Chapter 98: A Good Merchant Who Takes Good Faith as His Foundation (Seeking Favorites, Seeking Recommendations)

Old Fourth Tang was, after all, a seasoned junior officer who had seen plenty of battles, and he knew how to command. At his order, three or four hundred men threw themselves flat in the mud. The sand-ship gang's turtledove-foot arquebuses truly could not hit them then. Since they could not hit them, naturally they stopped firing.

When Old Fourth Tang saw that the other side had ceased fire, he opened his mouth and yelled: "I am a Battalion Commander under General Tang, the Resolute General of the Tianjin Guard of the Great Shun dynasty, patrolling the river by order! Whose side are you lot working for? Do you not know that the whole realm now belongs to the Roving King?"

He had been shot at today and lost seven or eight brothers, so he had to ask the other side's name, did he not? Those sand ships flew no banner — he did not even know whose men they were!

Shen Tingyang, peering out from behind a firing port, heard Old Fourth Tang's shout and answered at once. He spoke neither in the crisp, standard official tongue nor in his native Chongming dialect, but in official speech with a Quanzhou accent.

"Listen, you men on shore! We are merchants of the Zheng family of Anping. Elder Brother Yiguan sent us to carry grain for the Great Ming court…"

Old Fourth Tang did not understand. He asked those around him: "What the hell is he saying? Anybody understand?"

Someone beside him actually did understand, and explained: "Company Commander, they seem to be merchant ships of some Zheng family of Anping, sent by a man called Elder Brother Yiguan to carry grain for the court — no, for the Zhu traitor."

"His mother's — the Zhu traitor has already lost his kingdom…" Old Fourth Tang cursed and then spoke again: "Listen, you men on the ships! The Ming dynasty is already destroyed. The realm now belongs to the Great Shun. If you merchants have any sense, come ashore at once and offer up all the grain on your ships to the Great Shun! I will spare your lives!"

"We know Beijing has fallen to the roving bandits, but Tianjin is still in the court's hands." Shen Tingyang continued to answer in Quanzhou-accented official speech. "We are merchants, and merchants must take good faith as their foundation. Since we have taken the court's money, we must deliver the grain to Tianjin…"

"Damn it," Old Fourth Tang said, and once he understood the other's meaning, he let out another national curse. "What do you mean, good faith as the foundation? These days even officials shift allegiance from morning to night, and a broken-down merchant still talks about good faith… If you do not come over, I will go back and report to the Roving King!"

"Do as you please!" Shen Tingyang said with a solemn face. "Elder Brother Yiguan is a good merchant who takes good faith as his foundation. He will never go back on what he has promised a client!"

"Damn it, you will weep for this!" Old Fourth Tang was furious. This year was truly an unlucky one. He had followed Tang Tong and thrown in with Li Zicheng, who worked men for nothing, and now he had run into a bunch of unreasonable good-faith merchants… Good faith, my ass! What good-faith merchant ever killed people with arquebuses? These fellows were clearly no good people — they had to be sea bandits!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Just as Old Fourth Tang was seething, the arquebuses fired again. But this time it was not Shen Tingyang's own ship that opened fire — it was the sand ships following behind. More than a hundred vessels were proceeding in single file, and every ship, as it passed the place where Old Fourth Tang and his men lay, let off twenty or thirty shots with a crackle and pop. Three or four hundred men could only lie flat in the icy mud, not daring to rise. Who knew whether they would catch cold?

…

"The Zheng family of Anping, Elder Brother Yiguan… what sort of merchants are they? How can they not fear our Great Shun army?"

Outside the city of the Tianjin Guard, in the main army tent of the Shun forces, Li Guo listened to Old Fourth Tang's report with an equally baffled expression.

Strange things happen every year, but this year they were especially plentiful!

Li Guo had been a rebel for over ten years, and this was the first time he had ever met merchants who did not fear rebels! It was one thing for government troops not to fear roving bandits, but how could merchants not fear them either? Could it be that after entering Beijing and turning from rebels into government troops, the intimidating power of the "Roving" banner had failed?

"My lord, this subordinate has heard of the Zheng family of Anping."

The speaker was Tang Tong. If the Tianjin Circuit Intendant Yuan Yuzong and the Governor's aide Yang Weihan were still here, they would certainly have guessed that the ones coming to the Tianjin Guard were Shen Tingyang's sand-ship gang. But those two had just been summoned to Beijing by Li Zicheng — Li Zicheng wanted to find out whether the Zhu Cilang and Wu Sangui inside the Tianjin Guard city were real or fake, so he had called them away. And Tang Tong, not knowing the situation, truly believed that Zheng Zhilong's men had come.

"What sort of merchants are they?" Li Guo asked.

"They are no proper merchants — they are sea bandits." Tang Tong shook his head. "Their leader is surnamed Zheng, called Zheng Yiguan, also known as Zheng Zhilong. He was originally a great pirate of the southern seas! In the first year of Chongzhen he was recruited by the Fujian Governor Xiong Wencan and became a Mobile Corps Commander of coastal defense. Later, because of his repeated merits in suppressing bandits at sea, he rose steadily in rank until he became Regional Commander of Fujian."

"What? A fine great pirate, and he just surrendered to the Zhu traitor and became a running dog like that? Could he not win, or what?" Li Guo found it utterly incomprehensible. "And he even let that fool of a Supreme Commander Xiong Wencan recruit him… Could he not have faked surrender?"

"It was not that he could not win," Tang Tong said. "On the southeastern seas, the Yiguan faction has always been the strongest. It is said they possess many great Western ships, with powerful cannon and sturdy hulls. The Zhu traitor's navy was no match for them at all… Why he was willing to become the Zhu traitor's running dog, this subordinate does not understand either.

But after Zheng Yiguan threw in with the Zhu traitor, he was indeed utterly loyal — it was no feigned surrender. Within a few years, Zheng Yiguan pacified the Guangdong bandits, campaigned against the wild Li, repelled the Dutch barbarians who invaded Xiamen, and destroyed the great sea pirate Liu Xiang. The Fujian Governor of the time memorialized the court on this account: 'Zhilong has truly achieved extraordinary merit, capturing the vile wretches — something unseen on the seas in over ten years.'"

"He really does work hard for them!" Li Guo rolled his eyes. "How much money does the Zhu traitor emperor give this Zheng fellow?"

"Not a single coin," Tang Tong said, shaking his head. "Zheng Yiguan's naval force does not even take pay from the Zhu traitor. Zheng Yiguan builds and maintains it himself, and the pay and provisions are quite generous…"

Li Guo could hardly believe his ears. He stared wide-eyed and said: "What? The Zhu traitor still has loyal subjects like that?"

Tang Tong smiled. "My lord, Zheng Yiguan is nothing more than a profit-seeking merchant. That he is willing to work so hard for the Zhu traitor must mean there is profit in it somewhere — we simply do not know where the profit lies. Once we figure that out, we can simply entice him to come over."

Li Guo waved his hand. "That is for later… What do we do now? The Zhu traitor's emperor and Crown Prince will not slip away by ship, will they?"

"They cannot escape," Tang Tong said. "These past few days the wind has been from the southeast, and quite strong. Ships coming from Dagu have the wind behind them, but to go to Dagu would be to go against the wind. And even if they reached Dagu, with the wind direction wrong they could not put out to sea."

"But the wind will not keep blowing forever!" Li Guo frowned deeply. "Once the wind and rain stop, the Zhu traitor will go downstream with the current… What is to be done?"

"My lord, do not worry. Li Yan has come to help the general smash the Zhu traitor!"

Li Guo's words had barely faded when the curtain of the main army tent was lifted, and at the same time a man's voice with a Henan accent rang out. Then a man and a woman walked in. The woman was dressed all in red, alluring as spring flowers in full bloom, ripe as a peach, and she was none other than the famous woman general of the Roving King's army, Red Lady. The man with her was Li Yan.

Seeing Li Yan and Red Lady arrive, Li Guo's furrowed brow smoothed at once, and he laughed heartily: "I just received the field report that you two and Chen Yongfu were leading troops to reinforce us — I did not expect you to arrive so quickly… Now that you are here, I am no longer worried about taking the Tianjin Guard!"

…

"Chief Helmsman, there is something off about this Tianjin Guard!"

"What is off about it?"

"It is thick with killing intent… Does the Chief Helmsman not feel it?"

"Mm, a little. In such heavy rain there are still soldiers patrolling back and forth… Someone is coming. The one in the lead looks like a man of the Embroidered Uniform Guard. Are you ready?"

"It is ready."

"Hand it over."

Shen Tingyang, the loyal merchant who took good faith as his foundation and Chief Helmsman of the sand-ship gang, reached out and took a document from a steward beside him. It was an order from the Army-Soothing Crown Prince Zhu Cilang, and tucked inside the document was a gold leaf.

Walking toward Chief Helmsman Shen was Ren Yizhou, a Chiliarch of the Northern Pacification Office of the Embroidered Uniform Guard under the Grand Marshal's Office, along with a dozen or so of his men. He was a "loyal subject" who had gone over to Zhu Cilang during the Incident at the Gate of Imperial Supremacy. At that time he had been a Centurion; now he had been promoted to Chiliarch. He was one of the ten Chiliarchs under the reorganized Northern Pacification Office (his rank was Chiliarch, though the men under his command numbered only a little over a hundred), charged specifically with keeping order at the river docks of the Tianjin Guard.

"Shen Tingyang, Instructor of the Imperial Academy, manager of sea transport and Liaodong supply affairs, has come to the Tianjin Guard by order." Smiling, Shen Tingyang handed the order with the gold leaf tucked inside to Ren Yizhou, who had walked up to him.

Ren Yizhou opened the order, saw the gold leaf inside, then reached out with his fingers, pinched the gold leaf — which weighed at least one tael — and handed it back to Shen Tingyang with a bitter smile. "Instructor Shen, I cannot take your gold leaf."

(End of Chapter)