Chapter 374: The Origin of the Official Document

Time rewinds to March of this year.

At that time, the only remaining major pirate force, the Liu Xiang Group, forced by pressure from the north, had no choice but to move south from their old nest in the Chaoshan region, ultimately entrenching themselves around the Pearl River Estuary.

This matter was, in fact, orchestrated entirely by the Transmigrators. The purpose of letting Liu Xiang move south was to divert trouble southward, forcing the Guangzhou officialdom to react under pressure and invite the Cao Clan into Guangdong to suppress the bandits.

So, during this period, what exactly did the Guangzhou officialdom suffer that made them hastily issue official documents to borrow troops for suppression?

Regarding this matter, it was inseparable from Liu Xiang's own efforts and the strong support of the Transmigrators.

Unlike in history, the Liu Xiang Group's occupation of the Pearl River Estuary this time far exceeded the past in both the depth and breadth of its plundering.

Historically, Liu Xiang and the recruited-and-amnestied Zheng Zhilong became sworn enemies, with both sides remaining hostile along the Fujian-Guangdong Coast. It was not until seven years later, after Zheng Zhilong had eliminated the other bandit gangs, that he finally freed his hands to finish off the last pirate, Liu Xiang.

In that process, Guangdong, as Liu Xiang's rear base, did not feel the impact too strongly. Liu Xiang would usually only withdraw to the Chaoshan area during periods of rest and reorganization, at which time he would split his forces to plunder some ships at the Pearl River Estuary and collect some passage fees along the way.

However, compared to Liu Xiang's actions of charging into Fujian, storming Zheng Zhilong's old nest of Min'an County to plunder extensively, leading to "burning, robbery, slaughter, leaving entire neighborhoods empty, townspeople fleeing in disarray, and the provincial capital shaken," these harassing acts in Guangzhou were not very intense.

Because Liu Xiang's strategic focus remained on Fujian: contending for control of trade with Japan, striking Zheng Zhilong's trade ships, plundering the coastal townships of Fujian, and fostering discord between the authorities and Zheng Zhilong... everything was for the trade routes.

But in this plane of the Transmigrators, history has been completely altered.

This time, Liu Xiang, to put it nicely, was forced south by pressure; to put it bluntly, he was driven to the Pearl River Estuary like a stray dog.

From the moment he left Chaoshan, Liu Xiang never had the chance to return to his old nest again — small gunboats flying white sails had already brought the waters around Nan'ao Island into their reconnaissance range, and every few days they would circle outside Shantou Port, with a strong flavor of provocation and suppression.

Under these circumstances, Chief Liu naturally could no longer consider any damn trade with Japan. What lay before him was another very real problem: how to survive?

Although the Pearl River Estuary area is a hub of maritime trade, a place where wealth flows, as Lu Xun put it well: you can't keep shearing the same sheep until it's bald. If a large pirate force entrenched itself long-term at the Pearl River Estuary, extorting merchant ships and going ashore to plunder, then other powers would naturally react to this and make countermeasures.

This included not only the Guangdong garrison forces, the local guard militias, but also the Portuguese in Macau and the other powers that depended on maritime trade. Moreover, the merchants were no fools; knowing there were highwaymen and bandits, they wouldn't go to their deaths. Consequently, the battered maritime trade began to shrink, and the powers behind the merchants began to seethe with resentment.

Therefore, the longer Liu Xiang entrenched himself in a place, the lower the marginal returns, and later on, he would also face strikes from other powers.

Normally, Liu Xiang, the Great Lord Liu, would just pat his behind, pull a few jobs, and leave, avoiding the above situation. Historically, he roamed across the three provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, and Guangdong, and just a casual looting circuit along the way would take a year.

But now he was stuck: north of Chaoshan had been covered in a war fog by a certain power, and he could no longer go there.

What about going south then? Southward was equally a dead end: Vietnam, Khmer, Siam, Luzon, Java... just looking at these names tells you they are barbaric lands occupied by savages.

Even on the verge of collapse, the Ming Continent in the seventeenth century was still the birthplace of wealth, a true treasure trove of products. Merchants from all over the world were trying every means to obtain commodities from the Ming nation — raw silk, porcelain, daily necessities. There were only things they couldn't get, never things they couldn't sell.

In contrast were those surrounding younger brothers, including Japan and those tributary frauds in South Asia. Over the long years, the daily goods markets of all these nations had been dominated by Ming commodities. As for emerging cities like Manila and Batavia, needless to say, could you expect savages who were still running around with their dicks hanging out a few decades ago to produce iron nails and gold-painted fans?

So for a large pirate group like Liu Xiang's, going to the resource-poor South Asia was equivalent to being hit by a dimensionality reduction strike.

In the Ming nation, when Liu Xiang went ashore, he could loot silver, daily necessities, silk, and porcelain from lightly defended township areas; but in South Asia, aside from coconuts and sago, the best goods Malay pirates could routinely loot were brown-skinned female savages with breasts sagging to their bellies.

The bigger the plate, the stronger the parasites. The wealthy coastal areas of the Ming nation could not only sustain Liu Xiang, but historically also sustained many more great pirate gangs.

In South Asia, apart from a handful of cities, to put it bluntly, even if those savage tribes offered no resistance and let Shopkeeper Liu loot them freely, it wouldn't cover his expenses. As for those few cities... blockading Manila Bay could indeed capture merchant ships, but inside the bay, besides merchant ships, there was also the Spanish fleet, and Shopkeeper Liu probably didn't think his life was too long.

Most importantly, there was the channel problem. Pirate groups may seem to come and go like the wind, fighting across a thousand miles, but they still need logistical support. The "nest masters" spread across the Ming coast helped pirates fence stolen goods while providing them with supplies and intelligence; without these nest masters, a pirate group would become deaf and blind. Besides, Shopkeeper Liu couldn't exactly feed his men porcelain to fill their bellies, could he?... And such nest masters did not exist in South Asia.

In short, as the decision-maker in charge of a great gang of ten thousand, after entrenching himself at the Pearl River Estuary, Liu Xiang was actually in a strategic dilemma: going north would teach him a lesson, and going south — even if he could take that many people, which he couldn't — those people would be consumed like sand among the archipelagos, savages, and diseases of South Asia, never again enjoying the comfortable days of the Great Ming.

So, not long after settling in Guangdong, Liu Xiang immediately made a series of decisions: first was downsizing. A large number of outer circle leaders were promptly let go to fend for themselves. Such gatherings and dispersals among pirates were quite normal, so soon more than half of the forces scattered in all directions, each going their own way.

Next, Liu Xiang contacted the Portuguese. Besides hoping for some military support, Liu Xiang also attempted to obtain some commercial cooperation from the Portuguese.

Additionally, Chief Liu was also considering a fallback: the Portuguese and the Spanish, both Catholic, generally had close relations. Liu Xiang believed that if he could establish more connections with the two Iberian nations through the bridge of Macau now, then if it truly came to a day when he had no choice, he would at least have one more path — going to Manila to work for the Spanish — rather than being forced to surrender to those short-haired bandits.

Of course, while seeking a fallback, Liu Xiang was still carrying out his main business: plundering.

Not plundering was not an option. Even after releasing more than half of the peripheral pirates, Liu Xiang still had four thousand men and two hundred ships under his command. The daily supplies consumed by these men and ships were an astronomical figure; without doing business, they would soon exhaust their resources.

Furthermore, the several thousand men who were let go did not simply vanish into thin air. The majority of these people would still form scattered bandit gangs to "do business" nearby. So, for the prefectures and counties of Guangdong, it was as if, on top of the existing bandit problem, a ten-thousand-strong bandit gang had suddenly appeared in a short time, and the situation immediately deteriorated drastically.

Soon, a blizzard of reports and documents flew into the Liangguang Governor's Office and the offices of the Provincial Administration Commissioner, the Surveillance Commissioner, and the Regional Commander. These documents included reports from local prefecture and county officials, as well as letters of complaint from sea merchants and the great threshold families behind them. The content was remarkably consistent: Liu Xiang was raiding the prefectures and counties, and also setting up checkpoints on the sea routes to take a cut, causing the common people everywhere to suffer and merchants to cry out in misery, imploring the various bigwigs to quickly devise a solution.

However, the bigwigs had no damn solution. The Liangguang Governor's Office, besides strictly ordering the various guard posts to strengthen defenses and add beacon towers and watch posts, could not come up with any good ideas.

As for Liu Xiang setting up checkpoints on the open sea to take a cut... let him be. Anyway, without Liu Xiang at the Pearl River Estuary, there would be Wang Xiang and Ma Xiang. Given the strength of the imperial court's paltry water army, it was better to "watch them defeat themselves."

But this time, Liu Xiang could not "defeat himself," because the path north had been sealed by the short-haired bandits, and Chief Liu did not want to go south. Unable to even stay in their old nest of Chaoshan, the Liu Xiang Group soon brought far more plundering incidents to Guangdong than in the same period in history.

Naturally, this could not have happened without the instigation of a certain malicious regime: the actions of the Liu Xiang Gang at the Pearl River Estuary only brought a scale effect, but to make the Guangdong officialdom feel the word "pain," one had to look to the truly remarkable figures.

... The "Debon" special pirate detachment, originally operating along the Zhejiang coast to strike hostile gentry trade routes, had been transferred to the Pearl River area by the Intelligence Bureau before this. Since the tribute gifts they offered were quite generous, the detachment smoothly joined the great gang at the first moment after Chief Liu arrived in Guangdong.

That pirate detachment originally led by Chen Erye as its Shopkeeper, though still under Comrade Ma Liu as Shopkeeper, had long since replaced its crew and ships several times over, and the fleet's strength could be said to have been completely reborn.

After being attached under Grand Steward Liu's command this time, the Debon detachment began precision strikes full of technological content — special agents from the Guangdong Station would notify the detachment by telegram of the travel information of certain specific sea vessels, and then these vessels would be precisely intercepted, regardless of day or night, regardless of location, even being robbed before leaving the Pearl River.

The robbed sea vessels naturally met no good end. Their cargo was looted, the ships were towed away or scuttled as a certainty, and the ferocious "pirates under Liu Xiang's command" might even chop up a couple of sea merchants to go with their wine.

After this, the remaining unlucky survivors would be released. Then the shopkeeper of the commercial firm would soon learn the news, and next, the major shareholders of the firm would also receive the bad tidings — these major shareholders were, without exception, officials and gentry within Guangzhou City.

To assemble the cargo on a single sea vessel, it was impossible without tens or hundreds of thousands of taels of silver, so every time the detachment easily pulled off a job, some "powerful figure" in Guangzhou City would be stricken with heart-wrenching pain.

Thus, after Chief Liu's large-scale operations and the detachment's precision strikes had been going on simultaneously for several months, Comrade Wang Zunde, "Governor-General of Liangguang Military Affairs, Concurrently Managing Provisions, Supervising the Salt Law, and Concurrently Governor of Guangdong, Ministry of War Right Vice Minister, and Right Assistant Censor-in-Chief of the Chief Surveillance Bureau," under pressure from countless subordinate officials and the city's gentry, finally could no longer sit still.