Chapter 431 Jin Yiwei’s actions
Nanzhen Fusi's secret sentry in the city introduced the general situation of the Haihan people to Li Qingyang and others. In the past two years, the Haihan people's business in Guangzhou has grown bigger and bigger, and it is not difficult for the intelligence agency to collect some relevant information. It’s okay for the Haihan people to do a large business. After all, there are as many wealthy businessmen and powerful people as dogs in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Being able to do business is not a big deal. However, when Li Qingyang heard that the militia organized by Haihan was even more powerful than the officials. The army was still strong and equipped with surprisingly powerful guns, so he immediately put away his initial contempt.
Li Qingyang had seen the drills of the official firearms battalion and knew the power of the firecrackers and artillery. To say that the indifferent Yazhou people actually hid a private armed force that was more capable than the official army, of course he was Be skeptical of this claim. However, the two major operations of the Haihan Militia in Guangdong last year have long been known to the public. Once in Lijiazhuang, they defeated several bandits besieging the local area and killed several bandit leaders including Liao Dabi and more than a thousand of their subordinates who were wanted by the government. Later, he was awarded a commendation by Wang Zunde, the Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi. This cannot be faked.
Another operation was a sea battle with the Liu Xiang pirate gang at the Pearl River Estuary at the end of the year. In this naval battle, some Ming merchants were lucky enough to witness the battle at Wanshan Port. It is said that the Haihan warships were overwhelmingly powerful. The advantage defeated Liu Xiang's fleet, and the number of pirate ships sunk in Wanshan Port alone reached double digits. After this battle, the always arrogant Liu Xiang pirate gang completely withdrew from Guangdong waters and gave up the Pearl River Estuary, which seems to be strong evidence for this statement. Although the Ming Dynasty also has a navy camp in Xin'an County at the Pearl River Estuary, it has always ignored the existence of Liu Xiang's gang - or to put it more bluntly, it is unwilling to take the initiative to cause this trouble. After all, the armed strength of this group of pirates is compared to The navy is not too far behind. Comparing these two, it seems that it is not difficult to conclude that the surface forces of the Han people are stronger than the Ming navy.
The Daming Navy stationed in Xin'an County also rationally maintained restraint after the war and did not take hostile actions against another floating armed force that appeared in its jurisdiction. The Haihan people were well informed and did not try to expand their territory after fighting off the pirates. They still guarded their own Wanshan Port, so the two sides maintained a tacit understanding of peace and harmony.
In Li Qingyang's view, this approach of the Guangdong Navy was incompetent. How could the existence of another armed force be tolerated within the Ming Dynasty's maritime borders? As for why Liu Xiang's pirate gang was allowed to exist before, Li Qingyang believed that it was a matter of ability, not attitude. Those pirates are elusive and have no fixed abode on the sea. It is normal for them not to be caught. The Haihan armed forces are stationed on a small island outside the Pearl River Estuary, but the navy still ignores them. Isn't this a dereliction of duty?
Li Qingyang didn't believe in the fallacy that the Haihan people were stronger than the Ming Dynasty. He thought that the Haihan people just lived in a corner of Yazhou, and Yazhou had always been a place where prisoners were exiled. It was a real barren mountainous area. In addition, the area was vast and sparsely populated. How much battle can be done to help the Haihan people? In his opinion, the most likely possibility is that the Haihan people used money to bribe some military personnel who were derelict in their duties, allowing them to turn a blind eye to the existence of Wanshan Port. After all, the Haihan people are good at doing business, and a little money is not a problem for them. As for the corruption of the border army in recent years, Li Qingyang, as a Jin Yiwei, also knows a little bit about it. If there are people who are in cahoots with the Haihan people, he will not It won't be surprising.
In fact, Nanzhen Fusihui is interested in the Haihan people in Yazhou because in the past year or so, reports from Qiongzhou have unusually few descriptions of the Haihan people. The general banner in Yazhou even claimed in the report that this gang There are only "three to five hundred people who make a living by fishing and farming." However, a large number of Haihan products have appeared on the Nanjing market last year. Is it possible that dozens or hundreds of taels of silver mirrors, various Could the crystal clear glassware be made by a group of fishermen?
After all, Jinyiwei is the leading intelligence agency in the Far East in this era. If you really want to investigate something with peace of mind, you can't get through it just by relying on some deception. Soon Nanzhen Fusi learned that the Haihan people not only had a huge glass business in Guangdong and Guangxi, but also covered daily necessities, private salt, transportation and other aspects, and even had a certain scale of firearms manufacturing capabilities. Local private armed forces in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions have sold a lot of standard firearms, and their performance is said to be no less than the weapons equipped by the Ming Dynasty's military firearms battalion.
Privately making firearms was absolutely prohibited in the Ming Dynasty, so Nanzhen Fusi had another reason to investigate Haihan. However, considering that some personnel of the Jinyiwei branch in Guangdong may have been bribed by Haihan, Nanzhen Fusi decided to bypass the Jinyiwei branch in Guangdong and Guangdong and directly send people to Qiong to inquire about first-hand information. Moreover, it is not advisable to dispatch too many personnel. Large-scale personnel transfers can easily leak news. The officials in charge of Nanzhen Fusi are very clear about this. However, what they didn't expect was that under the wrong circumstances, Nanzhen Fusi's plan to investigate Haihan was found out by someone who was interested, and was sold to the Haihan Office in Guangdong at a high price. As a result, Li Qingyang and others have not yet When he arrived in Guangzhou, he was already listed as the target of their investigation.
When Li Qingyang and others arrived outside Guangzhou, they strictly followed the pre-planned plan and did not contact the Jinyiwei Yamen in Guangzhou rashly. After lurking outside the city for a day, they entered the city and went to the direct stronghold of Fusi in Nanzhen. It's just that they didn't expect that their opponents had guessed this move in advance and had already set up a surveillance circle around the wine shop. Calculating with intention but without intention, no matter how cautious Li Qingyang and others are, it will be difficult to escape Haihan's calculations.
Li Qingyang received action guidance from the local person in charge at the wine shop. If they wanted to cover up their tracks and go to the Sanya area controlled by the Haihan people on Qiongzhou Island, there were only three ways. One was to pretend to be merchants going to trade and sail their own ships. The second is to pretend to be immigrants who defected to Haihan, and the Haihan people organize a boat trip to the place; the third is to join the ship company and go to the place as an ordinary sailor.
The first method has the lowest risk, but is also the most difficult. Not only do they have to purchase ships and goods by themselves and prepare the money required for the transaction, but they also have to hire a group of sailors who are familiar with the waterway from the Pearl River Estuary to Sanya. After all this trouble, no matter how smooth it was, it would still take ten days and a half, and the time limit given to Li Qingyang was not generous enough to allow them to slowly complete the preparations in Guangzhou. Moreover, doing these things involves too many aspects, and the possibility of exposing his identity will also greatly increase. Li Qingyang did not want to be discovered before he left Guangzhou, so he was the first to reject this method.
The second method is undoubtedly the simplest and easiest to implement. Just go directly to the immigration recruitment points set up by the Haihan people in and outside Guangzhou. Young and strong people like them will undoubtedly become the targets of the Haihan people's recruitment. But the problem is that the Haihan people will conduct strict physical examinations on the immigrants they recruit, and their luggage is no exception. Several of them carry silver coins, gold leaves, identity badges, wound medicine, special weapons, etc., and these things are not It's not something that poor immigrants should have. If you search for any of them, your identity will be revealed, so this road probably won't work either.
In the end, the only thing left is to become a sailor. Due to the increasingly frequent business activities between Guangzhou and Sanya, there are chambers of commerce, shipping companies and other organizations recruiting sailors near the Pearl River Pier all year round. There are many opportunities to go to Sanya. Fortunately, Li Qingyang and others grew up in the Jianghuai area, and their water resistance is no problem. Even if they can't sail a boat, they are still capable of working as a handyman on the ship. Moreover, after sneaking into Sanya to complete the investigation, this identity can also be used. Leave the place in the most reasonable way to avoid arousing the suspicion of the Haihan people. So after exploring several ways to enter Sanya, Li Qingyang decisively chose the last one. Later, Li Qingyang and others also saw what the local person in charge called the Haihan recruitment point in Guangzhou City. The intensity of the recruitment was simply beyond their expectations. Of course, the situation they saw was indeed a temporary measure, and there was no such thing as usual. They set up street stalls in such a big way to attract immigrants.
Li Qingyang and others also went to several different booths to inquire about immigration-related information, and compared it with the situation provided by the local person in charge. Sure enough, it was basically true. However, such a scale of recruitment also made Li Qingyang conclude that Yazhou Jinyiwei's report It must have been mixed with too much water - according to what I have seen, the Haihan people are probably recruiting more than a thousand immigrants in Guangdong every month, and it is not just the three to five hundred people mentioned in the report. Li Qingyang didn't really believe that so many people from the mainland were recruited from the mainland to go to Sanya every month to engage in what they called land reclamation work. He very much suspected that these so-called Haihan people were actually human traffickers. The immigrants they recruited would be sold as piglets and sent to areas controlled by Westerners such as Manila, Batavia, and Malacca to work as slave labor. This situation had happened in the past. Not uncommon.
After basically "confirming" another bad deed of the Haihan people, Li Qingyang decided to apply for a job as a crew member, so the five of them successfully found the job they were looking for at the Pearl River Pier in the south of Guangzhou. One of them is a shipping company that specializes in freight business between Guangzhou and Sanya. There is a fleet from Guangzhou to Sanya on the first and fifteenth day of each month. It happens that the next day is April 15th. You can leave immediately after joining, so Three of them joined the shipyard as sailors.
For the sake of safety, Li Qingyang and another companion invested in another trading firm. This firm recruits trading personnel based in Sanya, ranging from waiters, warehouse managers, handymen, to accountants, stewards, and some unidentified positions called "business representatives," with varying levels of remuneration. But even for the lowest-level handyman, the annual salary reached as much as thirty taels, and it also included food and accommodation, which was much higher than what Li Qingyang knew about local employment benefits. As for the most senior "Business Representative", the basic salary alone is as high as 800 taels per year. Coupled with various subsidies, bonuses, commissions, performance income, etc., it can easily exceed 1,000 taels, and there is no cap.
The recruiting master heard that Li Qingyang could read and calculate accounts, and he had a decent appearance, with a capable air between his brows, so he wanted him to apply for this high-level position, and even cited examples to persuade him: "Shopkeeper Li of our firm, In the early years, I only worked in the Yacheng branch, and I could only make four or five thousand taels of business in a year. Since the arrival of the Haihan people, the business in Yazhou has become prosperous. Shopkeeper Li's business has become more prosperous. His income has been rising with the tide. Now he can buy more money per month than in the past year. It is said that the red envelope given to him by the boss of the general store last year was two thousand taels. He also bought a house built by Haihan people locally and plans to retire there next year. Settled in Sanya. If you go there, brother, and work for a year or two, I’m afraid you will be even more successful than Shopkeeper Li in the future.”
Although Li Qingyang had a mission, he couldn't help but feel a little excited after hearing this propaganda. Their salary and income as Jinyiwei officers are far better than those of ordinary public servants, but their annual income can only be a hundred taels. This level of 1,000 taels can only be enjoyed by officials with at least 1,000 households. If we want to make a horizontal comparison, Li Qingyang's position is the same as that of Luo Shengdong before he was promoted to general. He is a sixth-grade military attaché and his basic salary is similar. Of course, the actual income is not comparable. After all, Luo Shengdong's side job is really easy to make money. , one month's income is probably equivalent to what Li Qingyang has been doing for a year.
Li Qingyang can be considered a relatively determined person, but after being slightly tempted, he quickly retracted his random thoughts. As a court official, you should put the emperor's favor first. How can you forget your mission because of gold, silver, wealth and silk? When the charges are proven in the future and the Haihan man's property is taken over, he will naturally get a share of the benefits he deserves when he gets promoted and makes a fortune.
In order not to attract too much attention, Li Qingyang only applied for the position of accountant and asked his companion to apply for the position of warehouse manager. Although the master in charge of recruitment felt it was a pity, he still followed the instructions and wrote the letter of appointment for them. After the two of them signed and signed, the master warned: "You two will find a place to stay nearby today, and report here early tomorrow morning. The merchant ship will leave for Sanya tomorrow. If you miss this ship, you will have to wait. More than ten days, remember!”
Li Qingyang thought that this would be convenient. The other three people would also set off tomorrow. They would take different ships to Sanya so that they could take care of each other after sneaking into the local area. Immediately, he and his companions found a hotel to stay outside the city. After nightfall, they quietly contacted the other three people and agreed on how to contact them when they arrived at their destination.
The next day, the two boats taken by the five Jinyiwei people departed from the Pearl River Pier and headed south half an hour apart. The ship Li Qingyang boarded was a little late due to loading, but he was not in a hurry. He could just observe on the ship what kind of goods Guangdong merchants were selling to Sanya.
(End of chapter)