Chapter 224: Tragic News

Putemansi knew Comrade Yiguan quite well — after all, it hadn't been long since the scene of Dayuan's former Governor, His Excellency De With, fleeing back to Batavia with his battered remnants.

Now, hearing that this former Dutch translator and current pirate chief was dead, Putemansi was still taken aback.

But an even greater shock was yet to come: after this, Cai Feiming explicitly told him that the Dayuan side was prepared to hire all 14 Dutch ships and, in about one month, head to the Xiamen area to exterminate the pirates.

... Plunged into confusion, Putemansi had no choice but to demand more detailed intelligence from Cai Feiming. He could not grasp the logic: the Transmigrators, who already had a raw silk purchasing channel, were going across the sea to fight pirates — for what?

One must know, the Dutch fought tooth and nail along the coast, battling the officials one day, then cooperating with the officials to strike Zheng Zhilong the next — all of this had a clear objective: to obtain the raw silk trade rights. So when the Crossing Faction, their warehouses bursting with raw silk, clamored to go across the sea and stir up trouble, the Dutch were utterly baffled.

Cai Feiming naturally would not explain the twists and turns of this to the Red Hair. He simply told Putemansi: this ancient Nobility power base entrenched on Dayuan Island still maintained a sovereign-subject relationship with the Ming Dynasty, so exterminating the pirates was for political reasons; additionally, eliminating the pirates would help the Crossing Faction monopolize the raw silk trade in the future.

Hearing Cai Feiming say this, Putemansi instead understood. In European history, tales of kings screwing over great nobles and great nobles slapping kings in the face were more numerous than ox hairs, so he quickly contextualized the situation: the Ming Emperor was thinking of ways to weaken the Transmigrators' strength, and thus assigned them to exterminate the pirates.

Thinking of this, a knowing smile revealed itself on Putemansi's face: "As far as I myself am concerned, helping the esteemed gentlemen exterminate pirates is a noble undertaking. Of course, this matter still needs to be discussed with those crewmen — after all, as you know, those fellows have eyes only for money and beer."

"It's you, boy, who has eyes only for money, isn't it?" Cai Feiming, his face full of smiles, nodded at this, then took a document from the table and handed it to the Red Hair: "These are several compensation plans for hiring the Dutch fleet for external combat. We can pay in both goods and money. Take it back and discuss it with the crew."

"Very good, this document is most timely. I will give you a reply very soon."

To be honest, the Dutch were unwilling to lend a hand from the bottom of their hearts. Because times had changed — now that the Transmigrators already possessed the raw silk trade rights, the Dutch, as a third-party buyer, were naturally unwilling for a certain power to advance further and monopolize the raw silk trade.

This was the same principle as why, historically, they were unwilling to help Zheng Zhilong strike down his rivals: once any commodity is monopolized, the buyer is placed in a dangerous position. The Dutch, as the Global Coachman, understood this point very clearly.

However, the Dutch will was of no use whatsoever.

Since historically the Dutch failed to stop Zheng Zhilong from unifying the realm and monopolizing coastal trade, the same was true for today's Crossing Faction — they were even more terrifying than Zheng Zhilong: what the Transmigrators brought out was all hard power; any crooked schemes the Dutch might conceive were mere fleeting clouds before the Italian Cannons and heavy machine guns.

Therefore, on the surface, regarding the matter of attacking the pirates, Cai Feiming was soliciting the Dutchmen's opinion, but in fact, this matter brooked no shirking — just think of the goods in the Wharf Warehouse and the future trade qualifications; the Dutch had to agree, whether they wanted to or not.

Moreover, this time the Dutch couldn't even slack off. De With's fleet could lead the retreat during last year's battle where officials, bandits, and foreigners jointly annihilated Zheng Zhilong, but Putemansi could not do so today... Would they come back to Dayuan to load goods afterward or not? If they didn't fight with full effort, after the battle, there would not only be rewards based on merit, but also a settling of accounts come autumn.

So that evening, after the Red Hairs conducted a brief analysis in the Shang Hall, they knew they couldn't dodge this one — aside from going over tomorrow to haggle fiercely and strive to squeeze more profit out of the Transmigrators, there wasn't much else they could do.

Thus, the next day, after a round of intense quarreling, the matter was ultimately settled: the Dutch Fleet would, at some future moment, set out with the Transmigrators to go across the sea and seek trouble with the pirates.

This point in time was currently uncertain. Because Zheng Zhilong had just died, the Dayuan side was still waiting for the reaction of the Xiamen pirate horde. According to the Transmigrators' predictions, it would take at least 15 days for initial news to come from over there, and the actual moment to strike wouldn't be surprising even a month later — time was on the Crossing Faction's side anyway; the longer it dragged on, the more chaotic the rabble would become.

Just as Dayuan was outwardly relaxed but inwardly tense, closely watching the situation across the sea, the first typhoon of 1628 swept in.

Typhoons in the 17th century had no detailed records, at least that was the case in Taiwan. So when the wind circle swept over from the direction of the Philippine Sea, the Crossing Faction, lacking satellites and supercomputers, could only manage a half-day advance warning.

Half a day was clearly somewhat tight. Fortunately, ever since entering May, all industrial and mining enterprises under the Crossing Faction's command had successively begun disaster preparations, so when the storm swept in, the vast majority of factories had already ceased operations according to plan, and workers had begun emergency reinforcement of the buildings.

However, certain people new to this treasured land ultimately still underestimated the typhoon's power.

The typhoon, lasting a full day and night, mercilessly rolled over head-on. After the Category 12 central wind force swept across the Tainan Plain, large numbers of wooden dormitories in the Chikan area had their roofs ripped off, a portion of the houses collapsed, and the wharves and shipyards along the One Line of Taijiang also suffered heavy damage.

These were not yet the most critical matters: the floods and torrential rain that came with the typhoon were the true Great Killer.

Due to the pioneers' tireless efforts at modification, before this, the major rivers, including Xingang Creek, had been quite docile for a time: the sandbars and boulders in the rivers had been cleaned up, the channels had been dredged, and the water flow was very gentle.

However, when the typhoon arrived, the mountain floods triggered by the torrential rain rushed straight down from the Central Mountain Range. All the waterways in Tainan instantly swelled with water, and many smaller streams and rivers soon could not bear the flow. The next moment, the floodwaters began to overflow.

Then came the moment when rain falls on a leaky roof all night: at the time of the night tide, the water level of Taijiang surged violently. The streams and rivers that originally flowed from the plain into the Xiehu encountered seawater backing up. Under the pincer attack of the torrential rain and the backflowing seawater, the Chikan New District and Beixianwei Island instantly turned into a marsh.

... All of the above were matters to be expected. Whether it was the Transmigrators or the coastal subjects under their command, including those foreign crewmen on Beixianwei Island, everyone had ample experience and psychological preparation for this kind of disaster.

However, the one thing no one had anticipated was: someone died.

One Transmigrator died in the storm.