For the great war that took place in the Central Plains itself, a small, distant border war was of course impossible for the Central Dynasty to pay the slightest attention to. Therefore, Zheng Zhilong risked his old life and took out all his family resources to win the battle of the Tamsui estuary, in addition to satisfying his own desire for revenge and completely overthrowing the old enemy of the Dutch, he did not get any benefits for him from the court...... Until now, Zheng Zhi's dragon head still holds the title of "Five Tiger Guerrilla General" that made him feel glorious back then, and now he is familiar with the Ming officialdom and knows that it is a joke, and it is estimated that it will be difficult to improve in this life - if he continues to mix with shorthair.

Of course, as the saying goes, "those who are close to Zhu are red, and those who are close to ink are black", and after a long time of mixing with short hair, Zheng Zhilong doesn't take the famous weapons of the court very much in his eyes now - although he is not as unscrupulous as short hair, he dares to openly shout out the phrase "power comes out of the barrel of a gun", but he also deeply believes in a truth: power and fame are all fake, and having soldiers, money and ships in his own hands is the last word!

Shorthair's theory always seems to have merit, and even the unpleasant feeling that has made him depressed lately can be alleviated by reading a few books called "chicken soup for the soul" that he got from Shorthair. In Zheng Zhilong's view, the descriptions in those books are somewhat similar to Zen principles, but they are closer to the hearts of the people. In particular, there is a sentence in it that makes him feel very in line with his current state of mind: people are always out of breath and tired to death when they climb the mountain and walk uphill, while they are often relaxed and happy when they go downhill. So don't be discouraged when you feel particularly difficult, it means that you are trying to climb up. And if everything is going well in a certain period of time, then you should be vigilant - maybe you are happily sliding downhill.

Zheng Zhilong thought about it, it makes sense: Although my Zheng family has always felt that the stumbling is not smooth in the past few years, it is indeed getting better and better on the whole, it should be uphill, yes, then it is natural to feel difficult.

This thought relieved his anxiety for a while, but one day, when Zheng Zhilong went to the Princess, he saw the members of the short-haired delegation who were happy to eat and play silly. Immediately not calm - General Zheng Feihuang is a generation of heroes who can leave a name in history after all, and things like chicken soup for the soul can attract him for a while, but it is impossible for him to indulge in it for a long time, and many truths can be understood as long as you think about it.

- The Joan Navy is undoubtedly going uphill now. But why do these members of their gang live so happily one by one? At this time, Zheng Zhilong remembered that Wen Deji had told him a joke about the stone Buddha statue and the stone steps two days ago, and now he finally understood the feeling of the cutting board......

Remembering that it was when he saw him reading those books that he told him this joke, which seemed to have the intention of persuading him not to believe these words, Zheng Zhilong found an opportunity to talk to Wen Desi about it, Zheng Zhilong was born in 1604 and has not yet reached the age of thirty. However, people in this era are easy to look old, so Zheng Zhilong looks a lot older than Wen Mou, who was already in his thirties before the crossing, but when the two communicate, they still regard each other as equals.

When Wen Deji listened to Zheng Zhilong's confusion, he pondered for a long time before he said slowly:

"That's not wrong. But metaphorically, after all, we can only look at its favorable side, and it is impossible to see it everywhere. According to the parable, we also have trouble going up the mountain. It's just that more than 100 of us have joined forces to build a platform called 'Qionghai', or we are pushing a car up the mountain. You see those people having fun and not exerting their energy, because they're sitting in this car right now. ”

Seeing that Zheng Zhilong's face was quite unconvinced, Wen Desi smiled again:

"I know what you're going to say—now they're merry, for it's my duty to go by sea. When they arrived in the capital, it was their turn to get out of the car and work hard. And for me, if I can't do anything one day or I am in a bad mood and want to rest, I can jump in the car at any time and lie down comfortably without doing anything. Don't worry about delaying things yet, because I know there's going to be a group of people pushing down there – that's the benefit of having a big group to back you up. ”

Zheng Zhilong was silent.

…………

Later, when Wen Desi received a telegram from Liaodong on that day and urgently decided to divide the troops, Zheng Zhilong pondered the pros and cons. I decided to go to Liaodong with me - just have a reliable shopkeeper to follow you to make money, but it is possible to see these artillery ships really exert their power on the battlefield and learn the tactics of the Grand Fleet of the Qiong Navy. By the way, you can learn about the situation of the Houjin Manchurian army, and for him, of course, it is better to choose the latter.

Zheng Zhilong didn't reassure the Manchurians at all, he felt that our Zheng family's forces and the Manchurian Tartars were one in the south and the other in the north. One is at sea and the other is on land, and it really doesn't matter for eight lifetimes. Even if a merchant ship bound for Japan had to go ashore to avoid danger in the middle of trouble, it would run on the ground in Korea, so there was no need to care about the savages outside the Guan.

However, after more contact with the short hair, their attitude towards the Manchurians inevitably affected Zheng Zhilong. Judging from the propaganda that Shorthair usually used in the army, they seem to be very sure of one thing: Qiong Haijun will have a war with the Later Jin regime in the future, and Cheng Dù will pay much more attention to it than Daming. Zheng Zhilong has always been puzzled by this - with Qiongjun's decision-making system, he should not make any inexplicable decisions. But for this seemingly extremely unreasonable thing, no one seems to have objected from top to bottom.

Including this time, General Xiao rashly went to Liaodong to fight with Houjin, but the battle was unfavorable again, and he made trouble to the point of asking for help from the rear. In Zheng Zhilong's opinion, this is purely the surname Xiao's own death, only 600 people ran to fight to the death with the opponent's land and fought against thousands of enemy troops, and he was lucky enough not to be killed on the battlefield. But the people of the Qiong Navy who received the telegram did not question this at all, at most they only said that this guy did it too early, but no one said that they should not fight.

I can't figure it out, so I have to think about it, since the Qiong Navy has determined that Houjin Manchuria will be a great enemy so early, their Zheng family will have to follow suit at that time, and it is not a bad thing to understand the opponent as soon as possible.

As a general of the Ming Dynasty, it stands to reason that Zheng Zhilong should have taken the "Great General", but unless he was following the short-haired general, he would never get on that ship - because the captain of the Great General was surnamed Yu. It is the grandson of Yu Dayou, a famous anti-Japanese general of the Wanli Dynasty, and a certain son of Yu Zhigao, the former general of Fujian, - and Yu Zhigao was defeated by his Zheng family's naval army, and was sent to prison by the imperial court, and even lost his life for it. And he, the Zheng family, relied on that victory to change the will of the court from extermination to appeasement. But since then, he has embarked on the road of soaring, so there is a blood feud between his Zheng family and the old Yu family!

When deciding on the choice of captain of the "Great General", the Zheng family also had a lot of thoughts. Of course, the choice of captain is up to the imperial court, but whoever is there has to be trained and vetted by Shortfur - Shorthair will never agree to put this giant ship in the hands of a layman. Because of the short-haired level, there are some strange ideas on the court side that can't be mentioned. However, the civil officials' manipulation of political methods such as "factions" and "checks and balances" has really reached the point of perfection - even if the Zheng family has made a lot of money in Beijing, even if they have voluntarily provided many auxiliary ships for the "Jinmen Fleet", but for the core captain candidate, the imperial court has not considered the members of the Zheng family who have become the climate at all - such as Zheng Hongkui, a martial artist who is not bad in all aspects, but he did not know where to find a descendant of the Yu family.

When I got to the short-haired side, I audited: the descendants of the famous anti-Japanese generals - Genzheng Miaohong; His father has been commanding the naval division in Fujian, a naval family; In addition, he himself also participated in the Battle of Penghu - rich experience; So he was sent to a training course in Luzon for training, and he was very good in the whole process. OK, that's him! As for the hatred between him and the Zheng family...... Shorthair didn't care as much as the imperial court. Or to put it deeper: shorthair is also a trick.

In this way, Zheng Zhilong has to be careful - both now and in the future. Leave it alone in the future. At present, Zheng Zhilong is separated from the family armament, and he only brings one entourage. Because Shorthair hated the Japanese so much that none of his most trusted Japanese guards were able to get on board, he had to find a cabin on the Doge, and he went in and out with Moonheir.

this day. It was noon, when he was resting in the cabin, Zheng Zhilong suddenly heard a commotion, and there seemed to be many people running around on the deck. A person like him was naturally extremely vigilant, and immediately turned over and jumped up. I asked my entourage to go out and inquire, and said that many people had run to the bow of the boat, and I didn't know what was going on. Even the "Commander Wen" was among them.

So Zheng Zhilong also followed him to the deck, and when he came to the bow of the ship, he saw Wen Desi holding a telescope and looking south. Zheng Zhilong himself had the telescope, and he held it up and looked in the same direction for a long time, but he didn't see anything, so he asked Wen Deji a little strangely, and the latter explained with a smile:

"The rear headquarters is afraid that we will not be able to catch up. He also specially sent a fast ship from Qiongzhou Island to transport surgeons and medical equipment to Liaodong. They had set out from Qiongzhou Island two days earlier, and they had taken this outer sea route, and the telegram said that they were about to catch up with us. ”

"Two days ago? From Qiongzhou Island? ”

Zheng Zhilong used two questions in a row, while Wen Desi nodded affirmatively:

"Yes."

Wen Deji clearly knew what he was thinking. After a pause, he added:

"The ship was ...... soon Very fast. ”

After a while, the "very fast" ship that Wen Deji said finally appeared, at first it was just the lookout on the mast shouting, and then before Zheng Zhilong could raise the telescope in his hand, he could see the sail of the ship from the sea level.

When the full view of the ship was displayed in front of Zheng Zhilong, the latter felt as if his heart had been slammed hard. Zheng Zhilong is not lustful, but the appearance of this boat made him suddenly understand what "amazing" is, even when he first saw the most famous top-brand beauty in Lingnan, he didn't feel this way.

- That boat is so beautiful! Especially when she was speeding at full speed at the sea—the long, sharp, curved hollow bow of the ship split every wave with ease, and the whole ship was covered with sails, including a long series of spinnakers from the bow to the fore mainmast, and the three mainmasts in the foreground, middle and aft were full of square mainsails, together with booms on both sides with auxiliary wings. All the sails were fed by the wind, propelling the slender hull as lightly as gliding over the water. The snow-white sails mingled with the white hull used by the Joan Navy, making Zheng Zhilong feel as if what he was seeing was not a boat, but his former name "Nikolai?" A swan that I saw at the Governor of the Netherlands! And when you are treading water and taking off, that posture can be compared to it.

Zheng Zhilong had also seen the fast schooners of the Qiong Navy in the past - all five ships of the fast sailing fleet during the Battle of the Tamsui Estuary were displayed in front of him. But at that time, he just felt that these ships were fast and beautiful, but he did not have the almost subversive look and feel of the present.

The reason for this is that the hulls of the first two models are relatively small, and the sloop and the brig still can't get rid of the taste of the test model, and in the three-masted model, enough sails can really be installed to really give full play to the performance of the clipper. And its appearance waterline has really reached the perfect stage of this type of ship - it is like a fourteen or fifteen-year-old girl who has grown up to seventeen or eighteen years old, although there is only a gap of a few years, it is the difference between a little girl and a young girl.

At this time, Zheng Zhilong felt as if he had seen the most beautiful woman in the world. It's a pity that the encounter with the beauty is always very short, and his eyes are always fixed on the white ship, greedily watching every part of her, wishing that it can be firmly engraved in his mind, and nothing else. But I didn't feel like I had been looking at it for long, but I saw that the shape of the ship was getting smaller and farther away...... It disappeared from the sea level again!

Zheng Zhilong was stunned for a while, and then he heard the conversation between Wen Desi and the speed tester on the side, and realized that his feelings were not just psychological factors.

"How much can you visually see how fast the other person can go?"

"I'm afraid it's about eighteen to twenty knots."

Zheng Zhilong almost jumped on the spot when he heard this—he was now able to accept many of Qiong's concepts, including the use of "knots" to describe the speed of the sea. I also know that the current speed of my fleet is about five to six knots—it can be faster if it is only three galleons, but in order to take care of the auxiliary vessels, the whole fleet has to keep it at this speed.

This speed is not slow in Zheng Zhilong's concept, but now, Shorthair directly showed him a speed that can reach four times...... At least three times as many Super Clippers!

General Zheng felt that he was about to start to be depressed again. P