Chapter 258: One Wave Has Yet to Settle

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Two fishing boats raced the last sliver of sunset into the familiar bay at Luci. Reality was cruelly ironic: yesterday they had been here gathering riches, and today they had returned as homeless strays, seeking refuge.

In the now pitch-black night, Yu Chengde stood at the prow, first glancing back toward the fishing village, then lowering his head to look beneath his feet — on the seabed lay the sunken ship that had brought him both wealth and calamity.

After a long sigh, he set aside his troubled thoughts: what was done was done, what use was there in agonizing further? Now they were all fugitives wanted by the Great Ming, with no road back. Better to honestly plan the path ahead.

Thinking this, he turned his head again and gazed out toward the endless strait to the east. The real danger still lay ahead... for two battered fishing boats to cross the strait, this would inevitably be an adventure.

The next morning, the two fishing boats, with a combined "tonnage" of less than 400 liao, set sail eastward without a backward glance. Departing from Luci, in under one hour the small fleet reached the final landmark of the Putian Outer Sea: Wuqiu Islet.

This place consisted of two islets. In later generations, it would be the meeting point between Nationalist and Communist forces; the soldiers garrisoning Meizhou Island could often observe their counterparts on Wuqiu Islet through telescopes.

But when the 17th-century fisherman Yu Chengde arrived near Wuqiu Islet, all he saw were two desolate islets. No lighthouse, no military camp — ahead lay only the boundless sea, with no further landmarks to serve as his reference.

The small fleet quickly adjusted course and sailed away from Wuqiu Islet. One hour later, even though the sky was cloudless for ten thousand li, Yu Chengde and his men could no longer see any island. Looking out, all around them was the vast, endless ocean, two solitary leaves of boats drifting upon it, stubbornly pressing eastward.

It was now September, with the south wind blowing strong. After the fishing boats adjusted their sails one last moment before the islands vanished from sight, they could only resign themselves to fate.

Under the most ideal conditions, so long as the wind direction held steady, the people on the fishing boats would, at some moment the next day, catch sight of some stretch of the Taiwan Island coastline.

Under the next-best conditions, if the wind shifted once or twice, but not too violently, then Yu Chengde and his men could still rely on experience and memory to adjust the sails and maintain a general heading.

The worst case was chaotic wind. If a few gusts of chaotic wind blew through, fishermen without GPS would instantly lose their heading, and at that point they could only let the boats drift with the waves.

It seemed Heaven's testing of these wretches was not yet over. After Yu Chengde and his men had been adrift at sea for an entire day, around 5 p. m., the sky suddenly changed.

The originally clear sky gradually piled up thick clouds, and the world between heaven and earth slowly darkened. And with it came the boatmen's most dreaded condition — chaotic wind.

In just half an hour, the chaotic wind plunged the people on the two fishing boats into utter despair: between the dark sea and sky, they had lost count of how many times they had shifted the sails; the boats' heading had long since been lost, and the fugitives had now truly become headless flies. 【~… *Better updates, faster updates】

One young fisherman even broke down wailing on the spot.

"Worthless wretch! Your grandfather here isn't dead yet, what are you howling for!" Yu Chengde steadied morale with a timely roar. "The wind and waves aren't strong, and we have silver in hand. No matter where the wind blows us, there will always be a way to survive. What are you panicking for?!"

Yu Chengde had seized the crux of the matter: although they were now lost, the wind and waves at sea were not heavy; they had every chance of being blown to some piece of land. Even if they ended up back in the Great Ming, it didn't matter — they could simply use their silver to resupply near the coast and set out again.

With Yu Chengde's roar, the boatmen's emotions gradually steadied. Next, he gave the order to set full sail and rest — since they were already lost, they might as well run full sail with the wind; perhaps they would sight land even sooner.

Yu Chengde's thinking was sound, but reality was far less rosy: after a day's sailing, the fleet's position had already reached the midline of the strait. When he ordered full sail with the wind, the wind direction had actually already shifted back to the south, but the men aboard could not orient themselves to north, south, east, or west at that moment, and so had no idea from which direction the wind was coming.

The two boats that had originally been traveling west to east were now, under the blowing of the southwest wind, heading north from the strait's midline instead — with a bit of luck, in a couple of days they would sight the islands off the Zhejiang coast on their left; with bad luck, they could theoretically be blown all the way to the coast of the Land of Clubs.

So sometimes, ignorance is a kind of blessing.

Not long after Yu Chengde and his men let themselves go, transforming into sea grass drifting with the wind, it seemed Heaven had finally had its fill of sport, for between the sea and sky, a savior trailing sparks and lightning appeared.

Five Chinese-style ships, lined up in a single file and slanting southward against the wind, met the two northbound fishing boats head-on.

Just as Yu Chengde raised the salvaged brass telescope to observe the black dots approaching from afar, the opposing fleet was likewise observing these two fishing boats.

The Transmigrator fleet, equipped with radar and half-meter-long mounted telescopes, had spotted the fishing boats back when they were spinning in circles on the sea surface like flies.

This fleet had set out from Hangzhou. The two vessels leading were 0-ton passenger-cargo dual-use shallow-draft New Lock Ships being batch-produced at the Taijiang Shipyard, model S0.

These coal-gas motor sailboats, rigged with stiff sails but built on Western-style hulls, were the standard transport ship type designated by the Transmigration Nation. They were gradually replacing the old blessing ships on the Hangzhou route, and in the future, thousand-ton models like the S1000 would also make their appearance.

After observing the two fishing boats across the way, the Transmigrator Commander, who had been bored out of his mind on the flagship, immediately took an interest.

One must understand that ever since the Zheng Clan's annihilation, a certain power base had swept both sides of the strait with dragnets N times. Under the ruthless slaughter of radar, telegraphs, high-speed destroyers, and drones, pirates large and small had either surrendered or become fish food. The entire Fujian coastal area had been turned into a pathological state where doors went unbolted at night — the "Monk Soldiers" under Mobile Corps Commander Cao could already stop children from crying at night.

Under these circumstances, for boats to still dare sail the strait's midline: they had to be out here to turn pirate.

His Excellency the Commander did not consider these two boats draped with fishing nets to be merchant ships, nor did he think they had come to fish the strait's midline, and it never even crossed his mind that these two were heading for Dayuan... After all, they were currently traveling north-south, weren't they? So His Excellency the Commander had by now completed his assessment: these were two small pirate ships that had come out to plunder.

"Move forward to inspect. Soldiers, prepare for contact." Once the order was relayed, the fleet quickly reacted: the flagship engaged its engine and accelerated toward the fishing boats, while the other vessels maintained their original heading.

And upon seeing the strange large ships drawing ever closer, the fishing boats erupted in cheers: Monkey, who had been to Dayuan not long ago, recognized this strange ship type — these were the ships of the Kun People lords!

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