Hainan Island has good iron mines, this Zheng Sen has long known, although the quality of coal mines on Hainan Island is not good, just poor quality lignite, but not far from Hainan Island Vietnam has good coal mines, of course, most of the coal mines in Vietnam are anthracite coal that cannot be used for coking, but in Taiyuan, Vietnam, there is good quality coking coal. Although the reserves of www.biquge.info are not too large, they are still enough to support the current level of the steel industry. What do you think will happen if the steel industry becomes larger in the future? Zheng Sen is not worried about this, because when the day comes, if he can't control Shanxi, he should simply find a piece of tofu and kill him.

If Hainan Island was the territory of the Europeans, I was afraid that Zheng Sen would have already led the fleet and pounced on it with a roar. However, Hainan Island has indeed been the sacred territory of our country since ancient times, and the rule of our Ming Dynasty on Hainan Island is quite stable. And the Zheng family is a subordinate of the Ming Dynasty, so naturally they can't come simply and rudely. The Zheng family is just a family of military generals, and when they were two years earlier, they were not looked at at at all. Although the situation has improved a little now, even in Fujian, it is still impossible to do whatever it wants, and in Hainan, it is even worse. But according to the rules of my Ming Dynasty, this matter is particularly troublesome, especially since the Shilu Iron Mine is in the area controlled by the Li people, and the Li people don't trust the Han people very much, and they don't sell my Ming official accounts very much. However, Zheng Sen has something in his hands that impresses these Li compatriots, and that is cinchona cream used to treat malaria.

As in other tropical areas, malaria is endemic on Hainan Island, and the Li people who live in the mountains and forests are of course much more likely to contract malaria than those who stay in the developed plains. Relying on the golden cinchona, the people of the Zheng family have a good relationship with the Li people in several local areas, and they invited the Puxiang Taoist people to pretend to be ghosts to the Li people. To say that this Puxiang Daoist really has some ability, relying on all kinds of medical skills and witchcraft, bluffing those Li people into treating him as a living immortal. So the Zheng family succeeded in gaining the right to open mines in the mountains.

As for the Vietnamese side, Zheng Sen thinks things are actually easy to do. At that time, Vietnam was divided into the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and the fourth generation of Zheng Zhu Zheng occupied the northern part of Vietnam at this time. In order to unify Vietnam, he launched several wars against the Nguyen family in the south, and not long ago, he had just suffered defeat. Therefore, if Zheng Sen only intended to engage in general trade with them, he should not object, especially if Zheng Sen could provide him with the various weapons he desperately needed.

In order to obtain food and women, Zheng Sen's people did a lot of things to buy weapons on both sides of the North and South Koreas in Vietnam. In this regard, Zheng Sen estimated that Zheng Jie actually knew this, but he didn't have any decent sea power, so he could only let Zheng Sen's people reap the benefits.

"Send an envoy to Vietnam and ask Zheng Zhu to explore and mine coal in Jingbei." Zheng Sen said to Liu De, "We can pay for mining with silver or weapons." ”

"Major General, if the other party proposes that they open their own mines and then sell us coal directly, will we agree?" Liu De asked.

"That's not going to work." Zheng Sen said, "Let them open mines, with their management level similar to that of my Ming Ministry of Industry, let them open mines, and the price of coal in the end will be very high." Although we have money, most of this coal cannot be bought. Therefore, we should make such a request: our side will carry out mineral exploration in Taiyuan, ask the Li Dynasty to ensure the safety of the exploration personnel, and at the same time allow us to lease land in Taiyuan to open mines. Every year we give them 10,000 taels of silver, and everything in the concession is managed by us, and we are responsible for the transportation of coal. Of course, in order to protect the safety of the coal mines, the Li Dynasty should also allow us to maintain an armed escort of no more than 400 people in the mining area. ”

"Li Chao won't agree to this request, right?" Liu De's eyes widened.

"Of course not now, but ...... in the future," Zheng Sen smiled.

……

After another half a month, the envoy brought back Zheng Jie's reply, and Zheng Jie's request was sternly refused, claiming that as long as he was not dead, he would never agree to such a request to lose power and humiliate the country. He harshly reprimanded the envoy sent by Zheng Sen, and even threatened him that if it weren't for everyone's surname Zheng, he would cut off the envoy's head.

"It's a pity he didn't really cut it." Zheng Sen thought regretfully.

"Let Mr. Lucien and Captain Jack come to me." Zheng Sen said to Liu De.

……

At dawn, the fishermen of Dai Viet (Vietnam), under the rule of Hai Duong Cheng Xuan, laboriously raised the sails of their boats, left their small fishing village, and began to go fishing. This is the Red River Delta, which carries a large amount of nutrients into the Beibu Gulf, which has made it a rare fishing ground since ancient times. At the same time, the terrain surrounded by land on three sides makes this sea area relatively calm. The small fishing boats, about the size of a sampan, pulled up a sail and dared to go far from the shore to catch fish.

Nguyen Van Jin has had good luck these days, and he can catch a lot of fish every time he goes to sea. Although marine fish could not be sold for much money, (in those days, it was difficult for marine fish to be sent inland far from the sea because of the lack of freezing and freshness, which resulted in the phenomenon that marine fish could only be sold within a maximum of 30 miles of the coast.) As a result, most of the seafood can't be sold at any price. But catching more can still improve his life a little bit.

Nguyen Van Jin had just dropped another net and scooped up a net full of mackerel. Nguyen Van Jin asked his son to help pour the fish into the cabin, and he estimated that he could go back with a net.

At this time, Nguyen Van Jin raised his eyes and looked into the distance, this is the habitual action of fishermen, of course, this is not to see if there are other boats approaching, but only to see if there are signs of change in the weather. Although the Gulf of Tonkin is relatively calm, the boats used by Vietnamese fishermen are not the sailboats of later generations.

The weather was fine and I couldn't see that it was going to be windy or rainy. However, several boats appeared in Nguyen Van Jin's eyes. It was a few very large ships, including the Ming style fortune boats that he often saw, and the less common plywood boats. Nguyen Van Jin hurriedly put away the nets and leaned towards the fleet. In this era, Vietnamese fishing boats in the Beibu Gulf have not encountered those with D-shaped flags on the masts, and they ordered Zhuyi to avoid them quickly, and the uncle did not care about the Chitu National Maritime Patrol Boat. Although the Ming Dynasty also had some sailors in Guangxi, they had not yet developed the good habit of going to the Beibu Gulf to catch a few Vietnamese fishing boats and come back to fine them for the festival as in later generations. In many cases, fleets of ocean-bound vessels buy their catch directly from the fishing vessels they encounter.

It's just that those boats are full of sails along the wind, much faster than Nguyen Van Jin's small fishing boat, and people don't stop and wait for him, so soon these boats disappeared, but Ruan Van Jin has already judged that these boats are heading in the direction of the mouth of the Red River, that is, the direction of the fishing village where his family is located.

"Is there a big port over there, and what are they going to do over there?" Nguyen Van Jin couldn't help but think.

Nguyen Van Jin stopped fishing, and he said to his son, "It looks like the boats are heading in the direction of our village." ”

"Most of them are passing by, why don't people go to our broken village for what?" His son said indifferently. Not to mention that the sea has calmed down a lot now, those big pirates have almost wiped out Zheng Zhilong, even a small group of pirates, many of whom have also been trained by Zheng Sen's fleet. Of course, there are still pirates in the South China Sea, and there are quite a few, but in poor places like fishing villages for the Vietnamese, even pirates are too lazy to rob them.

"Let's go back and have a look." Nguyen Van Tan said, "Anyway, we actually caught a lot of fish today." In the past few days, the Dragon King has given us a lot of fish, people can't be too greedy, go back. ”

When his son heard this, he said no more. The father and son turned the bow of the ship and began to return to the ship.

When they returned to their fishing village, they saw that the boats were parked not far from the fishing village, and some men with short spears (in fact, flintlock pistols with bayonets) had disembarked from the boats and planted a flag on where they had landed. Then a number of small boats were lowered from the big boats, and they rowed to one place, and they were chained together, and the men laid planks on them, so that a temporary pontoon was formed.

Then from the big boat leaning against the edge of the pontoon, several large brass pipes (cannons) with wheels were lowered with a strange thing (crane). Several people pushed these large copper pipes and also went ashore.

By this time, the soldiers had already pushed all the cannons ashore, and on the other side, they also saw that the rest of the village had all been tied up, strung together, and put onto a boat.

"This is a pirate!" The father and son glanced at each other and prepared to turn and flee. However, the pirates had already seen what they were probing their brains for, and several pirates with short spears ran towards them.

"Run!" Nguyen Van Jin shouted to his son, and the two ran away.

"Don't go to the boat, our boat can't outrun the people, run into the woods over there!" Seeing that his son wanted to run to the boat, Ruan Van Jin hurriedly shouted.

The son had already run a few steps towards the fishing boat, and after listening to Nguyen Van Jin's words, he turned around and ran in the direction of the forest, but this delay, the pirates had already chased closer. Father and son ran fast, but the pirates behind them ran faster. In the blink of an eye, a pirate had already chased behind Ruan Van Jin, only to see that he dropped the flintlock pistol in his hand, and the butt of the gun was shining on Ruan Van Jin's thigh was a guy, and Ruan Van Jin who was running immediately fell to the ground and couldn't get up. However, Ruan Wenjin still tried very hard to raise his head and looked in the direction of his son, wanting to see if his son had escaped. However, he saw that a pirate had caught up, and the pirate also knocked his son to the ground with the butt of his rifle in the leg.