July of the 29th year of Tianqi, Zhejiang, Zhoushan Islands, evening.

In the sea breeze, the afterglow of the setting sun shines on an old man lying on a soft chair, covering his body with a layer of golden color.

"The students are waiting to meet the teacher, teacher~"

"Huh? Oh, it's you guys who are here. Hey, people are old and useless. They fall asleep just lying down."

"Teacher, the scenery here is really nice. It's no wonder that the teacher is no longer in his hometown in Wucheng and has moved here to live permanently. The students are really envious when they see it."

"Hahaha, it's still early for you to live such a life. Well, you will be going to sea soon, right? Have you arranged everything at home?"

"It's almost done. The imperial court advanced a year's salary and kept it all. A section of hair, the clothes I used to wear, and the watch I wore for many years are all kept. I have also written a suicide note for my underage son. If

If he is really killed in battle, when he grows up, his mother or eldest brother will read it to him. The clan elders of the family have also spoken. If he cannot come back from this war, the clan will be responsible for raising all the children."

"Hey... this battle must be fought. But if we really fight it, I don't know how many Ming men will die in a foreign land. I don't know how long God can let me live, and whether I can see you come back victorious."

"Hahaha, the teacher must live a long life. No matter how long this battle lasts, it can't be fought for more than fifteen years, right?"

This year, Wen Tiren is 84 years old. Even in the weather in July, after the sun sets, Wen Tiren has to wear a thin sweater before he dares to lie on a soft chair outside. The people beside him at this moment are other people.

The three students he accepted in his later years were Feng Jingdi, Wang Yi and Dong Zhining, all wearing white navy officer uniforms.

"As we get older, our memory is not very good. I remember that the three of you are now captains, right?"

"The teacher also said he has a bad memory? Yes, the three of us are captains. Brother Wanxun (Wang Yi) has the highest military rank, colonel. He is now the captain of the heavy cruiser Wei Zhongxian. You'an (Dong Zhining) and I are both

Lieutenant Colonel, the student is the captain of the destroyer Foshan and the leader of the third destroyer detachment. And Youan is the captain of the light cruiser Qiongzhou."

"Wei Zhongxian? Hey, this guy will die if he dies, and he actually managed to catch one for heavy patrol and name it. Oh, what good luck."

"Teacher, when the country did not issue banknotes, wasn't there an urgent need for precious metals to enter the market? The emperor had no choice but to sell the naming rights of warships. Moreover, with the contribution that the teacher has made to the country, in the future, a hundred years from now, the teacher will have a battleship.

Name it after the teacher."

"Hahaha, I'll leave it to you. But Wanxun, although Old Wei is a eunuch, he has never framed a minister of state in these years as the director of the East Factory. So, you are named after him on this ship.

Don’t worry about anything on the battleship.”

"Teacher, don't worry, students don't have any discrimination against eunuchs. A quiet and trouble-free factory supervisor like Wei Zhongxian is much better than Liu Jin before. The Wei family complied with his last wish and gave him a lock of hair."

Put it in a box and put it on the ship, and the students have the orderlies clean the box every day."

"Well, that's good." The old man let out a long sigh of relief: "Jiu Zhong, the destroyer you are in charge of, as far as I know, should be a type of ship that can see red bayonets in naval battles, right?"

"That's right, teacher. The destroyer is small in size and has weak firepower. It cannot fight against the enemy's large ships, and its ability to bombard the shore is almost useless. But it is fast. The Foshan the student is leading is from the 27th year of the Apocalypse.

The newly launched new ship has a maximum speed of twenty-seven knots. At such a speed, in a fierce battle, it braved the cannon fire in the sky. After dodging left and right, it approached the enemy ship at high speed, and then released a torpedo. Bang bang~ the oars and oars were wiped out!

"

Although Feng Jingdi said it very easily, Lao Wen was actually the first assistant. After so many years of retirement, the internal reference specially produced by the imperial court for senior officials has never been shorter than his. So after listening to his students

After telling the story, he couldn't hide the worry in his eyes: "Hey, if it were those high-pressure air torpedoes in the past that were slower than a turtle, you, the destroyer captain, would most likely die before the battle started. But now...

…”

"Teacher, be careful. According to the confidentiality authority, there are some things that Youan and Wanxun don't know about, and they can't know about them for the time being."

Yes, after the development of the internal combustion engine was kicked off by an illiterate blacksmith, Zhu Youdong immediately asked Zhu Kuiyou to make a basic internal combustion engine after receiving the report: preliminary tests showed that the thermal efficiency ratio was nearly 10% - this is already the same as

Daming’s current top-notch steam engines are almost the same.

Then Zhu Youdong gave instructions: There is no rush to develop a higher-power internal combustion engine. The first thing to do is to miniaturize the internal combustion engine and install it on the torpedo as soon as possible.

To achieve this, it is really difficult to say it - it is difficult to miniaturize the engine and difficult to produce it on a large scale. But in practice, if you just solve the problem, it is really not difficult: Ming Dynasty, or the Chinese Palace

There are simply too many skilled craftsmen. In this plane of history, the top royal craftsmen could even write the entire Diamond Sutra on the inner wall of a snuff bottle - when it comes to micro-management, Chinese craftsmen at this time beat the world.

Therefore, after having a basic prototype internal combustion engine, if we do not seek mass production but only hand-made production, the skilled craftsmen of Ming Dynasty can completely reduce the internal combustion engine to the same proportion and then shrink it again, and the performance will be exactly the same.

Of course, the quality of a purely handmade small internal combustion engine is good, but the efficiency and cost are extremely high. But Zhu Youdong doesn't care: this is an epoch-making thermal power torpedo, with an underwater speed of more than 25 knots and maximum stealth.

The distance is more than three thousand meters - such a torpedo, in this era, is a super killer weapon. Although this kind of torpedo is purely handmade, a large number of royal craftsmen worked hard for four months and only made thirty of them. But if

At the critical moment of the naval battle, these thirty torpedoes suddenly appeared and sank one or two enemy battleships?

The destroyer Foshan is, firstly, young in age, and secondly, its captain is very capable. Therefore, together with the other four destroyers, it shared these thirty special torpedoes. As the captain, Feng Jingdi certainly knew how powerful these torpedoes were.

As the retired chief assistant, Wen Tiren could also learn about this situation from the top-secret internal reference. But the other two really didn't know.

Of course, people like Wang Yi and Dong Zhining would never leak secrets. But since the classification of the new torpedo was not yet known to them, Wen Tiren immediately stopped talking.

But after such a fuss, the atmosphere became a little awkward.

Lao Wen had no choice but to quickly start a new topic: "By the way, Zheng Zhilong's son, who was named successful by the emperor himself, how is the situation now?"

"Teacher, this kid is only twenty-three years old this year. However, after all, he is a son of the navy and has many uncles in the army, so his rank is not low. He is already a major now. As for his job, originally Commander Inukai was

He was asked to serve as a staff officer on the flagship Lian Po. But he refused to do it. He had to work as a captain on a destroyer in order to achieve his goal. In order to achieve his goal, he even sent the application report directly to the emperor... In short, this brat is now with

Just like students, they are all special destroyer captains."

"You idiot, but it is precisely because my Ming Dynasty has countless good children like this that the emperor has the confidence to fight this battle!"

…

The Ming Dynasty is a huge ship. Because it is huge, once it is fully launched, the power it explodes is extremely amazing. But also because it is huge, it is also very difficult to turn around and adjust its course. The entire country has been operating in accordance with the national policy of fighting a war.

After more than three years, even though we knew at this moment that the other side had new technologies, our war preparations still had certain flaws. But the date of the war was no longer something Zhu Youdong could stop.

In July of the twenty-ninth year of the Apocalypse, Zhu Youdong took the lead, the prince, the king of Song, various vassal kings, and more than 2,000 clan members who were going to participate in the war in various positions, all gathered in front of the Xiaoling Mausoleum for a large-scale

of ancestor worship.

"In the 279th year since the founding of the Ming Dynasty in Fuwei, Zhu Youdong, an unworthy descendant, led more than 2,000 clan members to worship in front of Taizu's spirit. I solemnly say: Restore China, reopen the sun and the moon. To achieve the righteousness of the country, my Ming is the best.

Hongwu laid the foundation, Yongle opened the frontier. Five expeditions to Mobei, seven voyages to the West. Renxuan prospered, and all the people were safe. Orthodox civil engineering, always strong in the face of changes. Jingtai Tianshun, Chenghua Hongzhi, Zhengde Jiajing, Longqing Wanli. The inheritance continues, and the country is prosperous.

Yongguang. When the apocalypse comes, the world will be in a state of vicissitudes. Our territory is invaded repeatedly, and the Western thieves are rampant. Hundreds of millions of people are all angry. Three years of lessons, five years of reunion. Millions of soldiers, thousands of ships set sail. I swear to destroy this beast to tell the truth.

Ancestral Temple. The spirit of Taizu is above Haotian. Watch and bless the Chinese athletes. Every enemy will be defeated and they will be unstoppable. When the day of victory comes, tell the Ancestral Temple again. In the prosperous age of the Ming Dynasty, there will be no parallel in the world! Shang Xi~."

…

Following the example given by the royal family, throughout the summer of the 29th year of the Apocalypse, every province, every state capital, every county, every village in the Ming Dynasty was doing the same thing in unison.

In the houses of officials and wealthy families where big families live together, the ancestral halls of each family are invariably opened when it is not the Qingming Festival or the Spring Festival. Some of the more enlightened family elders have even allowed all the women and children in the family to enter for the first time.

Ancestral hall.

"My ancestors, I, the Ming Dynasty, will launch a nationwide war today against the tyrannical Western bandits. Liu Da (Sun Er, Zhang San, Li Si, Wang Wu, Zhao Liu...) is about to go to the battlefield. I wish I could

My ancestors have protected him so that the guns and cannons on the battlefield cannot find him... If there is really something wrong with him, I hope he can kill the enemy well for our Ming Dynasty and not disgrace the family name accumulated by our ancestors..."

In ordinary farmers or workers' families, recruits who have been drafted into the army may walk to the tombs of their parents and grandparents in the fields accompanied by their family members, or they may place the memorial tablets of their elders at home, similar to the way elders from large families use them.

Use the language to pray to your ancestors.

When it was the turn of those strong men who were drafted into the army and were about to leave to speak, they might be generous and passionate, or reluctant to leave home, or even cry bitterly. But without exception, they all solemnly expressed in front of their ancestors' memorial tablets or tombs: No matter life or death,

Never dishonor the reputation of our ancestors!

Afterwards, these soldiers either cut off their hair, left their nails on, or put some of their personal belongings into boxes, and solemnly handed them over to their closest family members, relatives and friends. Then they walked out of the house without hesitation and boarded the

Various means of transportation began to head towards the garrison of their troops!

…

It can be said that this moment is the concentrated expression of the core strength of all Chinese people for thousands of years: family, country. Family is country, and country is family.

As a Chinese, facing such a battle that determines the fate of the country, Zhu Youdong did not go to sign oaths, nor did he go to any large gatherings of tens of thousands of people. The generally introverted Chinese do not need those things very much. All Chinese people have no need for those things.
Chapter completed!