Qin Official

In late August of the thirty-fourth year of Qin Shi Huang's reign, on the blue south coast of Korea, five sterns were sailing eastward, but not far to the south of them, a storm was about to hit.

After hearing the alert from the outpost, Wei Yang, who was in charge of the expedition fleet, hurriedly came to the deck. The fierce wind blew his eyes away. Several miles away, the rolling waves were as high as the ship.

He secretly thought that something was wrong. It happened that a middle-aged man with a panicked look came outside to look out, and shouted loudly in the wind: "Master Xu, didn't you say that there won't be a north wind at this time of year?"

Xu Fu also looked at the storm sweeping in the distance, dumbfounded, but felt extremely aggrieved.

"I have never been to this sea area, how can I be sure of everything?"

This is indeed a coast that Xu Fu has never explored. Their voyage began a month ago. As the merchants moved deeper, almost all the Mahahan tribes fell over to the Qin Dynasty. Fusu personally commanded three thousand soldiers. Under the leadership of merchants and several Mahan tribes, they began to march eastward.

According to the latest information, Canghaijun's last stronghold is Lintun Town in Dongli. This town is at the other end of the peninsula and faces the sea to the east. In order to prevent Canghaijun from jumping over the wall and escaping from the sea, Jiaodong believes that a fleet should be dispatched , go to sea to intercept.

Wei Yang volunteered, and for the next job, Xu Fu was also invited by Hei Fu to accompany him. In terms of sea exploration, he was the most experienced.

A group of five sterns, each with a hundred people, set off from Chengshanjiao in late July. After arriving in Hancheng, they rested for a few days and then headed south along the Mahahan coastline.

Five days later, the coastline suddenly deflected and turned eastward. From then on, the fleet entered an area it had never entered before...

For this voyage, the ship was filled with food, and Heifu also asked Cang Xian to send them a large amount of bean sprouts, which are easy to preserve. If there is sufficient fresh water, they can also use the farmer's new method to grow bean sprouts and eat them, which is a good choice for sea voyages. of non-staple food.

Heifu was afraid that the crew would get scurvy if they stayed on the ship for a long time without access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Facts have proved that he was overly worried. Although the speed is slow due to walking and exploring, it is still traveling far from the shore. When encountering a bay where it is easy to anchor, the fleet will send people in small boats to search.

It was on the southern coast of the peninsula that they encountered tribes named "Benhan" and "Chenhan".

"Benchen people are not similar to Mahan people in appearance. Mahan people are both short and hairy, while Benchen people are slightly taller, have tattoos, and have turbaned heads. Their speech is also very different. Benjin is also good at farming, and the land here is larger than that of Mahan people. It is fertile, good at growing rice and making cloth, with towns gathered together, each with its own ruler, and capable of smelting copper..."

Wei Yang recorded this in his "Navigation Diary". He heard from the Mahan translator on the ship that after Bianchen's child was born, he let the child's head rest on a stone all day in order to protect the back of the child's brain. Bing Bian, maybe you think this can help you live longer? So everyone I saw was jealous.

And what’s funny is that Benchen’s residential buildings are a kind of well-dry wooden corrugated house, which is like a prison in the Central Plains.

The military situation was so high that they only stopped to get fresh water and change some food, and did not stay in Benchen Land for too long. The fleet continued to sail eastward and entered a sea area densely covered with islands. Xu Fu pointed to the southeast and told Weiyang that this was actually a strait. In the southeast, there was a land covered with mountains and forests, perhaps another state outside Kyushu. …

"Maybe just a big island."

Wei Yang repeated what his father-in-law Hei Fu said, but didn't take it to heart very much.

Just as the voyage entered the twelfth day, the ocean current suddenly became unstable. For fear of hitting the fragmented coastal reefs, the fleet moved a little farther from the land, but unexpectedly, it encountered this sudden strong wind!

This place is more than ten miles away from the land, and the coastline can be vaguely seen. An inexperienced captain would definitely rush over to avoid the strong wind, but Xu Fu stopped Wei Yang.

"This sea area is densely covered with reefs, and it's low tide now. If you get too close to it rashly, you may hit the rocks if the wind blows you!"

In this case, if you rush to the shore in a hurry, the ship may sink. The best way is to drive diagonally and keep the ship not too close to the shore. Once you see an island in the bay where the ship can be berthed, immediately approach it. !

Wei Yang gritted his teeth. At the moment, he could only try his best to find ways to get the ship out of danger.

They were lucky. Not long after, a narrow bay appeared in front of them. The fleet quickly rushed there before the wind and waves became stronger. At this time, they had to rely on the sails and rudder to prevent the ship from deviating from the direction under the strong wind. .

Xu Fu used his many years of maritime experience to ask the sailors to pull the sails of the two masts diagonally to let them catch the wind on the side. In this way, the smallest sail area can be used to take advantage of the wind and tilt the strongest part of the hull towards the waves, while maintaining the original course.

The four stern boats successfully rushed to the soft beach and immediately anchored, one on each side, to stop the boat steadily. The bottom of the sea was made of coarse sand and rocks, which could hold the anchor. As the tide rises, they will refloat on the sea surface and stop at a depth of three feet. They are small and can be stranded without any problem. A group of people can just push them into the sea.

But there was still a ship that veered off course and crashed directly into the sharp rocks on the edge of the bay! After everyone on the ship screamed, the ship hit the rocks hard, countless people fell into the sea, and there was a big hole in the bow of the ship, and seawater poured in quickly...

The ship had to be abandoned. Weiyang was busy rescuing people all night, but one third of the crew of the ship was still dead...

Four boats were parked on the beach, tilting badly as the wind and waves battered them. The waves jumped higher than the top of the ship, sweeping across the deck from bow to stern with swift and unstoppable momentum. The sails have been lowered, the mast is swaying, and the ship's planks are creaking, as if the next time, it will be scattered by the waves, which is frightening.

Except for the captain and a few people, no one dared to stay on the ship. They stood shivering on the shore and hid in the coastal caves, hoping that the storm would weaken at dawn, but their hope was in vain. At dawn the next day, the strong winds It was more violent than before, the sea was turbulent, and among the only four ships left, one had its mast broken and was useless.

"Boy, did you see it?"

Wei Yang had never experienced such a big wave since he joined the navy. He bit his lip and looked at his ship distressedly, but Xu Fu laughed:

"The sea is like a woman, her temper is unpredictable. Yesterday she may have shown you all kinds of tenderness, but today she may be covered by dark clouds and angry waves crashing on the shore, trying to tear you apart."

After sighing for a while, Xu Fu sighed again:

"But no matter what his temper is, a man can't live without a woman, just like you and I can't live without the sea."

It wasn't until the third day that the violent storm gradually subsided. Hundreds of people returned to the ship in shock and found that the cabin was filled with water. Most of the food had been soaked in water. If it was not exposed to the sun quickly, it would become moldy. However, it was the bean sprouts that Heifu asked them to bring. , after being soaked in sea water for a day and a night, sprouts actually sprouted...

After drinking bean sprout soup and waiting until the sea calmed down, more than 400 people crowded into four boats and continued eastward. Only two days later, the sailor in charge of looking out shouted:

"Lord Five Hundred, the direction of the coast has changed again!"

Sure enough, the coast turned again, winding northward.

"Coming."

Wei Yang breathed a sigh of relief, while Xu Fu happily wrote and drew on the map. Their voyage proved that this land full of tribes was indeed a "peninsula" as Heifu had drawn.

It was night, when the ship was moored at night, Xu Fu stood on the bow of the ship, holding a star board in his hand, and measured their latitude against the Liuren star disk.

Later generations always thought that the premise of latitude measurement was to prove that the earth was round, but even if Xu Fu and others believed that the earth was flat, it did not affect the latitude measurement at all. Determining latitude by relying on the angle between the height of Polaris and the ground is very suitable, accurate and convenient in the northern hemisphere.

"The county guard introduced the star-pulling technique into the army, and the scouts measured that Canghaijun's last stronghold, Lintun, is at 38 degrees latitude..."

And their current location is thirty-six degrees.

The violent wind and turbulence had completely subsided, and then there was an exploitable southeasterly wind. The four sterns propped up its two hard sails and sailed quickly with the wind. It tried to get as close to the shore as possible, and the sail ropes were fastened to On the starboard side, head north.

At this point, they had completely left the Benchen territory and circled around Dongyi. A few days later, when Xu Fu measured the latitude again, they had approached 38 degrees.

The rocks on the shore are covered with boundless greenery, and people can also see groups of deer jumping in the woods and on the plains. Not long after, a wooden city standing high on the mountain appeared in front of them. There are many more on the seaside. There are many wooden rafts and bamboo rafts, and many people are trying to push them into the sea...

And more than ten miles away, there was a dark army, wading through mountains and rivers, approaching quickly. It was an army led by Young Master Fusu himself.

"It happens to be the last day of August, so we are joining forces here."

Xu Fu and Wei Yang looked at each other and smiled.

"It seems it's not too late for us to arrive!"

…

On the last day of August in the thirty-fourth year of Qin Shihuang, Lintun City (Gangwon Province, South Korea) on the east coast of the Korean Peninsula was a small state established by the Yi people. It was actually a small village with wooden walls and fences. It was really different from the small state in the north. Similarly, he once belonged to Ji's North Korea, which was also the last place where Lord Canghai lived.

But Canghaijun's year-long wandering has come to an end. The original plan of Lord Canghai was to avoid the sharp edge of the Qin army and lead his troops to flee between Sanhan and Donghao. If the Qin people sent troops to pursue them, they would be exhausted by the mountainous landscape and would also break in. If conflicts arise in the territories of various ministries, Canghaijun can fan the flames and gather local tribes who don't know how powerful Qin Jiuji is to harass the Qin army and make it retreat.

However, in the past half year, the Qin army changed its strategy of going deep alone. Instead, it sent merchants to go deep into Mahan and Dongyi. They used brown sugar and knives as stepping stones to establish trade relations with various ministries. They also used a vicious trick: if each ministry did not have mink skins, they could Canghai Jun’s heads were exchanged for goods...

The various tribes were greedy for the benefit of the Qin people, and Canghaijun's tribe was repeatedly robbed and killed by the natives. The core deployment with him in exile originally only had more than 3,000 people, but in the past few months, more than 1,000 people had been lost.

Lord Canghai had no choice but to counterattack and captured Dongyi Lintun as a foothold. This place was adjacent to the Whale Sea to the east. At present, thousands of people from the Qin Army, Mahan, and Dongyi were surrounded from three sides by land. If they did not want to be completely wiped out, they could only count on He built ships and went to sea, and fled to Chenhan and Benhan...

But their hopes soon came to nothing. In the early morning, four warships suddenly appeared on the east coast, as if they had descended from the sky!

When the black flag was raised from the ship, when the bamboo raft struggling to float on the sea was unceremoniously knocked over by the stern, and when the crossbow fired continuously, shooting all the people who fell into the water to death, Canghaijun and his tribe were all Desperate.

Although the Qin ships were neither many nor big, they were heavily armed warships. They could not enter the sea relying on dozens of bamboo rafts.

The people who had escaped all the way knelt feebly on the beach. They knew that only one of them would die next.

"God's punishment, this is God's punishment..."

Next to Mr. Canghai, a white-haired old man dressed clearly from the Central Plains sighed:

"I am aware of the punishment from heaven, and I am moving away. This is the Qin Shihuang I know. Just like in the past, I dealt with King Xi of Yan, Prince Dan, and Fan Yuqi. If anyone touches Ni Lin, he will be punished by the emperor's wrath. , even if you run to the ends of the earth, you can’t escape!”