The Song Dynasty on the Sand Table

Chapter 343 This teacher is a ruthless character!
The three-masted sailing ship that Yue Wenxuan placed in the sand table was only thirty meters long. If it were in the Age of Exploration, it would only be considered a very weak and insignificant small boat, but in 1131, it could be called a giant ship.

Of course, Song Dynasty boatmen were already capable of building ships that were thirty meters long, but very few of them were built. The "Illustrated Record of the Mission to Goryeo during the Xuanhe Era" records: "The passenger ship was more than ten zhang long, three zhang deep, and two zhang and five chi wide. There were sixty boatmen and sailors on board, and it could carry two thousand hu of grain."

Northerners basically never have the chance to see such a large passenger ship. In any case, Gong Er Niangzi had never seen such a big ship!
The soldiers she brought were also unfamiliar with the place, and they stared blankly at the "celestial ship summoned by the True Lord".

Yue Wenxuan: "Let's go, let's get on the ship and go to sea to observe the students of the Naval Academy taking classes."

Gong Er Niangzi: "True Lord... we have a boat... but we don't know how to maneuver it."

Yue Wenxuan: Hmm, that is a problem.

Gong Erniangzi and her direct subordinates were all typical northerners; how many of them knew how to operate large ocean-going ships?

Yue Wenxuan thought to himself: It seems I'll have to bring in a squad of plastic sailors to operate the boat.

The Wu navy was incompetent; they were only good at operating riverboats, not seaboats.

Yue Wenxuan rummaged through the cabinet again, but couldn't find the Ming Dynasty sailor figurine. It was too late to ask Cai Xinzi to customize one now.

All I found were a bunch of Caribbean pirate figurines, which are obviously unusable. Caribbean pirates are good at maneuvering soft sailboats, and they're not good at hard sailboats.

That's ridiculous! You have a big ship, but no sailors!

and many more!

Yue Wenxuan suddenly realized that since the ship was a model he had placed in the sand table, he could "touch" it with his hand. He could simply reach out from outside the sand table and push it to sail. (If it wasn't something Yue Wenxuan had placed there, touching it with his hand would "break through the mold.")
Try it if you think of it...

My consciousness shifted outside the sand table, and with a push of my finger on the stern of the boat, the plastic boat began to sail on the plastic sea.

He was playing house when the two women in the sand table, including Gong Er Niangzi and the soldiers, suddenly shouted, "It's moving! The fairy ship is moving by itself!"

"It truly lives up to its name as a celestial ship; it can sail on its own without the need for sailors."

"so amazing!"

Yue Wenxuan's consciousness shifted from the sand table back into the lifelike figurine, and he smiled at Gong Erniangzi, saying, "Let's go, let's get on the boat."

Gong Erniangzi selected one hundred soldiers who were not afraid to board the boat, and they boarded the boat with her and Yue Wenxuan.

Most of these soldiers grew up in Jimo County, a coastal county. Although they didn't know how to operate a boat, they weren't afraid of the sea. Once on board, they didn't look cowardly at all; they were all smiling.

"Let's go! Let's find the naval academy's ship." Yue Wenxuan gave it a push, and the ship, carrying over a hundred people, rushed out to sea...

Wow, that's fast!

"This boat is moving so fast!"

Nonsense, how could this ship not be fast? Yue Wenxuan pushed the ship with his fingers, completely ignoring the physical laws of the sandbox world, and could go as fast as he wanted. If he didn't care about Gong Er Niangzi and the soldiers on the ship, he could even push the ship several miles in a second.

He deliberately slowed down the pace of pushing the boat while searching for the naval academy's ship in the sand table...

Where did Zheng Chenggong take Li Bao and the others?
Zheng Chenggong was yelling, "How are you handling the sails? Wind direction! Watch the wind direction!"

A sailor under Li Bao's command was desperately pulling on the rope to change the wind direction...

But his movements were clumsy; he pulled left and right, but couldn't adjust the sails at all, looking incredibly awkward. Zheng Chenggong shook his head in exasperation, then turned to look at Li Bao, who was now at the helm, turning left and right, scratching his head, and grinning…

Zheng Chenggong: What are you laughing at?

Li Bao: "This is amazing! No matter how I turn it, the boat turns with it. It's incredible."

Zheng Chenggong looked at Li Bao as if he were an idiot: "There's nothing surprising about this!"

He had barely finished speaking when one of Li Bao's soldiers on the mast grabbed the rope and swung across with a whoosh, letting out a strange "whoosh" sound.

Zheng Shigong looked up: "This guy's defection is quite impressive. Has he defected before?"

The man said smugly, "Reporting to the general, I jumped over the enemy's gang during the bandit suppression campaign at Hongze Lake..."

No sooner had he finished speaking than a wave crashed over the boat, rocking it violently. The man, who was swinging in the air by the rope, was caught off guard by the sudden sway. The rope slipped from his grasp, and he swung far away, landing with a splash in the sea.

Li Bao was startled and quickly shouted, "Quickly throw the rope and save him!"

The people on the boat frantically threw ropes to rescue people...

But then they saw a lookout on the tallest mast on the ship, also shouting in alarm.

The waves pounded against the ship, rocking it violently, making the top of the mast sway even more. The lookout, completely numb, clung to the mast and cried out, "God, have mercy! I haven't done anything wicked..."

He was screaming pitifully when suddenly, he spotted a ship a few miles away on the sea, sailing from north to south. There were no flags on board... and it was too far away to see the people on board.

This discovery instantly brought the lookout to his senses.

When there was no trouble, he was only afraid, but when trouble struck, he forgot about the ship's rocking, lowered his head, and shouted to the deck, "Ship sighted, coming from the north... not from the south... from the north! It's a big ship!"

Zheng Chenggong frowned but remained silent.

Li Bao quickly replied, "From here all the way north to Dengzhou, it's all our Northern Song territory. We Northern Song don't have a navy yet, so where would we get large ships? If they were maritime merchants, they would definitely be displaying their flags."

These days, whether you're a sea merchant or a land merchant, you have to display your flag! The main purpose of displaying your flag is to tell the bandits and highwaymen along the way, "I am so-and-so, I have paid protection money, don't come and rob me."

If you're wandering the world without raising your flag, what's the difference between that and suicide?
Gao Jin, a prominent merchant who had long cooperated with the Northern Song government, had a special flag with a huge character for "gamble" painted on it. This reflected Gao Jin's philosophy of life: to get rich, one must gamble with one's life.

At this moment, the man who had fallen into the water also got up. He was a minor leader in Li Baojun's army. He lowered his voice and said, "Boss, if the ship that came from the north is not from our Northern Song Dynasty, then it can only be... hehehe... from the Jin Dynasty."

Li Bao: "It's too early to say it's a Jin ship, but it's definitely not a good thing. Let's intercept it and question it."

The foreman quickly said, "Shh! Boss, we're students on this ship, we can't make decisions ourselves, we have to ask the teacher for advice."

Li Bao snapped out of his daze and quickly bowed to Zheng Chenggong: "Teacher, we'd like to approach that strange ship to investigate. What do you think?"

Zheng Chenggong waved his hand: "Anyone without a flag on the high seas is a pirate, take them down!"

Everyone: "?"

Li Bao was sweating profusely: This teacher is a tough character.

(End of this chapter)