Chapter 228: All the Worthy Gather (Part One)

The sea breeze was gentle, the sky a boundless blue, and the ocean surface was thick with the scent of moisture after a storm — this stuff would later be called negative oxygen ions, the kind of ions that sub-healthy city folk have to pay money to inhale...

Time: the morning of July 10, 1628. Coordinates: the wharf outside Zhongzuosuo City, at the southwest corner of Xiamen Island.

Wearing a short cyan robe, a short blade at his waist, robust in build and with a pair of thick, bushy eyebrows, Du Dewei stood at the bow of the slowly moving ship, arms folded, letting the sea wind blow against his headband, his face utterly expressionless.

Du Dewei was 27 years old, a native of Xianyou in Fujian. The Du family came from a Sea Merchant background, and in his early years his father had done well enough running the seas, so Du Dewei was able to attend the elementary school run by the local academy as a child.

However, when he was 15, his father died in a shipwreck. The Du family's fortunes declined, and Du Dewei was forced onto the same path as his father: running the seas.

After more than ten years of struggling on the ocean, Du Dewei had painstakingly built up a crew with 20 ships and become a Shopkeeper himself. And now, the place he was sailing to was the Central Army Tent outside Zhongzuosuo.

Ever since Zheng Da Zhanggui had defeated the Official Army and the Red Barbarians in succession, capturing Tongshan Garrison and Zhongzuosuo, large numbers of Pirate bands from Fujian and Guangdong had flocked to join him, his momentum unmatched for a time. And Shopkeeper Du Dewei naturally couldn't avoid the custom: gathering and scattering was the norm among Pirates; when a powerful figure raised the Banner, the weaker followed, and once the deal was done, everyone went their separate ways — nothing more normal.

And not long after drifting with the current and joining the great crowd, Du Dewei suddenly heard a rumor: Zheng Da Dangjia was going for Recruitment and Amnesty again.

To be honest, he himself was still full of hope for this old tale of Recruitment and Amnesty: from the very first day he became a Pirate ten years ago, he had dreamed of it. Having attended private school and possessing a rough grasp of letters, Du Dewei could never forget that his family came from respectable stock. If not for his widowed mother and younger siblings back then, the business of killing and plundering was something he had no desire to do from the bottom of his heart.

And to his delighted surprise, this time the rumor actually turned out to be true: not long ago, one day, the young Zheng Dalongtou had summoned all the Grand Stewards to the Central Army Tent and publicly announced a momentous matter — he was going to Fuzhou to discuss Recruitment and Amnesty face-to-face with the government's grand officials.

Setting aside how the various Shopkeepers clamored and quarreled in the aftermath, as far as Du Dewei himself was concerned, this was indeed a piece of good news. So, two days later in the early morning, he had even made a special trip by boat to see the Grand Steward off.

Unexpectedly, the Grand Steward went and never returned.

From the very day the scouts planted in Fuzhou by the various Shopkeepers sent back word, the Pirate Military Camp near Zhongzuosuo began to descend into chaos — the scouts had returned by boat from the Fuzhou wharf to Zhongzuosuo one after another in late June, in the days after Zheng Zhilong's fleet had set out from Fuzhou.

The straight-line distance from Fuzhou to Xiamen is only 200 kilometers, just over 100 nautical miles in conversion. Even the slowest fleet could crawl its way back in three days... yet even after the scouts who had set out later returned one after another, no one saw any trace of the Zheng family fleet.

After July 5, all kinds of rumors could no longer be suppressed — because the large numbers of men the Shopkeepers had frantically sent out to scout again, after making a round trip to Fuzhou City, still saw no trace of the Zheng family fleet...

Pirates had no concept of information control, so when this latest large batch of scouts returned, the marketplace of opinion instantly boiled over, and all sorts of true and false news began to circulate wildly.

Some said that Xiong Wencan, using the pretext of seeing them off that day, had sealed Fuzhou Inner and Outer City, secretly mustered the Governor's Standard Battalion Elite Troops, and surrounded and killed Zheng Zhilong's gang outside Fuzhou City, the sound of slaughter shaking the heavens, the wharf south of the city flowing with blood and littered with corpses.

Others said the Grand Steward was first lured into the Commander-in-Chief's Mansion by Xiong Wencan, and then Xiong threw a cup as a signal, whereupon the Grand Steward was instantly bound by ambushers rushing out from both sides. After this, Xiong Wencan first publicly read out several great crimes of Bandit Zheng, then requested the Imperially Gifted Imperial Sword and beheaded the Grand Steward on the spot.

... The storytellers recounted these tales with vivid detail and color; the listeners were utterly absorbed, as if they had witnessed it themselves.

The rumor closest to the truth was: the Zheng family fleet had encountered an ambush by a large force of the Official Army on the open sea and suffered Total Annihilation.

Yet it was precisely this rumor that found the least traction among the Pirate leadership. One had to understand that the Shopkeepers who currently held a seat in the Central Army Tent were all leaders of Great Gangs with over a hundred ships at their command. These men were well-informed, shrewd, and capable, and would never believe such a rumor.

The Great Gang Shopkeepers, who possessed the most accurate firsthand information, now generally leaned toward the most mundane answer: the Zheng family fleet had encountered a fierce storm on the open sea and suffered Total Annihilation.

... Zhu Baba had said: eliminate all impossible answers, and the one that remains is the truth, no matter how unbelievable it may seem.

The Shopkeepers thought the same — although the idea of a gale completely wiping out 5 Great Fortune Ships and 800 men sounded a bit low-probability, this outcome, in their view, was the only reasonable answer at present.

Because they knew Xiong Wencan was innocent: the Shopkeepers were well aware of the scene that day when Grand Commandant Xiong had reluctantly seen Zhilong off outside the city. Again, that same point: Xiong Wencan, holding every advantage in Fuzhou City, had not made a move there, so the possibility of him making a move on the open sea was zero... if the Official Army's handful of men and ships had that kind of ability, why would they have needed to summon and pacify Zheng Zhilong?

Therefore, for the Shopkeepers who held the firsthand information, the logic was very clear: the Zheng family fleet had simply met with a maritime disaster. There was no other explanation.

As time passed and there was still no word from the Zheng family fleet, the situation instead became clearer: Zheng Zhilong was dead — by now, the majority had accepted this. At this point, if the Grand Stewards still gathered at Zhongzuosuo didn't know they needed to find a way out for the brothers under their command, they would be idiots.

And so, the Central Army Tent, originally a symbol of authority, had become a marketplace since the start of July, with the various Shopkeepers quarreling endlessly every day. And as time went on, with any hope of Zheng Dalongtou's survival thoroughly extinguished, the moment for a showdown had arrived in recent days — people had completely lost patience.

"Hah..." Thinking of this, Du Dewei, standing at the bow and heading toward the Central Army Tent, couldn't help but let out a long sigh — Zheng Zhilong's death had once again shattered Du Dewei's dream of this Pirate Leader using a backdoor listing to go legit, and it truly made him wring his hands in regret.

Before Zheng Zhilong accepted Recruitment and Amnesty, Xiamen Island in the 17th century was just an ordinary island, inhabited as usual by some fishermen and garrison military slaves, and was not prosperous.

Historically, after Zheng Zhilong became the Coastal Defense Mobile Corps Commander, by occupying Zhongzuosuo City and striking at the import and export trade of Yuegang, he forced merchant ships to trade here, and in a short time transformed Xiamen Island into the center of Fujian's foreign trade. It was only then that Xiamen Island began to prosper.

But the Xiamen Island of today was even more desolate than usual: the successive great battles between the officials and bandits some time ago had caused the island's remaining inhabitants to flee entirely. And the Zhongzuosuo Acropolis, located at the southwest corner of Xiamen, was now long abandoned, just sitting there horizontally with its gates half-open.

Before this, many Pirates had simply lived inside the city after the battles. However, before Zheng Zhilong set out for Fuzhou, in order to show at least a little humility, he had given the order at the time to drive all the Pirates out of the city, creating a scene where the government had not yet lost the city... this could also be considered saving a little face for the officials.

Of course, with Zheng Zhilong's accident, his previous prohibition gradually lost its force. But by then the situation had changed again: since the Shopkeepers were glaring at each other in the Central Army Tent every day, their subordinates naturally couldn't go off and station themselves in the Acropolis several kilometers from the wharf. The over ten thousand Pirates now entrenched outside the Zhongzuo Wharf were all spending the night on their own ships — this was called combat readiness duty.

The ship Du Dewei was on was now slowly heading toward the wharf. Passing by along the way were large numbers of Fortune Ships, Cantonese Ships, Bird Ships, Fishing Ships, and all sorts of other miscellaneous vessels. Many on these ships were making breakfast, so cooking smoke curled along the entire route. Great numbers of ragged Pirates were brawling and making a racket over a bowl of food, while some who had already eaten their fill sat at the bows, baring their filthy chests and bellowing some local folk tune or other.

Before long, the boat Du Dewei was riding reached the wharf. After nimbly jumping onto the wharf, Du Dewei, bringing only one trusted aide, headed toward the Central Army Tent not far from the wharf.

At the moment, quite a few men under the various Shopkeepers were waiting outside the Central Army Tent. Du Dewei walked all the way with a face full of smiles, greeting the brothers as he went, and headed straight for the entrance of the large leather tent, where the flags of every family were planted outside the door. He lifted the leather curtain and walked in.

A Shopkeeper like Du Dewei, who only had 20 ships, had no seat in the Central Army Tent. Because Pirates were not an army; most Bandit Gangs actually didn't have many main-force ships capable of battle, the majority being makeweight goods like assorted Fishing Ships and the like.

Those who truly had a seat in the Central Army Tent were the Grand Stewards who could pull out over a hundred large ships at any time.

After Du Dewei entered the tent, his vision habitually dimmed for a moment, and then, after hastily cupping his fists and making a perfunctory circular salute to his surroundings, he forced a smile and walked toward a corner to one side. And the several men already seated in the two rows of chairs in the center of the tent paid him no attention.

"How goes it? Any result?" After Du Dewei took his proper place, he turned his head and asked in a low voice to a tall, heavyset man beside him, whose face was full of stubble.

This man was named Hu Ba, also the leader of a Bandit Gang. He and Du Dewei were of similar status and got along well; the two had hit it off from the day they met and usually looked out for each other.

"They're already eyeing the Grain Office," Hu Ba said, seeing it was his old friend. He lowered his head, a trace of a cold smile on his face, and whispered to Du Dewei: "I'm afraid today there will be a final reckoning. You and I, brother, must act with caution."

Hu Ba's words had barely faded when a voice tinged with a Cantonese accent came from the seat of honor: "If we keep waiting here any longer, our lads will just eat through our reserves. These past few days, the Grain Office hasn't been distributing silver and rice smoothly either; I fear someone may be harboring some crooked ideas, for all we know. Might as well disperse early and be done with it. When Zheng Da Dangjia returns someday, the brothers can always gather again — it's not out of the question."