Chapter 171: Debon

"What's your name, brother?"

"Answering the Ship Master, this one's called Wangcai."

"Wangcai, not bad, not bad — a fine name."

Inside the stern cabin of the Fortune ship, Xie Chushui and Xie Shisan, along with two yamen runners from Zhapu County, were now gathered around the clerk called Wangcai, watching him pack an express delivery.

Wangcai, who had been all smiles since entering, was not only quick with his hands but also glib of tongue — packing and replying at the same time, neither slowing the other.

They watched as he gently wrapped several home letters inside a bundle cloth, then padded the cloth bundle into a black wooden box; next, two pairs of satin-faced cloth shoes from Su Workshop were pressed down on top of the bundle cloth. After that, Wangcai closed the wooden box, then drew an exquisite copper lock from inside his robes. Once the lock was fastened, Wangcai pocketed the key, then pushed the black wooden box before Xie Chushui and said with a beaming smile, "When the Ship Master reaches Lintou, you'll meet the one who holds the key to open it."

"Mm, good, good. Only — this parcel for Master Lu's household, to whose residence in Zhangzhou is it to be delivered?"

"Oh, answering the Ship Master: it's for the residence of Censor Liu, in Banzi Alley, east side of Zhangzhou city."

"Banzi Alley? I know it, I know it. Mm, the Censor Liu residence — a grand threshold indeed."

"I won't hide it from you two: our household's First Madam is none other than Censor Liu's full younger sister. Every year she must find someone to send home letters back."

"Oh, so that's how it is. Rest assured, brother — the parcel will most certainly be delivered."

"Wangcai, on behalf of our First Madam, thanks the Ship Master."

"You're too courteous, brother."

In the end, amid mutual deferrals, Wangcai still left Ship Master Xie five taels of silver as the express fee, and with a beaming smile personally watched the black wooden box be placed into the wooden cabinet in the stern cabin.

With that, the matter was concluded. Wangcai and the two yamen runners then took their leave and disembarked. After the three walked out of Niutou Harbor, they continued on for over three li, then slipped into a boat moored in a river fork.

The boat threaded its way along, winding through Jiangnan's crisscrossing waterways. By the time they returned to the river dock before Moyun Temple, the moon was already up. Taking down the two lanterns hung at the bow, the three boat passengers — who had long since changed back into commoners' clothes — walked slowly up the green stone steps. Not long after, they saw Moyun Temple's tightly shut mountain gate.

Raising a lantern to illuminate their faces, the three pushed open the gate, which appeared unguarded, and made their way straight to the Abbot's quarters behind the temple. Wangcai, leading the way, knocked lightly on the door a few times: "Master, we've returned."

"Come in."

The room was very bright; a solar-powered antique-style hurricane lamp lit every corner. Draped in a monk's robe, his belly exposed, Lu Cheng sat beside the desk, smiling cheerfully as he watched them.

"Master."

"Mm, you're back not too late. It seems the mission went fairly smoothly?"

"Yes, completed on schedule."

"Mm, remember to submit the report tomorrow."

"Understood."

"Ah, the setup is still too thin — all our resources are staked right here." Lu Cheng said this, pointing a finger at the ground beneath his feet, then rose and paced a few steps inside the room. He sighed lightly: "For an operation like today's, theoretically the Jiaxing side should have had someone nearby deploy — that would have been proper. The few of you seemed to pull it off smoothly, but in truth it was a gamble: time was tight, and you had to chase right behind them to set the stage. The risk was considerable."

As Lu Cheng analyzed this, the expression on his face gradually hardened with resolve: "No, no matter how hard it is, we must take this step. Mm — when you go back, all of you be prepared. Recently, you'll take turns going to Dayuan for training."

Wangcai and the others of course knew what kind of place the legendary Dayuan was. Seeing that their master was now resolved, the three nodded simultaneously — though a trace of unease still flickered in their eyes.

"Heh heh, go and study well. Once you've gone through the Intelligence Bureau, you'll have completed your apprenticeship. When you return, we'll open a branch station!" As Lu Cheng spoke, he gave Wangcai an encouraging pat on the shoulder: "Liu Wang, I have high hopes for you. When you're there, be sure to visit the Kiln District and have a good look. After you've seen it, you'll know just how strong our power truly is!"

Wangcai's real name was Liu Wang.

Back before the Transmigrators seized the Beggar Sect, Liu Wang, then a clerk at Mingxiang Teahouse, had first been set up by certain people. In the end, under coercion and inducement, Liu Wang was forced to act, using castor toxin to kill Zhu Zheng, a clerk of Renhe County — thus securing the Transmigrators' plan to seize the Beggar Sect from the flank.

Liu Wang received reward silver in the aftermath, and also resigned from Mingxiang Teahouse: the Transmigrators would naturally not let someone who knew who the real culprit behind the scenes was wander the streets, so Liu Wang was scheduled to do odd jobs at Tangzhuang.

After witnessing up close the various inconceivable marvels of the Transmigrators, this carefree young man instead grew interested. Every day he scurried about Tangzhuang, and twice he nearly slipped into the rear garden.

Well then — interest was a good thing. So the comrade was eventually scheduled to Moyun Temple, becoming the disciple of Lu Cheng, the first Station Chief of Jiangnan Station, and from a youth inexperienced in the ways of the world, day by day he grew into a steadfast rebel.

The above is the story of Liu Wang.

The pitch-black ship's hold was stifling and cramped. A figure lay sprawled on a hammock, snoring loudly in deep slumber. Following the prompt of his internal biological clock, a habit forged over many years made the sleeper's snores gradually lighten — and the next moment, he awoke.

His right hand lightly felt beside the bed, and the short Tang Blade that never left his side was gripped in his palm. Chen Huoding slowly opened his eyes.

He raised his left wrist — the blue luminous dial of the Rolex Yacht-Master showed it was already noon. Chen Huoding then turned over and lightly set foot on the ground. In the darkness, he fumbled into a patched-up outdoor jacket and walked barefoot out of the hold.

The sudden transition from below deck onto the main deck made him squint against the noon sunlight. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he scanned his surroundings, then Chen Erye headed toward the stern cabin.

The sand ship Debon was currently anchored in a bay on Zhoushan Island.

Over a hundred years ago — that is, during the Jiajing era — Zhoushan Island had been quite prosperous. Shuangyu Harbor, located on the west side of Zhoushan Island facing Ningbo, was at the time the largest maritime smuggling trade base in sixteenth-century Asia. The smuggling group led by the sea merchant Wang Zhi, in league with the Portuguese and Japanese, used Shuangyu Harbor as their base to trade extensively with the mainland — the scene was booming.

After this came the court's classic "Sea Ban" special project kicking off.

The script was very old hat: the authorities lured and killed Wang Zhi, imposed the Sea Ban, and then — with coastal Chinese merchants as the main force and the Japanese serving as white gloves — the "Japanese Pirate Chaos" officially began. The court next proceeded to relocate populations, enforce the Sea Ban, and organize armies to campaign east and west.

Amid all this, naturally, there was no shortage of the epic and tear-jerking tales of Grandpa Qi fighting the Japanese pirates.

Yet the irony was that what ultimately quelled the Japanese Pirate Chaos at the strategic level was not Qi Jiguang's years of ceaseless slaughter of countless villains across ten thousand li of coastline — but four light, airy words: the Longqing Opening of the Sea.

No colonizers were needed to blast open the maritime customs with twenty broadside cannons. In the cold-weapon era, a certain regime fond of banning the sea, after forcibly severing the nation's foreign trade, found that it itself could no longer bear it.

Massive losses of social wealth, soaring military expenditures, the withering of coastal provinces — so the entire court, top to bottom, seized the occasion of the Longqing Emperor's ascension to stage another grand discussion. And so those who had originally advocated the Sea Ban suddenly achieved complete enlightenment. After paying the price of eight years of warfare and chaos along the southeast coast, Fujian Yuegang was opened — and the Japanese Pirate Chaos subsided.

With the opening of Fujian Yuegang, the center of gravity of mainland coastal trade shifted southward accordingly. And Zhoushan Island, once booming for a time, was thoroughly finished off by the authorities' blocking and filling of Shuangyu Harbor.

Time arrived at 1628. The Zhoushan Island of now, in the words of later generations, had already degenerated into an eighteenth-tier backwater. Some fishermen, some farmers, plus a garrison fort — that was the entirety of Zhoushan.

The bay where the Debon anchored at Zhoushan was named Rotten Gut Bay, its location right around the area of the later-era Zhoushan Culture Park.

This spot faced the mainland across the sea; ten kilometers away lay Ningbo Prefecture. The sea here was narrow, and to both north and south were the scattered, fragmented islets of Zhoushan strewn like stars in the sky. The sea routes were chaotic, the maritime conditions complex — it was a necessary passage for ships heading southward, and of course, a feng shui treasure trove for raiding and plundering.

Chen Huoding, the former Second-in-Command of Pingfeng Stronghold and now captain of the Debon, had just woken and was heading toward the stern cabin. Noon was mess time; the crewmen were gathered on the ship in twos and threes, eating from wooden bowls. Seeing the chief approach, they all rose to greet him.

Before Chen Huoding had finished returning the greetings, he heard a high-pitched, duck-like voice from outside the ship: "Erye! Erye!" Chen Huoding leaned over the starboard side to look, and saw a man with long arms and long legs, a donkey's face, and extremely disproportionate body-to-limb ratios, lifting a slab of iron plate from a cooking fire built of cobblestones. In one swift dash, he ran aboard the ship.

Though the man's build was disproportionate, his sense of balance was superb — likely skills honed from years on seagoing vessels. He ran all the way from the shore up the gangplank and onto the ship as if treading on level ground, yet the iron plate, padded with a rag in his hands, did not waver in the slightest. On the iron plate, fragrant dishes — slices of large yellow croaker, squid, grouper — sizzled and crackled.

Seeing the donkey-faced man, his face wreathed in ingratiating smiles, rushing toward him bearing fine dishes, Chen Erye — who theoretically should have responded with a hearty laugh — instead gave a cold sneer at this moment, turned around as if he hadn't seen the fellow at all, and twisted his head away, heading for the stern cabin.

But the donkey-faced man didn't mind in the least. Holding the plate, he followed behind Erye, his face piled high with smiles. As he smugly basked in the crewmen's flattery — "The Deputy Ship Master grills fine fish!" — he raised his duck-like voice and began flattering the boss: "Erye truly lives up to being a military man! After standing the night watch, up right at noon — what skill! But I, Ma Liu, am no slouch either — just look at this plate of fish! Perfectly timed on the fire — Erye, you really are too blessed with good fortune!"

Chen Huoding rolled his eyes the whole way. Arriving at the stern cabin door, he stopped, thought for a moment, then turned around with a face full of resignation, pointed at the ground beneath his feet, and said, "Wait here!" With that, he lifted the door curtain and went inside.

After a while, Erye emerged from the stern cabin and sat cross-legged on the deck before the door. Once seated, he lowered his head to look at the seafood teppanyaki before him, then raised his head to look at the donkey-faced man across from him called Ma Liu, shook his head, and muttered under his breath, "My family fortune's going to run dry!" while pulling two bottles from inside his robes.

These two bottles were one tall and one short. On the shorter bottle, the characters "Wahaha Fruit Milk" could faintly be made out. Next, Erye inverted the bottle and sprinkled the red powder inside over the large yellow croaker on the iron plate.

The next moment, the two fellows, who had long been drooling, began grabbing fish with their hands. As they ate, they unscrewed the tall bottle — on which the words "Nutri-Express" could faintly be seen — and gulped down yellow wine straight from it.

7