Chapter 1: The Last Night in An You Le Market

The sky was about to brighten, but the night was still thick. The faint light from oil lamps and torches in the shops and homes along the street cast a dim glow on the gravel road. The taverns, small eateries, and brothels were still lit, and bursts of clamor could be heard from time to time. Merchants, stewards, and sailors from ships that had missed the favorable winds and were wintering here, waiting for the monsoon, were stranded in this remote corner of the world. With nothing to do all day, they spent their energy and time on wine and women.

Hu Xun, wearing a silk robe and a cloak, braved the early morning chill and walked proudly down the center of the only main street in An You Le Market. A strange procession followed him. A handsome young servant carried a teapot wrapped in a brocade-covered cotton cozy. Beside him was a man who looked like a secretary, with a long gown and a beard. Further back, a servant carried a folding chair, while another held a bamboo slat—a tool for punishment. Finally, there was a troop of able-bodied men armed with clubs, swords, and spears.

Hu Xun was performing his duty as the local Baozheng (a local law enforcement officer)—patrolling the night and questioning any suspicious individuals. Although An You Le Market was not large, its security problems were prominent. It was a gathering place for a large number of seafarers. Once they were free from the tiring and boring life at sea and relaxed on land, theft, quarrels, brawls, and even armed fights were common occurrences. At its peak, several people would die in fights every day.

Hu Xun did not report the deaths to the county government—it was simply asking for trouble, and the county couldn’t solve it anyway. Outside the town were barren mountains and wild lands, and a few dozen li away was the territory of the Li people. Where would they go to hunt down the culprits?

However, as a leading figure in the area, he had to maintain a basic level of order. Every night, Hu Xun personally led his men on patrol. Anyone found drunk and rowdy or carrying weapons would be detained first. This also brought in some income—ship owners had to pay a fee to bail their men out. If a poor fellow had no one to bail him out, it didn’t matter. He could just be sold off when the next wave of ships arrived. Deaths were common on ships; losing a third of the crew on a single voyage was not unusual, and the stewards were always happy to have extra hands.

Today, An You Le Market was quiet, but quiet did not mean peaceful. As the last port of call before heading to the South China Sea, An You Le Market was a lucrative target in the eyes of some. One of Hu Xun’s most important tasks in preventing theft was to investigate suspicious individuals—pirates could very well send in spies to find an opportunity to “open the gates.”

This was especially true just before dawn, when the sky was still dark and the night watchmen were drowsy, making it the easiest time for a surprise attack. Therefore, at this time, Hu Xun always came out to patrol personally.

Walking from one end of the street to the other, he ascended the west gate tower, which faced the bay. A few stockade guards stood there, sleepy-eyed, watching the surface of Dadonghai Sea. Several “wind-proof” lanterns swayed in the sea breeze. Hu Xun leaned against the wooden stockade wall and looked out. The lights on the pier below the wall were lit, as were the lanterns on all the ships. The ships rose and fell with the sea. Listening closely, he could only hear the sound of the waves crashing against the reefs and the hulls of the ships.

Across the bay, a few points of light could be seen. That was the stockade built by the Lin’gao sea merchants who had come here last year. Although they traded goods and interacted with each other with smiles, and had always gotten along well, he was secretly very wary of them, fearing they had ulterior motives.

However, for all these days, the number of people in their stockade had never exceeded thirty. They went out early and returned late every day, either growing vegetables, raising chickens, and fishing for their own subsistence, or gathering coconuts and felling trees. Their activities brought vitality to An You Le Market. Many of the poor villagers in the market were employed by them to cut trees and gather coconuts, selling their labor for daily wages. The people from the opposite stockade also came to An You Le Market from time to time to purchase goods and hire craftsmen.

But there was one thing Hu Xun was sure of: the claim by that Manager Wang that they were merchants specializing in the South China Sea trade was a lie. Almost every week, ships would dock at the pier in front of the “Lin’gao Stockade,” carrying away coconuts, logs, and other local products, and bringing in some uniformly sized crates.

Hu Xun had never been to the South China Sea, but he had seen countless passing merchants and knew a little about the situation there. Logs and coconuts were even less valuable in that region, so they were obviously not being shipped to the South China Sea.

He was almost certain that this group was engaged in illegal trade. As for what it was, he didn’t care—as long as they lived in peace, why meddle in other people’s business?

“Anything unusual?” Hu Xun asked the leader on the gate tower.

“Nothing unusual, all is peaceful.”

The sea breeze at night was a bit sharp, and Hu Xun couldn’t help but tighten his cloak. The moon was about to set, and the sea fires flickered on and off. There seemed to be no abnormalities.

“Tell everyone to be careful and not to doze off again!” Hu Xun said as he descended from the gate tower and went back to sleep with his young wife.

Less than ten nautical miles from here, Ruan Xiaowu, the captain of the special service boat “Yute-04,” watched through his binoculars the long column of ships breaking the waves behind him, a fleet of no less than fifty vessels.

In front of him were fast, single-masted cutters. Their light hulls tilted so much under the force of the wind and waves that they almost touched the water’s surface. A few times, Ruan Xiaowu even thought the boats would capsize, but at every critical moment, the bow would turn just in time, keeping the onlookers on the edge of their seats.

The men sailing these single-masted cutters were the boldest and most skilled among the officer cadets and sailors. They maneuvered these fast and agile boats at the front and on the flanks of the fleet, constantly scouting for any anomalies. Behind the cutters was a long line of special service boats of various types, their holds packed with supplies in addition to weapons and sailors.

Then came the magnificent five-masted galleon, Sanya One. Its five great masts were fully rigged with giant sails, making it particularly conspicuous in the fleet. Along with the other, less spectacular sailing ships around it, it carried thousands of laborers, soldiers, building materials, tools, vehicles, and grain.

But it was not the core. The true core was behind it: those mysterious ships that, to the average native, moved without sails or oars. The self-propelled barge Xun Jing (Swift Whale), the flat-deck barge Da Jing (Great Whale), a Type 67 landing craft, and two Type 8154 fishing vessels. The broad deck of the Xun Jing was piled high with large, strangely shaped objects tightly wrapped in tarpaulins. The landing command headquarters was set up on one of the fishing vessels.

To the starboard of all these ships was another formation, led by the Zhenhai and the Fubo. Six three-masted sailing warships sailed in a column, their gunports tightly shut.

Ruan Xiaowu was proud to be sailing in such a magnificent fleet. True, there were many pirate lords with more ships than the Australian chiefs, but what were their ships worth? Rotten, filthy decks, patched-up sails, and a pitifully small number of crude cannons tied to the ship with ropes, which would even jump and do a somersault in the air when fired! Gunpowder was haphazardly piled below deck, and the ammunition consisted of scrap metal in baskets, which even contained stones and broken porcelain! The surrendered pirate ships that the naval cadets had toured were in such a state. Every cadet had shown a contemptuous smile—a bunch of country bumpkins.

On the flagship, the main leaders of the future Sanya Special Administrative Region were crowded into a command room converted from a former refrigerated hold. The Type 8154 had a small displacement, and its hull tossed violently in the wind and waves. Zhuo Tianmin was so seasick that he simply lay on a bench during the meeting.

These few men were huddled around a small table. In two hours, it would be dawn, and the landing operation would officially begin.

Although this was not a landing under enemy fire, and there were no cannons, minefields, or machine guns on the shore, coordinating a force of this size to land on an unfamiliar coast was still a daunting task. The fleet was fully loaded with various supplies, equipment, and personnel. Just getting them safely ashore was a complex and delicate job.

To prepare for this crucial, all-out landing, detailed planning had been underway for nearly a month. A joint team from the General Staff and the Planning院, under the direct leadership of Wang Luobin, had developed detailed steps for the landing plan.

The problems they faced were incredibly complex. There were many military precedents for such a landing, but the transmigrator group was doing it in the 17th century with extremely limited modern support capabilities. It was even more complex than D-Day. On D-Day, they had only 500 people; now they were landing 3,000!

They had a host of questions to answer. Where should they land? When was the best time? How many people should be in the first wave? How many laborers, how many soldiers? How many transport vehicles would be needed to carry these personnel? How many days’ worth of dry rations needed to be prepared before the mobile kitchens could adequately supply hot food? How many people would land by small boats, how many by pier, and how would they be organized to go ashore in batches? Rope ladders would be needed to get from the ships to the pier or small boats. How many small boats were needed? How would these small boats be transported?

These were just a fraction of the many questions the planners had to answer. By the time their plan was finalized, it had become a thick book. Every detail of Project Giant was meticulously laid out, and corresponding contingency plans were made for potential problems.

“When making the plan, don’t think about what to do after you’ve won. First, think about how to clean up the mess if you fail,” Wang Luobin demanded at a team meeting.

“Who could defeat us?” The planners found this incomprehensible. “The stockade guards of An You Le Market?”

“You have to consider all possible situations,” Wang Luobin said. “For example, the fleet encounters a major storm and half the ships sink; or we are in the middle of landing, and Zheng Zhilong’s fleet comes to attack… You have to consider how to respond to all of these.”

“How depressing, thinking about this before we even start…”

“In everything you do, you must consider the worst-case scenario,” Dongmen Chuiyu said in support of Engineer Wang’s view. “How to respond to unexpected situations is an important part of our plan. The more thorough everyone’s thinking is, the better.”