Chapter 486: White Knight and the New Flagship

After the brief three-day holiday, the camp resumed its normal routine.

This was agonizing for Young Master Mei: a young man tasting love for the first time finds separation utterly unbearable.

Fortunately, the Transmigrators had established this training camp precisely to showcase their advanced nature, to awe and influence the natives with an industrialized society, so they did not run it as a closed boot camp.

The trainees' normal schedule was 6 AM to 7 PM; leave could be requested after dinner and on weekends.

During this process, Battalion HQ would also proactively organize trainees to visit the Kiln District arsenal, the Navy's main battleships, the large-scale agricultural demonstration base, and the Central Mountain Range Reservoir Group under construction, among other places, for recreation and study. In short, any project that could demonstrate the "Empire's advanced nature" would be shown to the newcomers.

And so Young Master Mei and Zhu'er settled into the grueling life of working stiffs, stealing a few affectionate moments after the evening dismissal, and only able to go out and have fun on weekends.

But all this was unavoidable. Soldiers defend the nation; wouldn't they later have to garrison the frontiers? Unless reassigned to the rear, this frequency of meetings was already quite good.

Mei Fuxi naturally understood this, but he didn't fret over it too much. What young man in the throes of passionate first love cares about the distant future? Young Master Mei was now even ready to abandon the marriage his father had arranged for him... who knew if Hundred-Household Officer Ma's daughter wasn't an unsightly hag?

I want free love, and here in Yizhou, Grand Commandant Cao's word is law!

And so, after Mei Fuxi arrived in Yizhou, a hurried half-month passed.

It was now June 1630. The temperature in Tainan had risen slightly; the scenery was bright and beautiful — the finest season of the Little Ice Age.

Mei Fuxi also grew increasingly busy.

Because he had received a literary education, he was ahead of most trainees in military knowledge. Subjects requiring literacy — map reading, communications, geography, weapon specifications, and the like — Young Master Mei all picked up very quickly.

This led to him encountering the next advanced subject early: horsemanship.

Most of these trainees from the north would eventually return north to form cavalry units. How a primarily firearm-using cavalry force should fight was a key subject during the training.

On this point, Mei Fuxi also learned very quickly. During the previous King Qin Campaign, he had been responsible for sniping, so he had long since mastered small-scale firearm cavalry tactics.

What he now needed to supplement his learning was how to command large cavalry forces in decisive battle against the enemy on a formal battlefield.

This subject was, in fact, already an officer's course, as it required learning how to command and manage troops. Indeed, barring accidents, Mei Fuxi would be granted a formal Imperial military rank upon completing the training. Moreover, due to his prior military merits, he would skip grades and be commissioned as an Army Lieutenant.

The process of studying cavalry subjects was novel. Mei Fuxi and some companions sat in a screening room and saw the wondrous projection screen for the first time. Accompanied by voice-over and real camera footage, the Empire's young cavalry officers were introduced to a novel tactical concept: the Cavalry Wall Assault.

Watching the images of orderly rows of cavalry raising their sabers high, crashing into the scattered formations of traditional nomadic tribes and winning a resounding victory, Mei Fuxi, amidst his shock, viscerally felt the terror of this tactic.

After putting himself in their shoes and thinking it through, he immediately grasped the tactic's crucial point: soldiers required long-term training and an extremely tenacious fighting will to form such a formation and engage the enemy.

Sure enough, in the subsequent tactics class, the instructor explicitly stated: at present, only their power base was qualified to train in and employ this Riding Wall Tactic.

Unfortunately, however, the Riding Wall Tactic was born at the wrong time in the Transmigrators' plane — with breech-loading rifles, the enemy's primitive cavalry would struggle to even reach them, making a melee formation unnecessary.

Thus, the Riding Wall Tactic held no significant place in the current syllabus; it was the kind of thing one needed to grasp, but with a low priority.

After the morning theory class ended, in the afternoon, Mei Fuxi's role changed — he became a riding instructor.

The training camp housed not only soldiers from the north, but also many southerners. With his superb riding skills, his ability to understand the syllabus, and his knowledge of which skills soldiers needed to train, Mei Fuxi became an assistant instructor once the riding course began.

Being an assistant instructor naturally came with perks: Mei Fuxi received a purebred Arabian Horse.

This pure white Arabian Horse was named Lexus. Tall, robust, and well-proportioned, it was one of the fine breeding horses the Cao Emperor had purchased from later generations.

Last year, after the King's Rescue army set out, high-ranking Imperial figures, realizing that horse breeding also required careful handling, subsequently increased investment in this area. The Army's privately run, unregistered horse farm was thus legitimized, and simultaneously, a breeding model of embryo transfer plus a small number of stud horses followed.

What was now assigned to Mei Fuxi was one of those few imported stud horses. This Lexus had a shoulder height of 1.6 meters alone and ran like lightning. Even coming from the horse-abundant north, Mei Fuxi had never seen such a divinely spirited steed.

Fine horses, fine wine, and beautiful women — these three are naturally what heroes love. Having acquired a fine horse this time, Young Master Mei was naturally in high spirits and needed a bold, gratifying outlet.

Then he crashed and burned.

On Chikan Avenue, under the gaze of countless onlookers, a young knight rode a white horse, a laughing beauty held in his arms, galloping through the bustling streets. Ultimately, the white knight, having finished showing off, was forcibly pulled over by the police and thrown into the camp's detention cell.

Fortunately, Young Master Mei kept his wits in the crisis. As he was being pinned to the ground by many hands, he shouted to Zhu'er: "Quick, go west and seek the Tathagata Buddha" — no, it was "Quick, go to the Special Operations Team and find Chen Erye!"

With Chen Erye intervening, Young Master Mei ultimately had his horse confiscated, spent a few days in detention, and was released after writing a thick stack of profound self-criticisms, suffering no lasting consequences.

But this made him famous. Not just within the training camp — because of the newspapers, a great many people now knew of Young Master Mei's heroic feat, and they raised their thumbs to give the young master a virtual like from afar: What guts! The very spirit of King You of Zhou!

After being released, Young Master Mei suddenly found that wherever he went, he encountered all sorts of meaningful smirks, which troubled him for a time.

But a turning point soon arrived — one day in mid-June, the training camp received a notice to send personnel to the port. They were to join representatives from various Army departments in attending the maiden voyage of the Navy's newest flagship, the "Fuyuan."

The Fuyuan was a sister ship to the recently completed Zhenman. Also an iron-ribbed, wood-hulled, sail-and-steam warship, the Fuyuan, having been built a few months later, had a displacement a full 200 tons greater than the Zhenman, reaching 1,400 tons.

Although its volume was a size larger than the Zhenman, the number of cannons on the Fuyuan did not increase; all the extra tonnage went into self-sustainability.

This was in preparation for the next step: the campaign into the South Seas.

Ever since the Zhenman was successfully launched, the shipyards, having mastered large-vessel construction techniques, had begun the process of building ever-larger ships. The logic was simple: the greater a ship's tonnage, the higher its efficiency. In later generations, the oil tankers roaming the oceans — a hundred thousand tons was nothing, just an ordinary ship.

In this plane, the largest tonnage the shipyards had produced so far was a mere 1,400 tons, which made the Transmigrators frantic with impatience.

One had to realize that the population transport channel to Ming had already opened, and Taiwan's grain had also achieved initial self-sufficiency. Not only that, every half-year from now on, grain represented by potatoes would see massive yield increases, all of which laid the foundation for absorbing large populations.

Therefore, the Empire now urgently needed to build large-tonnage transport ships and mail steamers to conduct trade and rapidly extract populations from the coastal ports of the mainland.

This process had to be accelerated. Because according to current development trends, within a few years, the Transmigrators would be planning to dispatch a fleet across the Pacific Ocean to the Americas. By that time, the transport ships in the fleet would ideally reach the 5,000-ton class to ensure tolerable pitching and safe passage through storms.

Thus, for some time now, all the major shipyards along the Taijiang coast had been building 1,000-ton and 1,500-ton class transport ships. The previous 500 and 800-ton vessels were already being phased out in this rapidly changing society.

As for warships, the third ship of the Zhenman-class had already had its keel laid. This warship's tonnage would be further increased to 1,600 tons, directly rivaling the Sovereign of the Seas, the famous historical ship the British would build a few years later.

Of course, in terms of combat power, the Transmigrators' warships utterly crushed any opponent of this era.

Mei Fuxi, his face full of pride, boarded the towering warship. The gold and blue paint, the enormous White Sails, and those giant cannons gleaming with a metallic sheen — all of it thrilled the young man.

This time he was truly satisfied. He could escape to dodge the limelight, and ride a giant ship on a sightseeing tour — what more could he ask for?

The next moment, amid resounding bugle calls, the fleet set sail.

The Fuyuan's voyage this time was escorted by four escort ships. The fleet's destination was Huangpu New Port, opposite Guangzhou, to relieve the Zhenman, which had been stationed at Guangzhou for some time.

After the mighty fleet departed, it naturally had to cross the strait first and make a circuit around Xiamen. Having acquired a new great killer, they had to let all the various powers know, after all.

So the fleet crossed the strait overnight. Upon reaching the opposite shore, the fleet deliberately made a loop around Xiamen Port. Only after thoroughly flaunting its might did it begin sailing south along the coastline, brushing past numerous merchant ships along the shipping routes.

This way, it wouldn't be long before all the powers along the coast knew that that fellow Cao had cobbled together another giant ship.

Thus the fleet sailed continuously south. Along the way, Mei Fuxi, comparing the view to the map in his mind, took in the southern lands from Xiamen to Hong Kong one by one.

By June 20th, after the fleet passed the waters off Hong Kong, the main event arrived: in the outer sea off Macau, accompanied by two escort ships, the 1,200-ton Zhenman was leisurely circling about.

The next moment, the two giant ships made a triumphant rendezvous. The combined powerful fleet brazenly conducted a round of live-fire exercises in the outer sea off Macau. After this, the two giant ships parted ways, and the Fuyuan swaggered upstream toward the Pearl River.