"Are you lying to my cousin again?" Carl didn't quite believe that Hong Tao could come up with any good ideas, and every time Hong Tao made a new move, he thought that he was digging a hole for others.

"Why am I lying to him? Besides, he won't go either, does it make sense for me to trick a few scholars into leaving? You have to eat and drink! Hong Tao poured the noodles in the bowl and even the soup into his mouth, and asked back while wiping his mouth.

"Then why did you lend money to Louis, if you drive these Saracens away, as William said, my territory may be more dangerous. No king wanted to include in his territory a noble domain that was not loyal to him. Carl felt that what Hong Tao said was also reasonable, and it didn't seem to be good to trick a few scholars back to Jinhewan. That's not lying to William, but to him, anyway, he decided that Hong Tao had no good idea.

"The Saracens are not so easy to fight, otherwise they wouldn't have to wait until now. Now that you're there, they're even harder to fight. Because you are a traitor, you will tell the Saracens about it in advance, and then secretly sell them more weapons. But you can't just sell it to the Saracens, so that it will soon be revealed on the battlefield, you have to sell both sides at the same time, so that the crossbow arrows that appear in the hands of the Saracens have nothing to do with you, and they can seize them. ”

"That's not enough, you have to tell Louis about the origin of this crossbow, don't say that I made it, just say that I learned it from the big cannibal. The Great Cannibals and the Saracens both belong to Musi\ Lin, which is originally a technique of others, and it is understandable that it has been passed on. Let your slaves be open to the open, your chance to make a fortune has come, don't sell it cheaply. If you don't wipe out both of them, you won't be safe. "Speaking of pit people. The bad water in Hong Tao's stomach gushed out. It's all in one set.

"That's going to kill a lot of Christ knights......" Karl looked at Hong Tao's eyes, a bit like he was looking at a demon. But he understands that he can't oppose it, and if he can't do it well, Hong Tao will replace guys like Martini and Bojiao for him, and maybe Swan's father. Rather than letting them do the scourge, it's better to do it yourself, and there will be some mercy.

"The knights of Louis and Henry's country are all dead. It's good for me, for your cousin, for you. You can ask William how the two of them stood with the Holy See to embarrass your cousin when we had a meeting last night, when they didn't say you were all Christians. "If you can find an opportunity to pit Britain and France quietly, Hong Tao will never let go, not to mention the future maritime hegemons Spain and Portugal. If these four countries are tossed poor, the whole of Europe will have nothing to fear.

Friedrich II was not an ambitious emperor, he only wanted to fulfill the last wishes of his parents, unify the Apennine Peninsula and, by the way, drive the pope out of his nose. He didn't want to think about anything else, otherwise he wouldn't have let the German princes go.

Whether Carl likes it or not. He couldn't object to this matter, because not only did Hong Tao support Louis to fight, but his cousin didn't object either, and he alone would definitely not be able to break Hong Tao's thigh. For the remainder of the week, Hong Tao took on the role of an engineer in Karlburg, setting up a manual assembly line dedicated to the production of crossbows, and fixed each slave in a production link to produce or install a certain component.

This not only allows for a more intuitive check of the slaves' workload, but also allows for the separation of various processes, as well as an increase in output and quality control. This is where the baleen and whalebones stored in the Karl storehouse come in handy. As for crossbow arrows, Carl doesn't have the time to produce them, and whoever buys a crossbow will find a blacksmith to build it himself.

A week later, Hong Tao set out on a voyage home with five European scholars, three Byzantine scholars, two Egyptian scholars, and one Greek scholar, along with a copy of Friedrich II's decree, detailing the situation of these scholars and his agreement with Hong Tao. With this holy decree, Hong Tao has another excuse to come out and go around, and when the time comes, he only needs to tell the parliament that he is sending exchange scholars to the University of Naples, and he will come to Europe in one trip, and then find an excuse to go to the Americas.

These scholars all specialize in literature, philosophy and medicine, and Hong Tao also made a special chat with them on the way to Cape Town Port, and explored their knowledge in many ways through various tips to ensure that there were no experts in navigation before taking them back to the Great Song Dynasty with confidence.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Boss Luo and Swann never came back, I specially took the whaling ship to the island of Madagascar to see, the supply station is still the same, they must not have been there...... But where will they go? It was the beginning of 1242 when he returned to Cape Town, and before Hong Tao's feet could step on the dock, Medtini rolled over like a ball of meat, and pointed fingers at Hong Tao to report the unusual news that the whaling ship of Royoude and Swann had disappeared.

"Ahh Didn't go to the supply station! When did this happen? "Martini is really anxious, and a little scared, he is afraid that Hong Tao will be angry with him, after all, this is his territory, Swann is okay to say, Luo Youde and Hong Tao have too close a relationship. Hong Tao couldn't be indifferent, he knew where those two people had gone, and he had to pretend to be surprised on his face.

"They haven't been back since you left! They only brought supplies for a month and a half, and I personally sailed to find them, but they didn't ...... I've searched all the coastline along the way, and I haven't seen any ships stranded, do you think they'll go straight back to the port of Callamba? Martini stretched out his fat fingers and detailed his response, and then proposed the greatest possibility.

"No...... My order to Swann was to let him wait for me here, and Lao Luo would follow my warship back to the Great Song Dynasty, what were they going to do in the port of Kalamba? Even if you want to go, you shouldn't go in a whaling boat, what's the urgent need not to wait for me to go back? Hong Tao dismissed the possibility given by Martini.

"Then they ......" Medini sweated from his face, opened his mouth a few times, but never dared to say the word.

"It is very likely that if you come back more than two months late, even if the ship is fine, people will always have to eat...... Walking by the river is inevitable to get your shoes wet! Catching up with the extreme sea conditions, let alone the two of them, even I can only resign myself to fate. In any case, we will have to search again, and you get all the sailors ready, and go out to sea with me, along the coastline all the way north, and it will be up to their luck to find them! ”

Hong Tao pretended to be quite similar, he was not too sad or excited, but he was a little decadent, but he arranged things in an orderly manner. This is his consistent style, even if Chen Qihong dies in battle, he is also a reflection of this, only in this way will not make the sailors and officers who are familiar with him suspicious.

The search lasted for half a month, and Hong Tao took five ships along the coastline to find the north of the Comoros Islands, and still did not find any trace of the ship's grounding or sinking, and finally could only announce that the whaling ship, more than 20 slave sailors, more than a dozen imperial craftsmen, Luo Youde, and Swann were all missing. In nautical terms, missing basically means death, and it is the kind of death in which the body can never be found.

To do a full set of plays, Hong Tao still had to hold on to the last glimmer of hope, and change the route home from a direct flight to a halfway stop at the port of Kalamba to make sure that Luo Youde and Swan did not go north. As a result, there is naturally no need to ask, of course Bo Jiao has never seen Luo Youde and Swan's boat, and he is also embarrassed about the disappearance of the two of them.

"Thanks to Your Majesty, I and my clan are allowed to live here, and there is no restriction on my family's fertility. Now I also have a son and a daughter...... Don't blame anyone, if he stayed with the Great Cannibal, he might not be alive now. These were the only words that Swan's father said when he heard that his son had disappeared at sea, and then he fell silent.

In March 1242, a miserable cry rang out again in the city of Jinhe, and the emperor returned from his overseas tour not to gain anything, but to report the disappearance of Luo Youde and Swan.

Since the advent of better ships and navigation, it is rare for the ships of the Golden River Empire to disappear entirely, and at most one or a few sailors have been injured and killed in extreme weather while sailing.

And the missing person this time is also more important, one is Luo Youde, who has been cooperating with Hong Tao since the beginning of his fortune, he is not only the chairman of the Strait Company, but also friends with many Tan family members. The other is Swan, who has not been here for a long time, but he is also a friend in the Royal Navy. Mercy, Po Fish and Po Shrimp are his iron buddies, and many officers are in tears when they hear that their friends can't come back.

What's even more pitiful is Luo Mei, this fat boy is just fourteen years old this year, when he heard that his father was gone, he sat on the ground and howled, what kind of snacks Luo Youde bought for him in his pocket, and Luo Youde's promise to take him to Puerto Callamba during the coming-of-age ceremony all remembered it, and no one could persuade him, and the people present couldn't help crying.

In the end, Hong Tao had a way, he called the Hong salamander, and the little girl went up and muttered a few words to Luo Mei, and the fat man's cry was small, but it didn't stop. As a result, the salamander was anxious, grabbed Luo Meimei's ears and dragged him home directly, and now Luo Meimei did not cry, but cried out in pain.

Luo Youde was actually not wronged, he held two funerals by himself, one was a state funeral given to him by the Jinhe Empire. The statues of him and Swann also stood in the plaza at the entrance to the library, and in any case, they both disappeared while working for the Empire, and together with their past exploits, they deserved this honor.

In front of Luo Youde's statue, there are two spider crawling inscriptions written by Hong Tao himself: Friends of the Empire, my brother and nephew. Some people are alive, but they are dead; Some people are dead, but he is still alive......

(To be continued.) )