431. Chapter 431 Jin Yiwei acts
Chapter 431 Jin Yiwei’s actions
The secret sentry placed in the city by Nanzhen Fusi 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 been growing. It is not difficult for the intelligence agency to collect some relevant information. This Haihan people
It’s okay for the Han people to do business on a large scale. 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 actually had more combat power than the official army.
Strong and equipped with astonishingly powerful guns, 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
I am skeptical about this statement. However, the two major operations of the Haihan Militia in Guangdong last year have long been well known. Once, they defeated several bandits besieging the local area in Lijiazhuang, and killed Liao Dabi and other bandit leaders wanted by the government.
He had more than a thousand subordinates, and after the war he was awarded a commendation by Wang Zunde, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi. This cannot be faked.
Another action 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, Liu Xiang's pirate gang, which had always been arrogant, completely withdrew from Guangdong waters and gave up the Pearl River Estuary, which seemed to be a success.
Strong evidence for this statement. Although the Ming Dynasty also had a naval camp in Xin'an County at the Pearl River Estuary, it had always turned a blind eye to the existence of Liu Xiang's gang - or to put it more bluntly, it was unwilling to take the initiative to provoke this trouble. After all,
The armed strength of this group of pirates is not much worse than that of the navy. Comparing the 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 waterborne armed force that appeared in its jurisdiction. The Haihan people were also aware of the situation. After fighting the pirates,
There was no attempt to expand the territory, and they still guarded their own Wanshan Port, so the two sides maintained a tacit understanding of peace and harmony.
In Li Qingyang's view, the Guangdong Navy's approach was incompetent. How could the existence of another armed force be tolerated within the Ming Dynasty? As for why Liu Xiang's pirate gang was allowed to exist before, Li Qingyang believed that this was due to his ability.
It is a problem, not an issue of attitude. It is normal for those pirates to appear and disappear on the sea, have no fixed abode, and cannot be caught. The Haihan armed forces are stationed on a small island outside the Pearl River Estuary, but the navy still ignores them.
What is it if it's not dereliction of duty?
Li Qingyang did not believe in the fallacy that the Haihan people were more powerful 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 and made them 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 complicit with the Haihan people, he will
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 mirrors worth dozens or hundreds of taels of silver are all kinds of things?
Could 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 established the glassware business in Guangdong and Guangxi areas,
It has done a lot, and has covered daily necessities, private salt, transportation and other aspects. It even has a certain scale of firearms manufacturing capabilities. It has sold a lot of standard fireguns to local private armed forces in Guangdong and Guangxi. Its performance is said to have been
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
The Zhenfu Division decided to bypass the Guangdong and Guangxi Jinyiwei agencies and directly send people to Qiong to inquire about first-hand information. Moreover, the number of personnel sent should not be too many. Large-scale personnel transfers are easy to leak. For this reason, the head of the Nanzhen Fu Division
The officials were still very aware of it. However, what they did not expect was that under the erroneous rule, Nanzhen Fusi's plan to investigate Haihan was still found out by someone who was interested, and it was sold to the Haihan Office in Guangdong at a high price.
, so Li Qingyang and others were already listed as targets for their investigation before they even arrived in Guangzhou.
When Li Qingyang and others arrived outside Guangzhou, they strictly followed the plan beforehand 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 was 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. With calculated calculations without intention, no matter how cautious Li Qingyang and others were, it would be difficult for them to escape Haihan's plan.
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Li Qingyang received action guidance from the local person in charge in 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 an immigrant who defected to Haihan and go there by boat organized by the Haihan people; the third is to join the ship 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, 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 effort, even if
No matter how smooth it goes, it will still take ten days and a half, and the time limit given to Li Qingyang is not generous enough to allow them to slowly complete these preparations in Guangzhou. Moreover, there are too many aspects involved in doing these things.
, the possibility of exposing his identity will also greatly increase. Li Qingyang didn't want to be discovered before he left Guangzhou, so he took the lead in rejecting this method.
The second method is undoubtedly the simplest and easiest. 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. But the problem is that the Haihan people
The Han people will conduct strict physical examinations on the immigrants they recruit, and their luggage is no exception. Some of them carry silver coins, gold leaves, identity badges, wound medicine, special weapons, etc. These things are not for poor people.
If anything is found on an immigrant's body, his or her identity will be revealed, so this path 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
They are all grown in the Jianghuai area, and their water quality is no problem. Even if they can't sail a boat, they are still capable. They can also be competent as a handyman crew member on the ship. Moreover, after sneaking into Sanya to complete the investigation, this identity can be used in the most reasonable way.
Leaving the local area 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 stalls to inquire about immigration-related information and compared it with the situation provided by the local person in charge. As expected, it was basically true. However, such a scale of recruitment also led Li Qingyang to conclude that the report of Yazhou Jinyiwei
It must be mixed with too much water - according to what I have seen, the Haihan people recruit more than a thousand immigrants in Guangdong every month, and it is not just the three to five hundred people mentioned in the report. And every month
Li Qingyang didn't quite believe that so many people from mainland China were being recruited every month to go to Sanya to engage in what they called land reclamation work. He suspected that these so-called Haihan people were actually human traffickers, and that the immigrants they recruited would be sold as piglets.
It was not uncommon in the past to work as slave labor in areas controlled by Westerners such as Manila, Batavia, and Malacca.
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 wanted at the Pearl River Pier in the south of Guangzhou. One of them was a shipping company, specializing in Guangzhou
In the freight business with Sanya, there is a fleet sent from Guangzhou to Sanya on the first and fifteenth day of each month. It happens that the next day is April 15th. After joining, they can leave immediately, so three of them applied for the job as sailors.
I joined this boat company in name only.
For the sake of safety, Li Qingyang and another companion went to another trading firm. This firm recruited trading personnel based in Sanya, ranging from waiters, warehouse managers, handymen, to accountants, stewards, and something called
The unidentified position of "Business Representative" has different levels of salary. But even the lowest-level handyman's annual salary is as much as thirty taels, and it also includes food and accommodation, which is much more than the local workers Li Qingyang knows.
Remuneration. As for the highest-level "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 it can't go up.
capped.
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 intended to let him apply for this senior position, and even cited examples to persuade him: "Shopkeeper Li of our firm,
In the early years, I only worked in 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
His income has been rising with the tide. Now he can buy more money in a 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 in the local area. He plans to retire there next year.
I have settled in Sanya. If you go there, brother, and work for a year or two, I am afraid that in the future your achievements will be higher than those of Shopkeeper Li."
Although Li Qingyang has a mission, he can't help but feel a little excited after hearing this propaganda. Their salary and income as Jin Yiwei are much better than ordinary public servants, but their annual income can only be a hundred taels, thousands.
This level can only be enjoyed by officials with at least one thousand households. If we want to compare horizontally, 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 treatment is similar. Of course, his actual income is
There is no comparison. After all, Luo Shengdong's side business is really easy to make money. One month's income is probably what Li Qingyang did for a year.
Li Qingyang can be regarded as a relatively determined person, but after being slightly tempted, he quickly retracted his random thoughts. As an official of the imperial court, he should attach great importance to the emperor's favor. How can he forget his mission because of gold, silver, wealth and silk? Wait for the future.
After verifying the charges and taking over the property of this Haihan man, he will be promoted and make a fortune, and he will naturally receive a share of the benefits he deserves.
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. The two of them signed and signed
After that, 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 for more than ten days.
Remember, remember!”
Li Qingyang thought that this would be convenient. The other three people would also leave tomorrow. They would take different ships to Sanya so that they could take care of each other after sneaking into the local area. Then he and his companions found a hotel to stay outside the city and stayed at night.
After that, he quietly contacted the other three people and agreed on how to contact them after arriving at the 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 boat Li Qingyang took was a little late due to loading, but he was not in a hurry.
It's a good time to observe on the ship what kind of goods Guangdong merchants are selling to Sanya.
Chapter completed!