Tanggu Port, Beiyang Fleet, outside the Dagu Military Port Wharf.

At this time, it was a heavily guarded scene, and the dock was full of soldiers in steel armor and spears, five steps and one post, ten steps and one sentry. The entrance to the port had long been blocked by cavalry from an unknown place.

The berths of the wharf were already full of sailboats of all sizes, as many as two or three hundred. None of the sails were raised, and the huge anchor chains were lowered into the water, leading the sailboat up and down in the wind and waves.

On one of the most heavily guarded wharves in the mouth of the Haihe River, two identical "Oceania"-class battleships were docked, both waving the Chen Ming Dynasty flag of the sun and moon at the stern. The two sailing ships are not big on one side, and one of them is slightly larger, which is the battleship "Shenzhou" of the Ming sage Chen Dexing. Another smaller sailing ship was the battleship "Beimingzhou", the flagship of the Beiyang Fleet.

The ship that Chen Dexing took on his western tour this time was one of the two battleships, and no one knows which one it is, not even Admiral Cao An, the commander of the Beiyang Fleet, who was supervising the sailors on the deck to wipe the cannons.

Cao An is also one of the twenty-two brothers, only slightly older than Zhu Sijiu and Chen Qianyi. However, he is a character who is not very obvious, and for so many years, he has been leading the troops diligently. When the Ming army and navy were separated, he was divided into the navy, and worked in the Nanyang Fleet, the Beiyang Fleet, the Admiralty, and the Navy General Staff, and also served as the principal of the Navy Military Academy. It is not an exaggeration to say that he is a veteran of the navy, and his skills at sea are naturally very solid. Therefore, he very much hoped that Chen Dexing could get on his "Beimingzhou" battleship, although this ship was not as luxurious and comfortable as the "Shenzhou". But the officers and sailors on board were very experienced, and all of them had run a few times in the Pacific Ocean, but a dozen round trips!

A long carriage in the distance came under the escort of the steel-armored cavalry. Among them were five identical gold-encrusted carriages, all of which were towed by white horses of the same color. Cao An hurriedly beckoned the staff officers and adjutants beside him. Let's get off the boat and go to greet them. Because he knew that Chen Dexing was on one of the carriages - this Ming sage emperor has been working for a long time, but his courage is getting smaller and smaller, and now he travels in the same five carriages, one is four deputies, and only God knows which one the emperor sits on.

"Xian'er, I will be quick this time in a year and a half, and if I am slow, I will come back in two years. The Queen Mother, Lin'er, Qing'an, Lian'er and the children will take care of you a lot. Shadow Girl. You have to take care of yourself too......"

There were two other women in the carriage that Chen Dexing was riding, it was Li Cuixian, who had just given birth, and Mo Yingniang, who was about to give birth.

Because she will be produced soon, Mo Ying Niang naturally won't follow Chen Dexing on a tour of the west, and the Heavenly Taoist Sect also has a mess of things for her to deal with - to put it mildly, in case Chen Dexing really encounters something unexpected on the road, with the Queen Mother Li Cuixian and the Mo Ying Niang who holds the Heavenly Taoist Sect joining forces, the Daming Dynasty can still be as safe as a rock!

In addition to Li Cuixian and Mo Yingniang, the imperial concubine Zhao Lin'er, the imperial princess Wang Qing'an (the palace master of Qing'an) and Xia Lian'er will also stay in Beijing. Zhao Lin'er and Wang Qing'an's bodies are weak, and they can't withstand thousands of miles of wind and waves. Xia Lian'er stayed in Beijing because she was pregnant.

In addition to these five people, Otani Ai will not accompany her, she will return to Japan at the end of the seventh year of Tiandao, and is ready to succeed her mother Otani Kakushin as the head of the Japanese Great Sect of Tiandao. Before she returned to Japan. Chen Dexing also personally draped a white robe of the Heavenly Daoist Envoy on her body - this matter is nothing in Chen Dexing's opinion, Juexin is his disciple, and Xiaoai is his woman. Leaving Japan to them is naturally reassuring.

It seems that the class of Xiao Ai to receive the belief is a matter of course. However. In the eyes of the Japanese Tendo samurai, this move undoubtedly established the practice of the Tendo Sect of the Japanese Grand Sect presiding over the hereditary Otani family! And Ai Otani is inheriting the presiding officer of the church at the same time. He will also take over the position of the governor of Otani. In this way, the presiding officer of the church and the governor of the Otani family will be combined into one......

"Sage, you can rest assured, with the concubine here, the affairs of the family can rest assured." Li Cuixian replied while still breastfeeding a big fat boy.

This time, she added a son to Chen Dexing! Looking at her red face and breastfeeding her child herself, you can see that this birth has not caused much damage to her body.

And Li Cuixian's milk has always been very sufficient, and a baby can't eat it at all, so she will also breastfeed babies born to other concubines with less milk, and even one of Zhao Lin'er's sons and two daughters have eaten her milk...... In Chen Dexing's harem, no concubine would worry about Li Cuixian harming their children. Li Cuixian was also a woman who was good at manipulating conspiracies in her early years, and naturally knew that conspiracy was a double-edged sword, which could not only hurt others, but also harm herself. When you have an advantage, try not to use it as much as possible. Therefore, her actions in Chen Dexing's harem now are all upright.

It is precisely because of this amount of equipment that Chen Dexing will go out on patrol with confidence and boldness, and hand over a bunch of children and a few side rooms to Li Cuixian to take care of, without worrying about letting her kill a few.

And Li Cuixian's position of power has become more solid as a result. Not only can she have the final say in the harem, but she can also intervene from time to time in the affairs of the court. And it is an upright intervention, according to "Chen Li", she is the "matchmaker" of the Ming Dynasty, and she can supervise the regent of the country when Chen Dexing is unable to govern!

"In the affairs of the DPRK and China, there will be no surprises with Ren Yijiang, Kong Yu and Zhao Fu." Chen Dexing continued to explain, "Lu Liu, the general of the Guards Army, is also my brother (twenty-two brothers), and he also married a woman from the Yang family, and Yin Lixiong of Beijing Mansion is your brother-in-law, and he can be trusted." ”

Because Chen Dexing was going to tour the west, and the time was likely to last for two years, the Guards were divided into two and two general generals were arranged, Chen Qianyi followed Chen Dexing, and Lu Liu stayed in China. And this Lu Liu is not only Chen Dexing's brother-in-law, but also married Li Cuixian's cousin (also Yang Po'er's cousin), and he is completely a character that Li Cuixian can control. Such an arrangement actually ensures that Chen Dexing has any case, and Li Cuixian can smoothly control the overall situation.

At this time, the carriage had come to a steady stop. Chen Dexing opened the curtain and glanced out. It turned out that the convoy had arrived at the Tanggu Military Port wharf.

"Alright. Send you a thousand miles, and there will be a farewell. Let's leave it here! Chen Dexing sighed and squeezed out a few smiles at the two beloved women. Take care and wait for me to come back! ”

……

"King, the saint should have left Tanggu by now."

"The son is young and the mother is strong, how can he be relieved?"

"What the king said is that if there is any accident, it will be dangerous tomorrow."

"Niangniang, you are too worried, the queen is not a character like Wu Zetian and Lu Pheasant."

"Hehe, Li Cuixian is a Empress Dowager Xiao! Dexing really wants to have some surprises. The world must still believe Chen, and the old man is not worried about this. It's just that it's hard to say whether this Empress Dowager Xiao will be seventy or eighty......"

Tianzhu, Fahrenheit City, inside the Bodhi Palace. Chen Huaiqing was rubbing his beard at this time, chatting with his concubine Dama Polo and Shi Xiuwen, a scholar of Wenhua Palace. The content of the conversation is, of course, related to Chen Dexing's western tour.

Chen Huaiqing has always been a little dissatisfied with being excluded from Chen Dexing's core decision-making level in the Ming Dynasty - in Chen Dexing's opinion, his father is too selfish, and he is too good at calculating, and he has too many sons. Let him assist the government. It's inevitable that you have to plan for your own little sons.

"But if there is a real accident, the old man has to go to the field of Li Cuixian......" Chen Huaiqing glanced at Dama Polo's big belly as he spoke.

This woman's ability to give birth to children seems to be no worse than Li Cuixian - although she can't fight, her physical condition is also first-class, and she is an empty mother who has received strict training since she was a child. And Yinmi's training for the empty master is actually yoga. After twenty years of yoga practice, her body is certainly very good.

In addition to this special Dama Polo, Chen Huaiqing also has a large number of side rooms. The number of sons is about to exceed 30!

As soon as there are many sons, it is natural to bother to make arrangements. The territory is small enough to divide. When he was older, he was afraid of the interference of the Ming court. Seriously, Chen Huaiqing has been really difficult in the past two years. If Chen Dexing really has some accidents. He also had to get on good terms with his daughter-in-law in exchange for the Ming court's continued support for the expansion of the British......

"The king, the saint Jiren Tianxiang, it is impossible to have an accident." Seeing the embarrassment of the scene—and not knowing who suddenly brought up such a disappointing topic—Dama Polo hurriedly diverted the topic. "And this time he also brought a large army, maybe he can help His Royal Highness the Prince."

His Royal Highness was Tran Duc Fong, and during this time, he had been commanding armies against the Brahmanical coalition forces in South India, while also suppressing the frequent uprisings of the Celestial Cult near Delhi. There are a few people who are exhausted.

After the great victory in the Battle of Delhi, the expansion of the four kingdoms such as Ying, Song, Sulu and other countries in Tianzhu was not as smooth as imagined. All four countries are in trouble to varying degrees!

In the northwest and southwest of Tianzhu, there is basically no power of Buddhism, and the Tianfang cultists in the northwest are very powerful, while the southwest is the world of Brahmins. Although the forces of the Ying, Song, Sulu and Lu Kingdoms were strong, once they were to disperse and establish their rule, they would inevitably appear to be understaffed.

In particular, the fierce resistance of the Tianfang Sect in the northwest of Tianzhu put Li Tingzhi and Shi Tianze in a bitter battle. Shi Tianze fell ill in the summer of the seventh year of Tiandao, and there is no sign of recovery so far, and I am afraid that he will die in a foreign land.

Although the strength of the Brahmanical states, the rivals of the British and Lu countries, was not strong, the terrain in the central and southern parts of the Deccan Plateau was complicated, and the climate was too hot and humid, which was not conducive to the battle of large armies. Moreover, there was an epidemic in Chen Defang's army, and the three armies were tired of the war and had to go home, so that the nearly one-year campaign finally ended in vain.

Chen Huaiqing smiled bitterly and shook his head, "The Battle of Nantianzhu is not easy to fight...... Tens of thousands of people have been laid horizontally and vertically, and thousands of miles of fertile soil have been laid, and they are full of food up and down, and they can't move! ”

The biggest difficulty in the Battle of Nantianzhu was not the terrain, climate, epidemics, or even those Brahmin warriors, but the officers and soldiers who followed Chen Huaiqing and Chen Defang were unwilling to fight!

The reason is also very simple, the ground of Tianzhu is too fat. And the Bengal and Ganges River basins that fell into the hands of Chen Huaiqing, Chen Defang and his son are the essence of it. That's no less fertile land than Jiangnan! Moreover, the nobles here in Tianzhu are "kind", and many Brahmin and Kshatriya families in the Ganges River Valley and Bengal are all two or three thousand years old. Under the impetus of Chen Huaiqing and Chen Defang's father and son, all the Han "adventurers" who followed them married Brahmin and Kshatriya caste girls in Tianzhu, got a large amount of dowry, and those with greater credit were knighted, and the wealth of several lifetimes was in hand. All of them have counterattacked from dicks to local tyrants! Now it is a group of local tyrants who are fighting with Chen Defang, and they still have the fighting spirit and want to fight...... Historically, it was not for nothing that the Celestial cultists who conquered India had to buy slave soldiers from Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia.

This piece of land is too good, once it is occupied, once the comfortable days pass, it will soon be corrupted and degenerated, and no matter how elite the soldiers are, they will not be able to use it much.

"And even if Wu'er Dexing brings a large army over, he won't give it to me." Chen Huaiqing shook his head again and again, "Those soldiers are all Dexing's guards and servants, and they are all used in Tianzhu, so he can't go west to Persia and eat big." ”

There is another reason why Chen Huaiqing did not say it explicitly, that is, the expansion of Tianzhu Great Britain has reached the point where Chen Dexing is difficult to tolerate...... A unified Great Tianzhu is not in the interests of the Ming Empire!

Chen Huaiqing's adviser Shi Xiuwen also shook the paper fan and said: "The king, the minister thinks that it is better for the saint to go to Persia early and eat big." Ming Army...... We can't count on it! ”

Chen Huaiqing nodded, his brows furrowed: "The Lone King also sees it this way, he has to think of a way to deal with the past, and he can't let his Da Ming put too much effort into Tianzhu." ”

Dharma Polo frowned, "King, if we don't rely on the Ming Dynasty, what will we use to pacify Nan Tianzhu?" ”

Chen Huaiqing looked at Shi Xiuwen, and Shi Dastrategist laughed: "This Southern Tianzhu naturally has to rely on the Northern Tianzhu to go flat!" King, our army can't all use Han people, but also use some Tianzhu people! ”

"But this kind of surname ......," Chen Huaiqing looked embarrassed. Tianzhu is a soldier is a "kind", not everyone can do it, so although Tianzhu has a large population, there are very few people who can be soldiers. Otherwise, Chen Huaiqing and the previous Heavenly Fang Sect disciples would not have conquered so much territory so easily.

Shi Xiuwen shook his head and said with a smile: "The people here in Tianzhu do not all have castes, as far as the minister knows, on the southern slope of the mountains in the north (referring to the southern slope of the Himalayas), there are still many places where the caste system is very loose, and most of the people do not have a caste, and the mountains and highlands there are poor, so it is a good place to send elite soldiers." (To be continued.) )