Great Song Super Scholar

Chapter 273 Departure Expedition
Although Fan Tiege was a little worried about his son's expedition to the sea, he also knew that the opportunity was rare. As long as his son stayed with Fan Ning, it should not be a big problem, not to mention Xu Qing's protection. After handing it over, Fan Tiege finally agreed to his two sons to go to sea with Fan Ning.

Two days later, before dawn, fifty thousand-stone ships transported Fan Ning's officials and hundreds of craftsmen out of the capital, and headed for the Yangtze River under the coastal guard of two thousand troops.

Eight days later, the fleet arrived in Jiangdu County, Yangzhou. The Yangtze River was not far ahead, and the two thousand troops stopped there.

Just after dawn, Fan Ning was awakened by the sound of swords clashing.

Fan Ning stepped out of the cabin and saw Ming Ren and Ming Li besieging Xu Qing. For a moment, the cold light shone brightly, and the swords radiated everywhere. Of course, it was Xu Qing who was teaching them how to use swords.

The day before departure, Fan Ning took Mingren and Mingli to a weapons shop and chose two sabers for them. Unexpectedly, they didn't like swords, but knives. They each chose two long swords made in the army. When he had nothing to do, he asked Xu Qing for sword skills, and the two of them practiced well all the way south.

At this time, Xu Qing saw Fan Ning coming out, so he jumped up lightly, jumped seven feet high, somersaulted in the air, and landed ten feet away lightly and skillfully.

Mingren and Mingli yelled, and were about to pounce on them again, but Fan Ning snorted and said, "If I had known you two like martial arts, I wouldn't have studied any county school. I would send you to the martial arts school. The tuition fee might be cheaper." .”

Mingren wiped off the sweat from his head, and said with a smile, "I'm going to Maoren Island. What if I don't know how to defend myself if I encounter aboriginal people?"

Ming Li also smiled and said: "Brother will protect your safety at that time, of course, if the female natives take you away, we will be beautiful adults and will not interfere!"

After finishing speaking, the two of them winked and smiled ambiguously.

Fan Ning shook his head, and said with contempt on his face: "If I knew it earlier, I wouldn't have brought you out, and even the distribution of the female natives was calculated. Forget it, after arriving in the Yangtze River, you will disembark for me directly."

"If you want to send us away, there is no way!" The two said in unison.

At this moment, several large ships in front of him sounded low-pitched horns. Fan Ning walked quickly to the bow of the ship, and a gust of river wind rushed towards his face. In the distance was a piece of sparkling water.

In the afternoon, the fleet arrived at the sea base. The sea base is located in Zhihe Town, northeast of Changshu County, Pingjiang Prefecture, close to the Yangtze River. The starting point of Zheng He's voyages to the West.

This area has a very obvious advantage in the water area. The river along the coast is very deep, and ships can dock directly for more than ten miles. It is especially suitable for berthing large ships with deep draft. The Suzhou Port of later generations was also built here.

The reason why the base is set up here is mainly to consider the convenience of supply, and the supply cargo ship can directly send supplies to the military camp from Pingjiang Mansion.

The sea base is actually a military camp, covering an area of ​​over a thousand acres, with thousands of large tents set up. Except for the [-] sailors stationed there, the rest of the large tents are filled with various supplies and horses.

There are boundless large ships moored on the river, all of which are more than [-] shi. There are almost a thousand ships. At least half of the sea ships here are not newly built, but official ships moored in various ports. All were transferred to the mouth of the Yangtze River.

Fifty river boats coming from the capital slowly berthed at the shore. As soon as Di Qing stepped off the boat, Lieutenant General Lin Rui came forward to report the situation. Lin Rui was from Fuzhou. He has wiped out more than a dozen bands of pirates, and has also escorted the imperial merchant fleet to Japan many times. He has rich experience, and it is very appropriate to appoint him as the deputy commander.

Lin Rui stepped forward to salute and said: "Qi Di Shuai, this morning, someone sent more than a hundred stallions this morning!"

Di Qing smiled slightly, "But 140 four horses?"

"Exactly!"

Di Qing nodded, "These 140 four stallions are very important, they should be placed properly, and they must be taken care of by special grooms!"

"The final arrangements have been made. Ten grooms will take care of them."

At this time, Fan Ning and Zhao Zhongshi also disembarked. They were overjoyed when they heard that the stallion had been delivered. Zhao Zhongshi smiled and said, "Since the last batch of horses has also arrived, we can carry the supplies onto the ship."

Lin Rui quickly agreed, and half an hour later, there was a burst of battle drums outside the tent, and [-] soldiers began to carry various supplies onto the ship.

Two days later, everyone offered sacrifices to the god of rivers and seas, and a huge fleet of thousands of sea-going ships began to leave the Yangtze River. With huge white sails, like white clouds, they headed for the mouth of the Yangtze River in a mighty manner. The first overseas expedition of the Song Dynasty.

This day was the fifteenth day of March in the fifth year of Song Huangyou, and the weather at the mouth of the Yangtze River was clear and cloudless.

In Bianliang Outer City, Tokyo, near Chenzhou Gate, there is a small dry bridge. In the government office, this small bridge has no name, but the local people call it Pinger Bridge. There is a ravine in this area. Although there is no water, it is It more or less affected people's travel, and later everyone raised funds to build this small bridge, which solved the bottleneck of travel, and everyone named it Ping'er Bridge.

There is a pharmacy at the north end of Pingqiao, called Saibei pharmacy. Most of the medicinal materials sold in it are produced in the grassland and Xixia. Since there are no doctors in the hall, and each pharmacy has more or less medicinal materials from the grassland and Xixia, so this The business of this pharmacy was very deserted, and the people around once suspected that it would not be able to continue its business.

But it has not closed down for more than ten years. It was not until someone revealed that this pharmacy was engaged in wholesale business that everyone understood why it has been standing.

In the afternoon, a young man riding a donkey came to the gate of Saibei Pharmacy in a hurry. He turned over and jumped off the donkey, but limped when he walked.

The young lame man tied his donkey to a wooden stake outside the door, and walked quickly into the pharmacy. The pharmacy was deserted, and there was no customer. A clerk was dozing off behind the table. Look, after seeing that it was the cripple who came in, he was surprised and delighted and said, "Brother Zhang is back?"

"I'm back, where's the shopkeeper?"

"The shopkeeper is in the backyard, follow me!"

The man hurried to the backyard with the lame man. Strangely, the lame man surnamed Zhang had healed his legs at this moment, walking like flying, and he didn't appear to be lame at all.

In front of a rockery in the backyard, a burly middle-aged man stood with his hands behind his back. Although he was wearing the shopkeeper's gown, his waist was straight and majestic. He didn't have the slightest temperament of a businessman, and he was clearly a soldier.

The middle-aged man heard the footsteps of the two, and was very dissatisfied: "How many times have I told you, don't go back to normal walking, next time you dare to go back to normal, I will really cripple your legs!"

The young cripple was so frightened that he quickly knelt down and saluted, "I know my mistake!"

The middle-aged man was eager to know the information, and he didn't care about him, so he said, "Get up! How is the situation?"

Of course, this Saibei pharmacy was just a cover. Its true identity was an intelligence point established by the Liao Kingdom in the Song Dynasty.

Although the Liao Kingdom has permanent envoys in the capital and a special embassy post station, this is an official institution, and many things such as intelligence investigation cannot be done openly, and the Song Dynasty closely monitored it, so the Liao Kingdom set up another embassy outside the embassy. Saibei Pharmacy is one of them.

The shopkeeper is called Li Ping, but his Khitan name is Yeluping. He works in the Southern Privy Council of the Liao Kingdom. The Liao Kingdom implements two sets of political models, Han and Liao. And the imperial examination was implemented, but in the Khitan mainland in the north, the Khitan Oruduo system continued to be implemented to control the nomadic fishing and hunting peoples.

This Yeluping is a mid-level official of the Southern Privy Council, in charge of Bianliang intelligence, and the medicine shop is the intelligence center of the Liao Kingdom in various places in Kaifeng Prefecture.

The young cripple was surnamed Zhang, a Han citizen from Youzhou. Since he practiced martial arts and was loyal to the Liao Kingdom, he was selected as an intelligence officer. His real name was Zhang Li, but the neighbors around him called him Zhang Laizi. He came out to cover up his lightness and high strength. Who would have thought that a cripple would actually have high strength in martial arts?

Zhang Laizi bowed and said: "I went to both sides of the Yangtze River to search, and I found a sea fleet on the Yangtze River outside Changshu County. Thousands of ships with thousands of stones are moored in the river. They are majestic. I inspected them for three days, but Song The army was heavily guarded, and it was impossible to enter, and then dozens of ships came from the capital, and a few days later, a thousand large ships sailed out to sea."

Yeluping asked anxiously, "Are you sure it's going to sea?"

"Going to the mouth of the Yangtze River, where else can I go besides going to sea?"

Yeluping stood still for a while and said: "It seems that everything has been confirmed!"

Yeluping had heard about the Song Dynasty’s plan to build an overseas racecourse a few years ago, but Yeluping didn’t dare to believe it all because it was all folk rumors. Later, the Privy Council came out to evade the rumors, so he believed it was a rumor, and he was lucky I did not recklessly report to Liao.

But until half a month ago, Yelu Changhong, Liao's envoy to the Song Dynasty, wrote a secret letter, saying that the Song Dynasty had openly discussed the establishment of a racecourse overseas, and ordered him to immediately investigate whether the Song Dynasty had a fleet ready to go to sea. Only then did Ping realize that he had missed important information, and he immediately sent his subordinate Zhang Lizi to investigate on the south bank of the Yangtze River.

The results of the investigation fully confirmed the truth of this information, and Da Song was really going to build a ranch overseas.

Yeluping panicked, he turned around and walked into the room, spread out a piece of paper and wrote a short message, walked out quickly and handed it to the waiter, and said in a low voice: "Go to the Wu family ingredients store immediately, and ask them to send this information to you today. Send it to the embassy."

(End of this chapter)