Lao Mu had installed the Cool Music on Lin Run's boat. The cabin was cool and pleasant, allowing the two to close the windows and talk in peace.

"Okay, stop being angry." Lin Run poured Zhao Hao a cup of tea and said, "Tell me what you think?"

"Putting aside the question of his character, Yin Butang is still very capable, especially the first and third ones. One hits the nail on the head, and the other lays the foundation for victory." Zhao Hao said seriously, "Just these two points alone are much better than his predecessors."

"So, you have some opinion on the second one?" Lin Run said with a smile.

"Of course! What do you mean by 'relocating the people exiled to the coast to the inland'?" Zhao Hao raised his voice and asked, "Are you crazy? For two hundred years in the Ming Dynasty, the coastal garrisons in Guangdong have always been the main destination for prisoners from the inland. These people have multiplied and spread all over the coastal counties. Some entire villages are descendants of these people. And the boat people who are everywhere along the rivers and seas, do they have to be relocated as well? These people are not good people, how can they let the government manipulate them? If this rule is strictly enforced, Guangdong's coastal areas will be in chaos immediately!"

"Well, it's just lice on a bald head - it's obvious." Lin Run crossed his hands in front of his chest and nodded, "It's just such a simple truth, how can someone as wise as Minister Yin not understand it?"

"He definitely understands, or he's just overconfident and doesn't take it seriously at all; or he thinks doing this will benefit him in some way, or maybe both." Zhao Hao frowned and thought.

"Yes, I thought so too." Lin Run said with a half-smile: "I heard, I just heard, that Yin Butang had very close contacts with a big sea merchant named Lin Hongzhong."

"And the surname is Lin..." Young Master Zhao couldn't help but wail. This way the readers... Oh no, I will be confused.

"What's wrong with the last name Lin? Didn't I just tell you that our surname Lin is the most common surname in Fujian, and there are naturally many more in Guangdong as well." Lin Run said with a glance at him.

"Uh, okay." Zhao Hao laughed dryly and said, "I mean, this name sounds familiar, as if I've heard it somewhere before."

"He made his fortune in Southeast Asia and had been living in Macau. When Yin Butang suppressed the rebellion in Guangxi, he donated a large sum of military funds and has been a guest of Yin Butang ever since." Lin Run said calmly, "Yin Butang even included him in the list of meritorious service and asked for a post as a training doctor for him."

"Oh, I remember now." Zhao Hao slapped his head and said, "When my grandfather went to Macau to negotiate with the Portuguese, it seemed that he was the middleman."

"To be precise, he is the representative of the red-haired people." Lin Run said slowly: "The last time Zeng Yiben attacked Baietan, he brought the news that the Portuguese were willing to help defend the city. Later, the Portuguese warships joined the foreign army system and obeyed the government's dispatch to eliminate pirates. It was also under his operation. But the Portuguese were so enthusiastic, of course they had their own motives. Under his lobbying, the officials of the prefecture city agreed to change the annual foreign ship trade to two times, and the tax collected did not increase but decreased."

Young Master Zhao exclaimed, "Wow, isn't this his first generation of comprador?"

"If you look at this memorial again now, will it be clearer to you?" Lin Zhongcheng said in a coaxing manner.

"It's indeed clearer now." Zhao Hao couldn't help but smile bitterly. He hated these officials the most because they couldn't just speak their mind.

~~

But it’s indeed a long story.

The Portuguese never stopped coveting the Ming Dynasty. After all, this was the original intention of the red-haired devils to sail thousands of miles.

After the defeat at Tuen Mun in the 16th year of Zhengde and at Xicaowan in the first year of Jiajing, the Portuguese gave up their delusion of attacking the Ming Dynasty head-on with force.

They first formed a delegation to pay tribute to Beijing in the hope of establishing trade relations. After being rejected, they began to engage in smuggling and piracy along the coast of Guangdong.

In the process, they encountered the Ming Dynasty and Japanese merchant pirate groups who were also engaged in smuggling along the coast. Because the Portuguese had trade resources in Southeast Asia, India, and even Africa and Europe, especially advanced weapons such as muskets and artillery, they soon joined forces with the Sino-Japanese armed smuggling group represented by Wang Zhi.

He followed Wang Zhi to Fujian and established Shuangyu Port, an international trade center, on the coast of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. He even arrived at Tanegashima and found many of his teachers' seeds... Oh no, he found his teachers' homeland, Japan. Thus, a golden triangle trade channel connecting the southeast of Ming Dynasty, Japan and Southeast Asia was established. The Portuguese bought pepper and spices from Southeast Asia, transported them from Malacca to the coastal ports of Fujian and Zhejiang, exchanged them with Chinese merchants for raw silk, silk and porcelain, and then transported them to Hakata and Sakai in Japan in exchange for silver for the next round of trade.

The Portuguese invested 100,000 taels of capital, which would turn into 1 million taels after a round of trade in the Golden Triangle. There is no more profitable business in the world!

Anyone who has played the Great Ocean Navigation Age knows that Li Huamei made her fortune on this trade route. Once she breaks out of East Asia, her enthusiasm for trade will plummet. Because other trade routes are too poor, Sister Huamei, who is used to making a lot of money in East Asia, has no interest in trading in the wild.

However, the good times did not last long. As the Portuguese armed smuggling gangs grew bigger and stronger, the people of the southeast coast of the Ming Dynasty began to supply them with goods and supplies, tip them off, and even sent their children to join the gang. At their most arrogant, the sea merchants and pirates could show off their wealth openly on Wulinmen Street in Hangzhou, and then hire West Lake boat girls to parade like Su Dongpo visiting prostitutes, and the local officials pretended not to see anything.

It is no exaggeration to say that at that time, the Ming government's rule in the southeast was on the verge of collapse. Therefore, no matter how hard Zhao Wenhua, Yan Shifan and other protectors of maritime interest groups tried to stop them, they could not change the ruling class's determination to eradicate the smuggling groups on the southeast coast as the number one threat more deadly than the Mongols.

In the 26th year of Jiajing, the imperial court sent Zhu Wan as the Governor-General of Fujian and Zhejiang and the Governor of Zhejiang to the southeast to eliminate the Japanese invasion. After Zhu Wan took office, he vigorously rectified local officials and the army, strictly enforced the imperial ban, strictly enforced the Baojia system, and carried out a large-scale crackdown on armed smuggling. Less than a year after taking office, he destroyed Shuangyu Port, the East Asian international trade center that had been operated by sea merchants for many years.

Zhu Wan then pursued the smugglers all the way south, eliminating all the smuggling strongholds along the coast of Fujian and Zhejiang, capturing and killing a large number of merchants and pirates from the three countries of Japan and Portugal, and almost destroying the entire East Asian maritime trade network.

In this large-scale military strike by the Ming government, the Portuguese suffered heavy losses. Almost half of the Portuguese in East Asia were killed or captured, which directly led to the dismissal of the Governor of Malacca.

The second battle with the Ming Dynasty ended in failure, which made the newly appointed Governor of Malacca realize that the military strength of the Ming Dynasty was far superior to theirs and other forces in the East Asian waters. Especially on land, without the protection of the sailing ships, the Portuguese were like a tiger with its claws plucked out, pitiful, weak and helpless, and were no match for the Ming army.

So they began to change their thinking, adopt a more practical attitude, and use softer means to infiltrate the Eastern Empire.

They first used the excuse that their tribute ship had hit a reef and shamelessly occupied the Macau. Then, they gradually lowered the defenses of Guangdong officials by bribing and begging for mercy, and finally got the coveted legal trade rights, and then gradually expanded their share. At the same time, smuggling on the southeast coast never stopped - because they were pleasantly surprised to find that as long as they paid enough silver, Ming officials would turn a blind eye to their smuggling activities under the guise of legal trade. Even if they paid more, they would act as a protective umbrella to help them fight against competitors.

The whole process was inseparable from the guidance of comprador merchants like Lin Hongzhong. After helping the foreigners obtain legal residency, he simply opened a Wuyang Trading House in Macau. As the general manager of the trading house, he was fully responsible for all trade and residence affairs for the Portuguese who did not speak the language and had scary looks.

This General Manager Lin was also very skilled. He was well aware of the problem of Ming officials being too proud, and actively guided the Portuguese to show goodwill to Ming, and even directly helped Ming deal with its former accomplices, the sea masters between Fujian and Guangdong. Naturally, he continued to improve the officials' favorability towards the Portuguese. He believed that although these red-haired devils were a bit ugly, they were like the coyote soldiers in Guangxi, and they were all mature foreigners that could be used by the court. Finally, under the oppression of the sea masters, he gritted his teeth and incorporated them into the foreign soldier system to strengthen the weak maritime force.

Afterwards, Lin Hongzhou used money to pave the way and dragged many officials into the water, letting them take shares and bonuses in the Wuyang Trading House and act as the Portuguese and his own backers.

The Portuguese got the safe colonies and trading posts they had always dreamed of, and finally they could resume the triangular trade they had always dreamed of, and make a lot of money. The Wuyang Trading House monopolized all the Portuguese import and export trade in Guangdong, so naturally they made a lot of money!

Seeing that Lin Hongzhong had made a fortune, Cantonese merchants joined his business one after another, making Wuyang Trading House the dominant force in Guangdong, especially in the Pearl River Delta!

However, the Cantonese people have always looked down on the Chaoshan people who are at the "end of the province and the corner of the country", so the Wuyang Trading House has almost no influence in Chaozhou Prefecture.

~~

The waning moon was like a hook, hanging high in the sky, illuminating Hanjiang River in a pale light, just like Shu Tongpan's heart...

He had been waiting outside Zhongcheng Lin's cabin after dark. He had planned to wait for Zhao Hao to come out, then go in under the pretext of reporting on his work and getting acquainted with the Zhongcheng to see if there was any chance for him to turn things around.

Who would have thought that until this time, Master Zhao had not come out yet.

At this time, footsteps were heard outside the cabin. Lin San, the chief attendant of Lin Zhongcheng, was carrying a teapot and preparing to go in to add water. Seeing him squatting in the shadows, he couldn't bear it and said, "My dear, if you really have something to do, I will go in and report it to you, okay?"

"Hey, thank you so much..." Shu Fu thanked him repeatedly, but then he thought, it's already midnight, what's the point of going in? Asking Zhong Cheng what to eat tomorrow morning? Wouldn't that backfire, and make Zhong Cheng Lin look like an idiot?

So he forced a smile that was uglier than crying and said, "But I don't have anything to do. I'm just waiting outside the door in case the chancellor has any instructions."

"Don't worry, there won't be any more instructions." Lin San yawned and said, "Zhongcheng is very considerate and won't crow in the middle of the night. Go back and rest."

As he said this, he waved his hand, knocked lightly on the door and went in.

"Okay, you should go to bed early too." Shu Tongpan wanted to take the opportunity of opening the door to attract Lin Zhongcheng's attention so that he could ask him a question and realize that his blind loyalty was a good thing.

Unfortunately, Lin Run was so focused on his conversation with Zhao Hao that he didn't even raise his head. He didn't even notice the humble servant outside the door...