Dragon Sea Empire

Yin Feng flipped through the books and pen and ink in a hurry, hiding his embarrassment, looking for the appropriate words to say something.After thinking about it, he smiled wryly and said, "You really don't want to go home?"

The girl lowered her head and said in a low voice for a long time: "It is said in the village that I was captured by pirates, and that..."

Yin Feng sighed and said: "Okay. You can stay here for now. You don't need to do any work, just clean it a little bit. Where do you sleep?"

Asking a word, Yin Feng felt even more embarrassed, Wan'er lowered her head again, and both of them blushed a little.Yin Feng is no longer the first brother, but facing this simple and innocent fisherman girl, he still can't help feeling embarrassed.On the pirate ship, in order to save her, Yin Feng overturned a Malay sailor, hugged and pulled her, but Yin Feng didn't feel anything, and always treated her as his younger sister.Now, this fisherman girl who is good at diving has become his maid in front of his eyes, but Yin Feng feels that she has become a stranger.He couldn't help thinking about his marriage, sighed and said, "The east wing is full of sundries. I'll ask Li Bo to send someone to clean it up in the evening. You can rest there."

During the Chinese New Year, Yin Feng, Boss Li and Zeng's family all returned to Quanzhou.

The courtyard of the Zeng family in the northern suburb of Quanzhou was decorated with lanterns and festoons, and it was very lively.Since Zeng Shan, the third son of the Zeng family, passed the provincial examination, he officially became the first candidate in the history of the Zeng family, so this year's Chinese New Year was extraordinarily grand and lively for the Zeng family.When Yin Feng and others arrived at the Zeng family compound, the threshold at the gate had already been raised, and the servants at the gate held their heads high.There are still houses in the compound whose windows are being repaired; Fatty Li told Yin Feng that it was broken by the informant after the provincial examination.The custom of the Ming Dynasty: After the student was elected, the person who reported the letter would smash the hall windows of the house with a stick, and then a group of craftsmen followed and repaired it immediately. This is called "changing the gate".

These craftsmen will always be the patrons of the Zeng family, and different craftsmen often fight for Juren's patrons.

In this dynasty, literature was more important than military affairs, and the imperial examination was the most important. Once someone won the Juren, even if he was not an official, his status was equivalent to that of the county magistrate.Rich men from various families came to seek relatives, some came to recruit son-in-law, and some came to pay homage to teachers.As long as you open your mouth, thousands of taels of silver will be sent, and these are here to find a backer.Zeng's family was originally a family of officials, but Zeng Qi was born as a tribute payer, so he has a bad reputation and is often looked down upon by those officials and gentry who are on the way to the top of the imperial examination.Now that he can finally feel proud and straighten his back to meet people, all the masters and servants of the Zeng family, old and young, are all beaming.

Yin Feng's small courtyard is in the northeast of the Zeng family's compound. It was originally the land of the Zeng family, but now there is a small courtyard with two entrances.Yin Feng placed Magaro and Mai Wan'er in his yard, and then followed Boss Li to visit Zeng Ke, the grandfather of the Zeng family.This will be endless, and the uncle's brothers in each house have to pay respects one by one; the Zeng family's uncle went to sea in the early years and lived a hard life. Now he has rheumatoid arthritis and can't walk anymore.Of his three sons, only Zeng Yue is more capable, and the other two are Lao Tongsheng, who are still working hard for the endless imperial examination career.

The second master, Zeng Qi, never returned to his hometown. His wife received Yin Feng, who might become his mother-in-law;

The third master, Zeng Bai, has been sick all the time. Although his son Zeng Shan passed the exam, he couldn't get up to see others.Therefore, Yin Feng only met Zeng Shan, a new imperial examination candidate.Zeng Shan and Zeng Yue are not the same kind of people at all, Zeng Shan has already taken off the green shirt of a student, and put on a Confucian gown for juren, and his demeanor is very stable.He didn't have Zeng Yue's sincerity and casualness in treating others, but just followed the rules, simply bowed his hands to Yin Feng, and said a few scene words indifferently, his eyes were high and high.

When Yin Feng bowed and saluted countless times, and his waist was a little sore, Zeng Jingshan led a large number of business associates to visit him, and finally the servants invited him to the Zeng family's family banquet.This kind of family banquet pays attention to the orderliness of seniors and young people, strict hierarchy, and there must be no loss of etiquette; Fatty Li has explained and taught him repeatedly beforehand.Yin Feng's food is tasteless, and he is really not used to this kind of slow and rigid banquet scene. He asked Zeng Ke about his overseas experience and talked about his various overseas miracles; Come and go", the mystery of African blacks, the magnificence of the Taj Mahal in India, and the golden mountains in America... Everyone at the banquet was confused and skeptical.

In Yin Feng's original time and space, he would only talk so much when he drank too much.This time I was really impatient with the dull atmosphere, that's why I talked so much.

Afterwards, Zeng Ke said: Yiren Chai Chai!

Fatty Li explained: "He is very stupid!".

Most of the three brothers of the Zeng family still speak Chaozhou dialect, and many of their children already speak the local dialect of Quanzhou, or learn to speak official dialect.Yin Feng smiled and didn't care.

On this day, the day before New Year's Eve, Li Dan and several people came to the door, which made Yin Feng overjoyed.

After Li Dan returned from Manila, the northwest monsoon made his ship suffer a lot, and he had to make a detour along the coast of northern Zhejiang to return.After hearing about Yin Feng's deeds, he was greatly surprised and felt that Yin Feng was worth making friends with.Li Dan introduced the partners behind him: they are all very young "running sea people", including his two sworn brothers: Xu Xinsu and Li Huayu.In Yin Feng's original time and space, Xu Xinsu later became Zheng Zhilong's competitor; while Li Huayu, later a Chinese from Hirado, Japan, was Jia Bidan, who was listed as the former patron of the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company. several.

Now, these two able-bodied young men are not well-known, but they seem to admire Li Dan and are loyal to him.

Li Dan proposed that Yin Feng would be responsible for the supply of raw silk for the coming year, and Li Dan would be responsible for transporting it to Manila for sale, and then share it with Yin Feng.Yin Feng immediately agreed on behalf of the Zeng family. He originally planned to do business in Manila.

Of course, Yin Feng's most important plan is "Tongwa".He launched his own shipbuilding plan: build two ships to sail on the Yuegang-Manila and Yuegang-Japan trade routes respectively.

Originally, his plan also included contacting the Dutch, breaking the grape people's monopoly on Macao's external shipping routes, and gradually increasing the number of ships sailing, using Dongfanlu Port as a base to go to ports in the East and West, and then developing his own ships according to the actual situation. team; but these cannot be fully revealed, because Yin Feng does not want to turn Li Dan into his competitor.This is the advantage of the traveler, who can grasp the general direction of the situation change.Carrying out overseas trade on these routes at the same time is exactly what Li Dan would do later in history, but now Yin Feng has made the same plan nearly 20 years in advance; in the plan, Li Dan is to be his partner of.It would definitely not be a good thing for Yin Feng if he had the ambition to become the king of the sea ahead of time.

The shipbuilding plan startled Li Dan.It's not because building a ship privately may offend the government. Li Dan's family is a typical example of secretly building sea-going ships to go abroad. He was surprised by Yin Feng's ship design drawings.Li Dan, who has a lot of experience and is familiar with various Western ships such as the Spanish Carrack ship type, can tell at a glance that this is a sailing ship combining Chinese and Western:

The overall shape of the ship lowers the ship tower and lowers the center of gravity of the ship. The ratio of length to width of the ship is 4:1. The three masts are constructed of canvas and sail bamboo; the horizontal poles are densely covered with sail bamboo, and the cloth sail supported by many sail bamboo maintains the characteristics of a hard sail.This kind of cloth sail with bamboo, like the sail made of plant leaves, can increase or decrease the area of ​​the sail according to the size of the wind.When encountering a big storm, the cloth sail supported by the sail bamboo can also use its own gravity to lower the sail quickly, which is easy to operate.The inner cabin is divided into three layers by beams and wooden boards, and the beams are more than traditional Chinese ships; the first layer under the deck is a steerage without horizontal compartments, which is planned to be used to store cannons or cargo; the watertight compartments of Chinese ships are retained in the bottom compartment cabin design.

Li Dan, who has been working hard at sea all year round, can easily understand this design drawing, but he doesn't understand the section drawing at all; Yin Feng drew it with homemade charcoal brushes (the brush is really not suitable for drawing drawings) referring to the original laptop computer information. ), it took three days to draw it.The sizes marked above are all converted from the metric system to Chinese sizes, which come from the shipbuilding history of "Cambridge History of Technology".This is also a painful thing for Yin Feng: he was forced by his parents to learn abacus when he was young, and it has come in handy in the process of promoting double-entry bookkeeping for commercial firms; this time drawing design drawings has also come in handy.

At this time, the world shipbuilding industry was still dominated by empiricism. Although mathematics and physics had come in handy in the Western shipbuilding industry, the appearance of ship design drawings had to wait until England in the early 18th century.Strictly speaking, Yin Feng's design drawings are more like sketches, and the size data do not conform to reality; but Yin Feng has no way to make it more detailed and better: he doesn't have any geometric drawing tools, so it would be nice to be able to draw like this.

Li Dan murmured: "I'm afraid this kind of ship cannot be built in Fujian."

Yin Feng quickly asked: "Fujian can even build a five-masted "sealing boat" to Ryukyu. The maximum load of my boat is about [-] catties."

Li Dan shook his head: "This type of ship can only be built by the Spaniards and Portuguese. The shipbuilders in Fujian have never built this type of ship. They don't know the proportions of the parts of the ship, so they can't build it."

Yin Feng carefully pointed to the section on the drawing: "I wrote down the size."

Li Dan took a closer look and said in doubt: "The size of this ship is a secret kept by shipbuilders. How did you know it? This size comes from the actual ship?"

Yin Feng smiled, pretending to be mysterious and said: "Brother Li, don't doubt it, help me to find an old shipwright to take a look, and you will know the clues of this blueprint."

Li Dan looked at Yin Feng, shook his head and said, "If I met you, brother Yin, today, I would definitely not believe you. But this year, oh, it will be last year, and you have proved that you are not a big talker. Hehe, I will find someone for you to see if such a ship can be built."

Li Dan has his own considerations; he is now just a humble private businessman, and his spirit of adventure in overseas trade is much higher than that of the Zeng family.He is also trying to gradually increase his strength, but he has not thought of having his own armed fleet to challenge the maritime power of Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Britain.So he unsuspectingly helped Yin Feng shipbuilding and business.

This made Yin Feng feel uneasy at times, as if he was deliberately using Li Dan.

After Li Dan and others left, Yin Feng carefully put away the blueprints, leaned over his desk and began to calculate the equipment that needed to be placed on the ship.Wan'er's beautiful figure floated in, bringing him tea.

"The manuscripts I asked you to collect, be careful, don't let moths and rats bite." He said while writing without looking up.

"Yeah." Wan'er hummed obediently, then drifted away again.The Dan people were not allowed to read and write, so she couldn't read, and Yin Feng assured her to keep the ghost-like script that was copied from his hand.

In the past few days, he has been writing and drawing late every night, which left a good impression on the Zeng family.The Zeng family also sent him a few servants to clean the house every morning.Then, a certain servant went to the inner house of the Zeng family's compound and reported to the senior members of the Zeng family: "This Mr. Yin doesn't go out every day. He spends all day reading and writing in the study, and he is still thinking about things."

"How does he treat others?" Zeng Ke, the uncle of the Zeng family, asked.

"Treat the little ones very politely, don't need someone to serve them in daily life, and even say 'thank you' to the little ones..."

"Chai Chai!" (Stupid) Zeng Qi's wife said, "Thank you to my slaves, you are really a barbarian from overseas!"

"I think stupid people have good luck. These ghosts are eager to learn and make progress, and their business skills are not bad. The important thing is to be honest and reliable." The boss of the Zeng family nodded: "Although he acts perverted and a little reckless, he is still a good boy. Son-in-law." (Zi-in-law means son-in-law)

Mrs. Zeng Qi hurriedly said: "You have the final say on the affairs of Liang'er."

In fact, Zeng Qi wanted to betroth his concubine's daughter to Yin Feng. The Zeng family didn't have many opponents. After all, they were also businessmen, and they were concubines' runaway sons. The only objector was the newcomer Zeng Shan. He said: "Why should my daughter of an official family marry a businessman!"

Zeng Ke immediately blocked him with one sentence: "Your father and I are both businessmen."