In the early morning, the endless sea is rippling and undisturbed.

Under the cover of the morning glow, the Mingding fleet maintained its formation, marching methodically on the sea, and after several days of sailing, the fleet had reached the waters of Fujian.

Li Yuntian stretched his waist and came out of the cabin, standing on the deck at the bow of the boat, moving his hands and feet while looking at the vast sea in front of him, and the refreshing sea breeze blowing in his face made him feel very comfortable.

Due to the huge size of the Mingding, and the fact that there has been no major wind and waves on the sea for several days, the hull of the ship is very stable on the water, so that Li Yuntian can hardly feel any turbulence.

A moment later, Lei Ting, who was wearing a major's military uniform, yawned and walked out of the cabin, stood next to Li Yuntian, who was moving, and stretched lazily with his hands outstretched.

With this movement, her straight military uniform was tightly tightened on her body, and her bumpy figure was set off at a glance, and the two towering mountain bags on her chest looked extremely eye-catching.

Li Yuntian inadvertently noticed the two towering fullness of Lei Ting's chest, and was slightly stunned, and then looked away with a weak heart, and pretended to look at the escort fleet on the side, for fear that Lei Ting would notice what he had just done, he had never found that Lei Ting's figure was so good before.

Lei Ting's current identity is a staff officer by Li Yuntian's side, so that Li Yuntian can take care of her in Jiaozhi and protect Lei Ting's safety.

The military attachés of Xiaowujun did not know Lei Ting's origin, but everyone could see that the relationship between Li Yuntian and Lei Ting was not simple, and they seemed very close to each other, not only did the two often talk and laugh together in normal times, but Lei Ting's room on the ship was next door to Li Yuntian.

Because Lei Ting, who is dressed as a man, looks too handsome, the intimate behavior between the two naturally caused misunderstanding among the people on the boat, and they secretly suspected that Li Yuntian was good at Longyang and liked Lei Ting's handsome little white face.

Li Yuntian never thought that the relationship between himself and Lei Ting would be misunderstood by the outside world, he is a dignified general of Dingnan, who dares to chew his tongue on the ship?

"Big brother, their formation is really well maintained, and they practice hard in normal times." Lei Ting moved her neck, saw Li Yuntian looking at the escort ships around her, and praised with a smile.

In ancient times, communication technology was not developed, and the communication between ships at sea relied on flag language, which was very inconvenient.

It is especially important that the speed between the ships is properly controlled, otherwise the formation will be messy, and only those well-trained crews can keep the speed in line.

"The Three Treasure Eunuchs have been to the West six times and have established a complete sailing system." Li Yuntian smiled and nodded when he heard this, the coordinated operation of the various ships in the fleet was very mature, and it seemed that Zheng He had put a lot of effort into the ocean voyage.

At this moment, the moving Mingding suddenly slowed down and gradually stopped, and the ships guarding it all stopped sailing and floated quietly on the water.

"Lord Commander, a number of unidentified ships have been found ahead." Li Yuntian frowned slightly when he saw this, and he had a premonition that something might have happened, and sure enough, Luo Haijian quickly walked out of the cabin and came to him to report in a deep voice.

"Unidentified ships?" Hearing this, Li Yuntian's face suddenly showed a look of surprise.

The Ming Dynasty imposed a sea ban, and non-official ships were not allowed to go to sea to trade, and fishing boats could not reach such a far sea area, so there were only three possibilities for ships sailing in this sea area of Daming.

One may be a tribute ship that came to the Ming Dynasty from a foreign country to pay tribute and trade, one is a smuggling ship smuggled by merchants, and the last is a pirate ship that plundered at sea.

Generally speaking, due to the limited national strength of the tributary countries, the number of tributary ships is not too large, so in the case of multiple ships, the latter two possibilities are left, either private ships or pirate ships.

And whether it was a smuggling ship or a pirate ship, it was offensive to the Mingding fleet, and it had to be cautious and put on a defensive posture.

The pirates who were active in the Daming Sea were often referred to as the Wakos.

It is worth mentioning that the Japanese pirates were not only composed of Japanese pirates, but also Ming pirates composed of Ming people, who were active in the 13th and 16th centuries, using the Ryukyus and mainland Japan as bases to raid the Korean Peninsula and cities along the Ming Dynasty.

Unlike the Western pirates, the Japanese did not plunder ships, but also plundered cities on land, causing the coastal towns of the Ming Dynasty to suffer from the Japanese for a time.

At their peak, they were active as far away as East Asia and even as far as the interior.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Japan was in the Warring States Period, and a large number of defeated wandering samurai and Japanese poor people had nowhere to make a living, so they came to the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty in droves to rob.

Due to the implementation of the hereditary guard system in the Ming Dynasty, the military discipline of the coastal guard army was sloppy, and the armament was negligent, and it was difficult to resist those Japanese pirates, which made the Japanese pirates increasingly powerful and gradually became a major bandit along the coast of the Ming Dynasty.

Although it had been renamed from "Wakoku" to "Japan", the Ming Dynasty still called it Wakoku at that time, so those Japanese pirates were called Wako.

The appearance of the Japanese pirates was an important reason for the Ming Taizu to implement the sea ban, and the consequence of the sea ban was that a large number of coastal residents and merchants could not continue to live because of the sea ban, so they joined the Japanese pirates, and were collectively called the Japanese pirates by the outside world, and occupied a considerable number.

Although those Ming Dynasty people became Japanese pirates, they could not be called traitors, at best, they were just pirates who burned and plundered, and did not have any political position, and there were more people in Fujian and Zhejiang who were close to the Ryukyus.

In addition, with the development of the European navigation industry, there were some Western pirates in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, known as Fan Ghost or Red Haired Ghost, mainly Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, collectively referred to as "Francophone Man" at that time, the number was not large, but the weapons were relatively advanced, there were Hongyi cannons, fire guns and so on.

In the thirtieth year of Hongwu, Ming Taizu promulgated the "Great Ming Law", which imposed strict restrictions on overseas business, and all those who carried iron goods, copper coins, satin, silk cotton and other contraband to the sea without permission, as well as foreign traders were all beheaded, and private people were prohibited from manufacturing large ships with more than two masts to go to sea.

It is worth mentioning that collusion with foreigners is usually regarded as "rebellion", and Ming Taizu's punishment in this regard is extremely severe: all "rebellion and rebellion", the first offender and accomplice are all executed at Ling Chi, and the grandfather, father, son, grandson, uncle, brother, nephew, cousin of the clan, and the grandfather, father-in-law, son-in-law, son-in-law, and domestic slaves of the relatives with different surnames who live together will be beheaded if they are over 16 years old.

If the smugglers of the Ming Dynasty wanted to engage in the sea smuggling trade smoothly, they had to deal with the pirates entrenched in the waters along the way, and the pirates at that time were mainly Japanese people, and the Japanese people often intruded on the coast of the Ming Dynasty, and were deeply hated by the imperial court.

Therefore, if we really want to dig deeper, the officials handling the case can also use the crime of "colluding with foreigners" against those smugglers, and it depends on how the case is handled, and there is a lot of room for maneuver.

Therefore, in order to avoid being punished by the nine clans, in addition to colluding with the government, the smugglers of the Ming Dynasty did everything possible to cover up their backgrounds, and some smugglers themselves were big pirates, and dressed up as widows to hide people's eyes.

This is also the reason why the leaders of the rebellion in the Ming Dynasty often use nicknames to disguise their real names, such as the leaders of the peasant rebellion during the Chongzhen period are all using nicknames to replace their identities, such as the Purple Eight Kings, the Non-Muddy King, the Sweeping King, etc., the most famous is naturally the "King Chuang".

For those magistrates, what happened in their own jurisdiction not only greatly slowed down their political performance, but also was harshly reprimanded by their superiors, so they were also happy to report pirates or dead people as "widows".

Due to the Ming Dynasty's maritime ban policy of "no entry to the sea", coupled with the greed of local officials, the coastal residents of the Ming Dynasty had to join the ranks of pirates.

After all, since ancient times, the people have relied on the mountains to eat the mountains, rely on the sea to eat the sea, the population of the southeast coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty increased rapidly, but the growth of land was limited, once unable to go to the sea to make a living, their lives will be in trouble.

Since the Song Dynasty, the inhabitants of the southeast coast have always regarded the sea trade as a source of food and clothing, and maritime merchants, sailors, shipbuilders, repairs, porters, etc., have fed millions of people.

There is a saying in Fujian: "The sea is the land of the Fujian people", and the ban on the sea in the Ming Dynasty undoubtedly deprived the local residents of their "fields".

Therefore, for the local people, there are only two ways to go, one is to live a difficult life of hunger and cold, and the other is to take risks to engage in sea smuggling.

The Mingding fleet was an official ship, and the smuggling ships and pirate ships did not know the purpose of the fleet's voyage, so in order to protect themselves, they might preemptively send ships to attack the fleet and cover the escape of other ships, which made Luo Hai have to be on strict guard.

Li Yuntian immediately led Lei Ting and Luo Hai to the top of the Mingding, holding on to the fence on the top of the cabin and looking at the southeast sea, only to see more than a dozen ships approaching on the sea in the distance, because the distance was too far to see what kind of ship it was, but according to Luo Hai's experience, there were two-story three-masted ships inside, which were specially used to transport goods at sea.

Obviously, the other party should have also seen the Mingding fleet at this time, but unexpectedly, the dozen or so ships did not mean to avoid it, and headed straight towards the Mingding fleet.

"Lord Commander, the other party is not good, and I humbly request the use of a defensive formation." Seeing this, Luo Hai bowed to Li Yuntian and said in a deep voice.

Li Yuntian nodded when he heard this, his brows furrowed slightly, he was very surprised that the ships on the opposite side dared to come to meet the fleet of the Mingding, did they want to provoke the officers and soldiers, or did they have other intentions?

Luo Hai then asked the flag soldiers standing on the mainmast lookout to give orders to the surrounding ships, and the personnel on those ships immediately entered a state of combat readiness, and the atmosphere became tense for a while.

In order to prevent the flotilla from being collided by enemy ships, the ships of the flotilla quickly approached the Mingding, and put on defensive alert, and seven warships protected the Mingding, two grain ships and two ships in the middle, of which three warships were in front of the flotilla, two on the left and right.

The sergeants of the ships stood on the deck in full armor, armed with weapons such as spray canisters, javelins, bows and arrows, and waited expressionlessly to engage the enemy ships approaching.

The more than 200 Xiaowu soldiers also entered a state of combat readiness, changed into scale armor one after another, and came to the deck of the Mingding with crossbows, all with strict expressions, ready to attack those enemy ships that tried to approach.

As time passed, the dozen or so ships in the southeast sea area got closer and closer, and Li Yuntian gradually saw clearly, among the ships on the opposite side were two double-decked and three-masted sea ships, which looked like cargo ships used to transport goods.

Behind the two cargo ships were a dozen ships of various sizes, both double-deck and single-deck, separated by some distance from the two cargo ships in front.

However, because the speed of the two cargo ships is slower than the ships behind, the distance between the two sides has become closer and closer, and it is only six or seven hundred meters, and soon the two cargo ships in front will be overtaken by the ships behind.!^!