Chapter 1 The Situation

A few guards rushing towards the Ming An Cave hadn't arrived when trouble was discovered at the harbor. In this weather, only the few Fang Tooth ships equipped with three-man gun crews were prepared with fire oil bombs. With so many ships crowded in the harbor, the Fang Tooth ships couldn't easily set sail to patrol. The range of the few light ballistae was limited, unable to cover the main channel in and out of the harbor. Just then, several ships charged straight into the harbor area, their sails billowing in the fierce wind, showing no sign of being lowered. The ships crashed directly into the harbor, smashing into the ships moored there. Melee combat broke out immediately.

And that wasn't all. The Black Eagle Gang's assembled forces were not to be underestimated. There were over a hundred ships of all sizes, from large ships capable of carrying two or three hundred people to small boats carrying only twenty or thirty. Only a small portion of them charged into the harbor. To avoid congestion and to deploy enough troops to create a local advantage, the Black Eagle Gang went all-in, landing on the entire beach. Ship after ship ran aground directly onto the shore. The Black Eagle Gang clearly understood the terrain and hydrography around Jiao Ya Island. They divided into three groups, attacking the main island from three directions, choosing locations with large, exposed beaches free of reefs, allowing ships to run directly onto the shore. Sailors and the Black Eagle Gang's gongfeng (honored masters) could jump directly from the ships onto the beach. The enormous impact of intentionally running aground inevitably caused chaos on board. Some unprepared people were injured before the fighting even started, even thrown from the ships onto the beach, breaking bones or even dying outright.

However, large numbers of Black Eagle Gang members successfully landed and began to advance into the island's interior.

Ye Tao's courtyard, located halfway up the mountainside, was well-positioned and wouldn't be attacked quickly. The combat power of the guards and the merchants' escorts around Ye Tao were worlds apart. More importantly, Ye Tao's location was a necessary passage to the summit where Qi Zhentao was located. To avoid going through here would require climbing a small path behind the island. In this weather, and in this tense atmosphere, even if Black Eagle Gang members dared to come up this path, there likely wouldn't be many of them.

"Guan Huan, go to the summit and see what Old Man Qi is planning. Bring back news," Liu Yong said, stepping forward and giving orders in a deep voice, seeing that things were getting out of hand.

Guan Huan hurried off, while the well-trained guards were already fully armed and armored, ready for battle.

"Wu Ping'an, Zhou Rui, take twenty men and go down to meet them. Gather those who are scattered and concentrate on defending against the enemy. You can decide everything yourselves. Anyone who disrupts morale or endangers others, no matter who they are, you can deal with them first," Liu Yong said decisively.

"Bi Xiaoqing, you take three people in the courtyard. Everyone gathers together, and important things are gathered together. Leave any stray fish that rush in to you."

"The rest of you, form a line at the entrance of the courtyard. This place is only so big. I want to see who can rush up here," Liu Yong snorted coldly. In fact, he wanted to go down the mountain himself to meet those people. With his status, it would be easier to subdue those who didn't listen and who caused the already chaotic scene to shake even more. However, in this chaotic situation, he didn't dare leave Ye Tao's side. In fact, the number of people on the island from the Seven Seas Trading Company was only slightly more than the number of Black Eagle Gang members attacking the island, but among them, there were more non-combatants. The merchants' guards had to consider protecting their bosses first, and they might not dare to risk braving the wind and rain to join forces with their own people to engage the enemy. This made it easier to defeat them one by one.

Liu Yong planned to use this small courtyard as the center, summoning the stewards to gather here while meeting them along the way. Under other circumstances, Liu Yong might not care about the lives of those merchants, but this time, all the merchants and stewards attending the meeting would make considerable contributions to the Seven Seas Trading Company's future deployments. If the losses were too great, the Seven Seas Trading Company's operations would be affected for a while. The Seven Seas Trading Company's significance to Dongping was far more than just a trading company. But he really had limited manpower. Although Ye Tao's status was high and more than sixty people came to Jiao Ya Island for the meeting, including forty-eight guards and soldiers from the Special Operations Battalion, those forty-eight people were far from enough to reverse this chaotic situation.

Seeing Ye Tao also starting to put on armor and taking out a two-handed long saber, Liu Yong was about to dissuade him, but after a moment's thought, he said, "My lord, no matter what, try to stay close to me. Be careful and don't be reckless."

Ye Tao calmly replied, "Uncle Liu, don't worry, I know."

Ye Tao wearing full armor outside would not be much more dangerous than hiding in the room. The limited number of people meant that defending the people in the courtyard was far less safe than being surrounded by guards outside. If there was any danger, the risk of catching a cold was probably much greater than the risk of being killed.

The first to respond to the horn was the Liu family, who were not far away. The old man, wearing a coir raincoat and leading twenty or thirty guards, carried several large boxes and ran over. Liu Qing was already a leading person in the Jinglue Manor and had been responsible for various matters related to Ye Tao and the Seven Seas Trading Company. Although Liu Qing was originally the old man Liu's illegitimate son, he was favored by the old man but his position was awkward, but Liu Qing no longer needed to be involved in the division of the Liu family's property. Whether it was because of Liu Qing, or because the old man Liu felt some gratitude towards Ye Tao because of Liu Qing, the Liu family had a lot of trust in Ye Tao. When the old man arrived, he didn't say much. After discussing a few words with Ye Tao, he started coordinating the resettlement work in the original courtyard.

Amidst the chaos on the island, as some people began to try to organize some order, perhaps the most anxious were not the people of the Seven Seas Trading Company, but the Black Eagle Gang. They had indeed gained an advantage in a short period of time, but if they couldn't gain an absolute advantage in the shortest possible time, occupying the harbor and the Juyi Hall (meeting hall) that had been simply renovated by the Seven Seas Trading Company for use as a conference hall, once the Seven Seas Trading Company organized an effective defense, the situation would be terrible.

"Has anyone contacted Shark Eye Six and his group?" Xu Hanchao, the leader of the Black Eagle Gang, was among the last group of people to land on Jiao Ya Island. As soon as he landed on the beach, he asked about the progress of Shark Eye Six and his group. Then he asked the hall masters, "How is the progress at the harbor? Can we take it down?"

A hall master shook his head silently, his face gloomy. "Chao the Elder has been at the harbor and hasn't left the ship. We really can't do anything as long as he's there."

"Good... it's Chao the Elder again." Xu Hanchao spat. "Why doesn't this old man just die sooner?"

Chao the Elder's name was Chao Ge. His qualifications as a pirate were even deeper than Qi Zhentao's, but Chao Ge was a genius at naval warfare and didn't understand anything else. Whether it was small sampans or the current Fang Tooth ship fleet, Chao Ge developed the basic tactics. Now Chao Ge was also the commander-in-chief when the Seven Seas Trading Company's members launched a joint attack. But Chao Ge had a very typical professional habit: he couldn't sleep in a bed that didn't shake. Chao Ge's home was on a specially built warship. When Qi Zhentao was around, he would usually sit on Qi Zhentao's flagship and serve as the commander of the entire fleet. Usually, this was just a strange habit that everyone would joke about, but now it had become one of the keys to stabilizing the harbor.

The Seven Seas Trading Company had the Ye Family Workshop as its base and rich profits from maritime trade. They didn't have as many people as the Dongping military, so they didn't have to consider the cost, especially since each family had their own guard forces and some were even competing with each other. The equipment of the sailors stationed on the ships in the harbor was extremely sophisticated. Although the Seven Seas Trading Company rarely used boarding actions, they were accustomed to using ballistae and fire oil bombs to bully their enemies. The sailors all had leather armor and a pu dao (a type of Chinese saber) of suitable length.

With the experienced Chao Ge in charge and the well-equipped and well-trained sailors fighting hard, the Black Eagle Gang's desperate attack on the harbor, which they had high hopes for, didn't have much effect. The gang members who landed elsewhere on the island couldn't rush over to flank the harbor for the time being.

"Burn! Burn it for me!" Xu Hanchao gritted his teeth and said, "Light those imitation fire oil bombs and burn them."

As soon as Xu Hanchao's order was conveyed, after a slight shock, the Black Eagle Gang members became even more frantic. The imitation fire oil bombs they made didn't use advanced things like petroleum distillates, but things like animal fat and tung oil. Although the power was much different and there was no chance of causing a deflagration effect, at least one thing was the same: they had a strong corrosive and burning ability on wooden ship materials and the basic characteristic of floating and burning on the water surface. One by one, the lit small jars were thrown onto the decks that originally required huge casualties to capture. All the original fire oil bombs stored in the Seven Seas Trading Company's ships, which had already cost a lot to capture, were turned out and thrown hard at the ships next to them. Some hit the targets they wanted to destroy, while others hit the water surface, spreading a layer of burning film across the entire surface...