Chapter 46: Lingao Cape

If anything would make Lingao County famous in this timespace, it was the cape that bore its name. The promontory had always been a strategic point on Hainan Island—a fact Yu Eshui had emphasized during the pre-departure intelligence briefing. Since the Yuan Dynasty, a beacon tower had stood watch over these waters. The Ming had established the Bopu Patrol Office here to examine and interrogate travelers, and during the Zhengde era, thirty archers and three patrol boats had been stationed at this post. By the end of the Wanli era, only twelve archers remained—presumably with a single small boat at most. Still, the local fishermen had long used this place as a typhoon shelter, so they might well encounter fishing vessels.

Beiwei scanned the terrain ahead from the bow with practiced care. Three months before D-Day, members of the Military Group had conducted a reconnaissance trip to Hainan in the twenty-first-century timespace. Their focus had been the planned landing sites: Lingao Cape and Bopu Port as the primary target, with Maniao Bay, Hongpai Bay, and Houshui Bay as alternates. As leader of the landing recon team, Beiwei had not only examined every feature of the terrain during that trip but had subsequently reviewed the local topography multiple times from archived materials. He was determined to be absolutely certain of what awaited them.

The eastern sky was whitening toward dawn. Through his binoculars, everything on shore resolved into crystal clarity. The motorboat had entered a broad bay that the charts identified as Longhao Bay, southwest of Lingao Cape—a calm stretch of water where fish schools often came to rest, one of Lingao's most important fishing grounds.

Beiwei swept his binoculars across the shoreline and soon spotted a familiar triangular cape extending roughly one kilometer from northwest to southeast. There was no mistake—this was Lingao Cape.

Here, the cape formed a natural breakwater stretching 1.5 kilometers long and 500 meters wide. The center of the causeway was entirely sand washed up by the sea, crystal white, forming a bright sandy path. In the twenty-first century, the cape bore stone bunkers, watchtowers, and a lighthouse built by the Qing customs office in the nineteenth year of Guangxu—1893. In this timespace, the causeway lay empty and bare, though the overall landform differed little from what Beiwei remembered.

"Slow down," he called out. "Watch the water below."

Beyond the portion visible above the surface, Lingao Cape extended considerably underwater. The motorboat's draft was negligible, but scraping bottom on a reef would still prove costly.

The seawater was so clear that the white sand between submerged rocks was almost distinctly visible. The boat passed Lingao Cape and entered Changgong Bay. Even without binoculars, the crew could see Bopu Cape extending to the southeast. Changgong Bay was thus embraced by two promontories—about two kilometers wide, the inner waters calm as glass, the sand bright, the water transparent. Only tiny white waves rolled lazily at the shore.

"I really want to swim here," someone said.

"We should build a sanatorium here someday!"

Everyone laughed, though the suggestion felt somewhat absurd—like impoverished people discussing what they'd do once they became rich.

Beiwei warned the helmsman not to venture too deep into the bay. An arrow flying their way would be no joke.

"Captain, what's that mountain?" Li Jun pointed at an enormous oval shape emerging from the greenery on distant Bopu Cape.

"That's not a mountain. It's the beacon tower."

"The beacon tower is that big?!" Everyone on the boat was amazed. Their mental image of beacon towers came from the sand-worn earthen platforms scattered along the Silk Road. But this one would still stand sixteen meters high after four hundred years. Now, Beiwei estimated it at over twenty meters, with forty-five-degree slopes—at first glance, it resembled one of the small hills common in hilly terrain. The entire structure was built of laid stone blocks with a core of rammed earth, completely different from the twenty-first-century ruins overgrown with weeds and trees.

"Everyone stay alert! There are Ming soldiers stationed here. Pull down your face shields!"

At the command, everyone lowered the visors on their riot helmets. The motorboat quickly rounded Bopu Cape and entered the southeastern waters.

"Bopu Port!"

They had reached the estuary of the Wenlan River, Lingao County's largest waterway. Less than ninety kilometers in total length, the river formed a broad harbor here, its mouth facing north. The shadowy dark island in the distance was Red Stone Island—Bopu Port's eastern boundary.

"Reduce speed! Enter the harbor. Alert status!"

The harbor beach opposite Red Stone Island was silty sand, covered with lush mangroves. In some places, burnt and logged patches stood out starkly against the green. Behind the mangroves stretched undulating tableland—not high, with uneven crests. On the harbor's south side, the environment was completely different: overgrown weeds and what appeared to be the ruins of buildings.

The beach was littered with withered seaweed and many uprooted trees—evidence of a recent typhoon. One important reason for choosing to land after the ninth lunar month was precisely to avoid the typhoons and storm surges that swept through around the fifteenth of the eighth month every year.

The harbor interior was quite open, with extensive mangroves growing near the water and tidal flats crisscrossing everywhere. Various waterbirds circled and landed overhead. The water ran murky here—clearly a muddy bottom. The shore lay flat with only slight undulation. But something was wrong: not a single fishing boat was visible through the binoculars.

"This place is really desolate!" someone exclaimed.

"This is what the Committee called a 'well-developed county'? What are undeveloped places then—virgin forest?"

Beiwei shot an annoyed glance at the speaker. Civilian life had eroded basic military discipline.

Though Bopu was called Hainan's gateway, pirates raiding Qiongbei had long used it as a shortcut. Over time, except for some Danjia fishermen who scattered here to work the waters, the area had remained desolate well into the Kangxi era. The contemporary Lingao magistrate Fan Shu had once visited and, sighing at what he found, composed a poem describing the environment:

Riding alone, I've often passed this shore, In smoky desolation, the old customs station; White waves filling my view at the Danzhou border, Yellow-hatted Danjia folk by their salt-fire stations; Three-foot eaves low against the typhoon-mother, A fist-sized stone shrine to the Dragon God...

"Kill the engine! Measure the depth."

They had complete hydrographic data for Bopu Harbor. According to records, the estuary's depth ranged from two to ten meters. But this was the seventeenth century—four hundred years of accumulated silt and channel changes would create significant errors in any modern chart.

The motorboat began to drift slowly. Li Jun raised a steel Armed Police riot shield, covering the hydrographic personnel as they lowered the lead line.

Beiwei knew the boat was now a perfect target—completely exposed on open water. He wasn't afraid of arrows; those crude iron arrowheads couldn't pierce their stab-resistant gear or helmets. But if someone had a small cannon hidden in the shore grass, a blast of iron shot and lead from fifty meters would definitely cause casualties.

The Military Group members held their weapons ready, rounds chambered, watching every corner of the shoreline.

At that same moment, high on the beacon tower, another figure was observing the small boat in the bay.

This man wore a bowl-shaped iron helmet encrusted with thick yellow rust and a leather cuirass rotted beyond recognition—equipment issued when the court had augmented the Hainan garrison in the tenth year of Jiajing. He carried a saber of the same vintage; its wooden scabbard had fallen apart long ago and been crudely bound back together with rattan.

Behind him stood a soldier wearing an equally rusty iron helmet but no armor, only a tattered mandarin-duck combat jacket so worn it was impossible to tell inside from outside. He carried a bow and arrows, with a similarly ancient saber at his waist.

Fu Baiwen was from Qiongshan County. He had studied martial arts in his youth and achieved a "martial xiucai" degree but never passed higher. Near forty, he had finally obtained a lowly ninth-grade patrol inspector post, commanding twelve archers to guard this "Qiong Sea Gateway." Though called a gateway, transmigrators were few—mostly he examined Danjia fishermen and small traders from Leizhou. There was no profit here, just desolation. What he saw most frequently were pirates.

Hainan, situated on crucial sea lanes, had always been plagued by extreme pirate activity. Throughout history, raiders had struck Lingao multiple times and even besieged the county seat. In the eleventh year of Shunzhi, they had actually captured the Lingao magistrate. The Ming and Qing governments had never found any real countermeasures—they just built more beacon towers. Whenever unusual activity appeared at sea, the protocol was simple: light the signal fire.

When pirates anchored here for water, everyone kept the peace. But once they entered the harbor and launched boats, all Inspector Fu could do was run to the beacon tower to light the dung-fire, then lead his men into hiding. Once lit, the beacon was visible within a radius of tens of li along the Wenlan River, all the way to Lingao town. Commoners would flee, and the city gates would immediately close.

Every year after the fifteenth of the eighth lunar month, when the typhoons subsided, pirate coastal raids became frequent. The fishing boats that usually sheltered here had recently stopped coming. The patrol archers naturally couldn't slack off, however—their salary, meager as it was, still depended on their vigilance.

The reconnaissance squad's motorboat had been spotted by the tower lookout the moment it entered Changgong Bay. Normally, he wouldn't bother the Inspector over such a small vessel. But this one traveled with incredible speed, which startled him. When the boat entered the river mouth and he saw the occupants—all burly men in iron helmets and black armor, carrying black fire-sticks—the matter became serious indeed. He immediately summoned Inspector Fu to the tower.

"Inspector Fu, who are these people?" the archer asked quietly from behind. "Should we go down and question them?"

"Never seen them." Though Hainan was a southern frontier, its people were worldly. Fu Baiwen had encountered Japanese, Franks, and Red-Hair barbarians in his time. But this boat and these people were beyond anything in his experience. The only thing clear was that this group was not to be trifled with.

"Looks like they're sounding the depth?"

Fu Baiwen nodded. As the small boat drifted, someone behind that dark shield was constantly raising and lowering a rope. Sounding depths meant a large ship was coming.

"Light the fire?"

He hesitated briefly, then made up his mind. The visitors were few but fully armored—already criminals violating the law, certainly not law-abiding citizens. Their secret sounding of the depths meant a larger force was approaching. Dawn was breaking, and the commoners would soon be out earning their living. If these bandits raided, the people would suffer grievously.

"Light the fire!"

(End of Chapter)