Chapter 129: Zhu Cailao's Attack

Under Wen Desi’s promise of “imparting the secret method of building large Western ships,” Zhang Jiqi began to rush the work with great enthusiasm. He selected some people to work with him. Wen Desi was very interested in ancient shipbuilding techniques, so he stayed behind with Li Jun’s platoon to watch the shipbuilding. The navy, however, showed a completely different interest. Not only did the “Fubo” make a round trip every three to five days, but it also successively transported the NCO students assigned to the navy to Baitu to work as short-term laborers, learning firsthand experience in shipbuilding. Although the future shipbuilding engineers were being trained in the technical school, the navy believed that it was also necessary for them to cultivate officers who had some understanding of shipbuilding—if possible, the future shipyard should be controlled by the navy.

Wen Desi was well aware of the navy’s little scheme, but his own hobby gave him a natural preference for the navy, so he pretended to be oblivious and continued his cross-temporal technical exchange with Zhang Jiqi.

Wen Desi discovered that Zhang Jiqi was actually a master model maker. He could make all kinds of sea ship models with very simple woodworking tools. Not only could he build them, but all the parts were in accurate proportion and could be freely disassembled. It turned out that this was his technical secret, which, to put it bluntly, was the method of proportional scaling. Although this method was a bit primitive, it was very effective. Wen Desi knew that European shipwrights had also used similar methods, and the rule of making a model before building each ship was a legacy of this method.

Zhang Jiqi knew very little about mathematics and geometry, and his drawing skills were equivalent to scribbling, but he firmly remembered all the data about the size, structure, and dimensions of these ships in his head. This made Wen Desi very admire him—many skilled craftsmen in ancient China were illiterate and did not understand algorithms, but they could rely on the inheritance of experience from generation to generation to create exquisite objects. They indeed had their own unique points.

Seeing the ship models made by Zhang Jiqi, Wen Desi couldn’t help but feel an itch to try his hand. Anyway, there was nothing much to do while supervising the shipbuilding, so he decided to start making a model of a two-masted schooner. With a model, it would be easier to communicate with Zhang Jiqi.

He had always been a survivalist, and he always carried basic weapons, food, and tools with him wherever he went. The materials here were convenient, so he immediately found materials and started working.

Zhang Jiqi was even more impressed that a “learned man” like Wen Desi could also make delicate ship models with his own hands. In his view, learned men were all about literature and ink, and he had never seen one who could do such craftsman’s work with his own hands. After work every day, he would go to Wen Desi’s room to see the model of the Western ship. The two would also exchange their experiences in making ship models, and Wen Desi would take the opportunity to tell him some simple knowledge about ship types and sail shapes.

While Wen Desi was living a leisurely life of model making in Baitu, the work of the transmigrators in Bopu and Bairen City became busier day by day. There were thousands of projects to be started, and there were cries for lack of materials and labor everywhere. Ma Qianzhu, as the member of the Planning Committee in charge of daily work, became the busiest person, busy with material allocation, labor deployment, and also coordinating the relationship between various departments—who should get the limited materials and labor first often caused great disputes. This kind of dispute would also be mixed with personal grudges that had slowly formed in work and life since D-Day, and the personal grudges between the leaders of the professional groups would eventually become contradictions between the two professional groups. Any small matter would cause debate and quarrels, and the members of the Executive Committee had to often be busy mediating disputes. Xiao Zishan once sneakily found Ma Qianzhu and suggested that they should take back the pistols of the group leaders.

“Why?” Ma Qianzhu thought that the situation was so dangerous now, he even wanted to distribute pistols to everyone.

“In case the argument gets heated, an impulse—” Xiao Zishan made a gesture of drawing a gun.

“No, no, Zishan, are you mentally abnormal?” Ma Qianzhu disagreed.

Besides being busy with such daily routine work, Ma Qianzhu, as the chief of the general staff, also had to deal with military issues.

The success of the Baitu Village campaign injected a shot of adrenaline into the group. The new army trained by the transmigrators and the weapons they manufactured had been tested in actual combat, which made the people in the industrial and military circles very excited—they had been talking about war on paper for decades, and they had won a real battle.

Ma Qianzhu was not as excited as the masses. Although he did not participate in this expedition, he had a general idea of the various problems exposed during the whole process from Xi Yazhou’s mouth. The state of the army was not as optimistic as the masses imagined. The only way was to intensify the training of the troops. He ignored the repeated objections of the mechanical department and raised the priority of ammunition production to the first place. This caused the lead reserves of the industrial department to drop sharply. Ji Situi also reminded him that the chemical department had very little nitrate reserves left. Gunpowder production had used up a large amount of saltpeter, and nitric acid production had almost completely stopped.

“If we are defeated, what’s the use of so much nitric acid?”

Ji Situi shrugged and did not argue with him. Ma Qianzhu was well aware of the important role of nitric acid in the modern industrial system, but at the moment, with crises lurking everywhere and potential enemies all around, he had no choice but to be militaristic.

After the message of peace talks with Zhu Cailao was sent out by Shi Shisi, there had been no response. There was no clue as to whether it would be peace or war. Ma Qianzhu even suspected whether this little pirate leader had delivered the message at all. The transmigrators were currently ignorant of the situation of the various maritime groups. The news from Guangzhou was often vague, which made Ma Qianzhu confused. The only thing they could get now was the movements of the various maritime groups in the first year of the Chongzhen era (1628), compiled by the intelligence and data group from historical materials.

It happened that he was on duty at the communication center today. Listening to the chaotic conversation on the public channel, he decided to quickly finish reading this intelligence report so that he could, in place of the non-existent staff headquarters, formulate a combat plan.

As the number one enemy of the transmigrators, Zheng Zhilong’s forces had officially accepted pacification in July of this year, achieving his goal of controlling foreign trade through a legal identity. His accomplice, Li Kuaiqi, had defected “due to uneven distribution of spoils,” which might involve the interests of foreign trade.

In September of the first year of the Chongzhen era, Li Kuaiqi “seized ships and defected, recruited fugitives and rebels, and became a problem for Zhilong… On the ninth day of the twelfth month, Kuaiqi, in alliance with Chen Shengyu, Zhong Liu (i.e., Zhong Bin), and Zhou San, entered the old Wuyu with more than four hundred ships to fight.”

Li Kuaiqi’s strength was very strong when he rebelled. He even took away all of Zheng’s ships and artillery. It was said that Zheng was left with only a few dozen ships and six hundred soldiers. From Li Kuaiqi’s appeal, his strength was no less than that of Zheng Zhilong. But Ma Qianzhu did not quite believe this number. If Zheng Zhilong’s forces were really left with only “a few dozen ships and six hundred soldiers,” he would not have been able to fight with Li Kuaiqi for more than a year, nor would he have been able to sign a trade contract with the Dutch on October 1, 1628 (the fourth day of the ninth lunar month) as the largest maritime group on the coast of China.

For the Transmigrator Group, the struggle between Zheng Zhilong and Li Kuaiqi was extremely beneficial to them. At least, these two maritime forces would not come to attack them for the time being. Whether it was to fight for peace or to pay tribute for peace, they only needed to face the Liu Xiang group and the Zhu Cailao group.

This “only” was also a bit of a heavy pressure. Ma Qianzhu put down this report with a heavy heart. From beginning to end, this intelligence report rarely mentioned how much military power these pirates actually had. The numbers in the historical records were all approximate and of no value. How could one deal with this? But it was no wonder. Military intelligence was not the forte of the group of people who dealt with historical materials. It seemed that they still had to rely on the military’s own intelligence system. It seemed that the establishment of a local military intelligence network was an urgent matter.

Now that the training battalion had been initially formed, the military industry had also grown. The four fishing trawlers had been refitted, and the heavy catapults had been replaced with 70mm breech-loading cannons. With these few fishing trawlers, the situation of the transmigrators at sea had greatly improved—there were no ships in this time and space that had the ability to challenge them. A few days ago, through Lin Shenhe’s efforts, a primitive impact fuze for high-explosive shells had also been made. According to the test data, the detonation rate was 80%, which was quite considerable, but it required copper.

The source of copper was a bit tight. Although Guo Yi had the channel of Gao Ju, buying copper was still a very difficult matter, and Gao Ju was becoming more and more suspicious of their purchases: the whereabouts of so much pig iron, saltpeter, and copper were unknown; various foreign goods were constantly being shipped in, which could not help but make Master Gao think of some not-so-good things. Recently, he had been probing in his words, and the transshipment warehouse on Youyu Island had also been secretly inspected several times.

Guo Yi suggested that it would be best to occupy Hong Kong Island, or at least establish a base on the island for the transshipment of goods. He also proposed that they should establish contact with Macau as soon as possible and conduct entrepôt trade through the Portuguese.

Occupy Hong Kong Island. Ma Qianzhu thought this was not a bad idea, but Hong Kong Island was a much more sensitive place than Lingao, right under the nose of the provincial capital, at the strategic point of the Pearl River estuary. To occupy it, they would have to be prepared for a major battle with the Ming army. With their current five or six hundred men, they were really a bit stretched.

To fight a war, to build, it was really a dilemma. Ma Qianzhu now understood why in another time and space, there was often talk of “winning time for peaceful construction.” It was really too important. The army and navy were like two greedy golden beasts, not only devouring a large amount of their resources but also occupying a lot of useful manpower.

As he was lost in thought, he suddenly heard someone shouting on the public channel: “Enemy! Enemy sighted!” The channel was instantly in chaos.

Ma Qianzhu roared, “This is the officer on duty and chief of the general staff! Everyone shut up! The person who just gave the alarm, immediately state your identity and location! Shaozong, we need a separate communication channel! Quickly!”

Switching to a separate communication channel, the voice calmed down a bit: “This is Liu Zheng from the long-range exploration team. I went out with the team this morning to look for peat. At 9 a.m., we encountered the enemy 25 kilometers east of Bairen City. We immediately retreated and have just returned to the wireless network coverage area. The enemy is about an hour’s journey from us.”

“How many enemies? What equipment?”

“Probably several hundred people. I can’t see the equipment clearly from a distance. It seems they have muskets, a small number of cavalry, and no cannons!”

“Ming army or pirates?”

“No uniform clothing, and they’re not wearing armor. Probably pirates!”

Damn it, it seems Zhu Cailao has come to attack. This guy doesn’t seem to care about our olive branch at all!

“Return to the city immediately. Report if there are any developments!”