Chapter 953: The Celestial Empire Too Close, Heaven Too Far (Seeking Subscriptions)

The surface of the North Pacific can only be described as vast and boundless. Even seafaring sons like Chen Shangchuan and Shi Lang, who practically made the sea their home, were seeing such an endlessly wide ocean for the first time. The Henan, an eight-hundred-ton ship, was so tiny on this deep-blue, empty sea that it could not even count as a single leaf of a boat — it was a mere hair's-breadth speck of existence.

Unlike the Northern, Eastern, and Southern Seas, where islands and large stretches of land could be seen from time to time, the North Pacific seemed to hold only water and no earth. After the ship left the coastal waters of Japan, it had already run before the wind on the open ocean for a full forty-one days without sighting so much as a single reef. The Henan seemed to have entered a world of water. Had they not long since obtained sea charts from the Spanish, and had they not long since learned in the naval academy about the world they lived in, Chen Shangchuan and Shi Lang might well have suspected they were sailing toward the edge of the world!

After watching seascapes for more than a month straight, the two old sailors Chen Shangchuan and Shi Lang were both a little sick of it. So outside their routine inspections, they could not be bothered to go on deck to look at the sea, and instead stayed in the sterncastle studying the sea charts obtained from Emperor Zhu and the map of the west coast of the New World. The northwestern part of the New World west-coast map had been drawn by Emperor Zhu from memory. He was very familiar with the area around the Vancouver of later ages and knew it was a good place! Many of his friends, classmates, and superiors from his previous life had all fled there, so he had long wanted to stake out this piece of land — wouldn't it be convenient for everyone to flee there later?

On the map processed by Emperor Zhu, the location of the America Prefecture had already been marked — it was the area of the later Vancouver and Seattle, and that was the destination of the Henan on this voyage.

Judging from the map, the America Prefecture lay in an enormous bay about 1,500 li north of New Spain. The terrain of this bay was extremely peculiar: though huge, it was not open, because in the middle of the bay lay a long, strip-shaped island, and the island almost filled the entire bay. If the actual terrain really matched what was drawn on the map, then the America Prefecture truly was a foundational land bestowed by Heaven!

As long as a few batteries were built on both sides of the waterway between this large island and the southern shore of the bay, it should be possible to effectively seal off the entrance to this enormous bay. The world inside the entrance would be the Ming's foundation in the New World!

And within this bay, not only was the area immense, but the distances from north to south and east to west were very great. The coastline inside the bay was very long — at least over a thousand li. Transportation there would be simply too convenient, almost comparable to Jiangnan!

The only unknowns now were what the climate was like there, whether the land was fertile, how large the plains were, and whether there was enough timber and minerals. If there was timber, were there good fur-bearing animals living in the forests? If it had all of that, could such a fine place really be unclaimed?

If it truly was unclaimed, that would be wonderful!

Just as Chen Shangchuan and Shi Lang were staring at the not-very-accurate map and speculating wildly, the sound of hurried footsteps rang out, followed by a loud report.

"Captain, First Mate — land! Land has been sighted! A huge stretch of land!"

A huge stretch of land!

Was that the New World? They had finally arrived!

Chen Shangchuan and Shi Lang raised their heads and glanced at each other, each seeing a face too excited to contain itself.

"Come on, let's go take a look!" Chen Shangchuan said, already striding toward the cabin door.

Shi Lang hurried after him, and the two left the cabin together, then climbed the stairs to the sterncastle. By this time, quite a few sailors and passengers had already gathered on the sterncastle, the main deck, and the forecastle, all straining their necks to gaze eastward.

Chen Shangchuan and Shi Lang also craned their necks to look. What met their eyes was the hazy outline of mountains and land in the distance!

Liu Liang, one of the thirty settlers, also came out of the cabin at this time and went up on deck, leading his wife Liangzi by the hand. This short Japanese woman had not originally been called Liangzi — the name Liangzi had been given to her by Xu Kan, the headman of Peanut Settlement.

This Xu Kan had also served in the Green Standard Army, but he was better than Liu Liang at reading which way the wind blew. During those years of Ming-Qing confrontation, he had keenly perceived the trend of Ming rising and Qing falling, so he had defected with his horses, leading two horses over to the Ming side and becoming a glorious Ming cavalryman. Relying on his merits and toils, he had worked his way up to Squad Leader. But his origins were always a stain, and he had no great abilities, so rising further was difficult.

Just as he was mulling over whether to retire with the rank of Squad Leader, word suddenly came down from above that they were recruiting "overseas settlement headmen." The requirements were a rough command of letters, proficiency in infantry and cavalry, and the ability to use firearms, long spears, bows and arrows, saber and shield, javelins, and various other weapons. Oh, and one had to be unmarried, and one's rank could not be higher than Platoon Leader.

There were quite a few requirements, but no demands whatsoever were made regarding academic background. Moreover, anyone selected would immediately be promoted three ranks and would receive five hundred taels of silver as family-establishment money. Because overseas settlement headmen needed to be stationed overseas for long periods, they had to bring their wives with them, which was why a sum of family-establishment money was issued.

Xu Kan found that he actually met all the conditions, so he went and signed up, and was smoothly selected. He underwent the corresponding training, and then was also "issued" a wife! Not a Japanese woman, but a dependent of a traitor captured during the Northern Expedition — a teenage girl, clean and neat in appearance, well-mannered and literate, who now also came out of the cabin together with Xu Kan.

Chen Shangchuan, Shi Lang, Xu Kan, Madam Xu, Liu Liang, Liangzi, and other immigrants from the Divine Continent and Japan all surged onto the deck, gazing eastward, watching the land of the American continent draw nearer and nearer, clearer and clearer!

"Admiral! The lookout has sighted land. I believe we have reached the Philippine Islands!"

When the report from Captain Barbosa, commander of the large armed galleon New Spain, rang out, Admiral García de Toledo y Mendoza, commander of the Spanish Kingdom's Eastern Fleet, was leafing through the Report on the Situation in the Far East jointly written by Caballero and de Velasco.

This report had reached García's hands only two months earlier, when the fleet under his command had just arrived at the port of San Diego.

And what this report described was the situation in the Far East from about six or seven months earlier — and the situation was extremely grim!

The Spanish Empire's hegemony in the Pacific was being challenged by the Great Ming Empire!

The Great Ming Empire, that ancient Eastern nation, had undergone earth-shaking upheavals over the past dozen or so years!

The invasion of the northern Tartars and large-scale internal uprisings had once pushed the Ming to the brink of collapse, but at the same time they had awakened this slumbering Eastern giant!

After losing vast stretches of territory in the north, the Ming Empire had begun truly thorough reforms!

First, it eliminated many fatal abuses and rebuilt the empire's finances, raising fiscal revenue tenfold in a very short time, and without placing any additional burden on ordinary people and merchants — this was simply a fiscal miracle!

Then, the Great Ming Empire began earnestly studying Western military technology. It hired excellent officers from Holland, Portugal, and France, and established a massive European-style army and a European-style navy that was not large but was still very difficult to deal with.

At the same time, they opened their doors wide, welcoming merchants and artisans from all over the world, and established a fairly complete financial system and commercial legal system.

After this series of reforms, the once-dying empire had been completely renewed. It defeated the northern Tartars, restored the empire's former glory, and once again became the so-called Celestial Empire, the supreme state of the Far Eastern world. The Ming's position in the Far Eastern world was equivalent to Rome's position in Europe.

Therefore, the Ming's revival in the Far East was equivalent to Rome's revival in Europe!

Considering that the Ming's population and economic scale were nearly comparable to the total of all of Europe, the Spanish Empire had to take this enormous, wealthy, powerful, and quite progressive ancient nation seriously.

Any notion of conquering the Great Ming Empire was utterly unrealistic.