Chapter 1488: Has Li Jicheng Gone Mad?

"What? What... he, he actually wants my grandson? Has he gone mad?"

After hearing Wei Qingshan's report, Zhu Cizhao was stunned for a long while.

What's wrong with this Li Jicheng? What gives him the right to keep the Great Ming out of the Indian Ocean? Besides, the Great Ming never stopped him from plundering India! He's raided the place several times over the past two years — did the Great Ming interfere? Did the Great Ming's Malacca Fleet sortie? None of that! The Great Ming didn't even impose an embargo on Burma, nor launch any offensive from the Yunnan direction.

It was entirely an attitude of "you grab what you want, we won't lift a finger."

Even when Li Jicheng's troops came to New Ryukyu Island to demand money, Zhu Cizhao paid up. Of course, he gave little and earned much — on balance it was profitable, quite profitable, so he didn't summon the Malacca Fleet and ruin everyone's money-making.

Moreover, in Zhu Cizhao's view, Li Jicheng's navy wasn't all that formidable. Most of the oar-and-sail vessels were junk captured from the Kingdom of Arakan (built under the supervision of Portuguese craftsmen), and the sailors manning them were all foreigners. The senior sailors were either Dutch, Persian, Portuguese, or some other Westerners; the junior sailors were either Arakanese or Chittagonian. Only the "boarding troops" (who also kept the sailors from mutinying) were the Shun's own men.

As for those new "Sea Roving King" type ships, they were nothing more than Dutch engineers copying the Ottoman Empire's oar-sail gunboats, then building them for Li Jicheng at the Mrauk U shipyard (which the Portuguese had helped Arakan set up) — warships that rampaged along the Indian and Burmese coasts. The ships weren't bad, but set beside the Great Ming's "Malacca type," they weren't worth looking at — the Malacca type had far greater tonnage, more cannons, and all of them were longer-ranged 12-catty long guns (cannons). If the two met at sea, the "Malacca type" had an overwhelming chance of victory.

With a navy of this caliber, he still dares to challenge the Great Ming Celestial Dynasty — if that isn't madness, what is?

Zhu Cizhao still wouldn't give up. "Shopkeeper Wei, did you tell him that We can pay?"

"I did — he refused!" Wei Qingmu spread his hands. "He wouldn't even name a price. He just wants the Prince to hand over his grandson!"

"Hmph!" Zhu Cizhao's face had turned livid — that grandson was the old man's very lifeblood!

He wasn't Zhu Cilang or Zhu Cijiong, with sons in droves and grandsons too many to remember by name. He had only that one grandson. His only heir!

"Fire the rockets, call for help!" Zhu Cizhao said with a dark face. "If We don't show Our might, that Li fellow truly won't know how formidable We are!"

Zhu Cizhao was formidable, of course — the Western Army had five thousand warriors! And he also had the authority to mobilize the armies of the twelve South Seas principalities and the Kingdom of Siam. With full mobilization, he could field twenty or thirty thousand men — not a large number, but these were elite troops already adapted to campaigning in the South Seas.

Fighting in the South Seas isn't just about daring to charge hard, having superb martial skill, and being well-versed in battle formations. Those things matter, of course, but nothing matters more than epidemic prevention! Especially when campaigning in the South Seas during the rainy season (which it was now), the chance of disease breaking out in the army was enormous — once an epidemic spread, it could lay low an army of tens of thousands.

The Ming Western Army, having fought long campaigns in the South Seas and suffered enough from epidemics, had long since worked out a set of disease-prevention measures. Sometimes they would even "release poison" on the enemy. Once a battle dragged on, "General Plague" would stand on their side.

Furthermore, Temasek Island also had the powerful Malacca Fleet!

"Boom—boom—boom—"

As a dozen-odd Indian rockets (a type of large rocket imported from India that had played no small role in South Seas campaigns, useful for frightening the enemy's war elephants) were launched into the sky and then burst open with a roar, they turned into balls of fire in the air.

"One, two, three, four..."

Li Jicheng, who had climbed a height outside New Shuri City, watched the rockets bursting endlessly in the sky. At first he counted them, but when he saw the sky exploding without end, he stopped counting and turned to the military advisor at his side, Song Yaowen: "Looks like I've really riled Zhu Cizhao this time. If we can't take this one, it'll be hard to face each other later!"

Song Yaowen laughed: "We'll take it for sure. The Dutch naval admiral De Ruyter has already guaranteed it to me — all we need to do is lure the Malacca Fleet out!"

"Imperial Lord, if we're going to invade India in force, we can't look after the front and ignore the rear. We must pin the Ming army down at Malacca. Otherwise, while we're pushing into India up front, they'll stab Burma in the back — and we'd end up as the vanguard clearing the path for someone else."

So Li Jicheng's eastern expedition was nothing but a decoy!

His real objective was still to invade India — though he had already invaded several times and gained a small foothold, he had not yet fulfilled his long-cherished wish of becoming an Indian.

Due to his repeated invasions of India, Li Jicheng had gradually come to love India's traditional culture — the caste system was truly so reasonable! Whoever invaded could directly ride on the backs of India's impoverished masses and lord it over them. And the toiling masses over in India accepted this too — if an invader didn't let them toil like oxen and horses, they wouldn't even agree to it.

The Shun dynasty had suffered from this in its previous incursions. They tried to win over India's poor — proclaiming that when the Roving King came, castes would be abolished and so on. In the end, no one responded, and they were treated as great villains — look, they won't even let people be untouchables anymore. How utterly wicked.

Later, having become well acquainted with the plundered Indian beauties in his harem (all high-caste), he truly came to understand India's traditional culture. Li Jicheng was now very confident about being a good Indian.

"You're right." Li Jicheng narrowed his eyes. "Military Advisor, do you think the Dutch are truly reliable? Over in Batavia, there are also some Dutchmen siding with the Ming!"

"Just hedging their bets," Song Yaowen said with a smile. "The Portuguese are probably playing the same game!"

Li Jicheng snorted: "Each one craftier than the last. Military Advisor, when can we board ship and leave?"

"In ten days," Song Yaowen said. "With ten days, we can pile up the fortifications. Then Dutch merchant ships will come to take the Imperial Lord away first, while I remain behind with the fleet to await the Ming's Malacca Fleet."

Li Jicheng nodded. "Good. Military Advisor, be careful — don't let the Ming navy sink your ships."

"No problem," Song Yaowen laughed. "We have plenty of ships. The Sea Roving King type is fast — if anyone's going to die, it'll be those Arakanese!"

Temasek Island. The South Seas' Temasek Island, headquarters of the Great Ming Navy's Malacca Fleet.

"What? Xianwu, what did you say? Li Jicheng is personally invading New Ryukyu? And he wants to draw the line at the western mouth of Malacca, barring us from the Lesser Western Ocean? And he wants Prince Luo to hand over his grandson as a hostage... Has he fallen ill and lost his wits? How could he make such absurd demands?"

The speaker was Shi Lang, admiral of the Malacca Fleet. Since the Lesser Western Ocean Fleet was still only in preparation and not yet formally established, responsibility for the Great Ming's Lesser Western Ocean maritime affairs still rested with Malacca Fleet Admiral Shi Lang. He and Western Army Military Commissioner Zhu Cizhao divided the duties — one overseeing the sea, the other the land — and were the Great Ming's two chief officers in the Indian Ocean theater.

And the Shun state was one of the Great Ming's principal adversaries in the Indian Ocean theater — in that direction, the Great Ming's ally was the Timurid Empire of India, while its enemies were French India, the Dutch India Trading Company, and the Shun Empire.

In addition, Britain and Portugal had long remained neutral — until recently, when Portugal split because its king fled to Goa. Goa was now controlled by the Portuguese royalist faction, while Portugal's other outposts in the Indian Ocean were controlled by the "Regency faction."

Having long overseen Indian Ocean affairs, Shi Lang — who had served as Malacca Fleet admiral for many years — had some understanding of the Shun's internal situation. He knew about Li Jicheng's illness and the killing of Sun Kewang and his daughter. And he also knew that Zhu Cizhao's New Ryukyu Island always paid to avoid disaster.

So when he learned from Wang Jinbao, chief of staff of the Western Army, who had come from Nakhon Si Thammarat, about Li Jicheng's massive military pressure and the conditions he had set, his first thought was also that Li Jicheng had gone mad!

(End of Chapter)