The 431st Great Voyage of the Yue Kingdom

Beyond the imagination of the Shiyan and Shiliang brothers, the Wu family attaches great importance to the twelve international students.

Wu Qihua did not arrange for other international students to be placed in Xin'an Guozijian, which had a low threshold, but spent a lot of political resources and sent them to Yashan Guozijian, which had a slightly better reputation and was more formal.

Yashan Guozijian is in the real world, in Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province, China.

During the Song and Yuan dynasties, the coastal islands were deserted and poor, and they were all remotely controlled by Zhongshan County. Stepping into the Wei Xia Dynasty, the Yue State was established, which vigorously developed the maritime trade to fill the treasury, and at the same time accepted refugees from the Central Plains to expand the population, and the marine economy slowly developed. Before the establishment of Yashan Guozijian, this place had spontaneously formed a commercial port that could not be ignored. The vassal king of Yue considered that this place was only a sea away from Yashan, so he set up Yashan County in the name of commemorating the "defeat of Yashan in Zhao and Song Dynasty". When the demand for seafarers increased, the vassal king of Yue Guo set up Yashan Guozijian (Haike) in Yashan County, dedicated to cultivating usable naval talents in batches.

In terms of prosperity alone, Yashan County is even more prosperous than Jiaozhi Wangdu.

Perhaps the inefficiency of the sailing era, the large and small sea ships in the port, the sails are like the sky, the deck is like the ground, the scene is very shocking. Not only Shi Yan and other international students were amazed by this picture, but Wei Dongsheng was also amazed: when the third generation passed through Yashan County, how could this place be so prosperous! In just 18 years, Yashan County has undergone earth-shaking changes.

In addition to the advantage in the number of sailing ships, the harbor is also imbued with a positive spirit that the Cochin domain did not have, as if playing a rousing march. After the opening of new routes, or it can be traced back to Vietnam's domination of the Indian Ocean, gold, silver and other precious metals from all over the world began to flow to the two major trade black holes of Guangzhou and Quanzhou. The other vassal states of the Wei Xia Empire gradually became the logistics base of the Yue Kingdom, and the specialties of each vassal state were transported thousands of miles to Canton Prefecture, and they did their best to share some of the profits from maritime trade.

The indigenous treasures of Penglai and Kunlun, the exotic customs of Franc and Tianzhu, and the excellent specialties of other feudal kingdoms all appear in Xiaoxiao Yashan County.

The above is a good impression.

Yashan County also has a bad impression, first of all, the shocking gap between the rich and the poor.

At the same time, groups of ragged beggars are struggling to survive in Yashan County like rats. After the maritime merchants became rich, they habitually purchased a large amount of land to heirloom families, and the phenomenon of land annexation in Vietnam has become seriously unimaginable, and they are often the big landlords of thousands of acres and tens of thousands of acres of land, and countless bankrupt peasants flock to the prosperous coastal ports every day to survive.

If they are lucky enough to get a job, the bankrupt farmer may be able to quietly transform into a citizen.

Unfortunately, not every bankrupt farmer can find a job at the right time. The peasants, who had neither land to make ends meet nor a job to support their families, soon degenerated into "lazy poor" criticized by public opinion, or wandered blindly or begged for a living. Fortunately, the Vietnamese country had already launched a great voyage, and it was able to calmly direct the unstable factors overseas, avoiding the peasants' uprising and other worries.

Of course, just like Shiyan, Shiliang, Jiang Shengxing, Liu Lianggen and others are reluctant to go to sea, many people in Yue are also unwilling to beg for a living in the ocean. However, the Yue vassal state did not pay attention to human rights, patrols and even the army regularly harshly cleaned the unstable factors of coastal ports, arrested the strong men as if they were brutally arrested, and forcibly converted them into seafarers with the lowest treatment.

As soon as Wei Dongsheng and other students arrived in Hong Kong, they saw a group of tiger and wolf officials wantonly arresting those seemingly strong and bankrupt peasants.

Born in the country of Yue, he didn't even have the freedom to be a beggar.

Shi Yan criticized bitterly: "Harsh government! ”

It's a pity that Shiyan's sympathy and pity stop at words, and he can't do anything for the bankrupt peasants. Walking to Yashan Guozijian, Shi Yan quickly forgot his compassion and turned to the camp to compete, make valuable classmates, and find a shortcut to wealth.

What follows is the life of a prison student at a university in the real world.

In other words, whether it is real-world experience or the experience of the first three lives, Wei Dongsheng is not familiar with the details of the navy in the sailing era. If you want to experience the style of the Age of Discovery up close, Wei Dongsheng must learn the basics of sailing with a humble attitude. Wei Dongsheng's study is four years. In 1487, Wei Dongsheng, Shi Yan and other foreign students graduated from Yashan Guozijian on time and were dispatched to Yashan Naval Base as foreign recruits.

In 1488, Wei Dongsheng and Shiyan were incorporated into a small fleet as trainee officers and ordered to reinforce the Penglai trading post. This small fleet has a total of three warships, the flagship "Qujiang" is about 500 tons, and the other two warships "Yingde" and "Wengyuan" are small warships of about 350 tons.

Because of Yashan Guozijian's academic qualifications and excellent evaluation of completion, Wei Dongsheng and Shiyan were directly incorporated into the flagship Qujiang.

The Qujiang is a standard warship with 120 foreign recruits and 90 seamen. Ignoring the 120 infantry and 15 officers out of the 90 seamen, Wei Dongsheng and Shi Yan became two of them because of their brilliant Yashan Guozi Supervisor Xiucai, although they were newcomers to the industry.

Boarding the ship is a trainee officer, which is the privilege of the graduates of Yashan Kunizijian.

On the other hand, the largest number of sailors and handymen may have risked their lives to run the ocean for many years, but unfortunately because they have no connections, no fame, no opportunities, etc., they can only be sailors for the rest of their lives. Perhaps under the influence of the historical reversal of the feudal system, the hierarchical concept of the Wei Xia Empire has become more and more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the heirs of the powerful are officers when they join the army, but the children of the poor are difficult to get ahead after working all their lives. The officers condescended to look down on the sailors, and managed them with the strictest military discipline, especially some bankrupt peasants who had been forcibly conscripted, and were whipped almost every day when they first boarded the ship.

There is also a world of difference between the invisible treatment of officers and sailors.

Before going to sea, the captain specially summoned Wei Dongsheng and Shi Yan and tactfully told them how much seafood they could carry. Carrying seafood is smuggling, and the warship belonging to the state is regarded as a merchant ship with a limited capacity, and the special products of each port along the way are resold to other ports for profit. As far as national interests are concerned, Vietnam has long explicitly banned such acts, but the difficulty of enforcement and other factors have led to the widespread smuggling of warships. According to the current public opinion, the reason why seafarers are willing to drift on the ocean is that they are eager to make a lot of money through smuggling.

After decades of development, smuggling has even gradually become an industry rule. There are clear unspoken rules for how much sea a sailor can smuggle, how much sea a gunner can smuggle, and how much sea an officer can smuggle. Especially at the officer level, officers have the privilege of occupying idle cargo holds for a large amount of smuggling, and how to distribute the proportion of cargo compartments at this time deeply examines the management wisdom of an officer.

When Wei Dongsheng was in his first life, he also heard about the smuggling of the navy, and repeatedly issued regulations to restrict it. However, looking at naval smuggling from the perspective of an emperor is very different from looking at naval smuggling from the perspective of a trainee officer. The Vietnamese navy's rampant smuggling and smuggling tactics all made Wei Dongsheng dumbfounded. Witnessing and participating in the smuggling of warships in the era of sails was far more insightful than reading those nautical diaries.

While trying to integrate into the Vietnamese Navy, Wei Dongsheng sighed with emotion: "It's really corrupt." ”

Shi Yan was also very sad: "My father often said that the officials are cunning and must not be guarded against. In the past, I only said that the villain was greedy and forgetful, but now that I have joined the army and become a pawn, I know that the world is so desperate. It is no wonder that the previous dynasty forbade the promotion of excellent subordinate scientific examinations, and how could the students who grew up in such a harsh environment be impartial and uphold justice? ”

Shiyan is half Confucian.

Mechanisms such as the division of lords and the supervision of the study of the prince greatly weakened the influence of Confucianism. Especially in the previous northern feudal states, the competition between them was extremely fierce, and anyone who dared to reuse pure Confucianism and neglect military construction would definitely be humiliated by the next feudal state. However, after all, Confucianism has been inherited for a long time, and its ideas and ideas are still widely circulated among scholars. Taking Shiyan as an example, although he followed the trend and adapted to the political structure of the twenty feudal states of the Wei Xia Empire, he also inherited the classics of Confucianism, which seems to be a bit schizophrenic.

Shiyan hated the injustice and was born noble, but he actively befriended the Viscount Wu family.

Shiyan pitied the misery of the bankrupt peasants, but was unwilling to share the weal and woe with the bankrupt peasants.

Shi Yan was saddened by the corruption of the Vietnamese navy, but in order to protect himself and his future, he went with them to become corrupt.

After the fleet went to sea, it went north and successfully arrived at a certain port in the Japanese country.

After the Wei Xia Revolution, the imperial family confronted the northern vassal states, and Zhu Chongba, the Duke of Lelang, made peace with the Wa, so the Wei Xia Empire had a relatively small impact on the history of the Wa Kingdom. After the rise of the Yue and Wei Kingdoms, they attached great importance to the profits of maritime trade, and their expansion in Tianzhu and the Wei Kingdom stopped at the stable trade points similar to the real world of Macao of the Zhu Ming Dynasty, and did not have the ambition to cross the sea to conquer foreign countries. However, due to internal contradictions and other factors, the Wa Kingdom still staggered into the Warring States Period decades ago. After the Great Rebellion, the Yue and Wei countries took advantage of the situation to choose cooperative allies and established many supply ports along the coast.

Docking at the port of the Japanese state, three warships carrying seamen and infantry swarmed out.

Seafarers are first and foremost commercial goods that they carry with them. The navy is relatively well-informed, and they probably know which ports are best to sell, and they have deliberately selected money-making goods that are light in weight and small in size before coming. Unless you are particularly unlucky enough to encounter a cyclical decline in certain commodities, there are generally high profits of 30% to 150%. This time, we were quite lucky, and the gross profit of many commodities was as high as 60%, that is, goods with a cost of 10 taels of silver could be sold for 16 taels of silver.

After cashing out, the seafarers went on a spending spree. I don't know how seafarers formed a concept of consumption, the lower the status of the sailors, the more powerful the ability to spend money. The grassroots seafarers have just left - smuggling goods to make a little money, and in the blink of an eye, they have spent everything. According to Wei Dongsheng's statistics, the majority of the consumption expenditure of grassroots seafarers is to find women and eat flowers and wine: perhaps the sailing time has been delayed for a long time, and as soon as they docked at the port, the seafarers visited the local area in groups of three or five to advocate excellence; Some seafarers with spare money and sweet mouths even hooked up with women from good families.