To the right side of the boat is the stretch of coastline of the Philippines, and to the left is the endless turquoise South China Sea.

General Mario stood at the bow of the ship, staring at the empty sea in front of him, and behind his flagship was one Spanish galleon, one serpent after another, following the friendly ships in front of him to the north.

"We're going to be the laughing stock of all Europe." After hearing the sound of footsteps coming from behind, Mario said without looking back, knowing that it must be Captain Leonardo who walked behind him.

"Shameless Chinese." The captain's gruff voice reached his ears, and the anger in it was palpable.

Spain was the empire on which the sun never set, and her colonies spread all over the world, including gold and silver from the Americas, spices from Southeast Asia, and porcelain and silk from China, were constantly sent back to the mainland through her fleet. But hundreds of years have passed since the heyday of the Kingdom of Spain, and she has been constantly challenged by the Netherlands and the British, and the Kingdom of Spain, which is unable to compete with many challengers, has had to remain on the defensive on all fronts.

Spain's trade with China has been going on for hundreds of years, and the first pattern was to buy mercury from China, ship it to South America for large quantities of silver, and then return it to China to buy more mercury, the difference of which was enough for Spain to buy large quantities of luxury goods such as porcelain, which were very popular goods in Europe. But forty years ago, as South America's silver mines began to dry up, this lucrative trade route was seriously threatened; Fortunately, Japan has discovered a series of silver mountains, and the scale of them is unprecedented on the earth. The Spaniards changed the original bilateral trade model with China and added Japan to the mix, maintaining the survival of the Maritime Silk Road.

This was followed by an aggressive challenge from the Dutch, but thanks to the large profits and the Spanish maritime prowess, the Spanish Viceroyalty of Manila and the Dutch Batavia Parliament were able to keep at peace. However, with the entry of the Qing army, the war throughout China caused Spain to lose most of its supplies. At first, the Spaniards hoped that the Ming army would win, or that the Qing army would quickly unify China so that trade could continue, but the Manchu ban on the sea, which had begun more than a decade earlier, dealt the most severe blow to the sea trade.

In this dark era, the appearance of Deng Ming is tantamount to lightning piercing the long dark night for the Spaniards. The young Duke of Huangming's challenge to the Manchu ban on the sea led the Manila Governor's Office to think that he was simply a messenger sent by God. At that time, Manila was still laughing at the short-sightedness of the Dutch, because Batavia actually pressed the treasure on the side of the Qing court, hoping to provide weapons and naval support to the Qing court in exchange for the Qing court opening the sea market to the Dutch.

At that time, the Governor's Office of Manila reported to the mainland that it should invest in the Duke of Huang Ming, Deng Ming, and this would certainly have received an enthusiastic response from the other side, because the other party would undoubtedly need the profits of the sea trade to help him win the civil war. Moreover, until the winner of this brutal Chinese civil war emerged, the Ming army may have maintained a friendly or even stumbling attitude towards Spain, and would have taken a tacit attitude towards the Spaniards' expulsion of Chinese power in the Philippines.

However, the Duke apparently refused to cooperate with the Governor's Office of Manila, and instead of showing a keen interest in recovering the long coastline of his homeland, he actively pushed the Spanish and Dutch out of trade with Japan. With the loss of Japan's silver mountains, Spain had limited resources to trade with China, and in order to obtain Chinese luxury, Spain had to take out American gold that they had never been willing to use before.

Although the Duke looked less and less like an angel, Manila took comfort in the fact that the Duke's attitude towards maritime trade was unprecedentedly positive, that he had produced goods in an unprecedented quantity, that there were reasonable tariffs, and that he had made every effort to minimize unnecessary obstacles to trade - until this time, the Governor's Palace in Manila could still convince the Native that the Duke was kind and friendly to Spain.

"We have all been deceived by this devil." Mario let out another long sigh.

In the past eight years, the Duke had sent envoys to Manila three times and Batavia twice to assure the Spanish Governor and the Dutch Parliament that he had absolutely no intention of changing the division of power in Southeast Asia. To prove his sincerity, the Duke did not hesitate to declare war on Britain during the Anglo-Dutch conflict a few years earlier – a gesture but a reassuring gesture.

"The lowly has always believed that the Chinese have bad intentions." Captain Leonardo said in a gruff voice.

In recent years, China has been sending colonies to the Philippines, and unlike the Chinese before them, they have come with weapons, and as soon as they landed, they began to reclaim the land, adopting a hard-line policy without hesitation against those who dared to move around their estates.

Although the Spaniards adopted the same attitude towards the natives, they were still very uneasy to see the traditionally docile Chinese adopt a similar colonial stance as theirs. This also made the Spaniards in Manila wary of the Duke's intentions. There have long been loud calls for the use of force to expel the Chinese from the Spanish sphere of influence, such as Captain Leonardo.

Since the arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines, they have been hostile and repressive towards the Chinese, because the Spanish colonists believed that the local natives lacked both commercial and agricultural talents, as well as the ability to organize and resist, and posed no threat to Spanish rule. Manila's usual practice was to confiscate the property of the Chinese, provoke the natives to rob the Chinese, and then abduct the Chinese to the Spanish concentration camps for agricultural production.

But this policy became unsustainable after the armed colonization organized by Duke Deng, because the Spaniards were so few and the natives were no match for the organized Chinese armed peasants. The duke's careful avoidance of sensitive areas for the Spaniards made it difficult for Manila to make up its mind to risk the loss of trade and sacrifice the lives of large numbers of Spaniards for a long war. In particular, these Chinese colonies also greatly improved the agricultural situation in the Philippines, and they sold a large amount of grain to Manila, making the Philippines self-sufficient for the first time. The combination of these factors has prevented Manila's militant faction from becoming the mainstream voice.

In addition to the luxury goods in China and the grain provided by the Chinese reclamation group, Manila has also felt more at ease by the increasing rubber trade over the past three years. This gum is a South American specialty, and the Duke's demand for this crop has reached the point of hunger, doubling almost every six months. Although the governors of Manila and South America were puzzled and could not figure out what the use of this gum was, since the Chinese needed it in large quantities and could greatly alleviate the loss of gold in South America, the Spaniards would not refuse to sell it. Just a year ago, Manila experimented with rubber trees in several places, hoping to solve the export problem once and for all when the trees mature in a decade.

Upon learning that the Philippines had begun to successfully transplant rubber trees, the Duke sent an envoy for the third time. When the Duke's envoy arrived in Manila three months earlier, he once again loudly declared his determination to maintain peace with the Kingdom of Spain, reiterating that "the Philippines has been a sacred territory of the Spaniards since ancient times". Relying on this amicable argument and the Duke's own letter of pledge of eternal peace, the envoy bought ten boatloads of gum at a low price—which was about the whole of last year's sales. When it was discovered that the Chinese were so eager to need this kind of cargo, South America also vigorously stepped up the mining of this gum, otherwise it would not be able to meet China's growing demand for gum.

We're going to be a laughing stock. Mario sighed again. Leonardo's complaints, including accusations against the Doge's Palace, made Mario smile wryly.

As a result of Spain's sale of large quantities of gum at low prices, it was exchanged for an ultimatum from the duke. At the same time as this ultimatum was sent a letter from the Duke to the King and the Parliament of Spain, in which the Duke stated that although he had tried his best to lobby, the Chinese Parliament had made up its mind, so that the friendship between the Duke and the Spaniards, although unchanged in the slightest, still had to choose the motherland painfully between friends and the Fatherland, and tearfully became the commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force, personally awaiting Manila's reply to the Imperial Parliament's ultimatum with the fleet and the army.

When the news reached Europe, Mario knew that the Governor of Manila would be under fierce criticism and great pressure in Madrid: knowing that the other party was only a duke, knowing that the other party had an imperial parliament, why not sign a treaty directly with the Chinese parliament, and pin his hopes entirely on a personal relationship with a duke? Any normal person would think that this is simply stupid, are the Spaniards in Manila stupid to think that the Duke can resist the orders of the royal or parliament?

The problem is not in Europe, this is in extremely authoritarian Asia. And this duke is by no means a vassal of the emperor or a tool of the council, he himself should be the master of the council! It wasn't a bitter choice on the part of a duke or a stupidity on the part of Manila, but a blatant treachery.

But none of this can be explained to people living in Spain as far away.

After rejecting the ultimatum of the Chinese Parliament, the Governor of Manila immediately ordered the fleet to set off, to annihilate the Chinese expeditionary fleet at the first opportunity, capture the duke and bring him back to Manila, and force him to give an order to the Chinese parliament to declare an armistice.

If the war had been lost, Manila would have taken more blame, accusing them of foolishly sending the fleet out of the heavily fortified fortress of Manila to fight the Chinese. But Mario knew very well that this was a last resort, and they could not even allow the Chinese fleet to disperse and land, because the Chinese army would be supported by tens of thousands of armed peasants of the reclamation regiment, and the Chinese not only had an absolute advantage over the Spaniards in numbers, but also had enough food. It is impossible to win in a protracted confrontation without food. As for the natives to fight the Chinese expeditionary force, it was even more foolish that the armed peasants of China could drive the natives out of their homes in droves in a few years, and that the natives should be expected to help the Spaniards defeat the regular Chinese army?

"The Chinese fleet is much weaker than ours, and we must defeat and annihilate them at sea." Mario reiterated: "The devil's safety must be guaranteed, and we need him to order a truce to continue to feed us and maintain trade." ”