The houses in Niudao Fishing Village were low and cramped, and they looked dilapidated, so Lu Jiude and the others did not accept the invitation of the village chief to enter the village to rest, but set up tents in the open space of the village and the port.

Jeju Island at the beginning of the fourth lunar month is exactly what it looks like in late spring, and although the temperature during the day is over 20 degrees Celsius, it often drops to about 10 degrees Celsius at night, and the temperature difference between day and night is quite large.

However, the port of Ushido where Roh and others moored their ships was just leeward of Ushido, and the east, west, and north sides were shaded by the mountain peaks around the port, and the south side was blocked by the main island of Jeju Island, so the night temperature here was much warmer than the rest of Jeju Island.

Lu Jiude, Xu Xinsu and a few Japanese shipowners simply stopped a clearing in the camp with coarse cloth, and prepared a few drinks under the starry sky by the light of the moonlight and the fire.

This time, there were three Japanese ships with seals and two smuggling ships, including three Japanese ships and two smuggling ships, with a total of five Japanese shipowners.

They were thrilled that these Japanese shipowners were able to follow the fleets of the Ming envoys to the Ming Kingdom in an open and honest manner, and to resume direct trade between China and Japan that had been interrupted for nearly 80 years.

And these shipowners knew very well that if they could complete this significant deal, it would mean that Japanese merchants would no longer need to go to Taiwan, Manila, Vietnam and other places to buy goods from the Ming Kingdom.

This will not only reduce the risk of Japanese shipowners at sea, but also greatly reduce the cost of purchasing goods from Ming China. Therefore, these ship owners have always maintained a respectful attitude since they were introduced to Lu Jiude and Xu Xinsu.

When the fleet anchored for the night in Ushijima, they brought sake from Japan and ordered the maids accompanying them to sing and dance for the feast.

Xu Xinsu, who was sitting next to Lu Jiude, drank light sake, and looked at the crooked maids dancing in front of him, feeling bored in his heart. These maids are all weaver girls who are proficient in weaving, and they are not professional kabuki, and their dancing is naturally not very good.

However, he squinted at Lu Jiude beside him and seemed to be very happy about this, and he had to pretend to be intoxicated.

Lu Jiude and Xu Xinsu were talking with several Japanese shipowners when they entered the alley when a noisy noise suddenly came from outside the barrier.

Xu Xinsu suddenly became alert, as a maritime merchant, he had seen a lot of natives lost in their minds by goods, and he wanted to rob the maritime merchant in a daze. He raised his hand and paused the song and dance, letting his retinue behind him go out to see what was going on.

Lu Jiude looked at Xu Xinsu, who was on guard, and also put down his wine glass and became nervous. Although the Japanese shipowners did not understand the language, they sensed the change in the atmosphere of the banquet and were equally silent.

However, this tension was quickly broken, and two of Xu Xinsu's entourage walked in with a thin man and reported to Xu Xinsu that the man had secretly mixed into the ship in Nagasaki and had just gone to the ship's kitchen to steal food when he was discovered by a sailor who had gone to fetch salt.

"It turned out to be a stowaway." Xu Xinsu's heart suddenly relaxed, he had no interest in this kind of smuggler, he didn't even have the interest to ask, so he ordered his subordinates: "Throw him out and let him fend for himself here." ”

"Please don't leave me here, kind nobleman, please take me to China." A female voice with a strange tone suddenly rang out in the room.

Xu Xinsu suddenly looked up in surprise at the stowaway kneeling on the ground in the middle of the banquet, and he angrily reprimanded his entourage: "Didn't you say he was a man? ”

The two attendants were also a little confused, and one of them couldn't help but whisper: "When we caught her just now, we didn't say anything, we thought he was a mute..."

"Then how do you know she's on a ship in Nagasaki?" Xu Xinsu asked with a frown.

When her subordinates speculated, she nodded and admitted. The attendant standing behind the woman immediately replied.

Xu Xinsu got up from her seat, walked to the woman and squatted down, looking at her seriously. Except for a pair of frightened and somewhat blue eyes, the hair was not visible from the dust and dirt, and the left half of her face was covered by a large sore that made her reluctant to take a second look.

No wonder these entourages all regarded her as a man, and they didn't bother to look at him a second time, Xu Xinsu thought so in his heart. The woman who was stared at by Xu Xinsu lowered her gaze and didn't dare to look at him.

Xu Xinsu stared at the woman for a long time, and suddenly reached out without warning and grabbed the disgusting big sore on the woman's face. The two attendants standing on the side suddenly subconsciously turned their eyes away, afraid of seeing something disgusting.

However, apart from the woman's exclamations, nothing seemed to squirt out. Xu Xinsu threw away the rotten sores on his hands that seemed to have been made of batter and sawdust, and let two of his attendants grab the woman's hands to prevent her from covering her cheeks.

Looking at the woman's smooth cheeks, Xu Xinsu suddenly understood that this rotten sore was just a disguise for the woman. He ordered a plate of water to be brought and washed the woman's face. Soon, the appearance of a good-looking, slightly childish Western woman was revealed.

Xu Xinsu stood up straight, took a white cloth from the entourage and wiped his hands, and then said coldly to the woman: "Tell me, who are you?" Why are you dressed up like this ghost and get on my ship?

If you dare to lie, I'll throw you to the sailors tonight. Trust me, you won't see the sunrise tomorrow. ”

Under Xu Xinsu's threat, the woman stammered and recounted her experience upside down.

She is an Englishman, and her father is a clerk at the British Merchant House on Ambon Island, named *Sentomas.

In 1613, John Salis, captain of the British East India Company, landed in Hirado aboard the Lilac. He brought with him a letter from King James I of England to Tokugawa Ieyasu and intended to establish a base for trade with Japan.

With the help of William Adams, an Englishman canonized as a samurai by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the British established a small merchant house in Hirado.

His father was one of the seven people who were left behind to build the Hirado Shokan, but the Western clothes, Indian cotton, ivory, and candles brought by the British were not popular with the Japanese, and the Shokan's profitability was very bad.

But for her father, this life in Japan is not so bad. During his time in Hirado, her father met her mother, Haruko, the daughter of a small Japanese businessman.

In 1614, her parents were married, and a year later she was born. In 1617, three years after her parents' marriage, Eisen Thomas was transferred to the English Merchant House on Ambon Island, where the English attempted to intervene in the most lucrative spice trade.

In 1618, her mother took her to Ambon Island to join her father. But while the British trade hall on Ambon Island was gradually expanding the size of the spice trade, the Dutch attacked the British trade house on the island.

The incident, known to the British as the Ambon Massacre, took place in 1623 and the remnants of the British Merchant House had to be evacuated from Ambon Island.

But Ida Thomas's parents were killed in the massacre, and the panicked British forgot to take the 8-year-old girl with them when they evacuated.

Ida Thomas thus fell into the hands of the natives of the island, who gave her the name of Aisha and gave her to the king of the island.

If nothing else, she was supposed to be a concubine in her 40s a few years later.

However, after the Dutch expelled the British power on Ambon Island, they accelerated the colonization process on the island. In order to seek financial assistance from a Chinese businessman who traveled to Japan and Southeast Asia, the local king gave her and another girl to the Chinese merchant.

The ship carrying them back to Japan caught a storm near Taiwan, and she was lucky enough to survive holding on to a few barrels bound together by rope nets, before being rescued by a passing Japanese ship.

But the Japanese shipowner did not save much kindness, and after he brought her back to Japan, he ordered someone to teach her tea ceremony, singing and dancing, calligraphy and painting and other skills, and prepared to give her to a certain daimyo as a plaything.

She tried to flee back to her mother's family, but was soon returned to the Japanese owner by her own uncle. She found that the only way to escape the Japanese shipowner's control was to flee Japan. Therefore, after hearing that there was a ship going to Mingguo, he secretly got on the ship desperately.

After listening to this woman's story, Xu Xinsu looked at her figure and was a little surprised, "Obviously she is still a girl less than 14 years old, but her figure looks like a 17 or 8-year-old girl, which is also too mature." ”

Xu Xinsu's face softened slightly, and said to the girl: "I'll ask someone to take you down to freshen up, and then let us see if you have ever learned dance skills, if you tell the truth, then I will take you to Mingguo." ”

After waving his hand to let the girl Ida go down, Xu Xinsu asked the translator to say a few words to these Japanese ship owners. These Japanese shipowners had neither heard of nor cared about Ida's affairs, and after their doubts were cleared, the feast was lively again.

Even the Japanese were happy to eat fresh seafood, and after tossing for half an hour, the people at the banquet were slightly drunk.

Even Xu Xinsu himself forgot the episode of the incident with the girl in the banquet, and he asked Lu Jiude, who was slightly drunk beside him, for instructions: "Father-in-law, tonight's banquet might as well stop here, and we will continue to hurry tomorrow." ”

Lu Jiude replied with a red face: "Yes, the miscellaneous family also feels almost the same... Who's that? This woman is much stronger than the previous group..."

Xu Xinsu turned his head to look at the venue, a dancer with a face under the veil of a veil, dancing a very exotic dance in the venue, in his memory, it seems to be a popular style on the side of the big cannibal.

The girl who originally looked like an ordinary girl, after changing into the costume of a dancing girl, became charming and seductive, especially Ying Ying's waist trick, which writhed so that several Japanese shipowners present showed greed.

Xu Xinsu then understood why the Japanese shipowner who saved Ida wanted to give the girl as a gift to a certain daimyō.

While he was thinking about it, Lu Jiude suddenly said faintly: "If you train her for some more time, Your Majesty will be fascinated by her." ”

Xu Xinsu suddenly subconsciously replied: "What my father-in-law said is extremely true. The eyes of the two met for a moment, and soon turned to Ida in the field.