"What? Escaped? In the newly established Yamen of the Four Seas Admiral in Shuangyu Port, Zhou Zhong questioned Wu Shan with a look of disbelief, he never thought that Zhang Rui was about to be escorted to Shuangyu Port, but he escaped at the last moment.

"My lord is angry, my subordinates have already checked it in person, and found that Zhang Rui should have pried open the window and jumped into the sea not long after the ship left Ningbo Port, judging from the sea conditions over there, even if the other party knows the water, I am afraid that he will not be able to swim on land, so it is likely that he has drowned in the sea!" Wu Shan said with a worried expression at this time.

In fact, when he first received the news, Wu Shan was also very surprised, and when he learned that this incident was true, he immediately scolded the escorted Jinyi guards, and then personally went to the sea where Zhang Rui disappeared to check, and came to the conclusion that the other party was likely to have drowned.

"Drowning?" Zhou Chong was stunned for a moment when he heard this conclusion, and then said with some displeasure, "Since you said that you drowned, then hurry up and find Zhang Rui's body, if you can't find the body, then the other party is likely to be alive!" ”

Wu Shan has been following Zhou Zhong for a long time, this is the first time he has seen him so angry, and he immediately agreed in fear, turned around and left to urge his subordinates to find Zhang Rui's body. But the result of the search was just as Zhou Chong feared the most, Zhang Rui really couldn't see anyone alive or dead, and there was no way to prove that he had been drowned.

Regarding Zhang Rui's jumping into the sea, Zhou Chong wanted to hide it from Bai Junwan for the time being, but later saw that Zhang Rui's life and death could not be determined, and finally confessed to Bai Junwan. Unexpectedly, Bai Junwan seemed very calm when she heard the news, but she sighed faintly and never spoke again, but afterwards Bai Mengwan told Zhou Chong that her sister Bai Junwan set up a tablet for Zhang Rui at home, and she would burn paper incense for Zhang Rui on the fifteenth day of the new year.

With the rectification of Shuangyu Port by Zhou Chong, the smuggling business of the whole port has become more popular, especially after the army has been stationed in Shuangyu Port, the entire Shuangyu Port can no longer be called a smuggling port, but a real open sea trade port in Daming, although the ships that come and go need to pay an extra tax. But in the name of it. There is no need to worry about being wanted by the government, and even in the waters around Ningbo and Songjiang, they can still be protected by the Daming Navy, so the merchants do not have much complaint.

In a small fleet of boats heading north from Shuangyu Port. The fleet is not large. There were only five merchant ships. In addition to a large merchant ship about ten zhang long, the other four were medium-sized merchant ships, and each merchant ship had a deep draft. Apparently the ship was full of cargo.

The largest merchant ship in the fleet is called Luqiao, and the owner of this ship must be a lazy person like the eunuch Wang Gui, and he directly uses the name of the person as the name of the ship, in fact, the owner of this fleet is indeed called Lu Qiao, a smuggling merchant from Hangzhou, and this fleet is also the family business that he has accumulated with great difficulty, and usually mainly runs the North Korean route.

The fleet had just left Shuangyu Port less than a day ago, and had just passed through the strait between Zhoushan Island and the mainland. On the tall deck of the Luqiao, Qi Yanming stood at the stern of the ship and watched the waves on the sea, but he was thinking about his thoughts.

As Zhou Zhong controlled Shuangyu Port step by step, Qi Yanming felt more and more unsafe around, and later when he heard that there was a fleet to go to North Korea to recruit guards, he immediately said goodbye to Zhu Jiu and others to register, and as a result, he easily passed with his martial arts, and became a guard leader on the ship.

Looking at Shuangyu Port in the distance, which had gradually submerged below sea level, Qi Yanming couldn't help but sigh, originally he thought that he could settle in Shuangyu Port for a long time, but because of that Zhou Chong, he had to embark on the road of exile again, and even this time he will leave Daming completely, and he will probably have to stay in North Korea for the rest of his life.

"Oops~, come and see, there seems to be someone in the sea!" At this moment, suddenly someone on the Luqiao shouted loudly, and then many people surrounded it, and at the same time, someone dragged a rope to save people. Qi Yanming also came over at this time, leaning on the side of the boat to look down, and sure enough, he saw a person floating on the sea, and he didn't know if Lu Dao was dead?

Soon, a person on the boat jumped into the sea with a rope, swam to the other party's side to check it, and quickly tied the rope to the person's body, which showed that the other party should not be dead, after all, the boat would not drag a dead person up casually.

After a while, the people on the boat dragged the people in the sea together, and Qi Yanming also stepped forward to help, but it turned out that the rescued man was a young man, his face was not bad, and he was only wearing a close-fitting small coat, and the material of the clothes should not be poor.

"Let's go, the owner is here!" At this moment, I suddenly heard someone shouting outside the crowd, and then the crowd was divided, and a fifty-year-old chubby middle-aged man walked in, this person was the owner of this fleet, Lu Qiao.

"How's it going, can it be saved?" Lu Qiao is a person who believes in Buddhism, and he is usually very good at his boatmen, and when he encounters difficulties with others at sea, he can also help them, so the boatmen dare to decide to rescue people without authorization.

"Owner, it should be fine!" I saw one of the old boatmen speak, and then I saw him walk up to the rescued man, pick him up and carry him on his shoulder, and put his shoulder on the other man's bulging belly, and suddenly pushed it up with force.

At this time, Qi Yanming saw the rescued young man "Wow~", and opened his mouth to spew out a lot of seawater, which was actually mixed with a lot of filth, and the smell was very strong, and Lu Qiao was smoked and took two steps back.

Then the old boatman put his shoulder on the other party's stomach a few times, and when the other party couldn't spit out, he put the other party down, although the rescued person was not yet awake, but the rise and fall of the chest was much more powerful and stable, and it seemed that this fate was saved.

Seeing that the person was rescued, Lu Qiao immediately looked up at everyone, and said to Qi Yanming with a smile: "Wen Wu, this person is temporarily handed over to you to take care of, take him back to the cabin to change his clothes, if he wakes up, let him come to see me, I want to ask the other party's origin and then decide what to do with him." ”

There is a reason why Lu Qiao handed over the rescued young man to Qi Yanming to take care of, after all, they didn't know the identity of the person who was rescued by Lu Dao, and they didn't know whether the person was good or evil, so the necessary vigilance still had to be there, Qi Yanming, as the leader of the guards, was excellent in martial arts, and nominally let him take care of it, but in fact, it was for surveillance.

"My subordinates understand!" Qi Yanming clenched his fists and said at the moment, after speaking, he bent down and helped the other party to the cabin, although he was the leader of the guards, but the space on the ship was limited, after all, this was a merchant ship, and most of the space was used to load goods, so Qi Yanming was also crammed into a cabin with a group of guards, and he slept in a Chase bunk.

The guards in the cabin all went out to patrol, the whole cabin was empty, Qi Yanming helped the rescued young man in, put him on the bed by the door, and reached out to take off the wet clothes on his body, ready to change into dry clothes for him, after all, it is still spring, and the weather is relatively cold.

However, as soon as Qi Yanming took off the other party's clothes and inadvertently swept the other party's cross, what shocked him was that the other party turned out to be a eunuch, which made Qi Yanming also startled, and at the same time immediately became curious about the identity of this young man. It should be explained here that although the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty were all eunuchs, the eunuchs were not all eunuchs, so Qi Yanming was not sure that the other party was a eunuch.

Speaking of which, the Ming Dynasty is the dynasty with the most eunuchs in history, mainly because except for Zhu Yuanzhang, the remaining emperors of all dynasties reused eunuchs, so the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty even exceeded 100,000 at one time. The origin of these eunuchs is very complicated, some are prisoners of war, and some are because there are too many children in the family to support them, so many parents take the initiative to send their children to the palace as eunuchs.

In addition to the above two, there is also a private castration, that is, many adult men castrate themselves for some reason, and then find a way to enter the palace, such as the famous Wei Zhongxian in history, and the great eunuch Wang Zhen and others, they were castrated into the palace after adulthood.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the sources of eunuchs were mainly the first two, but with the Ming Dynasty emperor's attention to eunuchs, the power of the eunuch class became greater and greater, so many people castrated themselves privately for their own way out, that is, the private eunuchs mentioned above, and the number of eunuchs was very large, so many people could not be used in the palace at all, and sometimes only two or three of the ten eunuchs had the opportunity to enter the palace.

And not only in Beijing, but also in other places in the palace of the king of Fan, so there are private eunuchs all over the country, and even the number of private eunuchs in the capital who can not enter the palace is too large, which has formed a threat to the security of the capital, and the court has to send those who can not enter the palace to work in Nanhaizi in the royal garden. Originally, there were some special households in Nanhaizi who took care of the royal garden, called Haihu, but as the number of eunuchs increased, the household registration also fell to Nanhaizi, and as a result, Haihu has almost become a synonym for private eunuchs in society.

It is also the prevalence of the Ming Dynasty's private eunuch, Qi Yanming's Bazhou is also on the edge of Beijing, and there are also private eunuchs there, so when he saw that the rescued person turned out to be a eunuch, he couldn't guess the identity of the other party for a while, and he didn't know if the other party was a genuine eunuch or a private eunuch?

Just when Qi Yanming was guessing the identity of the rescued person, he suddenly only heard the man on the bed moan, and then slowly opened his eyes, and after looking at the situation in the cabin, he said in a weak voice: "I...... I'm not dead? (To be continued......)