They're already prieing.

When Fu Yuanbu's fleet passed through the Azores, the people of the island were frightened.

They docked at the island of São Miguel, which has three volcanoes, a small island about the size of Lisbon, and a seaport called Ponta Delgada, the capital of the Azores, to the southwest of the island.

Originally belonging to Portugal, the island was discovered and possessed a hundred years ago by Prince Henry the Navigator, and two months earlier he had surrendered to Philip of Spain.

The port has always been an important supply point for the Atlantic route, and in the past, the merchant ships and pirate ships of the Portuguese, Spanish, Ming, and Han kingdoms of the Ming Dynasty have been supplied here, but they have never received so many warships in one day.

Fu Yuan's fleet consumed one-third of the reserves of water and grain prepared by the grain and horse ships, and in order to replenish the baggage, they emptied almost everything on the island with the dispatch order issued by Chen Mu, the Oriental Military Government.

For this isolated Spanish island, the Ming boat has always been their nightmare, and it has also urged the islanders to grow.

The deposition of volcanic ash has brought fertile land to the island, but there are still too few inhabitants on the island, especially as Portuguese land, who have not been able to cultivate all the land that can be cultivated on the island, which was nothing a decade ago.

There were many Portuguese ships at sea, but for ten days and a half months there was perhaps only one armed merchant ship, and sometimes not a single one for a month; Later, when the Spaniards came here to resupply, there might be a Spanish fleet passing by within a month, and the merchants on the island were cheering because there were more Spanish ships.

Sometimes, the Jumbo fleet, which sailed from the Philippines, transited through Mexico, and returned to Spain, would have a large ship and seven or eight warships at a time, which could sell a large amount of goods, and the odd goods could live in, and the cheap water and grain could be sold for high value.

It was only in the last two or three years that this situation changed, and Spanish ships rarely docked here again, in contrast to armed merchant ships flying the Ming flag.

Ordinary caravans, with seventeen or eighteen ships at every turn, roared thousands of people claiming to be from the Celestial Empire to the island, more than the Portuguese originally inhabited on the island.

The caravan alone, the merchant sailors flying the prosperous flag of Fujian, Guangzhou, and He, made it difficult for the Portuguese to parry...... These men have a big temper, and their supplies are a little higher, and their eyes are frightening, and they are far less talkative than the Spaniards.

But in the deal, the sailors obeyed their own rules, and as long as the captain did not speak, they would not go further than to stare and swear; The captains were all literate men who wore long robes and folded fans, and they called themselves Confucian merchants, who would not resort to force if they could negotiate with each other, and who were very clever, often offering the prices of the other eight islands, and exchanging precious silk and porcelain for food and water from the merchants with the lowest prices.

The real trouble was in the tavern, they were not like the Spanish merchants or the Portuguese merchants, and the fights between different merchant ships in the taverns were only skirmishes, and even the sailors on the same ship would watch the excitement.

The sailors of the Ming Dynasty are different, no matter which ship, as long as a person and someone else start a conflict, the sailors of the entire tavern will stand up, and even all the sailors outside will gather no matter what they are doing, and according to their distribution habits, launch an attack on all potential helpers on the other side.

A fight between a Portuguese and a Spaniard often ends in one of them being knocked to the ground.

A Portuguese or Spaniard fighting a Ming? A war will break out on the island.

They will mention the Oriental military government Changsheng to build a sailor axe, a multi-purpose short-handled weapon with an axe on the front and a hammer on the back; Three-eyed guns, short-barreled muskets that can fire three times in a row; The Ming arquebus gun is no different from the arquebus in Spain and Portugal; The Ming Tiger Squat Cannon, a large-caliber short-barreled artillery, sprayed scattered to block the entire street; Small-caliber Furlong cannons, no one knows why the people of the Celestial Empire would fight with this kind of artillery that is only available on warships.

The man who started the dispute, his crew, his captain, and the crew and captain of the same country with him, and their ship, may be gone in the end.

This has not happened on the island of São Miguel, but people are still cautious in taverns or other corners where they can see Ming people, because it happened on the nearby island of Santa Maria.

As for the arrival of the Ming warships, it was even worse, there were no barracks on the island for them to rest, so they left the soldiers to carry shovels and build their own bricks and tiles, and no one could say anything; The kings of Portugal had all died in the war, and who could care about it, as long as they sent some silk to the governor of the island, they would be happy to give the land to the Ming army.

Because there is another group of people on this sea - Yang Ce's people, only the Ming army can control them, and where the Ming army is stationed, the Han pirates will not attack, and if they are in a good mood, they will pay for things.

In fact, Fu Yuan didn't dare to stay on these small islands for long, for fear that his soldiers would eat up the island, so he only stayed for three days, sent people to fill up the baggage of each ship, and then took Li Dan to lead the army to continue to sail eastward.

Yang Ce had no such concerns at all, and his subordinates and Shi He directly pounced on the two islands of Flores and Corvo, the westernmost of the archipelago, both of which were not as large as San Miguel's Island, one south and one north were not far apart, and the similarity was that they had no intention of surrendering to Spain.

Six thousand Han pirates landed in the town, several pirate captains under the command of Yang Ce led a neat line of subordinates to seize the two fortresses and batteries of Flores, due to the news that Fu Yuan's fleet had just passed, the defenders on the island were not ready to fight against such a huge fleet, and the people's hearts were floating at the time of panic, and people had not even figured out how to give themselves a decent surrender, and the conflict broke out.

The battle on Flores Island lasted two hours, beginning with the rout of the fort defenders, and the stubborn resistance of the fort defenders until the pirates loaded their guns onto the fort and surrendered under the bombardment.

The defenders of Corvo were lucky, they were attacked by the pirate king Shihe's men, and attacking them was not their forte, so they lost the opportunity; Even the defenders hid in the fortifications and set up defensive lines, only to find that no one had come to attack them.

The leaders of the pirate king landed on the island and started their old business, who cares about those fortresses, first looted the towns without the protection of the city walls, until Yang Ce's side was finished, and the beacon fire ignited in the sky in the evening, and Shi He realized what he was here for.

It was too late, and the defenders all burrowed into the medieval castle built in the 15th century, leaving the four thousand pirates at a loss.

Perhaps the temperament of the army was different, and the defenders of Flores Island saw that the Ming army, which appeared to be well-trained, had left the city and surrendered before the bombardment was about to be shelled; On the other side, the defenders of Corvo Island were even more determined to defend in the face of Shi He's rabble, and refused to surrender even though Shi He built a civil fort and brought in artillery outside the castle.

It was not until Yang Ce led his army to the island and told them that there were no Portuguese reinforcements that he finally relented, and asked Yang Ce for three armed merchant ships that they had originally stopped in the harbor, and was allowed to leave the island before leaving the city and surrendering.