Chapter 233: All the Worthy Gather (6)

Hearing the other party state his origins the moment he opened his mouth, Du Dewei was first slightly startled, then relieved: Xu Xinsu's side must have sent a fast ship with the news, and its speed would certainly be far faster than the twenty miscellaneous boats on this side.

Having figured out the connection, Du Dewei slowly removed his bamboo hat, revealing his true face, then smiled and said: "So it is Shopkeeper Xue in person. My apologies for the discourtesy. This unworthy one is indeed Du Dewei."

At this, Du Dewei took Xu Xinsu's handwritten letter from his bosom. After reading the letter, Xue Haiyuan nodded and said to him: "Shopkeeper Du, I have long heard of your esteemed name. May I ask when your esteemed group set out from Haimen Island?"

Du Dewei knew that what followed would be the inevitable "grilling" procedure, so he concealed nothing and honestly answered a string of Xue Haiyuan's questions.

The polite "conversation" with the host ultimately took half an hour. Once all the intelligence checked out, Xue Haiyuan rose and began inviting the guests to "wash off the dust of the journey."

The three were then led to a guest room within the courtyard, after which servants brought several buckets of hot water and three sets of unremarkable-looking plain blue cloth robes. Once they had tidied up, the sky had already darkened, and Du Dewei was brought back alone to that same room as before.

Inside the room, a bright kerosene lamp had already been lit, along with several plates of wine and dishes... Xue Haiyuan was sitting there waiting for him with a beaming smile.

After a simple toast of watered wine, Xue Haiyuan came straight to the point: "Shopkeeper Du, I am fully aware of the purpose of your visit. That Shopkeeper Du is willing to serve the country and bring peace, to enter the court's regular army, and to fight for a future for himself — this is a good thing, the very mark of a true man."

"There is merely one complication here." At this, Xue Haiyuan fixed his eyes on Du Dewei's and said slowly: "The Public Gate offers no ease, and ease lies not within the Public Gate. Brother Du, the regular army is different from the ways of the rivers and lakes. Once you don the uniform, some matters will no longer be yours to decide."

Du Dewei understood clearly the meaning behind Xue Haiyuan's words.

Since ancient times, bandits seeking recruitment and amnesty have never escaped the government's routine tricks of division and dispersal. Yet this mutual charade of willing consent has endured through dynasty after dynasty, with people forever willing to throw themselves into the fire like moths, just to enter the system and become civil servants.

Among them, unfortunates like Liang Shanbo were many; however, there were also those who, after recruitment and amnesty, managed their operations well and flourished: Zheng Zhilong is one such example.

But for the majority of powers accepting recruitment and amnesty, they lack the ability to flip the table like Zheng Zhilong or Li Chuangwang, so the government holds the stronger position relative to them. In other words, their ability to resist disbandment and absorption is very weak... they lack bargaining power.

One must realize that the Great Ming still retains its tattered tiger skin for now; it has not yet rotted to the point, ten years later, when military strongmen run rampant everywhere. This is the core problem Du Dewei now faces: does he truly have the confidence to mortgage his entire life's assets on the scale, in exchange for a chance to adapt to the system?

This chance is, after all, a venture capital investment. Du Dewei's trip to Fuzhou, to put it bluntly, is using his brothers to trade for a chance for himself to enter the system. If things go poorly, everything will be lost, and if handled badly, his very life could be forfeit.

Yet all these principles above, Du Dewei had already pondered countless times during his years as a pirate. It still came back to that one statement: since he sat at this table today without hesitation, it meant he was willing to bear all risks — nothing could now stop his desire to become a "good man."

"Dewei understands." After hearing Xue Haiyuan lay everything bare, Du Dewei said sincerely: "Had my family not suffered great misfortune in my youth, Dewei would not have fallen to such a state as today. Now my resolve is absolute, and I only hope for your assistance, sir."

After hearing this, Xue Haiyuan's assessment of this man was: clear in reasoning, with an exceedingly firm "heart set on the path," clearly the result of deep and careful consideration. "That being so, very well..." Xue Haiyuan nodded, smiling as he raised his wine cup, and the two drank this crucial cup of wine with tacit understanding.

Now that the blunt words had been spoken, the atmosphere at the table improved considerably.

"Shopkeeper Du, you have truly picked a fine time for this trip." After a couple bites of food, Xue Haiyuan's face glowed with a ruddy hue as he said cheerfully to the man before him: "Since ancient times, there's the saying of spending a thousand gold to buy horse bones, and now is precisely the time when 'my family's general' thirsts for worthy men. Shopkeeper Du, your future is boundless!"

Hearing this, Du Dewei's mind became crystal clear.

Previously at Xu Xinsu's place, all he had gotten was the vague concept that "the government has always been preparing for recruitment and amnesty, and has never given up." And when he took his leave, Xu Xinsu's final admonition to him was: after going to Fuzhou, he must follow the lead of "Zhou Xingchi" without question, to rest and recuperate under this man's arrangements, and await the "wise lord."

The "wise lord" here referred to the person who would ultimately be recruited and granted amnesty by the government, entrusted with the great task of bandit suppression. And from the meaning in Xue Haiyuan's words just now, Du Dewei knew: this "wise lord" had already appeared.

Du Dewei, who had been gloomy and displeased ever since confirming Zheng Zhilong's mishap, finally set aside his melancholy at this moment, and his heart, set on establishing merit and a career, stirred to life.

Du Dewei stayed the night at the Haedong Trading Company.

Early the next morning, Xue Haiyuan brought his men and led Du Dewei's party by boat straight to Mawei Islet.

Mawei Islet is situated on the northern bank of the Min River's lower reaches, east of Fuzhou. In later generations it was called Mawu District, a necessary passage for entering Fuzhou by sea, where the famous Mawu Naval Battle later took place.

Surrounded by mountains and strategically perilous, this place has been Fuzhou's maritime gateway since ancient times. The Wulong, Bailong, and Qin rivers converge here, then flow past Min'an Town and Changmen into the East Sea.

In the Ming dynasty, Mawei Islet housed an Inspection Office and also a fort. And now, Xue Haiyuan and his group's destination was the newly built Mawu Water Camp located on Mawei Islet.

Fujian had previously possessed five major water camps.

In the early Ming, the Marquis of Jiangxia, Zhou Dexing, oversaw Fujian's coastal defenses. This man not only built a land defense line along the coastline with guard posts and inspection offices as its backbone, but also established a maritime defense line centered on water fortresses.

These five water fortresses were: Tongshan Water Fortress, Fenghuomen Water Fortress, Cheng Water Fortress, Nanri Water Fortress, and Wuyu Water Fortress.

And so history changed at this point: the Matsu Naval Fortress, which had never appeared near Fuzhou before, recently, after an order from the Fuzhou Governor, rapidly began construction. Thus, when the blessing ship Xue Haiyuan and his group were aboard reached Mawei Islet, the water fortress had long since taken shape.

A rolling plume of black smoke rose from the shore, and wooden stakes erected in the water had already cordoned off a large area of water. Meanwhile, large numbers of corvée laborers conscripted from nearby counties were simultaneously constructing several docks along the shore.

Seeing the blessing ship approach, a patrol ship soon came out to meet them. Perhaps because the fortress had long since received word, Xue Haiyuan and his group entered without much trouble.

The architecture of the water fortress was filled with the style of the Transmigrators. On the shore, there was not only a boiler room built of red brick, belching black smoke, but also large swathes of wooden and stone dormitories.

Du Dewei soon met the most important target of his journey inside a square and upright red brick great house, its walls not even whitewashed with calcium oxide yet: the counterfeit Cao Chuan, Zhang Dongdong.