These people were divided into three groups.

One group were sea merchants who were originally gathered together by Cheng Yongzhen. Now that Cheng Yongzhen was gone, they planned to continue being sea merchants. Another group was local people employed by Cheng Yongzhen. With Cheng Yongzhen gone, they planned to go back to farming and the third group… became pirates.

After Jiang Zhen learned of this incident, he had strengthened his security, but the result was not very good. Recently, there have been many pirates on their side of the sea.

Pirates during this time not only robbed on the sea, but also on land before fleeing back to the ocean.

The next day, Jiang Zhen went to the beach.

He used to bring Zhao Jinge and their children with him, but recently the seaside was not safe. He didn’t even dare go there alone, let alone bring anyone with him.

As soon as he arrived at the seaside, someone came to report: “Boss, last night we were attacked by pirates!”

“What?” Jiang Zhen believed he finally understood. What pirates needed the most was his ship!

“What happened?”Jiang Zhen asked.

“Boss last night pirates attacked us. They managed to wound a dozen of our people but fortunately no one died. We didn’t let them rob anything and were able to capture them alive,” the man said.

“Show me.” Jiang Zhen said.

Jiang Zhen was soon taken to see the captured people.

They were all dressed like Japanese ronin. Not only that, but after seeing him they began to mumble and speak Japanese.

Jiang Zhen has been doing business with the Japanese ronin for several years, but there weren’t many people under his command who could speak Japanese.

At this time, the country of Daqi was very powerful, so the Japanese were scrambling to come over and learn the dialect. The Daqi people didn’t even try learning Japanese because the Japanese spoke the Daqi language.

However, although his men couldn’t speak it, Jiang Zhen could.

The more he listened to the Japanese language spoken by these people, the more he felt that something was wrong.

Among these people, a few of them spoke Japanese normally with a very pure accent, but few of them… were simply talking nonsense. They had learned simple words in Japanese and repeated them without any sense.

They ware pretending to be Japanese ronins?

When Jiang Zhen noticed this, he felt it was a little funny.

In order to keep people from discovering their true identity, pirates would sometimes pretend to be Japanese ronins, but he didn’t expect to meet that situation here.

“Can’t speak the human language?” Jiang Zhen looked at these people with a smirk, then he said to his men, “cut their tongues out.”

“Yes! Boss!” Jiang Zhen’s men answered and moved to cut the tongues of those people.

Jiang Zhen had never given such an order before, but Jiang Zhen often liked to scare people.

Jiang Zhen’s men knew very well about Jiang Zhen’s love of bluffing, so they naturally also knew that he was trying to scare people.

Though Jiang Zhen’s men might have known it, those people didn’t.

At first, they continued gibbering and talking nonsense, but seeing Jiang Zhen’s men with knives coming closer and closer, they finally couldn’t sit still.

“No, you can’t do that!” The men were so frightened that they screamed.

“You can talk properly now?” Jiang Zhen asked. He doesn’t usually kill people and since these pirates hadn’t killed his men, he wasn’t going to do anything to them.

Even so, he was still going to interrogate them properly.

“Are you trying to scare us?” A middle-aged man asked.

Jiang Zhen did not say anything, just smiled as he looked at them.

These people looked at Jiang Zhen for a while, but the middle-aged man suddenly said: “Boss Jiang, I have something to talk to you about alone.”

Jiang Zhen looked at him and smiled. “What do you want to say?” These people didn’t looked like ordinary pirates.

“It must be said alone only!” The man immediately said.

Jiang Zhen thought for a moment and then had someone bring him into the room next door.

The man was brought in with his hands tied. After entering, he first looked around to make sure that no one was around, then finally said, “Boss Jiang, I am Wang Ruicheng.”

Jiang Zhen looked at that man in some surprise. Wang Ruicheng was not a nobody, he was one of Cheng Yongzhen’s great generals. It was said that many of Cheng Yongzhen’s strategies were created by him.

“If you are Wang Ruicheng, how could you be caught by me so easily?” Jiang Zhen looked at the other person.

“Boss Jiang, we are only trying to survive!” Wang Ruicheng said with a wry smile:. “We are having a hard time these days. The people of the imperial court are after us and even the former head of the Cheng family is after us!”

Recently, the days have been really hard for Wang Ruicheng.

It goes without saying that the people of the imperial court wanted to  hunt them down. As for Cheng Yongzhen’s family wanting to hunt them too…

Cheng Yongzhen has been a sea merchant for so many years that he had accumulated countless contacts and money.  Some of his contacts might already be dead so they were meaningless, but what about the money?

Cheng Yongzhen’s men divided his money amongst themselves, but everyone believed that Cheng Yongzhen could not have so little money.

Wang Ruicheng was one of Cheng Yongzhen’s closest friends, so many people thought that Wang Ruicheng should have keys to his private treasury.

Everyone wanted to capture Wang Ruicheng, so he had no choice but to shave off his own hair and blend in among a group of Japanese ronin.

He commanded the ronins until he met Jiang Zhen’s men, who beat them up.

He wasn’t really trying to rob the ship but he wanted to gain Jiang Zhen’s protection.

Jiang Zhen felt that Cheng Yongzhen should never have heard of him, but in fact it was the opposite; Cheng Yongzhen actually knew of Jiang Zhen.

Cheng Yongzhen even asked someone to investigate the newly emerged Jiang Zhen, who quickly suppressed other sea merchants in Wexing Province.

It was because of this that Wang Ruicheng learned about Jiang Zhen. Although Jiang Zhen seemed very brutal, he was in fact very methodical and never hurted innocent people.

Since he was desperate and wanted to find a place to hide, he finally choose Jiang Zhen.

At first he still wanted to hide his identity, so he didn’t kill any of Jiang Zhen’s men and did things in a measured manner. He felt that Jiang Zhen would not want to kill him if he worked hard.

After doing this for a period of time, when the attention on him died down he would naturally leave to find his own subordinates but as result… Jiang Zhen scared them so much that even people under his hands were frightened!

Changing his mind, Wang Ruicheng said, “Boss Jiang, although the King of Ryukyu was captured, he left behind a lot of treasures which only I can locate…”

“You don’t need to tell me that.” Jiang Zhen said. “Everyone in Wexing Province knows that I don’t like to hire the Japanese ronin, so you can leave later.”

“Boss Jiang!” Wang Ruicheng was surprised. He never thought that Jiang Zhen could act so indifferent to such a big temptation in front of him.

Of course, Jiang Zhen could be indifferent. He was not greedy for other people’s money, nor did he want to involve his own family.

The imperial court was looking for Wang Ruicheng. If such a person stayed and became his subordinate, once he was found by others…

Instead of continuing to talk to Wang Ruicheng, Jiang Zhen went outside and said to his men, “Those people are Cheng Yongzhen’s men, throw them all out.”

“Yes, Boss!” Jiang Zhen’s men glanced at Wang Ruicheng and said, “Excuse me.”

Wang Ruicheng’s heart skipped a beat, feeling a bit suffocated, but Jiang Zhen did not consider his mood.

Soon, the people were sent out.

Wang Ruicheng and his men stood on the dock of Yabian Village, stunned.

“Uncle Wang, they let us go! We are so lucky, right!” A 17 or 18-year-old boy said, looking very relieved and happy.

Wang Ruicheng’s expression, however, didn’t show much joy.

They’ve been hunted all this time, but now that they couldn’t stay here, where could they go?

Wang Ruicheng suddenly saw a group of people in uniform approaching them from a distance.

There were only eight people in this group, it wasn’t that many people but the feeling that they gave… Wang Ruicheng soon found that the strides of those people were about the same. Not only that, they walked in the street without even whispering to each other, and very seriously patrolled around.

Previously, Wang Ruicheng heard people say that the fleet run by Jiang Zhen were the most difficult to rob, because his men were all very strong.

Originally Wang Ruicheng didn’t take such talk seriously, but now in shock, he remembered those who fought against him last night.

Last night, none of Jiang Zhen’s men died, but many of his people died. Almost all of them were Japanese ronin so he didn’t care, but now thinking about it…

The cooperation between Jiang Zhen’s people was really tacit.

He followed Cheng Yongzhen for a long time. Under Cheng Yongzhen’s hands, there were many fierce people but none of them acted as neat and orderly as Jiang Zhen’s men.

“Who are you?” The gaze of Wang Ruicheng and the others were noticed by the patrol, so they came over and vaguely surrounded Wang Ruicheng and his men.

After this side of the dock was almost burned down, Jiang Zhen arranged for more people to patrol and defend it. This made Yabian Village docks one of the safest places in the whole of Wexing Province. Many small merchants even deliberately moved their homes here.

“My lord, we are here to make a living, how can we make a living here?” Wang Ruicheng asked.

“Daqi people?” The men gave Wang Ruicheng a look and then said: “Take care of your personal hygiene and don’t make yourself look so strange. Then you will be able to find a job and stay.”

“What about the Japanese ronin?” Wang Ruicheng asked again. He was left with only ten people under him and six of them were Japanese ronins.

“First take care of yourself, and then learn our Daqi language.” The man added, “If you don’t want to learn the Daqi language, you can only do the hardest hard work available here, but if you learn it, things will be different.”

“# ¥% # ¥# & *” Several Japanese ronins who worked under Wang Ruicheng had lived in Daqi for a long time, so they were able to understand the language. Since they were a little unhappy now, they were unwilling to change their attire and spoke in Japanese. Afraid that the people from the patrol would not understand them, they added in Daqi, “We do not change!”

“You really don’t want to change? See that man? He is also ronin, but now he has a house and land here and even married a wife.” The man on patrol, pointing to a middle-aged man not far away, wearing brocade clothes, looking in every way like a very rich person.

It was true that Jiang Zhen did not like Japanese ronins.

However, if the Japanese ronins gave themselves a Daqi name, wore Daqi clothes and started to speak the Daqi language, he would be very good to them.

Among them, those who performed well would be selected by him as an interpreter to facilitate business with the East.

One of the patrolling men was pointing at a ronin who had been working as an interpreter for Jiang Zhen’s fleet for a long time.

This ronin no longer thought of himself as Japanese. He now firmly believed he was from Daqi and was proud of it.

The Japanese ronins around Wang Ruicheng could not help but waver when they saw the man’s appearance.

That man’s life looked too good.

Originally, they left their country to come here because of the war at home. They needed to go somewhere else to make a living. If they could live a good life in Daqi…

They were no longer feeling as repulsed as they were at first.

However, before they could continue to ask questions, a horn suddenly sounded. After the first horn, more and more horns sounded.

These horns rang through the sky, making almost everyone on the dock hear them. Then ordinary people at the docks began to hide in their houses, while adult men ran out of various houses and gathered in different places.

When Wang Rucheng saw this, he was startled: “What’s going on?”

“Enemy attack.” The patrolman answered, then began to evacuate the surrounding people, saying to Wang Ruicheng and others: “During the emergency all unknown people must be guarded, come with me!”

Wang Ruicheng and others were startled, as they were pulled aside by the patrolling men to a location where many other people like them were placed.

“Why is there so much noise about this enemy attack? It wasn’t like this last night.” Wang Ruicheng couldn’t help but say.

“There were only a few people in the attack last night, so why would they make such a commotion?” Someone said, “so few people could be casually cleaned up.”

He suddenly looked at Wang Ruicheng and others suspiciously: “The ones who attacked yesterday were several Japanese ronins. Could it be you?”

Wang Ruicheng: “……”

Wang Ruicheng was more or less afraid at that moment, lest those people would capture him. However, at this time, Jiang Zhen was already fully armed and on guard.

 

Edited by: Antiope1

 

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