The huge fleet of the Ming Naval Division slowly sailed out of Manila Bay and continued southward, but the fleet did not sail directly to the Strait of Malacca, but continued south along the island of Kalimantan to Batavia.

At this time, Batavia has not changed much compared with a few years ago, because Zhang Bin's focus in the Ming Dynasty in recent years has not had time to take care of the Nanyang region or the Mughals, Persia, and Europe outside the Nanyang.

In these years, without strong military protection, ocean trade is basically impossible to carry out, because many shipping lanes are prevalent with pirates, and, sometimes, the fleets of the great powers are more ferocious than the pirates, if you encounter pirates, you may still be alive, if you meet the fleets of the great powers at sea, it is very likely that you will disappear with people and ships!

Zheng Zhihu, the great treasurer of Dongshengtang Nanyang, is not a timid person, but he is not a reckless person, without the support of the Daming sailor, he did not try to open the Persian or even European markets, he just operated in Nanyang in a regular manner, waiting for the moment when the Daming sailor would become famous overseas.

He believes in Wei Guogong's ability, he believes that there will always be a day when Daming will crisscross the seas, and the Daming Navy can even defeat the fleet of the Dutch, the overlord of the sea, what else is there to be afraid of, Wei Guogong will lead everyone to rush out sooner or later, but there are thieves inside Daming, and there is a threat from Jiannu and Meng Yuan outside, and Wei Guogong can't get out for a while.

In the past two years, the good news has been coming, the anti-thieves have been exterminated, Jiannu has been defeated, Liaodong has been recovered, and even Dongying has been beaten down by Daming, he knows that Wei Guogong is about to set his sights overseas, and the Daming Sailor is coming!

Sure enough, a few days ago, he received the news that Zhang Bin, the prince of the Taishi Weiguo, would lead the Fujian Navy fleet to visit the European continent.

On this day, the fleet of the Daming Sailors was not expected to arrive in Batavia until around noon, but he organized the employees of Dongshengtang to be busy on the docks from early in the morning, arranging and preparing for the arrival of the Daming Sailors and the Taishi Wei Guogong.

Badavian city here is also the Ming merchants and their families in the majority, heard that the Ming cabinet chief, Taishi Wei Guogong is coming, many people spontaneously came to the port nearby, the port soon became like the beach in Manila, crowded with people to watch the lively.

The first assistant of the cabinet or the grandfather of the country, many people have never seen it in their lives, let alone a super official who is also the first assistant of the cabinet, the Taishi, and the prince of the country, and no one has ever seen such a big official in Batavia.

Before noon, dense black dots appeared on the sea level in the distance, these black dots became bigger and bigger, bigger and bigger, with the exclamations and cheers of the people on both sides of the port, thousands of warships overwhelmingly entered the port, suddenly, everyone's eyes were filled with battleships, Zhenyuan cruisers, Weiyuan battleships, light ironclad ships, full of warships, although most of the people of Batavia have seen these three kinds of warships, but never thought that there would be so many warships of the Ming Navy.

Zheng Zhihu is also a very knowledgeable person, he also heard that the shipyard over there in Dongfan is constantly producing warships, and the warships of the Fujian Navy Division have already exceeded a thousand, but when thousands of warships appeared in front of him at the same time, he was still shocked, too spectacular, too spectacular!

He stood there in a daze, looking at the overwhelming battleships in front of him, until several Zhenyuan cruisers approached the dock, and countless Ming soldiers gushed out from above, and he took a few Dongshengtang shopkeepers to ask the Ming generals who came down.

Soon, he found the location of the flagship, and at this time Zhang Bin had already walked down the escalator surrounded by a group of generals, Zheng Zhihu saw this, and hurriedly stepped forward, just about to lean down and kneel, but Zhang Bin held him and said kindly: "Okay, they are all their own brothers, don't be so polite, Zhibao, where did this guy go." ”

If you count according to the relationship between Zheng Zhilong's brothers and Zhang Bin, Zheng Zhihu and Zhang Bin can indeed be regarded as cousins, but there is no blood relationship between them, Zheng Zhihu couldn't kneel, so he could only arch his hand awkwardly: "Thank you Grandpa Guo, if you return to China, Zhibao is patrolling the outpost of Sumen Island with a fleet at this time, he has been there for more than ten days, I don't know that Grandpa Guo will come, and I hope that Grandpa Haihan." ”

When Zhang Bin heard this, not only did he not get angry, but nodded with satisfaction: "Well, yes, this kid is quite diligent." ”

At this time, Svera and Coqueira also brought a few personal boats, Zhang Bin introduced Zheng Zhihu, and then led everyone to the direction of the Batavia Governor's Palace.

He's not just here to show his face, he still has important things to arrange.

In the afternoon of the same day, a special meeting was held in the conference room of the Governor's Palace in Batavia, and this time there were no officials from the Ming court and generals from the Ming military, but representatives of major merchant gangs.

After Zhang Bin came in, a group of representatives of the merchant gang naturally stood up solemnly, a compliment, he directly raised his hands, motioned for everyone to sit down, and then picked up the ash rod on the conference table, turned around and pointed to the big map on the wall and introduced: "Everyone should know that now the main business areas of our Ming merchants are Dongying and Nanyang in addition to the territory of Daming, and like the Mughals, Dashi, Persia, Amicil and Europe in the west, our Ming merchants are rarely involved. ”

The representatives of the major merchant gangs present all nodded with regret on their faces, they more or less knew a little bit, the money on the Mughal, Dashi, Persian, Amicil and European continents was very profitable, and many goods were surprisingly profitable in those places, but they didn't dare to go, because it was too dangerous, and if they were not careful, they would even lose their money with people and boats.

They had to do business with the Portuguese, the Spaniards, or even the Dutch, selling their goods to these people for a small profit, and leaving them to make an astonishing profit.

This time, the reason why these big business gangs actively responded to the call of Zhang Bin, the Duke of Weiguo, sent a large number of merchant representatives and brought a large number of samples of goods, is that I heard that the Duke of Wei Guo is going to lead everyone to open up the Western market, which is a huge market.

Sure enough, Zhang Bin then pointed to the map and said: "The reason why our merchants in Daming dare not set foot in these places, it is too dangerous to go to sea and sail this is only one aspect, and on the other hand, have you ever thought about it, if you want to go to sea and sail, you must organize a fleet of a certain size, and as soon as the scale of this fleet comes up, there will be more people, hundreds or even thousands of people are possible, so where does the drinking water of these hundreds or even thousands of people come from, and this sea water can not be drunk." Where does the grain come from, and there is not food everywhere along the Western coast. If your merchant ships were crammed with fresh water and grain, how much cargo would you carry, and how much profit would you make by taking a risk? ”

Most merchants really haven't thought about this problem carefully, because most of them do business in the territory of the Ming Dynasty, even if they go to Dongying and come to Nanyang, they are basically the areas controlled by the Ming Dynasty along the way, and they can get fresh water and food supplies wherever they want, so most of them are not aware of this problem.

This trip to the Western Ocean is thousands of miles, with the speed of the now popular Daifuku ship, it is a few months or even half a year or a year, during which everyone eats, drinks, and brings enough fresh water and food, it is simply impossible, even if you don't bring any goods, it is impossible to bring all the crew for a few months or even half a year of fresh water and food.

Everyone's faces slowly showed a look of worry, it seems that this ocean-going business is not easy to do, not only must there be enough merchant ships and goods, but most importantly, there must be enough supply places, otherwise, the entire fleet will starve to death even if it is thirsty!