Chapter 5: Two Corpses

He dismissed the guard captain.

Lin Qian handled the docking procedures with the Spanish port official.

Lin Qian's Spanish was fluent, his pronunciation standard, and communication was highly efficient.

The members of the Han Merchants Guild all stood bent at the waist waiting off to the side, while the interpreter repeatedly used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

The paperwork was quickly completed, and the Spanish official cheerfully shook hands with Lin Qian in farewell: "Apologies for the misunderstanding. I wish you a pleasant stay in Manila, sir."

With that, he walked off to the next berth.

The interpreter steeled himself and stepped forward, cupping his fists: "That was my fault just now. Brother, don't take it to heart."

Lin Qian swept a glance over him: "A pirate, are you? I'll remember this 'kindness.'"

Before the interpreter could reply, he heard the Spanish official shout: "Hurry up and follow, you inarticulate yellow-skinned pig."

The interpreter's whole body trembled, then he led the Han Merchants Guild members, following meekly step by step.

"Pah, you dog of a lackey!" Lei Sanxiang spat as he watched their retreating backs, then asked, "Brother Lin, what do we do now?"

Lin Qian slowly turned, his gaze settling on Fourth Brother and Fifth Brother.

Seeing all the brothers looking at him at once, Chen Hong widened his eyes and forced out a smile uglier than a cry: "I was just too anxious in the moment and said nonsense... Brother Lin, you're the one to blame too—if you had this skill, why didn't you say so earlier, making all your brothers worry with you..."

No one spoke on the plank road; the atmosphere was murderous.

Chen Hong hardened his heart and knelt down: "This time it's your elder brother's fault. If you want to hit me or punish me, go ahead!"

Seeing Fourth Brother standing there stiff as a wooden post, Chen Hong struck him hard in the back of the knee and snapped angrily: "Apologize to Sixth Brother, now!"

Fourth Brother put on a tough face, but his legs were weak as water—he collapsed to the ground at once, then scrambled up again in a sorry state, glaring at Lin Qian.

Chen Hong stopped paying him any mind and simply knelt there with his head bowed.

Lin Qian's face was expressionless as he coldly watched the two of them.

Chen Hong felt his heart pound harder and harder; cold sweat dripped into his eyes and he didn't dare wipe it. Every second was agony. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, he gritted his teeth and stood up: "Lin, what exactly do you want? Give me a straight answer!"

Lin Qian spoke slowly: "He who betrays his brothers shall be struck down by heaven and earth alike."

"What!" Chen Hong's face went pale with shock—these words were precisely the oath the seven had sworn when they became sworn brothers.

Fourth Brother, who had been putting on a tough front all along, finally couldn't hold out either, and collapsed to the ground in a stagger.

Chen Hong and the other man looked at the crowd with pleading eyes.

Chen Jiao, Lei Sanxiang, Lin Qian, and Bailangzai all looked at the two of them with the eyes of men staring at the dead.

That evening, on the beach outside Manila.

One big pit, two corpses, three men filling in the dirt.

Lin Qian stood at the edge of the pit, watching the two bodies gradually buried beneath the sea sand.

"You deliberately let things get dangerous, just to see who wasn't of one mind with you, weren't you? A fine trick." Big Brother Chen Jiao stood beside him. When he finished speaking, he raised his wineskin and took two gulps, then handed it to Lin Qian, "The Franks' liquor—want a swig?"

The smell of the alcohol was pungent, with a slight sweetness—probably rum or the like. Lin Qian shook his head: "In this line of work, better to keep a clear head."

Chen Jiao grinned, revealing an extremely ugly smile: "You might just be the only man in this trade who wants to keep a clear head."

He paused, then said: "I went to check out the Parian market—there's no shortage of buyers here, and the prices are far higher than in Macao, just like you said before."

The brothers had sworn their oath merely to seize ships; at bottom it was all for money, and compared to silver, the deaths of Fourth and Fifth Brother were a small matter.

Chen Jiao took a few more gulps of wine, then turned his head, fixing Lin Qian with his one eye.

"Sixth Brother, you're so familiar with the Franks, you can speak their barbarian tongue—even working as an interpreter would give you a fine future. Why become a sea bandit? Or are you the type who's simply born to live a life licking blood off a knife's edge?"

Lin Qian smiled without answering. He knew Chen Jiao had grown suspicious of him. With two of the seven brothers now dead, hearts were unsettled—what mattered wasn't explaining his identity, but calming people down.

When it came to calming people down, nothing worked better than silver.

So the cargo had to be sold off as soon as possible.

"Tomorrow, I'll find a buyer. The day after, we split the money on the ship." With that, Lin Qian turned and headed back to the docks on his own.

Lei Sanxiang, Scholar Zhou, and Bailangzai, who had been filling in the dirt, all perked up at these words.

Chen Jiao, meanwhile, stared at Lin Qian's retreating back for a long time, his expression complicated.

Although Manila was under Spanish rule, over seventy percent of the city's population were men of the Great Ming, clustered around the Parian market district doing business.

Dealing with these Parian merchants wasn't much different from doing business back in the Great Ming.

Accompanied by Bailangzai, Lin Qian negotiated with one merchant house after another at the Parian market.

In the end, he settled on a firm called Lu Cheng Ji. Boss Lu's quote wasn't the highest, but he could take the entire cargo in one go—no need to sell in batches, which saved a great deal of trouble.

Boss Lu's purchase prices were: 6 pesos per bolt of silk; 2 pesos per ten ordinary porcelain bowls; 8 pesos per large porcelain piece.

Lin Qian had long since tallied the ship's entire cargo—eight thousand five hundred bolts of silk and over forty thousand pieces of porcelain, large and small. A quick calculation showed this one shipload could sell for sixty thousand Spanish silver pesos.

Ten silver pesos were roughly equivalent to seven taels of silver in the Great Ming.

Sixty thousand Spanish silver pesos converted to roughly forty-three thousand four hundred taels of silver.

After deducting the Han Merchants Guild's one-in-twenty insurance fee, the Spanish one-in-ten tax, and miscellaneous charges like anchorage and loading fees, about thirty-six thousand-plus taels remained.

Far higher than the figure Lin Qian had promised.

Even if each crewman received a hundred taels of silver, over thirty thousand taels would still remain.

Seizing a ship was a business with a single investment and a hundredfold return—those thirty thousand taels were pure profit.

Though Lin Qian didn't know the purchase prices of silk and porcelain back in the Great Ming, a bit of inquiry gave him a rough picture.

If a legitimate Great Ming merchant shipped this cargo from Yuegang to Manila, the gross margin would be at least around 50%.

Calculated as profit divided by cost, the profit rate would be around 100%, and at the very lowest, no less than 80%.

Lin Qian had been a merchant in his previous life and was extremely sensitive to numbers—he had worked out all the above results with nothing but mental arithmetic.

It was precisely this kind of sky-high profit rate that drove the people of the Great Ming to actively engage in smuggling, even at the risk of having their heads chopped off.

According to the regulations of the Manila Governor-General's office, a Spanish tax official and a Catholic clergyman both had to be present when a cargo contract was signed.

After Lin Qian and Boss Lu settled on the prices, Boss Lu had his clerk summon the Spaniards over.

While they waited, Proprietor Lu brewed tea and probed Lin Qian's background with roundabout questions, but Lin Qian deflected them flawlessly in a few sentences.

A moment later, the shop hand arrived with the tax collector and the padre.

Proprietor Lu rose and went out, greeting the Spaniards with great deference, and gestured for Lin Qian to follow.

Lin Qian found this strange—Proprietor Lu could afford to buy his entire shipload of goods, which showed considerable wealth and no small influence in Manila, so why did he look so fearful and reverent before the Spaniards?

But a guest follows the host's lead, so Lin Qian went out to meet the two Spaniards.

The Spaniards were long accustomed to such fawning attitudes and wore extremely arrogant expressions.

They found it somewhat odd that Lin Qian came out with his back straight, and gave him a few extra glances.

Proprietor Lu stepped aside and invited the two Spaniards inside.

Just then, a commotion broke out on the street in the distance.

Lin Qian looked toward the disturbance and saw three riders galloping at full speed. Pedestrians scrambled out of the way, and in the crowded Eight-Link Market, people soon toppled over in a wave.

The three showed no sign of slowing their horses, charging straight toward Lin Qian's direction.

As they drew closer, Lin Qian could make them out—the two on the flanks were Spanish guards in orange uniforms with rapiers at their waists, just like the guards he'd seen at the harbor.

The one in the middle had finely chiseled, delicate features, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt with black riding breeches and boots. Though dressed in men's clothing, it only accentuated her graceful curves; her hair streamed as she galloped, carrying a wild, flamenco-like beauty.

"Lower your head!" Proprietor Lu saw Lin Qian looking up and, in his urgency, reached out to push Lin Qian's head down—but Bailangzai intercepted his hand.

With that delay, the woman had already reined in her horse before the gates of Lu Chengji's trading house.

"Yellow monkey, what are you looking at?"

Yahei

Pink Round

Pen