good in the Wa Kingdom these days......

Therefore, instead of returning to Daming empty, it is better to sell the ship in Nagasaki, so as to save the salaries paid to the crew on the return trip, and they can use the money they earn to take the ships of other maritime merchants to return to Daming without worrying about anything. As for the crew, they were naturally paid by the new owners, and they did not lose money.

Wait until next year to buy a new ship from the coastal shipyard, and for many maritime merchants, it is not certain that they will not come to the country in the coming year?

Therefore, when Chen Yue revealed the news through Li Guozhu that he wanted to buy a sea ship, many maritime merchants came to the door and were willing to sell the sea ship to Chen Yue, and at the same time, he also threw the burden of the return trip of dozens of crew members on board to Chen Yue.

And the price, naturally, is not as good as the price of a new ship, according to the new and old ships are about eighty percent of the price of the newly launched ships, and these maritime merchants are still very happy. A three-masted ship is only two or three thousand taels of silver, how many dollars can you lose if you lose? The loss of money is not enough to pay the crew's salaries, knowing that they have earned enough money from one trip to trade to buy ten of these new ships!

So everyone rejoiced!

For Chen Yue, the expansion of Zhoushan's strength requires a large number of ships, and even more needs a large number of skilled crews, and now it only needs to spend tens of thousands of taels of silver, which are ready-made and very worthwhile!

At the same time, Chen Yue did not forget the main thing, that is, the training of Zhoushan soldiers. Wu Ping took a fleet to train and explore the situation in the north of the Ming Dynasty by the way. In Nagasaki, there are more than 10 newly purchased sea ships, more than 20 three-masted sea ships, and two captured Dutch armed sailing ships, and there are more than 500 soldiers and sailors who stayed on Shengyue Island and the cadets of the Sailor School, but the remaining 8 or 900 people are hired crew members, not counting Zhoushan's own people.

Taught by the surrendered Dutch and the skilled shipowners, the Sailor School was set up on Izuki Island, where the cadets had already learned the skills of sailing, and they were able to operate the two armed sailing ships without the help of the Dutch.

The biggest difference between the Dutch ship and the Damingfu ship is that there are many more guns, each of the two ships has 36 guns, according to the wartime calculation that one gun needs two gunners, at least 72 gunners are needed.

In fact, there were originally more than 100 people on each armed sailing ship, and most of them would be used as gunners in wartime, which means that most of the gunners of Dutch armed sailing ships were part-time.

During the attack on the Dutch ships, nearly half of the Dutch and Javanese servants were killed on the spot. The total number of captives added up to eighty or ninety people. Most of these Nanyang Chinese had worked as artillerymen, and the Javanese black slaves had only a dozen or so who could operate artillery because of their stupidity, and only about 50 of them could operate artillery because of their stupidity, plus the seven Dutch who surrendered.

Most of the Zhoushan soldiers and academies who came to the Wa Kingdom did not know how to operate artillery. So now there are many artillery, but there are not even enough gunners.

Therefore, in the past few months, while learning the skills of operating sea ships, all the soldiers and trainees in Zhoushan, Chen Yue required them to learn how to operate guns. In order not to cause panic in Nagasaki, in general practical training, the sea boat sails to the sea far away from Igetsu Island and shoots at the uninhabited island.

Chen Yue stipulated that all soldiers of the Qiyun Merchant and cadets of the Sailor Academy (excluding those hired sailors) must learn to operate artillery. Chen Yue knew that now was the era of alternating hot and cold weapons, and muskets and artillery would gradually replace bows, arrows, knives and guns in the future.

Just when the training was in full swing, seeing that the time was November, and soon the northwest monsoon would rise, and then it would be the time to return to Zhoushan, and everyone was looking forward to it, they had been away from Daming for too long.

At this moment, the sea ship sent by Wu Ping to report the news returned to the Wa Kingdom.