Batavia.
Xu Erjue wore a floral shirt, floral pants, and flip-flops, walking on the pier with a figure-footed step.
Holding a big coconut in his hand, he took a sip and sighed.
Looking at the sight of many fewer ships in the pier than before, I felt sad.
Ever since Zheng raised the toll, business here has become difficult.
In order to make up for the losses, Xia Guolai's merchants had to increase prices.
This has become a burden for local consumers, causing transaction volumes to plummet.
How to break the situation? As the general commercial representative of the Xia Kingdom in Batavia, his hair turned gray in a hurry.
"What did Ambassador Lu say? Is there any explanation from home?"
The secretary next to him quickly answered.
"There is no news in the country yet. Ambassador Lu has been communicating with Governor Batavia, hoping to find a solution."
"Oh, it's so difficult!"
Xu Er felt extremely headache, and at the same time he hated Mrs. Zheng so much that his teeth itched.
We were getting angry here, and the dock suddenly became lively.
I saw six or seven lucky ships entering the port one after another, crowding the waterway.
"A ship is coming!"
Seeing this scene, Xu Erjue was surprised and excited, and ran over quickly.
When he saw the people coming off the boat, he laughed and grabbed them.
"Mr. Wangsang, why are you here?"
When the man saw him, he paused for a moment. After looking at it carefully for a long time, he clicked his tongue and shook his head.
"Master Xu, why do you look like this?"
Xu Erjue didn't feel there was anything wrong with his appearance.
"It's hot here all year round. If you don't dress like this, you won't be able to survive it."
After he came here, he suffered a lot from the hot and humid weather at first, and he even wrote letters to China specifically to complain.
After Zuo Mengeng saw it, he had new clothes made and sent to him.
At first, Xu Erjue resisted such clothes.
Coming from a scholarly family, he couldn't let go of his grace.
But as time went by, the heat became more and more unbearable. In addition, many of the natives here were naked, so he gradually got used to it.
After putting on new clothes, there are only two words to describe it.
So delicious!
Seeing ships coming from China, Xu Erjue couldn't care less about small talk.
"With the current situation, how could you come here by boat? Aren't you afraid of losing money?"
The name of "Wangshangong" is Chen Zhiyuan, a well-known wealthy businessman in Songjiang, who has a very close relationship with the Xu family.
"I have good news for you. We have discovered a new route and we no longer have to pay Zheng."
"real?"
Xu Erjue was shocked and of course overjoyed.
"Tell me, what's going on?"
In fact, the new route discovered by Chen Zhiyuan and others is exactly the same as Lin Jiahui.
As a Xia national, everyone knows that the area east of Taiwan Island is navigable as long as they learn new geographical knowledge.
One of the most important reasons why no ships took this route in the past is that the voyage distance has increased by thousands of kilometers.
As a result, the food and water carried will not be enough.
And compared to the Taiwan Strait, which is surrounded by land on both sides, the width of the Bashi Strait can be said to be endless.
When walking in a place like this, it is easy to get lost because there is no reference.
These are taboos for sailing.
But things are different now.
The Xia Kingdom's navigation technology has begun to become widely popularized, and determining direction is an essential skill for all people who walk on the sea.
As for food and water…
"After we decided to try this new route, we specially brought an extra boat specifically to carry food and drinking water. It turned out to be a smooth passage with no problems at all."
Not only that, Chen Zhiyuan and others also calculated the time.
I discovered that taking the Bashi Strait to reach Batavia is actually almost the same as taking the Taiwan Strait.
"There is no need to pay Zheng an extra five hundred taels of silver. Our goods can be sold at a great price again."
Xia's merchant ships began to unload.
Various cotton, leather, ceramics, glass and other products fill the docks, and the falling prices have stimulated the enthusiasm of local consumers.
Almost in the blink of an eye, the originally deserted Batavia port returned to its former liveliness.
Lu Guangzhai and Anthony Van Diemen came together and were equally surprised after hearing the introductions by Chen Zhiyuan and others.
"Now that we have a new route, we don't have to worry about Zheng anymore. If he wants to make money from us, let's just dream about it."
Both the Xia people and the Dutch were very angry with Zheng's increase in tolls.
Now that Zheng could be bypassed, everyone took active action.
Three days later, a joint Xia-Holland fleet set sail from Batavia, headed for Xia Kingdom under the leadership of Chen Zhiyuan and others.
On the Batavia side, a Han man walked into a roadside shop.
“How do you sell this kind of cloth?”
He recognized it at a glance. It was cloth produced in Xia State.
There used to be a lot of this kind of cloth in Batavia, but since Zheng raised the toll, all of them disappeared.
Unexpectedly, it appears again now.
The shopkeeper was very happy when he saw someone buying cloth.
"This is fine cotton, thirty-five cents per foot."
When the man heard this, he was inevitably surprised.
"Why is it so cheap? Wasn't it sixty cents per foot before?"
The shopkeeper was in a good mood, so he said everything.
"I heard that a new route has been discovered. I don't have to pay Zheng anymore, so the price will naturally fall."
The man was in a panic and knew something serious had happened. He scribbled and asked the shopkeeper to cut two feet of cloth and left quickly.
After a while, a clipper ship left Batavia and headed north quickly.
Leading to the open sea.
The morning mist will still linger.
A sailboat was sailing comfortably on the water, approaching the Shimabara Peninsula.
Everyone on the boat was very calm, as if they were traveling.
But in fact, the ship was packed full of muskets and artillery.
It was the weapons provided by Xia Guo to the Shimabara rebels.
In the past, doing such a thing involved risking a narrow escape.
But things are different now.
The Xia Kingdom's navy had already taken control of the nearby sea, and the Satsuma clan's navy had been driven back.
Although Xia Guo claimed that it had never provided weapons to the Shimabara rebels, since the Japanese had no clue, what else could they say?
Gradually, I became bolder in transporting weapons. Even though it was dimly lit like now, they dared to go out.
The sailboat broke through layers of fog, but still could not see the shadow of the shore. But it doesn't matter, what surprises can there be in a place like this?
A sharp sound of breaking through the air suddenly sounded, and without giving the people on the ship any time to prepare, they saw a crew member hit by an arrow in the neck. His body tilted and he fell overboard.
"Enemy attack!"
The peaceful atmosphere was suddenly broken, and the people on the boat couldn't help but panic and picked up weapons one after another.
Almost in the blink of an eye, we saw seven or eight small Japanese morning boats rushing towards us. The Japanese warriors above were howling and screaming, and at the same time they completely enveloped the sailboat with bows and arrows.
Several people on the boat were shot to death immediately, and the rest could only find shelter in embarrassment.
"This is not a Japanese arrow!"
Almost at the moment of the fight, the captain on the sailboat realized something was wrong.
But he wasn't given much time to think.
The Japanese ships bumped into each other one after another.
Those Japanese warriors waved their sabers and screamed meaninglessly while striking down the killers.
There were not many people on the ship, and there were heavy casualties in the first confrontation.
The team leader was crippled and suffered multiple injuries on his body. He knew that he would not be spared.
Suddenly a knife stabbed him from behind and penetrated his stomach.
He used his last strength and turned around to see a ferocious and proud face.
But what really concerned him was the other party's strange cry.
It sounds like Japanese, but it doesn't seem to be the case.
