Chapter Eighty-Seven: Fang Riding the Wind

He Xi didn't know that he would never see Fang Mingqian again.

Because Fang Mingqian is dead.

In the sixteenth year of Hongwu, after the three-way voyage, Fang Mingqian's journey was the smoothest. A southerly wind carried him to the Bering Strait, just the usual eastward current. It took them a long time, although they crossed the Bering Strait, but they did not go long before they met winter.

It was freezing and there was a lot of ice floe. There was also an accident in which a vessel collided with an ice floe. There were the first casualties.

Fang Mingqian decided to look for a port and wait for spring.

So they waited for about three months, waited for the spring flowers to bloom, and continued southward to the west coast of the United States. They are well aware of their goal, and their purpose is to find a new continent, but more importantly, to find a good seed with high yields.

Therefore, wherever they went, they sent people ashore to reconnoitre.

In the summer of the seventeenth year of Hongwu, they finally arrived in Mexico and saw the high-yielding and high-yield corn predicted by He Xi. I saw the gold even more.

I have to say that gold is a magical thing. When they could easily get a piece of gold from the natives, the whole fleet went crazy. Originally, after getting corn seeds, I could return to China. But everyone decided to stay for a year.

Get more gold back, it's a wealth that children and grandchildren can't spend for generations.

At the beginning, they also wanted to exchange supplies with the local aborigines, and the goods and materials they carried were very popular with the local aborigines. It was replaced quickly. However, the gold of the natives seems to be endless.

So, under the guidance of various forces. Fang Mingqian finally made up his mind, and he took nearly a thousand people on the ship to go out and ransack the largest tribe in the vicinity. Nearly 1,000 catties of gold were obtained. That's a wealth that rivals the riches of a country.

But this wealth rivals the wealth of the country, which has attracted even more infighting.

What is the concept of nearly 1,000 catties of gold? In ancient times, one catty and sixteen taels. Sixteen thousand taels of gold. And one tael of gold is equal to ten taels of silver, and one hundred and sixty thousand taels of silver. In Daming, it is also an expense to ask the household department to sign.

For one person, that's astronomical.

How to divide so much gold is a big problem.

With more and more gold. Fang Mingqian's sanity also recovered. He meant to get some extra money. But with so much gold, he quickly realized that this matter could not be hidden from the imperial court. So, he wanted to dedicate the gold to the imperial court.

Because no amount of gold can compare to power.

There is a lot of gold in this America. But Fang Mingqian didn't want to live here. Because there is no use for gold here. Since you want to return to the Ming Dynasty, it is enough to have some gold, and more importantly, power, and Zhu Yuanzhang is also a Ming monarch. In Fang Mingqian's mind, he offered gold, which explained the source of gold. There will definitely be a lot of rewards, and the court will not treat meritorious officials badly.

As a result, Fang Mingqian's mentality changed. Only a small portion of the gold was given to the soldiers, and most of it was kept in their own hands to be offered to the imperial court.

But the soldiers below were unwilling.

This also reveals a major hidden danger of this voyage.

That is, the sailors of the three fleets that sailed this time were all elite soldiers and strong generals drawn from all over the country. This is a good thing, but it is also a bad thing. Because they were not a group before, they obeyed their superiors, but they obeyed the orders of the imperial court.

In a place far away from Daming. What is the order of the imperial court?

I can't do it here.

Easy to infighting.

It is not without its benefits to doing so. That is, they are not in harmony with each other, so that some people will not learn from Xu Fu and never return.

Since Fang Mingqian wanted to dedicate most of the gold to the imperial court, he reduced the gold of the soldiers. This made many soldiers very dissatisfied. The reason is also very simple. For Fang Mingqian, more gold is dedicated to the imperial court, which is equivalent to more rewards from the imperial court.

But the soldiers are different here.

The reward of the imperial court is certainly rich for the soldiers, but it is definitely not comparable to the gold in the hand, after all, even if the Ming Dynasty is generous, it is impossible to give every sailing soldier a high-ranking official. And so the disagreement arose.

I don't know why.

An infighting began.

Fang Mingqian also wanted to stop it at that time. As a result, he was hacked to death with a knife.

Fortunately, this fleet was established with the old department of the Fang family as the core. The people of the Fang family finally killed the other side. As a result, the expedition of more than 1,000 people died in various accidents, and even the natives killed only a few dozen, or even less than a hundred. But nearly half of them died under their own swords.

In the end, Fang Mingqian's son, Fang Chengfeng cremated Fang Mingqian, took the ashes on the boat, and left this sad place.

From the nineteenth year of Hongwu, they began to return to the sea, spent a winter on the way, and until now, they found the channel they were familiar with, that is, the channel of the Sea of Japan.

Originally, when I arrived in Japan, I returned to the mature waterway system, and it was not far from the Ming Dynasty. And while Japan is remote. But compared to the Americas, it is already a civilized place. And when he left the Ming Dynasty, he took with him a letter from the imperial court to the king of Japan, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. The final supplies were made in Japan.

They don't know that things have changed. Also resupplied in Japan.

The Japanese didn't want to tear their faces with Daming. But with the soldiers, they showed white, not yellow.

Not wanting to tear his face with Daming was the idea of Shogunate Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. With the Japanese ruling model, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's thoughts are not consistent with the thoughts of the samurai below, they don't think much, and that is Kaneko I want.

So, after the local samurai discovered that the Ming people had a large amount of gold, they organized a night attack that night.

Fang Chengfeng was alert, and it was blocked.

Fang Chengfeng was furious, and immediately opened fire on the Japanese port, igniting the thatched houses in Japan, and a fire burned the port to the ground.

It's a big deal.

The local samurai did not die, but it was impossible for them to say that they attacked the Ming people and were retaliated by the Ming people, so they insisted that the Ming people knew about the allies between Goryeo and Japan and took revenge.

As a result, the news reached the shogunate, which immediately ordered all localities to pay attention to the traces of Fang Chengfeng's fleet.

And Fang Chengfeng went all the way from the south of Japan to the south, and did not dare to get close to Japan again. But the Sea of Japan is quite large. It's easy to hide, but it's not the same when you get to the Tsushima Strait. The Tsushima Strait was originally narrow, and this period of time was the period when Japan transported a large number of troops to Goryeo.

There was a lot of movement between Japanese and Korean ships.

Naturally, I saw the boat riding the wind.

The Koreans were the first to act.

First, the Koreans have a deep blood feud with the Ming Dynasty. I have already torn my face and don't care at all. Second, the Goryeo Sailor has actually fought with the Daming Sailor a few times.

Although Lan Yu is not prepared, now fighting with Goryeo, he wants to drag Japan in and make things bigger. But there is still a need for basic reconnaissance of the enemy. For example, Japan and Goryeo have reached that point. Therefore, Sapphire often sent sailor ships to test it.

Feel the confidence of the other party.

Generally speaking, the old ships used before the 16th year of Hongwu are used. The sixteenth year of Hongwu was a watershed in the shipbuilding industry of the Ming Dynasty. Sixteen years before Hongwu, because of the ban on the sea, the number of official shipbuilders was very small, and it was only to replenish the original lost ships, and the shape of the ships was also very monotonous and small.

After 16 years of Hongwu, more and more Ming ships were built and bigger and bigger.

The old ship of the Blue Jade faction was worried about scaring the Koreans. Expose your strength in advance.

Even the main force of the Damyeung Navy Division was not in Goryeo, but on Tamnado, that is, on Jeju Island. At the time of the Yuan Dynasty, Tamna was still an independent state, and it was incorporated into Goryeo for a short time. And for Goryeo, Tamna is a remote place. Da Ming didn't have any idea about Tamna. So, the Ming sent people to take over Tamna, and there was no need to do anything at all. Tamna had already abandoned Goryeo and thrown himself into the arms of the Ming Dynasty.

It is difficult to hide the sailors of the Daming Dynasty in Goryeo. After all, the scale of the sailor is so large. What the Ming Dynasty did in Goryeo, naturally there were countless people who were willing to make free eyeliner for the small court of Goryeo.

But it's not the same in Tamna.

Not to mention that the Tamna people are different from the Koreans. Just say. Even if someone wants to report the news, no one can get out of the island.

When the Koreans saw Fang Chengfeng's ship, they immediately became the main force of the Daming Naval Division. The Goryeo sailor still has some strength. A big battle that Fang Chengfeng couldn't figure out, and so began.

The situation is very unfriendly to the other party.

Years of wear and tear. Let the firearm run out of gunpowder for everything. The gunpowder they configured themselves was too much worse than the official gunpowder of the Ming Dynasty. After months of sailing, the ship's sergeants were in a bad state. And more importantly, that's it. The staffing gap is too great.

As soon as Fang Chengfeng started fighting, he fled south.

Fortunately, the Ming army sailors found them. With the response of the Ming Army's naval division. It's an escape. It was also known to Lan Yu.