Chapter 122: Straight to Zhelin Bay

On the seventh day of the first month, in the residence of the Vice Regional Commander of Nan'ao in Chaozhou Prefecture, a pall of gloom hung over everything.

Ever since Ma Chenglie had returned several days ago, covered in ashes and humiliation from Zhelin Bay, he had shut himself in his study and refused to come out.

Even his favorite concubine, who came to see him, was slapped out the door.

Ma Chenglie was not wallowing in self-pity—he was racking his brains over wording.

Nan'ao Island was lost, the navy suffered a crushing defeat—such things could not be hidden, and sooner or later they would be exposed.

Rather than wait for someone to impeach him in a memorial, it was better to submit his own memorial first, giving the court an explanation and keeping the initiative in his own hands.

Of course, how to write that memorial was itself an art.

Tell the plain truth, and death was certain.

Embellish the battle report—pointless.

Ma Chenglie had to find a way to tell the truth while shifting the blame—a fine balance indeed.

And so, in the days since returning home, he had kept himself locked in his study, pondering day and night.

"Knock, knock, knock."

A knocking came from outside the study door.

"My lord." The concubine called out in a sweet, coquettish voice.

"Get lost!" Ma Chenglie cursed.

Through the door, the concubine sobbed, "My lord, this concubine came only to bring you your meal. If you won't see me, that's fine, but you must eat on time—don't ruin your health from hunger."

Ma Chenglie, his mood foul, snapped, "Stop your sniveling! I'm not dead yet! Leave the food by the door."

"Yes." The concubine dared not disobey. She answered with a plaintive note and drifted away.

Ma Chenglie steadied his thoughts, took out a sheet of paper, weighed it down with a paperweight, selected a wolf-hair brush, dipped it fully in thick ink, and raised his brush to write.

"By imperial commission, Vice Regional Commander stationed at Nan'ao to jointly defend Zhangzhou and Chaozhou, your servant Ma Chenglie respectfully memorializes:

Concerning the rampant sea bandits and the loss of the defense post, humbly beseeching His Sacred Majesty to swiftly dispatch reinforcements to pacify the seas.

On the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth month of this year, the bandits gathered more than twenty great vessels and suddenly attacked Nan'ao.

Your servant immediately led three Fujian junks and fifty patrol boats to suppress them. Unexpectedly, the tides shifted abruptly... Though your servant personally slew three bandits with his own hand, in the end he could not prevail and fell back to defend Zhelin Bay. All of this is your servant's crime of poor deployment and reckless advance against a contemptible foe..."

The more Ma Chenglie wrote, the colder his neck felt, as if he were already on his way to the dungeons of the Ministry of Justice. In a rage, he flung down his brush, crumpled the paper, and tossed it aside.

On the floor, a layer of identical crumpled paper had already accumulated.

Ma Chenglie slumped back into his seat, clutching his hair in agony, his eyes shot through with bloodshot veins.

This time at sea, he had achieved not a single merit. Had he but managed to cut down some sea bandits or capture one or two enemy vessels, he would not now be at a loss for even half a word to write.

No matter how clever he fancied himself, faced with this utter and complete failure, he ransacked his mind and still could not think of a single phrase to exonerate himself.

Ma Chenglie gazed up at the ceiling in despair and muttered, "Could heaven truly be seeking my doom?"

At that very moment, the door was knocked upon again. Rage surged in Ma Chenglie, and he hurled his Duan inkstone at it.

The inkstone struck the doorframe with a loud crack, shattered on the floor, and splattered ink everywhere.

"Get lost!" Ma Chenglie roared.

There was a moment of silence outside the door, then a low voice said, "Commander, it's news from Nan'ao Island."

"What!" Ma Chenglie seized upon it like a drowning man grasping at a lifeline. He opened the door, pulled the household soldier inside the study, carefully bolted the door shut again, and urged in a low voice, "Speak quickly!"

"This morning, Garrison Commander Huang sent a boat to Zhelin Bay, delivering more than two hundred severed heads."

Ma Chenglie pressed urgently, "Whose heads?"

"He didn't say. But judging from the condition of the vessel, they should be a band of sea bandits." The household soldier reached into his bosom and produced a letter. "This was delivered along with them."

Ma Chenglie snatched the letter, tore open the envelope in a few quick motions, and saw two large characters printed at the top of the paper: "Capital Gazette."

Below was printed the date: "First day of the twelfth month, first year of Tianqi."

Ma Chenglie flipped it back and forth, confirmed that this was indeed an ordinary copy of the Capital Gazette with nothing else included, and felt both bitter disappointment and deep puzzlement.

"Any other news?"

"No."

"You may go."

Having dismissed the messenger soldier, Ma Chenglie took the Capital Gazette to his desk and leafed through it.

He had read this issue before. Its contents were still the war of words over the Red Pill Case and the Relocation Case, the topic being the disposition of Li Kezhuo, who had presented the red pill.

The Zhejiang Faction and the Chu Faction held that Li Kezhuo had merely made a medical error and should be dealt with leniently.

The Donglin Faction, however, held that Li Kezhuo had deliberately murdered the sovereign and must be severely punished.

As the Donglin Faction gradually gained the upper hand, the court's punishment of Li Kezhuo changed again and again.

At first, Li Kezhuo was to be rewarded with fifty taels of silver; then it became a year's salary forfeiture; and in the end he was sentenced to military exile. That controversy was finally laid to rest.

In truth, any clear-eyed person understood that whether Li Kezhuo lived or died, no one up or down the court truly cared.

Li Kezhuo had been recommended by Chief Grand Secretary Fang Congzhe.

The Donglin Faction's demand for severe punishment was in fact a pretext to attack Fang Congzhe. Fang Congzhe was the leader of the Zhejiang Faction, so in reality it was also an attack on the Zhejiang Faction.

This year, two successive emperors had passed away, power had changed hands with dizzying frequency, and factional strife at court had reached an unprecedented and unsurpassable pitch.

Every matter, great or small, was judged not by right or wrong, but solely by allegiance.

Share the same allegiance, and even killing an emperor would earn you a reward of silver.

Hold a different allegiance, and even a great general guarding the frontier would be stripped of office and title.

Take, for example, the previous Military Commissioner of Liaodong, Xiong Tingbi. After the disastrous defeat at Sarhu, he had assumed command in a time of crisis and quickly stabilized the situation in Liaodong. A man of considerable military talent, he could well be called a pillar of the state.

Yet such a man, because he sat on the fence between the Chu Faction and the Donglin Faction, was disliked by both sides and was casually dismissed, replaced by a bookish scholar, Yuan Yingtai, as Military Commissioner of Liaodong.

At this thought, Ma Chenglie's eyes suddenly lit up, and his heart began to pound. In a situation with nine deaths and not one chance of life, he had found a thread of escape.

If only his allegiance were correct—might he then be spared punishment?

So the question is, which stance is the normal one?

The Donglin Faction currently holds great power at court, but they are all lofty literati who bond through classmates, fellow graduates, and examination mentors. Even if Ma Chenglie sincerely wanted to defect to them, they wouldn't want him.

Moreover, his ancestral home is in Hubei, making him a natural member of the Chu Faction. Shifting the blame for the defeat onto the Donglin Faction would naturally earn him the protection of the Chu Faction, and by extension, the Zhe Faction and Qi Faction as well.

Nan'ao Island is but a tiny patch of land, far less worthy of discussion than the Red Pill Case or the Palace Removal Case. It would soon be drowned out by the court's war of words and quietly dropped.

With this thought, Ma Chenglie immediately spread out paper and picked up his brush.

"Your Majesty's Imperial Commissioner and Vice Regional Commander in charge of defending Nan'ao and surrounding areas, Your servant Ma Chenglie respectfully memorializes:"

With the newly delivered two hundred heads and a few broken ships, Ma Chenglie sang the praises of the naval battle of the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth month in his memorial, spinning a great defeat into a bloody fighting retreat.

Then he shifted his tone, writing that the bandits were powerful in number, and that to protect Zhangzhou Prefecture from falling, he was forced to abandon Nan'ao in exchange for thwarting the bandits' attempt to land at Zhangzhou.

Next, he analyzed the reasons why Nan'ao was still lost despite this victory, attributing it to insufficient military funds, damp-spoiled gunpowder, and unmaintained warships.

Reducing commercial taxes was a policy long advocated by the Donglin Faction. By raising the issue of military funds, Ma Chenglie was subtly shifting the blame onto the Donglin Faction, while avoiding accusations of blaming his superiors or resenting the court.

Finally, he wrote that he was currently reorganizing his defenses, begged the court to allocate ships and grain, and requested permission to atone for his crimes through future merit.

The memorial was sincere in tone, his fervent desire to serve the nation evident between the lines — even he himself believed it a little.

After finishing, Ma Chenglie read through and checked it several times. After a moment's thought, he picked up his brush again and added a line: the bandits on Nan'ao Island were suspected to be under Li Dan's command.

Writing this had three benefits.

First, Li Dan was notorious and commanded vast power. Having such a man seize Nan'ao would lessen the crime of Ma Chenglie's failure to hold his territory.

Second, it would prevent the court from associating this matter with a rebellion of the common people — after all, losing territory to sea bandits carried a far lighter punishment than losing it to rebels.

Third, once the court learned that Li Dan had sent men to occupy the island, they would surely make thorough preparations and would not rush Ma Chenglie into hasty action, buying him time to maneuver.

After his inspection was complete, Ma Chenglie took out a clean memorial form and copied it over. After blowing the ink dry, he wrote on the cover: "Memorial on the Maritime Affairs of Nan'ao."

With everything done, the great stone in Ma Chenglie's heart finally settled. He let out a long breath and looked up — outside the study, dusk was approaching. Just as he stepped out to call someone to deliver the memorial—

A household soldier came running in panic.

"Commander..."

Ma Chenglie's heart clenched tight. He knew it must be bad news, but he had already suffered so much that he truly could not imagine what worse news could possibly come.

The soldier reached him, gasping for breath: "Commander... Zhelin Bay is under attack by sea bandits!"

"What!" Ma Chenglie's heart turned cold, and the memorial slipped from his hand to the floor.

Just a few hours earlier.

Ten li south of Zhelin Bay, Lin Qian's fleet was assembling on the sea.

In the officers' mess of the Santa Ana, Lin Qian's sworn brothers, the shipowners of the Sea Wolf ships, and the acting shipowners sat around the table.

There were too many people; some acting shipowners had no seats and could only stand to the side.

Spread across the table was a hydrographic chart of Zhelin Bay, drawn in great detail — the position of every military tent, the berth of every ship, the height and layout of the naval stockade walls, the waterways and shipping lanes, the positions of hidden reefs — all were marked out.

This was precisely what Shi Jun and the other household soldiers had drawn under the Great Memory Restoration Technique.

The battle plan had already been explained before setting sail, and now Lin Qian repeated it: "Let me say it once more — the objective of this battle is to capture ships. Do not get bogged down in fighting.

First, the Santa Ana will blast open the stockade wall, then the Sea Wolf ships will charge in. Bai Qing, your ship goes here."

Lin Qian pointed at a spot on the chart, where a water-drop shape was drawn with a line of small text beside it reading "A-2 Large Fujian Junk."

"Yes!" Bai Qing clasped his fists.

"Zheng Aqi, your target is here." Lin Qian pointed again on the chart — at the "A-3 Large Fujian Junk."

Zheng Aqi also clasped his fists and accepted the order.

Lin Qian continued: "Shi Kai, Mu San — your two ships are responsible for providing support around the large Fujian junk, and if necessary, you are to board and grapple as well."

The two shipowners whose names were called rose and accepted their orders.

"As for the other naval vessels — grab whatever you can, and if you can't grab them, burn and sink them. Every ship has been issued carbon-heat agent. Be careful when using it — don't go burning off your own eyebrows."

Lin Qian's tone was light, drawing a roar of laughter from all the sea bandits.

When the laughter subsided, Lin Qian's expression turned serious: "That's all. Everyone, to your positions!"

"Yes!" The sea bandits all rose together and clasped their fists, murderous intent radiating from them.

After all the shipowners had left, Bailangzai said: "Helmsman, let me go help on my sister's ship. This blade of mine hasn't tasted blood since it came into my hands."

Lin Qian thought for a moment, then nodded in agreement: "Alright, but be careful. If you're outmatched, fall back promptly. You and your sister are far more important than any ship."

"Yes, Helmsman, rest assured!" Bailangzai clasped his fists excitedly and followed Bai Qing off the ship.

Bailangzai was utterly loyal, and Lin Qian did not lightly let him court danger.

However, according to Shi Jun's confession, on the night of the twenty-eighth of the twelfth month, every naval warship had household soldiers supervising the battle, which was why morale stayed high and they did not collapse for so long.

Now that the navy had just suffered defeat, and the household soldiers borrowed from each guard station's commanding officer had all returned to their posts, morale was certain to have sunk to rock bottom.

Moreover, sea bandits going ashore had at most meant raiding villages — none had directly attacked the imperial navy. There had been no wokou pirates on the southeastern seas for decades, so the camp soldiers had no sense of vigilance at all. This surprise attack could be said to seize the initiative completely.

So this assault on Zhelin Bay was essentially a sure thing.

And since the large Fujian junk was extremely important to Lin Qian, that was why he agreed to let Bailangzai go help with the boarding action.

After the shipowners returned to their vessels, the fleet headed north. In less than an hour they sailed into Zhelin Bay, rounded Xunzhou Island, and arrived two hundred paces outside the naval stockade — the entire way unimpeded.

Lin Qian raised his telescope to survey the stockade. He could see soldiers on the walls running about in panic, the warships inside the stockade in dilapidated condition, and the barracks shrouded in deathly gloom.

Lin Qian lowered his telescope, his voice cold and stern: "Open fire!"

"Open fire!" Chen Jiao shouted.

On the gun deck, Lei Sanxiang had long since prepared for firing. Hearing the order, he shouted: "Release!"

In an instant, fourteen Siren cannons spat tongues of flame, and towering columns of water erupted around the stockade walls.

The bombardment lasted an hour, and most of the stockade wall was blasted to rubble.

The cannon fire ceased, and the green flag spun.

Ten Sea Wolf ships formed a line and charged into the naval stockade like starving wolves pouncing on sheep.

The Santa Ana shifted to the northwest of the naval stockade and began bombarding the barracks on shore.

Through the telescope, one could see solid iron shot crashing down, sending up great clouds of dust and dirt from the barracks. A dozen or so barracks collapsed, and soldiers scurried about like headless flies.

Officers shouted at the men to form ranks and board the ships, but no one paid the slightest heed to orders.

On the water, the Sea Wolf ships had already pulled alongside the warships, first clearing the decks with matchlock muskets and Folangji breech-loading cannons as usual, then boarding and grappling.

Amid the gunsmoke, Bai Qing and Zhong Aqi's Sea Wolf ships also reached the sides of the two great Fujian junks. Crewmen cast out grappling hooks and lines, hauled the Sea Wolf ships close to the great junks, then climbed hand-over-hand up the lines onto the junks' decks.

Bailangzai was first onto the deck, his great miao saber gleaming with cold light. With a few swift, agile movements of the blade, two soldiers' necks sprayed blood, and another had his lower leg hacked off—a bloody, grisly sight.

Bailangzai was naturally quick and agile, and with a sharp blade in hand, dealing with soldiers who had no will to fight was like a tiger among sheep, or boiling water poured on snow. His great miao saber swung in wide, sweeping arcs, and wherever the blade's light reached, soldiers fled in rout.

As the rest of the crew boarded and grappled, the decks of the great Fujian junks became ever more one-sided. The camp soldiers of the naval forces offered almost no resistance, scrambling over each other to flee ashore.

The gangways were packed with soldiers fleeing for their lives, and men kept being jostled off into the water.

Some soldiers, seeing the gangways jammed, simply flipped themselves over the bulwarks and jumped straight into the sea.

The Spring Festival had just passed, and the sea was bitingly cold. The great Fujian junks were anchored no small distance from shore, and the landing stages were too high to climb back onto easily.

The soldiers in good physical condition could barely manage to swim to shore.

But many soldiers cramped up the moment they hit the water, exhausted their strength within a short time, lost body heat, and froze to death in the sea.

To call this a boarding action would be a stretch—to call it driving ducks into the water would be rather apt.

At the same time, several Haicang ships and Cangshan ships had been captured, and men under Lin Qian's command sailed them out of the naval stockade to anchor alongside the galleon.

Some warships were leaking so badly they had no value as prizes, so Lin Qian's men drew close and lit thermite sticks, tossing them aboard.

Once the black powder on the thermite sticks burned out, the reduction reaction began, and molten lead at over a thousand degrees flowed forth. No matter how fire-resistant the timber of the warship, it caught fire at once—the decks were soon burned through by the molten lead, and the entire hull was set ablaze.

In but a moment, the whole of Zhelin Bay was shrouded in firelight.

The flames sent up thick black smoke visible for miles.

Through the rolling smoke, the two great Fujian junks emerged, followed closely by the rest of the Sea Wolf ships. A few of the Sea Wolf ships had flames licking at their sails, and crewmen frantically doused them with sand and water.

The fleet anchored outside the Zhelin Bay naval stockade for a long while, counting heads to make sure everyone had assembled and that no men or ships of their own remained inside the stockade.

Lin Qian gave the order to return to the island.

The fleet set sail and soon entered the coastal waters, with Nan'ao Island visible in the distance.

Lin Qian stood on the stern deck and turned to look back. Beneath the overcast sky, black smoke rose high over Zhelin Bay.

Astern of the Santa Ana, the two great Fujian junks followed under full sail. On the Jia-2 great junk, Bailangzai stood at the bow, carefully wiping his great miao saber with cotton cloth and clean water—the cold gleam of the blade visible even from a distance.

On the Jia-3 great junk, Zhong Aqi was directing crewmen to bail water from the hold. This ship had been badly damaged in the sea battle on the twenty-eighth of the twelfth month, and after docking at Nan'ao, it would need thorough repairs.

Flanking the two great Fujian junks were ten Sea Wolf ships, and beyond them, twenty-odd Haicang and Cangshan ships captured from the naval forces.

When Lin Qian had set out, the fleet had only eleven ships. Returning to the island, the fleet had grown to nearly three times that size—a bountiful harvest indeed.

The two great Fujian junks in particular were the most crucial prize.

Ming warships generally had low freeboard, and being small with watertight bulkheads, they could not accommodate a gun deck—cannons could only be mounted on the open deck.

And since the bulwarks of an open deck were weak, and considering the ship's center of gravity, large-caliber cannons could not be mounted either. They could only be fitted with Folangji breech-loading cannon positions, like the Sea Wolf ships.

But the great Fujian junk was different. Since this ship could carry heavy Folangji cannons, it could also carry twelve-pounder Siren cannons.

Capturing these two great Fujian junks and refitting them would give Lin Qian the main warships he currently most lacked.

And this was only one of the reasons Lin Qian had attacked Zhelin Bay.

He also had strategic considerations.

He had earlier sent the severed heads and the Capital Gazette to the Vice Regional Commander of Nan'ao, hoping that Ma Chenglie could hold on to his position. That way, the court would not dispatch some formidable figure to retake Nan'ao.

At the same time, eliminating Ma Chenglie's effective strength meant he would not dare boast to the court about retaking Nan'ao, and could only try to maintain the status quo and coexist with Lin Qian.

Once this goal was achieved, with no naval ships left under his command, Ma Chenglie would have no cards left to play and could only be manipulated at Lin Qian's whim.

Going deeper, Lin Qian actually hoped Ma Chenglie would go and attach himself to the Chu faction, the Qi faction, or the Zhe faction.

These men were the future eunuch faction—highly susceptible to corruption—which would make it convenient for Lin Qian to use Ma Chenglie as a thread to infiltrate the Ming central government and secure a more stable external environment.

Of course, all these deductions were premised on Ma Chenglie being rational and capable.

If Ma Chenglie was dead set on seeking his own destruction, or spoke plainly and honestly, or was so politically inept that the court saw through the ruse—

—then the court's suppression campaign would still come.

In that case, at least Lin Qian had eliminated the naval forces' effective strength in advance while strengthening himself, giving him more confidence to face a naval siege.

After all, no one in this world could plan for every contingency. All Lin Qian could do was devise an endless series of Plan Bs.

Zhelin Bay was not far from Nan'ao Island.

An hour later, the fleet had docked at Houjiang Bay.

The Houjiang Bay docks now held over a thousand Tanka boats, the ships seized from Li Kuiqi, and the newly captured naval warships—the harbor was packed as tight as dumplings in a pot, with no room left for new arrivals.

When the docks were first built, Lin Qian had left plenty of spare capacity, never imagining the fleet would grow so fast that within less than a year, all that capacity would be used up.

Lin Qian had no choice but to order some of the idle ships to moor at Shen'ao Harbor instead, freeing up the berths at Houjiang Bay for the newly arrived warships.

At the same time, he summoned craftsmen from the island to the docks to begin urgent repairs on the great Fujian junks.

In the evening, in the Santa Ana's captain's cabin, Xiao Jiu, the apprentice of Mute Huang, knocked and entered, reporting: "Helmsman, among the ships returning to port this time, there are two great Fujian junks, two Fujian junks, fifteen Haicang ships, and nine Cangshan ships. My master has already ordered the craftsmen to hasten the repairs."

With that, he handed Lin Qian the measurements he had taken of the great Fujian junks.

On the paper, drawn in imitation of Lin Qian's own blueprint style, was a hull diagram of the great Fujian junk.

The great Fujian junk was twelve zhang long overall, three zhang wide, with a draft of six chi. It had a tall sterncastle and four decks: one within the hull, one open deck, and two sterncastle decks.

By Lin Qian's rough estimate, the ship could carry twelve Siren cannons. If one level of the sterncastle were removed, the sterncastle deck could fit two more light four-pounder cannons.

Adding it all up, arming the two great Fujian junks, plus adding a gun deck to the Santa Ana, would leave a shortfall of forty-eight Siren cannons.

Lin Qian sent someone to summon Jose.

A moment later, Jose knocked and entered the captain's cabin.

Lin Qian said, "Go place an order with the Bucalao foundry. We've got work coming."

Just as the new ship was being welcomed at Nan'ao Island.

At the Zhelin Bay naval stockade, Ma Chenglie came galloping at full speed. He reached a hilltop and tumbled off his horse in a clumsy scramble, his bloodshot eyes filled with utter despair.

The flames at Zhelin Stockade had already died out, leaving a charred black expanse with thick smoke rising everywhere. Most of the stockade walls had collapsed, and in the harbor, two large Fujian junks had vanished without a trace—along with the warships that had been in decent condition.

All that remained floating on the sea were a few warships burned black as charcoal, with broken planks and tattered sails blanketing the entire surface of the water.

On the shore lay corpses pale from the cold, continuously pushed onto the beach by the waves, like a school of dead fish floating belly-up.

Along the shore, the camp soldiers who had narrowly survived moved corpses with numb, expressionless faces, and several piles of bodies had already stacked up on the beach.

The barracks on land had suffered lighter damage—six or seven out of ten still stood—but the ground was covered with broken tiles and rubble, forcing the camp soldiers to pick their way through the debris with difficulty.

This was the current state of Zhelin Stockade, one of the six great naval stockades of Fujian and Guangdong—nothing remained of it but the name.

Ma Chenglie felt waves of dizziness wash over him. His eyes vacant, he stared up at the heavens and roared inwardly: "Damn you, unjust heavens! Why do you do this to me!"

"Regional Commander." His household soldiers steeled themselves and stepped forward, cupping their fists to report the casualties. "At Zhelin Bay, over two hundred dead and wounded, with several dozen more missing..."

Ma Chenglie felt a faint metallic sweetness rising in his throat. Suppressing it, he asked through gritted teeth: "What about the ships?"

"Only a dozen or so sampans remain. The warships... not a single one is left."

"Ah!" Ma Chenglie roared at the sky, then screamed hysterically in the direction of Nan'ao Island, "Five-Clawed Dragon, I'll fuck your ancestors!"

Even after fighting this long, Ma Chenglie still didn't know the name of the pirate who had taken the island—he only knew that his men called him "Helmsman," and that the common folk called him by his nickname, "Five-Clawed Dragon."

"Regional Commander."

"Regional Commander!"

Seeing Ma Chenglie in a state of madness, the household soldiers around him rushed forward to dissuade him.

With a clang, Ma Chenglie drew his blade and moved to cut his own throat, but his household soldiers were already prepared. They lunged forward and seized his sword hand in a death grip.

(End of chapter)

Yahei

Fenyuan

Pen