The coalition army's operation in the waters of Zhejiang, which lasted for many days, did not have too many scruples for Haihan, but Xu Yuzhuo and the Ming army led by him were more sensitive, and if they were caught by the local government after revealing their identities, there might be some trouble in the future. The coalition forces have been delayed here for more than three days www.biquge.info, and their whereabouts must have been inevitably exposed, but now the people and pirates who have been in contact with the coalition forces are temporarily under control, and the officials and people on the mainland probably haven't figured out what the origin of this sudden armed force is, but if they continue to stay, I'm afraid they won't be able to hide their identities for long."

Originally, the coalition forces planned to leave Wenzhou Bay and head north the next day, but the two ships of Ming troops rushing to Yandang Town in Yueqing did not return to the assembly site in Wenzhou Bay until the afternoon of the next day, two or three hours later than expected. According to the account of the officer leading the team, the errand did not go as smoothly as expected.

After the two boatmen arrived in Yandang Town last night, they went ashore in the dark to go to the lair of the Yueqing Boat Gang. These pirates almost poured out for the 100,000 taels of silver, and only a few old, weak, sick and disabled people remained in the local area, and the wolf-like Ming army did not make much effort to clean up these people. But what they didn't expect was that the silver in the secret place of the Yueqing Boat Gang was all cast into silver winter melons, one weighing hundreds of catties, coupled with the round and smooth shape, which made it extremely inconvenient to carry.

This method of storing silver came from the north, and in order to prevent their own silver from being stolen, the rich people cast it in the shape of melons and buried them in the cellars, so that two or three silverfish thieves would certainly not be able to get rid of the heavy silver melons. There are few such ways to store silver in Fujian, and the officers sent to retrieve the treasure were also dumbfounded, and they couldn't find ropes and wooden sticks or other equipment in the middle of the night, and they couldn't even find a flatbed truck, so they could only carry them to the ship with their hands on their shoulders.

However, the three leaders of the Yueqing Boat Gang probably used their little talent to hide silver, and this silver vault was two miles away from the shore, and it was located on a hillside, which greatly increased the difficulty of carrying silver. The only thing to be thankful for is that the burial place is not in Yandang Town, otherwise these people will toss so much in the middle of the night, which will inevitably attract the attention of the outside world. Even so, the dozens of people who went to carry out the mission were tired enough, digging and moving, until dawn to carry all the silver winter melons in the secret silver vault onto the ship.

This night's busy work was not in vain, a total of thirty-two silver winter melons were brought back, with a total value of nearly 200,000 taels of silver, which also shows that these people lived quite nourishingly in Yueqing as pirates. According to the original agreement between the two parties, Xu Yuzhuo wanted to hand over all the money to Haihan's side as funds and rewards for this temporary operation.

This operation was not in the original plan of the coalition forces, and the military spending was naturally unplanned. Although there is a huge difference in the strength of the two sides, in order to be able to fight quickly and ensure that no fish slip through the net, the coalition forces also invested almost all the combat personnel and ships in the final battle, and the shelling of the pirate fleet was even more firepower, and the consumption was really not small. Coupled with the few days that the entire coalition fleet was delayed here, the cost of more than 2,000 Haihan, as well as the combat rewards after the war, is not a small amount.

However, Qian Tiandun thinks that it doesn't seem to be good to just take it all as it is, after all, the Ming army also contributed troops in this process, and in the end, even the rough work of digging the silver treasury was done by the Ming army. After the two sides exchanged polite words, the Haihan side took seventy percent, the Ming army got thirty percent, and the commanders of the two armies issued commendation orders to their subordinate troops, and the morale of the coalition army was once again boosted.

After nightfall that night, the coalition fleet set off from Wenzhou Bay one after another and continued northward. A handful of logistical vessels headed south to return to Fujian with pirate captives captured in the past few days, as well as some fishermen on the islands that the coalition fleet had docked on during the war. The reason why even the fishermen on the island have to be taken away is mainly because they are worried that the news will leak out too soon, especially the identity of the Fujian sailor is more sensitive, and if he can cover it for a while, he must cover it as much as possible.

From Wenzhou to the north, it entered the boundary of Taizhou. Taizhou is bordered by the East China Sea in the east, Wenzhou in the south, Shaoxing and Ningbo in the north, and Jinhua and Chuzhou in the west. The topography of Taizhou is mainly mountainous, the south is based on Yandang Mountain as a barrier, there are peaks such as Da Lei Mountain and Tiantai Mountain in the territory, and the main peak of Tiantai Mountain, the highest peak in eastern Zhejiang, is located in Taizhou. Yueqing Bay, where the Yueqing boat gang hid, belonged to Wenzhou in the west to the mainland, and the Chumen Peninsula and Yuhuan Island in the eastern half belonged to Taizhou.

Taizhou has a long history, as early as the pre-Qin period there was an official office, but it was not until the fifth year of Tang Wude that Taizhou was named after the Tiantai Mountain in the territory, and then it has been used to this day.

With a coastline of more than 1,000 miles and 12 island groups and nearly 700 large and small islands off the coast, Taizhou's maritime situation is also very complicated. Although there is no pirate gang of this size like the Yueqing Boat Gang, there are quite a few small pirate gangs of two or three boats like the Song brothers were in before.

The coalition fleet's combat vessels, logistical vessels, and merchant fleets as decoys are nearly 100 in size, and it would be difficult for such a large mixed fleet to act together without attracting the attention of the government in the coastal areas. Therefore, at Shi Diwen's suggestion, the combined fleet was still divided into several parts, with the merchant fleet traveling along the nearshore route, and a few nautical miles east of it were small and medium-sized warships, while the "Enterprise" with the largest tonnage, the corresponding frigates, and logistics supply ships were kept on a route about thirty or forty nautical miles away from the shore to reduce the chance of being discovered as much as possible, because the appearance of this ship was indeed too obvious, and it was difficult to hide its identity once it appeared.

During the coalition operation in Wenzhou, the "Enterprise" only appeared in the final battle, and the rest of the time it was as stealthy as possible, in order to make future opponents unaware of the existence of this big killer. Before arriving at its final destination, the Zhoushan Islands, the Enterprise follows this principle and minimizes public appearances.

The fleet was once again attacked by pirates when passing through the upper and lower Dachen Islands, these two islands are very similar to the battlefield in Wenzhou the day before yesterday, and they are also two islands one north and one south opposite, collectively known as Dachen Island, also known as Dongzhen Mountain or Dongzheng Mountain.

Merchant ships from Wenzhou and Taizhou to Korea and Japan would pass through the waters near Dachen Island and use the island's Gorear Reef as a navigational marker. In the middle of the last century, Dachen Island was also one of the battlefields of the Ming army's naval division to resist the Japanese at sea. In the 34th year of Jiajing, the Ming army sailors pursued and suppressed the Japanese in this place, and there were alarm chimneys and strongholds built by the Ming army on the island at that time. However, by this time, the coastal defense was relaxed, and the Ming army's naval divisions had long been unable to compare with the situation a hundred years ago, and the army was no longer stationed on these coastal islands. What was an anti-Japanese outpost has now become a paradise for pirates.

There is only about two nautical miles between Upper and Lower Dachen Islands, and there is a group of pirates stationed on each of the two islands, who usually make a living by fishing, but when they encounter a lone merchant ship at sea, they will immediately turn into pirates.

The merchant ships used by the combined fleet as bait were all in batches of two, and the two ships that walked in front happened to encounter the pirates of Dachen Island who were going to sea. After confirming that the target had two ships, the pirates who felt that they were not strong enough gave a signal to let the pirates from Dachen Island rush to help.

The crew of the bait boat had undergone special training before setting off, and when they saw several fishing boats in the distance heading straight towards them, they immediately adjusted their direction to test the other party's intentions. After seeing that the other party also immediately changed direction and tried to cut into their own forward course, the two decoy boats immediately turned decisively and turned to the east and fled in the direction of the East China Sea.

If these two ships turned directly to the west and fled in the direction of the Jiaojiang estuary in Taizhou Bay, perhaps the pirates might not be able to chase after them, because there was a naval camp at the mouth of the Jiaojiang River, and although there were not many troops, the pirates did not want to provoke the authorities. However, since the two ships were going to run to the East China Sea, they had to chase after them - there were no islands to dock or hide within a few hundred nautical miles to the east, and the nearest island to the east, Amami Oshima, in the Ryukyu Kingdom, was a full 400 nautical miles away from Dachen Island, and the pirates did not believe that these two merchant ships could escape so far. The two groups of pirates communicated with the four ships with a simple signal, and immediately decided to continue the pursuit.

Of course, the next development of events did not go as the pirates had hoped, and when they chased them for more than ten nautical miles, they found that there was another huge fleet in the sea in the direction of the escape of the two ships. Although they could not figure out where the flotilla came from, they could already smell danger in the air. However, it was too late to turn away from them, and the pirates were surprised to find unidentified sailing ships coming towards them from both the north and the south.

The pirates turned around and tried to flee as they scrambled to pick up their weapons and try to fight. Their weapons are not much better than the pirates on the Wenzhou side, and they are still mainly cold weapons such as harpoons, spears, and waist knives. There are also bird guns and earth cannons, but with only four or five guns and one or two guns, the combat effectiveness is simply negligible in front of the coalition fleet.

The coalition ships did not try to persuade them to surrender after approaching, and directly fired a round of grapeshot from their guns across the deck, causing the pirate ship to cry and howl. The pirates never imagined that they would run into such an iron plate in front of their own home, and they had lost the ability to fight back almost at the same time as they fought.

After clearing the decks of the four pirate ships with crossfire, the warships slowly approached. In order to prevent the survivors from jumping into the gang, the sailors on board the ship stood in a line on the side of the ship and aimed their muskets at the deck of the pirate ship.

However, the pirates were so badly wounded that they could no longer resist, and the people on the deck were either dead or wounded, and lay down. Those who had narrowly escaped this catastrophe were all shrunk in the cabin and shivering, not daring to show their heads at all.

The sailors spent half an hour cleaning the ships, transferring all the survivors who had escaped to the coalition ships, and then scuttling all four badly damaged pirate ships and letting them sink into the sea with the pirates' bodies and a few seriously wounded. This is not because the coalition forces are acting cruelly, firstly, they have to try their best to keep their whereabouts secret, and secondly, these seriously injured will occupy the limited resources of the coalition fleet, and it is the most cost-effective way to simply dispose of them.

As for the captives who are alive, after the interrogation, they will be handed over to the next group of logistics ships to return to Fujian. Their future destination will probably be in northern Taiwan, where there is still a large labor gap to be filled, whether it is the Tamsui estuary or the gold mines near Jilong Harbor. These prisoners of war labor are best suited to be employed in gold mines that require fully enclosed management. Although the number of prisoners of war in this group was not large, Qian Tiandun believed that as the coalition fleet continued to move north, it would encounter more and more pirate forces. When the Zhoushan Islands are captured, at least thousands of prisoners of war labor will be sent to the island of Taiwan.

The two bands of pirates on Dachen Island disappeared into the sea almost silently, and it took a long time for the fishermen in the nearby area to notice it, and it was only ten days before the Songmen Guard, who was in charge of the military defense of the area, learned about the change in Dachen Island. At that time, the coalition fleet had already arrived in the Zhoushan Islands and launched operations there, and it was only then that officials who knew the situation in various parts of Zhejiang began to link the mysterious disappearance of pirate gangs that had appeared in various states in recent years with this huge fleet that fell from the sky.

This little episode on Dachen Island only delayed the allied fleet for less than half a day, and after dealing with the completed matters, the fleet continued to march north along the established route in three directions: left, center, and right. Originally, Qian Tiandun wanted to divide a few merchant ships into Taizhou from Jiaojiang and go to Taizhou City to see the local security situation and business environment, but Xu Yuzhuo was worried that there would be extraneous complications and urged him to continue to the north. Qian Tiandun knew that he was afraid that the matter of the Ming Army's naval division personnel in the coalition fleet would be exposed too soon, so he didn't insist anymore and continued to march north according to his wishes.

From Dachen Island to the north of more than ten nautical miles, you will arrive at the Dongji Islands, one of the landmarks of the boundary between Ningbo and Taizhou. The south of the Dongji Islands, which are composed of 57 large and small islands, belongs to the waters of Taizhou, and the north is under the rule of Ningbo Prefecture.

The first important place to enter the sea area of Ningbo is Changguowei, one of the four famous coastal defense guards of the Ming Dynasty. Chang Guowei is located 80 miles southwest of Xiangshan County and 350 miles away from Ningbo Fufucheng. During the Hongwu period, the city of Weisuo was built in Dongmen Mountain, south of the county seat of Changguo County, and it was repaired and expanded several times during the Yongle, Chenghua, and Jiajing years.