He pondered for a long while before saying, "I will go."
-----------------------
Author's Note: Zhu Ci: Give up? Give up what! If you give up, it means there will be no tax revenue, which means the state will have no money! Meow jumps up and kicks Fu once. jpg
Next update at 6:00 PM~
Chapter 159
Zhu Ci's mouth twitched. "Stop messing around."
What was the difference between letting Fu go or sending someone else to their death?
Fu Qingsheng said nonchalantly, "It is not as if I have never been on a battlefield before."
When he first raised an army to rebel, he was truly leading his subordinates into a life-or-death situation; failure would have meant death for everyone. How could he hide in the back with a clear conscience?
Zhu Ci said earnestly, "That still won't do; the ultraviolet rays at sea are very strong."
He spoke, then looked at Fu's face again, before turning to Wu Xia and saying, "Go get some ointment."
He told Fu earnestly, "This salve was specially prepared by my men. If you are exposed to the sun, remember to apply some; it should at least mitigate some of the damage caused by sun exposure."
He spoke and then led Fu into Wenhua Hall.
Zhu Ci did not know how he had arrived here; he had not entered Wenhua Hall since returning to Nanjing.
This wretched place had truly left him with quite a psychological shadow.
However, what surprised him was that, aside from its location, the Wenhua Hall had almost nothing in common with how it had looked before.
The plaque above had been changed, even the pillars inside had been redecorated, making it look more like a place for studying than before.
Zhu Ci turned to look at Fu with some surprise. "You even renovated this place?"
Fu Qingsheng said softly, "Although Wenhua Hall has always been a place for the Crown Prince to study, I felt that Your Majesty also lacked a place for reading, so I ordered people to renovate Wenhua Hall as well."
Zhu Ci was extremely disdainful: "You should just go be a teacher."
I've trained well enough, so there's no need for studying.
He slowly took a stroll around Wenhua Hall, finally standing at the entrance and saying, "More than a year ago, the thing I hated most was coming to Wenhua Hall."
Fu said nothing. He naturally knew that if he hadn't known, how could he have allowed the Wenhua Hall to be renovated as well?
Moreover, the scale of the renovations for Wenhua Hall was even greater than that of the Qianqing Palace.
The Qianqing Palace only needed some minor repairs due to years of neglect, but when the Wenhua Hall was being renovated, the original structures had to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch.
After Zhu Ci finished speaking, he also stood there dazed for a long while; he had never stood at the entrance of Wenhua Hall to observe the scenery outside before.
Every time he had come here before, all he could think about was how to deal with that foolish emperor.
He bowed deeply when entering Wenhua Hall, bowed deeply again when leaving. As he departed, he wished he could walk even faster, fearing that if he moved too slowly, Zhu Yousong would find an excuse to kill him.
Now, he could be said to have revisited his old haunts.
Zhu Ci looked for a long time before saying, "You went to such great lengths to renovate the Imperial Palace so well; I certainly do not wish to simply hand it over to someone else."
Fu Wensheng said, "Your Majesty need not worry, everything in Great Ming is fine."
Anyway, it is much better than when Zhu Yousong was on the throne.
Zhu Ci said, "It is still not enough. We must hold maritime trade in our own hands, even if it takes a little longer, we must take Taiwan as well."
Unless the Tartars also have a great man descend from the heavens to create epoch-making weapons, they will lose sooner or later.
Zhu Ci was extremely confident in this.
As long as he is given time, he can improve firearms bit by bit.
The Qing court could certainly make improvements as well, but Zhu Ci knew very clearly which areas needed improvement, so he could avoid many detours when the time came.
Could the Qing court achieve this?
Therefore, the longer it took, the more the scales of victory tipped in their favor.
He would rather slow his pace slightly to establish the maritime hegemony of the Great Ming.
Fu was somewhat puzzled. "Why is Your Majesty so concerned about sea transport?"
Zhu Ci turned back into the hall, sat at the right side of the desk, waved to Fu: "Come, I'll tell you a story."
This story was very long, so long that by the time Zhu Ci finished, the lamps had been lit in the hall and the palace gates had been closed.
Fu naturally could not return, but his mind was no longer there.
The more he listened, the more silent he became. In fact, halfway through, he knew this was not a story at all, but real history.
No matter how real a story might be, it would never have this much detail, this piece of history was so unforgettable that Zhu Ci was even more vigilant against overseas threats than he was against the Tartars.
"And then?" Fu saw the Little Emperor falling silent and couldn't help but press further.
Zhu Ci snapped out of his thoughts and said with a smile, "As for what happened next.. what happened next was, of course, returning to the peak, but it's not over yet—after all, I've arrived.
Fu felt a rare sense of unwillingness. One had to realize that even during the most chaotic period of Great Ming, the Great Ming's large ships could still dominate the seas.
Those small foreign nations showed great respect to the merchants of the Celestial Empire.
Therefore, he found that future very difficult to accept, but those things did indeed seem like something the Tartars could pull off.
Having one's national gates blasted open by cannons.. Fu thought about it and found it simply unbelievable.
He pondered for a long while before saying, "I understand Your Majesty's meaning, but the development of the navy is not something that can be achieved in a day or two.."
Zhu Ci, however, said, "As it stands, do you think the navy's competition is still purely about the capabilities of the generals? In fact, the Fire-Dragon Water-Spout was originally improved specifically for naval warfare; it isn't used much in land battles, when I use it to fight pirates, it's like using a butcher's knife to kill a chicken, so its prowess hasn't been fully demonstrated."
Fu thought for a moment and said, "Going head-to-head directly is not a good idea; Zheng Zhilong's ships also have cannons."
At sea, the power of cannons on a ship is actually even greater than on land.
After all, Red-coated Cannons are only suitable for sieges on land, but they are much more convenient for striking enemy vessels at sea, as enemies are not as flexible on the water.
And they did not have that many Red-coated Cannons!
Li Zicheng had actually captured two of them on the front lines, but the problem was that these old veterans would definitely want to keep them for themselves.
Zhu Ci slapped the desk and said, "It's not that there's no way; if it's hard to fight head-on, we can launch a surprise attack."
Fu shook his head. "Unless we can achieve our goal in a single stroke, a surprise attack will only work once."
If a sneak attack were that easy to succeed, Zheng Zhilong would not have gained such fame by successfully launching a sneak attack against the Dutch fleet and defeating them.
Zhu Ci smiled slightly. "Who says? An open and above-board sneak attack can only happen once, but a true sneak attack can happen many times."
The terms "openly" and "ambush" did not seem to belong together.
But in Zhu Ci's view, sailing a ship over to launch a surprise attack versus fighting openly would, at most, only catch the opponent off guard; it could hardly be considered a true sneak attack.
Fu was clearly somewhat confused by his words: "How does Your Majesty intend to launch a sneak attack?"
A surprise attack from underwater.
Sinking the boat?" Fu shook his head and said, "The Zheng family's ships are not that easy to damage, even if they are, they are very easy to repair.
Since it was a sneak attack, the number of people sent must have been limited—at most a dozen or so. What could those dozen or so people possibly do?
Zhu Ci leaned slightly toward him and said, "What if there were boats that could travel underwater?"
Fu's mind suddenly flashed with an idea: "A boat that travels underwater?"
Zhu Ci continued, "Not only ships that can travel underwater, but also mines that can explode underwater."
Fu did not ask where they came from, but simply asked, "How long can the boat travel underwater? How deep can it dive? And how powerful is the mine?"
-----------------------
Author's Note: Zhu Ci: Don't ask me why I must conquer them; if you ask, the answer is an obsession. The kitty left a paw print in the southeast corner of the map. jpg
Next update tomorrow morning at six o'clock~
Chapter 160
Zhu Ci spread his hands. "I don't know."
Fu looked at him in silence.
Zhu Ci could only explain, "I'm saying that the weapons and equipment that will be developed in the future cannot be realized now; we can only make them and see what happens."
In fact, with Zhu Ci's understanding of current craftsmanship, he could judge quite a bit.
However, the values he judged were most likely ideal figures. If it were anyone else, they might have been deceived, but if it were Fu.. he would just tell the truth.
Fortunately, Fu could also understand. He looked at Zhu Ci and asked, "I'm afraid this item will be difficult to obtain for the time being. As for the naval battle.."
Zhu Ci immediately waved his hand and said, "It's not necessary, it's not necessary. Since it's a sneak attack anyway, I might as well just make some one-time-use things; the truly good stuff can come later."
Fu looked at Zhu Ci and suddenly asked, "Your Majesty doesn't just want to deal with Zheng Zhilong, do you?"
From the looks of it, it didn't seem like he only wanted to seize Zheng Zhilong's stronghold in Taiwan.
It looks more like they intend to clash with the Dutch.
After all, Taiwan is currently entirely in the hands of the Dutch; Zheng Zhilong only possesses a few strongholds, his maritime hegemony along the southeastern coast was actually obtained by fighting the Dutch and subsequently gaining the right to cooperate with them.
Zhu Ci nodded very decisively.
Fu replied without a second word, "Alright."
If it had been in the past, he would definitely have advised the Little Emperor not to be so impulsive.
At present, the Great Ming is practically surrounded on all sides by enemies; there are foes on every front on land, if a new battlefield is opened at sea, the pressure on the Great Ming will be far too great.
However, Fu could also understand why Zhu Ci was turning his gaze toward the sea.
To put it bluntly, the foundation for land warfare has already been laid. If having various types of rockets plus the Dongfeng Bronze Cannon still isn't enough to take Xuzhou, then Shi Kefa, Liu Zhaoji, He Gang should all hurry back to farming.
Under these circumstances, the intensity of the land warfare could be reduced, allowing for a continued strategy of encircling the cities from the countryside, while shifting the primary focus to the sea.
Fu was also worried that the empire he had worked so hard to win might end up in such a state.