After nearly ten days of sailing, Zhou Chong's fleet finally arrived at Weihaiwei. Along the way, Zhou Zhong soon found that the northern coast is different from the southern coast, compared with the southern coastal smuggling and the sea ban is relaxed, the northern coastal area is much more desolate, most of the beaches seen along the way are deserted, and even fishermen who go out to sea to fish are rare, and occasionally you can see some fleets going to Korea or the Japanese country, but these fleets are from the smuggling bases such as Shuangyu Port in the south.

The reason why the northern coast is so desolate is actually caused by many reasons, the first is that it is relatively close to the capital, and the imperial court's control over this place is relatively strong, and the enforcement of the sea ban here is also greater.

The second reason is that in recent hundreds of years, the north is several wars, all kinds of techniques have regressed, of which shipbuilding technology is one of them, coupled with the serious destruction of forests in the north, there is no wood for shipbuilding, so the shipbuilding industry of the Ming Dynasty is now concentrated in the south, laying the foundation for the smuggling industry.

As for the third reason, due to the weather, with the influence of the Xiaoice period, the winter in the north became colder, and the northern coast often froze, so in winter, the ships in the port could not leave the port at all. It is precisely for the above reasons that the smuggling industry in the south is extremely prosperous, but the northern coast is in a depression, and many of the northern ports that have flourished in history have been deserted.

When the fleet arrived in Weihaiwei, Zhou Zhong finally saw a more lively port, but this bustle was only relatively desolate before, and the port here in Weihaiwei was only used to allow some passing smuggling ships to temporarily rest and replenish fresh water, so the scale of the port was not large. The facilities on the port are also very rudimentary. At best, it is about the same as the Qingcun Port in Matsue Prefecture.

Zhou Chong's huge fleet had just docked. It immediately caused a sensation in the whole Weihaiwei, after all, it has been a long time since such a huge ship arrived, and for a port like Weihaiwei, the arrival of the fleet also means that their business is coming, so when the fleet has not stopped, there are already many people in small boats carrying various local specialties to sell.

But the little vendors, who had come forward to peddle their souvenirs, had just arrived halfway there, and before they could get close to their boat, they all suddenly stopped. Because they saw a lot of Jinyi guards wearing flying fish suits on the opposite boat, these people were stunned at first, and then rowed the boat and fled in all directions, after all, they had disobeyed the orders of the imperial court by going to sea without authorization, and now there were Jinyi guards of the Forbidden Army of the Son of Heaven on the opposite boat, although they couldn't figure out what the reason was for the time being, but in order to avoid trouble, the best choice was to stay away from the other party.

The appearance of Wu Shan and these brocade guards not only frightened the merchants on Weihaiwei, but also frightened the officials here. The guard was originally a military institution of the Ming Dynasty. There were 5,600 men in the first guard, and the guard commander was in charge. Although after so many years of development, the population of Weihai Weizhong has grown greatly, almost reaching the size of a small county town, but the biggest official here is still the Wei commander.

Wei Haiwei's commander made the surname Meng Ming's wealth, although the name was very cheesy, and he was a military general, but it is said that his hometown was a native of Zoucheng, Shandong, and he was considered an authentic descendant of Mencius, and he usually declared it to the outside world, often using his ancestors to put gold on his face, and he usually likes to take a book to be a vassal and elegant, but people who know him know that this Meng Decai commander actually can't even write his own name.

Meng Decai is over forty years old this year, his family is a world official, from his grandfather's generation, is the commander of the entire Weihaiwei, after so many years of family efforts, now more than half of the land in Weihaiwei is their Meng family, and half of the military households are tenants under him.

Although the Meng family is greedy, Meng Decai himself is also unlearned, and usually has no big hobbies except eating, drinking, and having fun, but in order to be worthy of his ancestors of Yasheng, this Meng commander does not have much bad deeds, he has never done such a thing as bullying men and women, and the rent of the field is lower than that of ordinary landlords, and even many years ago, in order to give himself an extra way to make money, he took the risk of providing water for the smuggling boats, which turned out to benefit the ordinary people of Weihaiwei a lot. Therefore, the official reputation of this Meng commander is still very good in Weihaiwei, at least compared to most Ming Dynasty officials, he is also considered to be above average.

When Zhou Chong's boat arrived, Meng Decai was staying at home and listening to his concubines singing songs, he didn't have any other hobbies, he just liked to listen to women singing, these concubines were all bought by him from brothels, all of them had a good voice, and they also knew how to play pipa and other musical instruments, listening to them singing with his eyes closed every day, Meng Decai felt that he had not lived in vain in his life.

However, just when Meng Decai was enjoying the beauty of life, the news of the arrival of a large number of brocade guards on sea ships scared him half to death, and his first reaction was that someone hugged the matter of opening his private port, and these brocade guards came to arrest him. But then he thought about it, even if his own affairs were known from above, but he didn't need Jinyiwei, although his commander was bigger than the sky in Weihai, but in the eyes of the imperial court, he was just a small ant, and he could arrest himself by sending a few errands at will, but now there were a large number of Jinyiwei, and this formation was too big?

Considering the above, Meng Decai felt that those brocade guards should not be coming for him, which made him feel a little relieved, and at the same time, he also dispelled the plan to run away immediately. In addition, although he doesn't want to deal with Jinyi Wei, but now that people are on his own territory, he has to come forward to greet him no matter what, otherwise if the other party blames him, he will definitely not be able to afford to be offended by a small Wei commander.

Thinking of this, Meng Decai immediately asked people to change their clothes, and at the same time asked people to notify other officials of Weihaiwei, such as commanding Tongzhi, commanding servants, calming and other officials, as well as thousands of households from various thousands of households all rushed to the port to greet them, Weihaiwei's port income does not belong to him alone, the entire Weihaiwei officials have a share, now that Jinyiwei is here, he naturally wants to call everyone over, one is grand, and the other is to give himself courage, in case the other party is really coming for himself, The other officials of Weihaiwei didn't want to run, and they all had to accompany him to prison.

Zhou Zhong didn't expect Wu Shan's appearance to have such a big impact, not only did the merchants dare to approach their ships to sell goods, but even the port managers were frightened, and they didn't dare to come forward to collect taxes, until Liu Tao asked people from those ports to notify the people in those ports to replenish the fleet with fresh water and unload the goods, and the people in those ports began to move slowly.

On the ship, Zhou Zhong and Ashikaga Kazuki were ready to bring the gifts to the capital to Emperor Zhengde had not yet been unloaded, Meng Decai was already wearing neat official uniforms and came with a large number of officials to greet them.

Although Wu Shan is only a thousand households, which is lower than Meng Decai's official position, he is the Jinyi guard of the Forbidden Army of the Son of Heaven, which is higher than the local official level, and he is deeply trusted by Emperor Zhengde, so he naturally does not take the other party's small guard commander in his eyes, and at the moment he shows his identity with an arrogant expression, and at the same time asks them to prepare a residence for himself and Zhou Zhong and others.

Meng Decai heard that the other party turned out to be Jinyi Wei Qianhu, and at the same time he was shocked in his heart, he immediately put his mind at ease, because he was already sure that the other party was definitely not coming at him, after all, to arrest a little person like him, there was no need for Jinyi Wei Qianhu's big driver. As for Wu Shan's request for him to arrange accommodation, Meng Decai was very surprised, because he felt that this was a good opportunity, and if his arrangement could satisfy this adult, maybe he could use this to tie up with the other party.

Thinking of this, Meng Decai immediately agreed, and while asking the people in the port to carefully serve the Lord Jinyiwei, he also instructed people to arrange accommodation for Zhou Zhong and them, and he also listened to Wu Shan's special advice to let him prepare a quiet house, because there were female dependents among the people they escorted, and they must not be sloppy.

Although Meng Decai didn't know who the escort of Wushan was, the person who could let a Jinyi Wei Qianhu personally lead the escort was definitely not a small person, so he naturally didn't dare to slack off, and rushed to his home in person to vacate his home for Zhou Zhong and others to live in.

With Meng Decai's orders, the managers on the dock were also very hard-working, and the gifts on the ship were quickly unloaded, and they found several carts according to Zhou Zhong's instructions and loaded these gifts on the carts. At this time, Meng Decai had already cleaned up his house, so Zhou Chong, under the leadership of Wu Shan, sent these gifts to Meng Decai's courtyard, and at the same time, he and Jinxuan lived there temporarily.

Meng Decai wanted to talk to Zhou Chong from beginning to end, after all, he wanted to get acquainted with this "big man" who was escorted by the Jinyi Guard, even if his identity was not up to others, but it was good to be familiar with his face, but it was a pity that Zhou Chong was already very tired by boat, and Wu Shan didn't seem to want too many Ming officials to contact Zhou Chong, so Meng Decai never saw Zhou Chong.

After a few days of sea voyages, Zhou Chong and they were already very tired, so after living in Meng Decai's mansion, Zhou Chong decided to rest here for two days before rushing, after all, it was more tiring to take the land route than to take the sea route, he was worried that the bodies of Jinxuan and Bang'er would not be able to bear it, but what Zhou Chong didn't expect was that in the few days he stayed in Weihai, he made a big discovery inadvertently. (To be continued......)