Chapter 35: The Fall

On the path below the slope, the 7.62mm bullet fired from the Mosin-Nagant rifle pierced Zheng Zhilong’s chest. Before Tōtarō and his men could react, the two M77B1s had already swept the area with NATO rounds, cutting down several Japanese mercenaries. Tōtarō, in his haste to help Zheng Zhilong, had thrown himself to the ground and luckily avoided the first volley.

Ignoring the bullets flying around him and the men falling one by one, Tōtarō reached under Zheng Zhilong’s armpits and, on his knees, half-dragged, half-pulled him behind a large rock in the nearby bushes. After finally getting to cover, he saw that Zheng Zhilong had not only been shot in the chest but also in the leg. Blood was gushing out, and bloody foam was coming from his mouth. It was clear he would not survive. A wave of sorrow washed over him, and he couldn’t help but shed tears.

Although Zheng Zhilong was severely wounded, his mind was clear. He knew he was going to die. He struggled to speak, “Life is like a dewdrop, destined to disappear… You need not grieve too much… I rose from the storms of my youth, and before I was even thirty, I built this enterprise. It has been a life well-lived…” As he spoke, blood welled up in his throat, and he coughed, unable to speak. Tōtarō quickly helped him wipe it away. He rested for a moment and managed to continue, “I just can’t rest easy about Fusong…”

Tōtarō held back his tears and said, “I will swear my life to follow the young master and protect him completely!”

Zheng Zhilong managed a nod. “I trust you. If the situation becomes impossible… find a way to take him back to Hirado, and find…” He lowered his voice and whispered a few words.

“I understand!”

“I am so unwilling…” Zheng Zhilong’s gaze drifted away. Before he could finish his sentence, he breathed his last.

Tōtarō’s eyes filled with tears, but there was no time for grief. The few personal guards and mercenaries who had accompanied them were either dead or wounded. The Kunzei ambushers would soon charge down. In the heat of the moment, there was no time to bury the body or even hide it. “A general’s head must never be taken by the enemy.” This was a samurai’s creed. He drew his wakizashi, cut off Zheng Zhilong’s head, wrapped it in a piece of clothing, and tied it to his back. He then plunged into the undergrowth and fled.

By the time Qian Shuixie and his men reached Post 6, the gunfire had completely stopped. The leader of the ambush team there gave him a brief report. When he heard that a sniper had hit a “young man who looked a lot like the one in the photo,” Qian Shuixie’s heart leaped. Could Zheng Zhilong really be here?

He and his men scrambled down the slope to the path below. Near a large rock lay about a dozen bodies. Judging by their weapons and equipment, they were clearly an elite force. In particular, several of them were obviously Japanese, and only Zheng Zhilong’s personal guard had Japanese mercenaries. This group was undoubtedly Zheng Zhilong’s guard. The team members checked the bodies. A few were still breathing but were clearly not going to make it and couldn’t be questioned.

“Which one looks like Zheng Zhilong?” Qian Shuixie asked.

The problem was that none of the bodies on the ground matched Zheng Zhilong’s photo. The sniper looked for a long time but couldn’t recognize which one he had seen. The team members searched the area and, behind the large rock, found a headless body. The wounds on the chest and leg confirmed it had been hit by a Mosin-Nagant rifle.

Qian Shuixie went over and examined it closely. Although the head was missing and the man was dressed in the common rough cotton clothes of a Zheng army soldier, the fact that the head had been cut off was very telling. There was no reason to behead one of your own fallen men unless the person was important and the enemy, unable to bury the body in time, took this extreme measure to prevent the general’s head from being taken.

From this, it was highly likely that this man was Zheng Zhilong! Qian Shuixie carefully observed the surroundings and found drag marks on the ground. Clearly, this person had been dragged behind the large rock after being shot. So many others had been left unaided, yet this one person had been helped. It was clear his status was higher than the others…

If not, this person was still likely an important figure in the Zheng clan, possibly one of the “Eighteen Shiba.”

“Search these bodies.”

Almost everyone was carrying some gold and silver, but there was nothing to identify them. The headless body had been stripped clean, which was suspicious. However, during the search, they found a second piece of evidence suggesting this person was Zheng Zhilong or another important figure: his undergarments were made of high-quality poplin, which was inconsistent with the rough cotton outer clothes.

Qian Shuixie took out his Casio digital camera and photographed the entire scene. He then ordered the headless body to be buried separately next to the large rock and marked. Since the head had been taken, it was impossible to verify the identity, and there was no need to transport the body.

Although he subsequently reported to the Lichun that he had “likely killed Zheng Zhilong,” he continued to maintain the blockade in the direction of Wulao Peak to prevent any others from slipping through.

The force led by Matos was pursued by Shi Zhiqi and eventually completely scattered. Matos and a few others managed to escape to the docks, where they seized two boats and fled. The rest were either killed or captured, or, if they were lucky, lost their unit and were scattered in the mountains and forests.

The follow-up fleet arrived in succession. The heavy artillery units, the army, and the logistics column landed one after another. Although there were no more significant targets on the island, many scattered Zheng army soldiers were still at large, and several of the Zheng family’s forts had not yet been captured. The arrival of the follow-up forces was just in time for the subsequent pacification operations.

Gulangyu fell later that day. The First Expeditionary Force waited for the follow-up troops to land before crossing the strait. They occupied Gulangyu without any resistance. The garrison on the small island had already fled in disarray.

Xu Ke, as an intelligence officer, was the first to land on Gulangyu after the battle. The “Island of Pianos” was at this time just a desolate little island, with no artistic atmosphere to speak of, apart from a few fishing villages.

This small island, southwest of Xiamen Island, was almost entirely made of rock, with an area of only four square kilometers. Xu Ke climbed to its highest point, Sunlight Rock.

The surface of the rock was tinged with a faint golden yellow. Strangely, the sunlight did not reflect off it; it seemed to be completely absorbed.

“No wonder people call it Sunlight Rock!” Xu Ke said, looking up at the strange rock on the hill. Not far from this slightly angular giant rock, there was a dense cluster of round rocks.

From here, he could see the entire island. It was clear that the Zheng family had invested considerably in this small island. They had not only built forts but also established a large-scale weapons factory and a shipyard. The shipyard was nothing special, still building large Fuchuan and Guangchuan ships using traditional Chinese methods. On the shipyard’s beach were several unfinished large Fuchuan ships, which looked to be over a thousand tons in displacement. It seemed Zheng Zhilong also knew that small-tonnage ships were useless in the current maritime environment.

“There’s not much to see at the shipyard; those few ships are unfinished. But the arsenal is full of good stuff,” an excited naturalized citizen from the Planning Commission’s special search team who was accompanying him said. “It’s full of pig iron, copper, and lead—especially copper, probably tens of thousands of jin! And many iron and bronze cannons…”

He thought this “chief” was also from the Planning Commission because Chief Xu had been inspecting the piles of spoils and warehouses ever since he landed.

Xu Ke smiled faintly. His interests were different from the Planning Commission’s. He wasn’t concerned with how much loot could be captured, but with finding any clues among the spoils that might pose a threat to the Senate’s rule.

Just now, at Zhongzuosuo, he had already seen two Lingao-made 94-pounder cannons. Although their carriages were damaged, they were so distinctive that the marines had recognized them as one of the navy’s standard naval guns the moment they occupied the city.

Xu Ke had subsequently checked the insignia and serial numbers on the cannons and confirmed that they were the guns from the missing patrol boat Haixun 94. He then ordered his men to collect the shells and other accessories for these two cannons. They soon found the damaged carriages, some of the guns’ accessories, some unfired shells, and several high-explosive shell fuzes.

With these two cannons in Zheng Zhilong’s hands, it was clear that Haixun 94 had also fallen into their hands. This did not surprise Xu Ke; after all, there were only a few factions with the motive and the guts to do such a thing. But Xu Ke was more concerned with what the Zheng clan’s purpose was in acquiring this boat. Was it just to get these two cannons? If they had the cannons, then where were the “typewriters” (Gatling guns)?

Pondering this, Xu Ke said, “Let’s go to the shipyard first.”

The shipyard itself was unremarkable, with traditional Chinese shipbuilding techniques, equipment, and raw materials. However, when Xu Ke inspected the few unfinished large Fuchuan ships, he noticed something different.

First, the length-to-beam ratio of these two Fuchuan ships was close to 4, whereas traditional Fuchuan ships generally had a ratio of no more than 3. Such a design provided good stability at the cost of speed. The rib installation used a European-style design, and on one of the nearly completed Fuchuan ships, he saw that an upper deck had been half-laid.

These changes would not be apparent to the average person, but Xu Ke was a naval intelligence officer and was very sensitive to shipbuilding technology—he had crammed on all sorts of 16th and 17th-century maritime and naval knowledge.

These improvements indicated that the Zheng clan had already begun to experiment with incorporating some European shipbuilding techniques. The increased density and strength of the ribs and the laying of an upper deck seemed to be preparations for installing more cannons—traditional Chinese ship types like the Fuchuan and Guangchuan were structurally limited in the number of cannons they could carry. However, these techniques were all well-established at the time and showed no signs of having been copied from the Haixun 94. The whereabouts of the missing patrol boat remained unknown.