Chapter Sixteen: Li Yongxun's Reconnaissance

The next morning, Lin Ming, after a comfortable flower petal bath attended by two maids, felt refreshed. He changed his clothes and walked slowly to the main hall. A moderate amount of pleasant sexual activity was beneficial to both body and mind. Lin Ming was in a cheerful mood, and seeing the breakfast laid out on the round redwood table with a full set of fine porcelain made him even happier.

Li Yongxun, however, seemed preoccupied, leaving her bowl of fine fish congee unfinished. Lin Ming, his desires fully satisfied from the “great battle” of the previous night, felt a surge of “familial affection” for his sister-in-law and asked with concern:

“Does your foot still hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Li Yongxun said. After returning to her room last night, she had tossed and turned, unable to sleep, thinking about how to deal with the short-hair bandits. She had been tempted to wake her brother-in-law up in the middle of the night to arrest them, but she was afraid he would be angry. She now had a slight understanding of men’s tempers: “An hour of spring night is worth a thousand gold.” The consequences of interrupting her brother-in-law’s spring night would be very serious.

“Brother-in-law,” Li Yongxun said hesitantly, “this Master Huang must have dealings with the short-hair bandits in secret.”

“Of course. If he didn’t, where would the things you ate yesterday have come from?” Lin Ming said lightly.

“But the short-hair bandits are overseas barbarians who have seized a prefecture and a county… Master Wang even launched a punitive expedition against them…” Li Yongxun felt that her brother-in-law was not very enthusiastic about arresting the short-hair bandits. “Last night, I saw them. They are in the Huang family’s residence. Why don’t we capture them and send them to Guangzhou? It would be a credit to you, brother-in-law…”

Lin Ming put down his congee bowl and whispered sternly, “Capture them and send them to Guangzhou—and invite the short-hair bandits’ navy to the gates of Guangzhou again? A woman’s opinion!”

When the short-hair bandits’ navy attacked Guangzhou, although they eventually retreated, everyone knew it was the result of Governor Li’s “negotiations,” not because the short-hair bandits were defeated or afraid of the court. Why would he go looking for trouble?

Seeing the great displeasure on his sister-in-law’s face, Lin Ming felt he had spoken too harshly. He patiently explained, “What’s the use of capturing an Ao bandit?? If you want to capture someone, in a few days, Manager Guo, the leader of the short-hair bandits, will return to Guangzhou in a grand manner. Governor Li will probably even send him a congratulatory gift. Who dares to arrest an Ao bandit now?”

“But—” Li Yongxun’s ardent love for the court and her desire for personal revenge were intertwined. She wanted to make one last effort.

“The short-hair thieves have never offended us. There’s no need to make an enemy of them. Besides, even if you capture him, he’ll be released once he’s sent to Guangzhou.”

“He doesn’t have to be released,” Li Yongxun said eagerly. “Don’t hand him over to the yamen. Take him back to the hundred-household office for our own interrogation. I don’t believe all short-hairs have iron teeth and won’t confess to their rebellion…”

Lin Ming slowly drank his congee, letting her ramble on. When she finished, he said slowly, “Finish your breakfast first. After breakfast, I’ll take you out for a walk.”

Li Yongxun was instantly discouraged. She knew her brother-in-law had no intention of dealing with the short-hair bandits and felt indignant. She refused to eat her breakfast out of pique. After breakfast, she even refused her brother-in-law’s offer to take her out for a walk.

“I’m not feeling well,” Li Yongxun said with what she thought was a very cold attitude. Lin Ming knew she was having a tantrum and simply ignored her. Just then, Huang Shunlong invited him to discuss business, so he made a few perfunctory remarks and left.

As soon as Lin Ming left, Li Yongxun felt that her passion for the court was not only unsupported but also ridiculed by her brother-in-law. She was heartbroken and threw herself on the bed, crying. After crying for a while, she realized it was quiet around her. No one was listening to her cry, and no one was comforting her. It was better not to cry.

“Hmph, if you won’t arrest them, I will! I, Li Yongxun, am a true confidante of the court!” A stubborn streak rose in Li Yongxun. She changed back into men’s clothes and hung her small embroidered spring saber at her side. The Jinyiwei waist token she had stolen had long been returned to the family members who had followed her, but in Foshan, Lin Ming, unable to refuse her request and thinking it would be safer for her to have a token, had given her the waist token of a long-absent officer from the hundred-household office. Li Yongxun hung the waist token at her waist, one hand on her saber, the other on her hip, and stood in the middle of the hall with her head held high, feeling as if the spirits of all the past commanders of the Jinyiwei had possessed her!

Li Yongxun gave up the idea of getting information from the Huang family’s maids and servants. Since Huang Shunlong was engaged in shady business, his subordinates had probably been taught not to talk to outsiders. Now that she had no official status, she could neither intimidate nor torture them. She could only investigate in secret. Her foot was already better. Although she couldn’t run, walking was not a problem. She quietly climbed over a low wall in the backyard.

She didn’t know the way at all—fortunately, Macau was a small place. Huang Shunlong was also a famous person. If she got lost, she could just call a sedan chair to go back. After climbing over the wall, Li Yongxun wandered around the alleys. She soon learned from a talkative, bored shop assistant in a grocery store in an alley that a sedan chair and seven or eight people had indeed entered the Huang family’s residence through the back door last night. Some of them were carrying wicker boxes on their backs, which looked heavy.

She also learned that these people had come from the direction of the Seventh Lane. Li Yongxun went towards the Seventh Lane. The Seventh Lane was no different from the Fifth Lane she had walked through yesterday. When she saw the same pointed roof she had seen yesterday, she suddenly realized that this group of people must have come from the direction of the pier—the Fifth Lane and the Seventh Lane should be parallel. And the Huang residence was actually not far from the pier.

Li Yongxun slowly followed the alley towards the pier. There were slightly more pedestrians in this alley—from time to time, small vendors, porters, and some savage-looking overseas people in strange clothes passed by: red-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed Northern Europeans; light-brown-skinned, black-haired Latins; short, yellow-eyed Southeast Asian natives; short Japanese with messy hair shaved in a semicircle; dark-skinned Indians; and authentic African blacks who were dark all over except for the whites of their eyes… she could see a few of almost all of them here. The strange appearances made Li Yongxun feel very nervous—many horror stories about overseas barbarians were widely spread in Guangdong.

Fortunately, no one paid any attention to her along the way. Li Yongxun walked and observed her surroundings. She heard the cries of seagulls not far away, and the salty smell of the sea was in the wind. She knew she was almost at the seaside.

Sure enough, the alley opened up at the end, and the residential area ended here. Here was a large area of compacted mud. Several wooden piers extended into the bay, where many ships were moored, their sails and masts like a forest—and there were many ships she had never seen before. Especially a few large galleons, with their huge hulls, masts reaching into the clouds, and cannons gleaming in the gunports… Li Yongxun, seeing European ships for the first time, was amazed. She ignored the large and small mud puddles on the ground and kept walking forward, wanting to get a closer look.

Bales of goods were piled on the ground, covered with reed mats. Teams of coolies, carrying goods on their shoulders and backs, chanted as they continuously loaded straw-bagged and burlap-wrapped goods onto the ships. Some of the packaging was already damaged, revealing the straw ropes used to tie the porcelain or the coarse cloth wrapping the silk inside.

Li Yongxun was almost stunned—where had she ever seen such a large-scale scene of overseas trade? She had already forgotten most of her mission to track the short-hair bandits. She just walked and looked around, wishing she had more pairs of eyes.

She was curious about almost everything in front of her. Even a damaged boat abandoned on the mud, the wreckage of a ship destroyed in a storm, and a stone anchor deeply embedded in the mud aroused her interest. As she walked and looked, she unknowingly reached the other side of the pier. At the end was a silted, stagnant bay, with all kinds of garbage floating on the water, emitting various foul odors. Li Yongxun unconsciously covered her nose and quickly walked back. She found a tea stall on the pier, ordered a pot of tea to rest her feet, and at the same time inquired if there were any ships from Lin’gao.

“Yes, yes,” said the middle-aged woman who ran the tea stall. Although it was called a tea stall, she actually only made money from selling hot water—her customers were the coolies on the pier, who couldn’t afford tea at all. They would just pay one or two crab-shell coins for some “herbal tea” without tea leaves to rehydrate. Today, she was able to sell a whole pot of tea and seemed very enthusiastic.

“The ships from Lin’gao come every ten days or so, three or four ships at a time,” the middle-aged woman pointed to a ship not far away. “Isn’t that their ship?”

Li Yongxun followed her finger and saw that it was just an ordinary-looking two-masted large Guangdong ship, nothing special. It just looked neater and cleaner than the average ship. She was a little disappointed—she had long heard that the short-hair bandits had large iron ships, and she had originally thought she would see something different.

On the Lin’gao ship, there was a man at the bow and another at the stern, constantly looking around. Li Yongxun knew that they were most likely “lookouts”—it seemed they were very careful. She wondered what they were up to.

“Are they transporting goods?”

“Of course, they’re transporting goods,” the tea-selling auntie wiped the table and sat down opposite Li Yongxun with a plop. She had no customers at the moment and was happy to have someone to chat with. “A ship full of goods, the coolies have to unload for half a day to finish. The goods are unloaded and then transported to the warehouse—I heard they are all valuable goods. Who doesn’t know about the Australian goods from Lin’gao? I even want to buy one of their small mirror powder boxes! But it still costs two taels of silver!”

“Where is the warehouse?”

“It’s right at the entrance of the Fifth Lane,” the tea-selling auntie said that the warehouse was a house specially rented by the Lin’gao people to store and transship goods. Usually, the visiting merchants and sailors also lived there.

Li Yongxun’s heart skipped a beat. She looked towards the entrance of the alley—and saw a group of people coming out of the entrance of the Fifth Lane. Seven or eight big men surrounded a two-man sedan chair, walking in a hurry.

“Are these people from Lin’gao?” she asked.

“Probably,” the tea-selling woman looked and nodded. “You see, a few of them have short-hair style hair. Who else could they be but short-hair people?”