Although Fan Tiege was a little worried about his son's expedition to the sea, he also knew that the opportunity was rare, as long as his son followed Fan Ning, it should not be a big problem, not to mention Xu Qing's protection, and more importantly, this was the only way to make the two sons obediently hand over the money, Fan Tiege finally agreed that the two sons would follow Fan Ning to the sea.

Two days later, before dawn, fifty ships of a thousand stones, carrying Fanning and other officials and hundreds of craftsmen, left the capital and headed for the Yangtze River under the escort of 2,000 troops along the coast.

Eight days later, the fleet arrived in Jiangdu County, Yangzhou, not far from the Yangtze River, and the two thousand troops stopped.

As soon as it was dawn, Fanning was awakened by the sound of swords clashing.

Fan Ning walked out of the cabin, only to see Mingren and Mingli besieging Xu Qing, for a while, the cold light was shining, and the sword was shining, of course, it was Xu Qing who was teaching the two of them knife techniques.

The day before departure, Fan Ning took Mingren and Mingli to an armory shop and chose two swords for them, but the two didn't like swords, but liked knives, and each of them chose two military standard long knives, and asked Xu Qing for knife skills when they were fine.

At this time, when Xu Qing saw Fan Ning coming out, he lightly jumped up seven feet high, flipped a heel in the air, and landed lightly and skillfully one zhang away.

Mingren and Mingli shouted loudly, and were about to pounce on them again, but Fan Ning snorted and said: "I knew that the two of you like to practice martial arts, so don't study any county school, send you to the martial arts hall, and the tuition may be cheaper." ”

Akihito wiped the beads of sweat on his head and said with a smile: "If you want to go to Maoren Island, if you meet a native, how can you do it if you don't know how to defend yourself?" ”

Mingli also smiled and said: "At that time, my brother will protect your safety, of course, if the female natives take you away, we will definitely be adults and will not interfere!" ”

After speaking, the two of them squeezed their eyebrows and smiled ambiguously.

Fan Ning shook his head and said with a look of contempt: "I knew that I wouldn't have brought you out, but I even calculated the distribution of the female natives, forget it, after I get to the Yangtze River, you will get off the boat for me directly." ”

"If you want to send us away, no way!" The two said in unison.

At this moment, there was a low horn sound from several large ships in front, Fanning walked quickly to the bow of the boat, a river breeze blew in his face, and in the distance was a sparkling water, which turned out to be the Yangtze River.

..........

In the afternoon, the fleet arrived at the sea base, which is located in Zhihe Town, northeast of Changshu County, Pingjiang Prefecture, close to the Yangtze River, and the Loujiang River flows from Pingjiang Mansion and flows into the Yangtze River here, which later belonged to Taicang Liuhe Port, which is the starting point of Zheng He's voyage to the West.

This area has a very obvious water advantage, the river along the coast is very deep, and ships can directly dock, which is the case for more than ten miles, especially suitable for mooring large ships with deep draft, and the Suzhou Port of later generations was also built here.

The reason why the base was set up here was mainly due to the convenience of supply, and the supply cargo ships could send supplies directly from Pingjiang Province to the barracks.

The sea base is actually a military camp, covering an area of thousands of acres, and thousands of big tents have been set up, except for the 10,000 sailors, the rest of the big tents are all kinds of materials and horses.

There are boundless ships moored on the river, all of which are huge sea ships of more than 10,000 stones, almost more than 1,000 of them, and at least more than half of these sea ships are not newly built, but official ships moored in various ports, all of which have been transferred to the mouth of the Yangtze River.

Fifty riverboats from the capital slowly docked and moored, Di Qing just stepped off the boat, the deputy general Lin Rui came forward to report the situation, Lin Rui is a native of Fuzhou, the official is the deputy commander of the navy, he has annihilated more than a dozen pirates on the island of Liuqiu, and has also escorted the imperial merchant fleet to Japan many times, he has rich experience, and it is also very suitable to appoint him as the deputy commander.

Lin Rui stepped forward and saluted: "Qi Qi Di Shuai, this morning, someone sent more than 100 stallions this morning!" ”

Di Qing smiled slightly, "But one hundred and forty-four?" ”

"Exactly!"

Di Qing nodded, "These one hundred and forty-four stallions are very important, they must be properly placed, and they must be taken care of by a special groom!" ”

"The last general has been arranged, and ten grooms will take care of them."

At this time, Fanning and Zhao Zhongzhong also got off the boat, and the two were overjoyed when they heard that the stallions had been delivered, and Zhao Zhongzhong smiled and said: "Since the last batch of horses has also arrived, then we can carry the supplies on the ship." ”

Lin Rui hurriedly agreed, and half an hour later, there were bursts of war drums outside the tent, and 10,000 soldiers began to carry all kinds of materials onto the ship.

Two days later, everyone worshiped the god of the river and the sea, and the huge fleet composed of thousands of stone ships began to leave the Yangtze River, spreading their white sails, like white clouds, and sailing towards the mouth of the Yangtze River, starting the first overseas expedition of the Great Song Dynasty.

This day is March 15 of the fifth year of Song Huangyou, and the weather at the mouth of the Yangtze River is sunny and cloudless.

.........

In the outer city of Bianliang, Tokyo near Chenzhou Gate, there is a very small dry bridge, in the government, this small bridge has no name, but the local people call it the bottle bridge, this area is a ravine, although there is no water, but more or less affected the people's travel, and later we raised funds to build this small bridge, to solve the bottleneck of travel, everyone named it the bottle bridge.

There is a pharmacy in the north bridge of Bottle Bridge, called Saibei Pharmacy, most of the medicinal materials sold in it are produced in the grassland and Western Xia, because there is no doctor sitting in the hall, and each pharmacy has more or less medicinal materials from the grassland and Western Xia, so the business of this pharmacy is very deserted, and the surrounding people once suspected that it would not be able to operate.

But it hasn't closed down for more than a decade, until someone reveals that the pharmacy is in the wholesale business, and everyone understands what it has been standing all along.

In the afternoon of that day, a young man riding a donkey hurried to the gate of the Saibei Pharmacy, he turned over and jumped off the donkey, but he walked with a limp, and it turned out to be a cripple.

The young cripple tied the donkey to the stake outside the door, and walked quickly into the pharmacy, the pharmacy was deserted, there was no guest, a guy was lying on the table behind the nap, he heard the footsteps, couldn't help but look up, and when he saw that it was the cripple who came in, he was suddenly surprised and happy: "Brother Zhang is back?" ”

"I'm back, where's the shopkeeper?"

"The shopkeeper is in the backyard, follow me!"

The man hurried to the backyard with the cripple, and the strange thing was that at this moment, the cripple surnamed Zhang had healed his legs, walked like flying, and did not look lame at all.

In front of a rockery in the backyard, a burly middle-aged man stood with his hands in his hands, although he was wearing the shopkeeper's robe, his waist was straight and majestic, how could he have the temperament of a businessman, and he was clearly a soldier.

When the middle-aged man heard the footsteps of the two, he was very dissatisfied and said: "How many times have I told you, don't go back to normal walking, next time you dare to return to normal, I will really cripple your legs!" ”

The young cripple was so frightened that he hurriedly knelt down and saluted, "Humble and know your mistakes!" ”

The middle-aged man was anxious to know the information, and he couldn't care about him, so he said, "Get up!" The situation is understood. ”

Of course, this Saibei pharmacy is just a cover, and its real identity is an intelligence point set up by the Liao State in the Song Dynasty.

Although the Liao State has a permanent envoy in the capital, and there is also a special pavilion station, but this is an official organization, many things such as exploring intelligence cannot be done publicly, and the Song Dynasty has a strict surveillance of it, so the Liao State has set up a number of intelligence points outside the embassy, and the Saibei Pharmacy is one of them.

The shopkeeper is called Li Ping, but his Khitan name is Yeluping, serving in the Privy Council in the south of Liao, Liao implemented two sets of political models of Han and Liao, in order to control the Han people and the Bohai people in Youzhou, the Liao State imitated the Song Dynasty system to set up official positions, and implemented the imperial examination, but in the north of the Khitan itself, and continued to implement the Khitan Huluduo system, controlling the nomadic fishing and hunting peoples.

This Yeluping was a middle-level official in the Southern Privy Council, in charge of Bianliang intelligence, and the pharmacy was the intelligence center of the Liao State in various parts of Kaifeng Prefecture.

The young cripple surnamed Zhang, is a Youzhou Hanmin, since he practiced martial arts, loyal to the Liao State, he was selected to be an intelligence officer, his real name is Zhang Li, but the surrounding neighbors call him Zhang Cripple, the lame leg is naturally pretended, but also to hide his light skills, who would have thought that a cripple actually has a strong martial arts?

Zhang lame bowed down and said: "The humble duty went to the banks of the Yangtze River to look for it, and sure enough, the sea fleet was found on the Yangtze River outside Changshu County, thousands of stone sea ships were moored in the river, the momentum was majestic, and the humble duty checked for three days, but the Song army was heavily guarded, and it was never possible to enter, and then dozens of ships came to the capital, and after a few days, thousands of big ships went out to sea. ”

Yeluping asked anxiously, "Are you sure it's going to sea?" ”

"Heading towards the mouth of the Yangtze River, where else can you go except to the sea?"

Yeluping stood for a long time and said, "It seems that everything has been confirmed!" ”

The Great Song Dynasty wanted to build an overseas horse farm, Yeluping heard about it a few years ago, only because it was all folk rumors, Yeluping did not dare to believe it all, and later the Privy Council came out to avoid the rumors, he believed that it was a rumor, and he was glad that he did not recklessly report it to Liao.

But it wasn't until half a month ago that Yelu Changhong, the envoy of the Liao State to the Great Song Dynasty, wrote a secret letter, saying that the Great Song Dynasty had openly discussed the construction of horse farms overseas, and asked him to immediately investigate whether the Song Dynasty had a fleet ready to go to sea.

The results of the investigation completely confirmed the truth of this information, and the Great Song Dynasty really wanted to establish a ranch overseas.

Ye Luping felt a panic in his heart, he turned around and walked into the room, spread out the paper and wrote a short message, walked out quickly and handed it to the man, and whispered: "Go to the samurai food store immediately, and let them send this information to the embassy today." ”

https:

Genius one second to remember the address of this site:. Vertex mobile version reading website:m.