The most relied on admiral under Lin Feng outside of Zhuang Gong was Yang Ce, and at the same time when he was training the flag army in Beiyang, Yang Ce trained a group of pirates with almost the same drill on an island thousands of miles away from the Ming Dynasty.

At this moment, Admiral Yang Ce is leading his fleet to carry out the important mission entrusted to him by the Han State on the other side of the African continent - selling salt and cloth.

Selling salt and cloth sounds like a low-end thing, but in fact, when the amount is huge, it is a very high-end business, for example, in West Africa, salt and cotton can be exchanged for gold, and silk from the Ming Dynasty can be equivalent to gold.

Yang Ce led almost the most powerful fleet under the command of the four kings of the Han Kingdom, with 1,200 elite soldiers composed of Min and Luzon people, who received an average of up to a year and a half of training, although this kind of training was very rudimentary in Yang Ce's opinion, it was still enough for them to stand proudly among the many armies of the Han State.

Limited by the reserves of gunpowder and muskets, the maximum number of 400 gunmen is less than 200 rounds of lead bullets, and the artillery even releases an average of 20 cannons, but they can arrange more training into physical fitness, spear formation, spear throwing, fortifications and hand-to-hand combat, so that they have extraordinary combat power according to local conditions.

Although training can be saved, it is fair to say that the armies of various countries pulling 1,200 men from the regular army may not be able to defeat them on the battlefield.

Africa is rich in gold, and salt is a very important hard currency for both the chaotic chieftains in the south and the three large countries of Songhai, Mali and Benin in the west, because they do not know how to boil salt, a necessity that has always been the focus of foreign trade.

In Songhai, they traded mainly gold, slaves, ivory, spices, kolago, and cotton fabrics, as well as salt, weapons, horses, copper, glassware, sugar, and North African shoes and wool products.

There is no need for a fleet to do business, Lin Afeng values this rich land, and cares more about this route, its area is complex and difficult for large armies to enter, and attacking is a sign of insanity, and trade is easier to bring wealth than conquest.

But there is a problem with the trade in front of them - there are many competitors.

The Spaniards, the Portuguese, the English, the Ottomans, they all traded here, and the salt was too unskilled for many countries, and it was difficult for other handicrafts to compete with others, and the status was very embarrassing.

The weapons and horses of the Han Kingdom were not enough for themselves, and it was impossible to sell them to others, and the pirates did not like to farm, and it was impossible to make sugar, so they could only make a living by boiling some sea salt, but there were so many competitors.

But they are pirates, in Lin Feng's words: if you kill them, won't there be no competition?

Therefore, Yang Ce's goal is very clear, empty all the goods on the ship from a few chaotic chieftains in the south, and then go north along the coast around the west of the mainland, block the northern route with warships, kill all the ships sailing south, and then use the lucky ships to pick up the goods and sell them in West Africa.

This thing is very addictive to do, and the prosperous commercial routes have brought them huge profits, not to mention, even important materials such as weapons, war horses, copper, and iron have been sent to the door, and the only disadvantage is that Yang Ce found that he couldn't go back.

The longer the route was cut off, the higher the price of goods in the three major trading countries, and he could not leave at all with the constant arrival of ships from the north.

In fact, he only has seventeen four-hundred-grain flying sharks and five four-hundred-material lucky ships, such strength is nothing to the navy, but to those European merchants who only have one or two ships?

Oh, that's the nightmare.

You can't run away, you can't beat it, not to mention how annoying it is.

Of course, few people have the opportunity to hate Yang Ce, except for those who slip through the net.

For example, Yang Ce's men are still blocking the shipping routes in the north, and he personally leads three flying shark ships with the most artillery weapons to pursue a notorious English trafficker, the slave ship is fast, and his pursuit is all over the west coast of Africa, until the slave trader reaches his destination, Congo, there is no chance of catching up with the war.

By this time the chase had failed, the pirates knew what they were buying here, and those slaves were of no use to the pirates.

But Yang Ce couldn't swallow this breath, he was going to kill these three ships.

Not for wealth, for comfort.

But when it came time to make a move, the pirates were timid again.

"Admiral, many, many, many, driven from the woods to the shore!"

The voice of the lookout hand with the worn telescope on the mast was trembling, and when Yang Ce looked over, it was really a lot of people.

The black pressed a piece, their complexion was already black, and there were hundreds of people, those slaves with their arms and ankles tied to the rope and only a piece of cloth on their bodies stood side by side, and even Yang Ce couldn't tell how many thousands of people were standing on the shore.

"It won't be less than five thousand, what are they going to do?" Yang Ce looked at the coastline from afar and frowned, leaned on the side of the boat and blurted out: "Those three boats can't even fit four hundred people, what are they doing when they drive so many people out?" ”

The pirates knew that these traders from Europe bought and sold slaves, they did not rely on robbery, because they were not armies, and a small number of firearms could not pose much threat to bows, arrows and spears when they were not on a large scale, and African tribes were not Americas, but also used iron weapons, and the cost of robbery was too great, not to mention the plateaus, rivers and tropical rainforests made it difficult for them to enter.

So South Africa became a paradise for them, and sophisticated slave traders would win the favor of the chiefs with cheap handicrafts, and then sell weapons to support one or more chiefs in battle, and when they were victorious, they would buy all the captives at a very low price.

These slaves also had a place to go, and the silver mines of Potosí in Spain were constantly dying, and there was a serious shortage of manpower to open the mines, and twenty or thirty thousand slaves were sold there every year, and eventually died there.

But what will be the price of these people being transported to another continent?

Yang Ce saw through his binoculars that the slave trader he was chasing had commanded his men to pick and choose through the crowd, and finally selected less than five hundred men and drove them onto the ship with spears with the assistance of the chief's soldiers.

Yang Ce had a smile on his face, he said that these three ships couldn't even fit four hundred people, but now they had to fit five hundred people, and the more people they loaded, the slower the ship would go.

He had even explained his tactics to the left and right: "When the ships leave the shore for eight miles, we will rush up, and they will flee to the shore, but one round of shelling can sink three ships, and the slaves on board can swim back without dying too much...... What are they doing? ”

Yang Ce's words were not finished, he could even hear the noise of the coast from a distance, when he put his eyes to the telescope, his eyebrows involuntarily raised, and the cold hairs on the back of his neck even stood up, what happened in front of his eyes was probably one of the darkest moments in the history of the human heart.

The slave traders, with satisfaction, watched their carefully selected five hundred goods loaded onto the ship, waved their hands to their men, some whistled, a few retinues with muskets shot diagonally into the sky, others drew their swords at their waists or drove away the slaves with spears and halberds, and then the chieftain's soldiers blocked the coast with spears, and more joined in with spears.

It is true that there were more slaves on the coast than five thousand, and the total number of captives was seven thousand five hundred.

Now the remaining seven thousand people are worthless to them, and they intend to drive these people into the sea and drown!