Chapter 1 The Idea of Cutting Off the Enemy's Retreat

Qi Zhentao, never one to shy away from a bit of chaos, gladly agreed to Min Yue's idea of cutting off the enemy's retreat. Their expedition was well-supplied with food and water, and with the option to resupply in Dubai, they didn't need to worry about the return journey. After sparing some supplies for Qi Zhentao's escort fleet, they set off for the Middle Eastern waters. With Qi Zhentao's considerable knowledge of the area and a fleet powerful enough to dominate it, their actions were brazen.

Neither the crossbow nor the Shenbi crossbow could match the range of the yet-to-be-invented cannons. Lacking the strength to land and capture ports, their only recourse was destruction and harassment. They charged into ports under cover of night several times, indiscriminately bombarding ships and buildings. They also organized several small-scale raids. Attacking a port every one or two days, they demonstrated their impressive mobility and formidable fighting power. These unbridled actions not only enhanced the reputations of Ye Tao and Qi Zhentao, but also brought Min Yue's name into the Middle Easterners' awareness. The Yazhou First Fleet, as the formal army of the Dongping navy, actively intervened in the Middle Eastern situation, a fact that caused both joy and sorrow. The Samir family was delighted to see their ally transform from a commercial group into a nation, anticipating a strong country's friendship. Those countries opposed to the Samir family, especially the now-defunct Bosa Kingdom, which stretched far north on land to an area not far from Zhenzhou, deeply worried about Dongping baring its fangs.

Of course, where Dongping's attitude towards the Middle Eastern situation would lead was a matter for the future. The most immediate effect was a severe blow to the morale of the allied forces, large and small. Upon hearing the news, the Samir family seized the opportunity to launch a full-scale counterattack.

In this era, with naval warfare on such a massive scale, no one could fully control the situation. They could only follow a general strategy, with individual fleets fighting their own battles. Through a gradual back-and-forth, a rough sea front eventually formed. In terms of the current combat situation and the area of sea controlled, the Samir family held a significant advantage. However, the Samir family fleet, centered on Dubai port, along with the Seven Seas Trading Company fleet and other Samir family vassal fleets, faced a significant problem: Dubai port was becoming overwhelmed.

To win this extremely difficult nation-building war, the Samir family not only paid a tremendous price, but also activated forces they had cultivated for many years, both overt and covert, in various countries, orchestrating countless conspiracies to serve their victory. Dubai port was originally the Samir family's private territory. Some of the closest neighboring small countries directly merged into the Samir Kingdom, while others were unable to resist the Samir family's schemes and instigations when their ground forces, which were not yet strong, attacked. As for the surrounding countries, if they couldn't persuade them to remain neutral or support them, the Samir family would not hesitate to concoct plots to render them unable to mobilize large armies against them. Bribery and discord were everywhere. Even the powerful Bosa Kingdom, after nearly a year of turmoil within the royal palace and almost as long of negotiations among various domestic forces, and also seeing the threat posed by the Samir family, gradually mustered its troops and began to assert its presence and its opinions. Dubai port was at the center of these activities.

As the center for both naval and ground forces, and a supply hub, Dubai port, capable of accommodating two hundred ships of all types and supporting port activities, was gradually becoming strained. When the naval battles were more dispersed and the Samir family was initially suppressed, Dubai port, unable to gather sufficient goods, struggled to maintain supplies to various departments through strict economy. As the situation at sea gradually improved and the ground campaign consumed more resources due to increased distances, Dubai port, lacking experience in ground logistics, struggled to resupply its troops with convoys for a long time. Even now, the supply of ground forces often experienced major and minor problems. As the all-or-nothing naval battle loomed, Dubai port became the center of the entire Samir family power group. While the resupply of food and water was manageable, the production of fire oil bombs, spark bombs, and Greek fire was something only Dubai port could currently handle in the Middle East. Large numbers of ships were resupplying, heading into battle, returning to port for repairs, resupplying, and heading out again. Although the Samir family's luxurious underground warehouses still held ample supplies of all kinds, port workers were inevitably experiencing a decline in efficiency due to long-term overwork. Dubai port's supply efficiency was only about 70% of its peak, and all the shipwrights in Dubai port's shipyards had not had a day off in four months. Although a batch of artisans supported by the Seven Seas Trading Company had arrived, along with three thousand experienced port laborers recruited from Hengbo Port, Yicheng Port, and various ports in Chunnan, it would take some time for them to fully function due to coordination issues and language barriers. It seemed that their contribution would be felt more during the major construction period after the naval battle.

The port's inadequate resupply and maintenance did not directly affect the Samir family's advantage on the battlefield, but the subtle impact, especially on morale, was becoming apparent. The Samir family's leaders seized the opportunity when Ye Tao, Qi Zhentao, and Min Yue harassed the enemy from behind, causing them internal turmoil. In the moment of indecision about whether to deal with the Samir family's main force head-on or spare some forces to clear the enemy behind them, the Samir family resolutely launched a full-scale attack, finally initiating the earth-shattering naval battle. Unlike the previous stalemate, probing, vigilance, coercion, and expulsion, the Samir family and their vassal fleets attacked frantically. Once they engaged an enemy fleet, it was a fight to the death, until one side lost its combat power. The Samir family's direct fleets were given the order to "fight to the last man."

This order might have seemed rash, but it was the result of careful consideration and planning by the Samir family. On the one hand, the Samir family and its vassal fleets, as well as the ground forces, were well-equipped. Even though they had won and lost battles in the previous stalemate, they always held the initiative on the battlefield. Generally speaking, it was rare for a Samir family fleet to encounter an enemy fleet with inferior strength, unless in extremely bad weather. The Samir family's "fight to the last man" order, while forceful, gave the fleet commanders ample room to maneuver. Once in battle, everyone had to abide by this order, had to obey the family, respect the oath they had made to the great true god, and had to obey the family without regret. However, they still had full discretion over whether or not to engage in battle and how to engage in battle. The Samir family's direct fleets could do this, but the vassal armies, in order to show their absolute loyalty to the Samir family, had to execute this order even more strictly, even though they did not have the same reconnaissance and combat capabilities as the direct fleets or the Seven Seas Trading Company's fleets. This was also to safeguard the interests of the Samir family; they had to let those powerful vassal families and vassal forces bleed and get hurt, otherwise, if they exhausted themselves, they would be left with a situation that was too big to fail after the nation was barely established. On the other side of the Samir family was a complex coalition. Although the coalition had a clear advantage in terms of the number of ships and the number of participants, its combat power was slightly inferior to that of the Samir family. Furthermore, what was even more troublesome was that, unlike the Samir family and the forces supporting the Samir family, who had already seen the dawn of victory, the contradictions within the coalition made it impossible for the coalition to conduct command and operations efficiently. When the Samir family revealed a desperate attitude and inflicted pain on the enemy, the contradictions within the enemy would become even more prominent. How much responsibility and sacrifice they had undertaken, and how much they would gain in the future... These allied forces that could not unite had a good deal of infighting to do, and the key to triggering this infighting lay in whether the Samir family could truly carry out its desperate fight to the end.

The Seven Seas Trading Company had no intention of going crazy with the Samir family. The recent continuous naval battles had led to the emergence of a large number of promising captains, fleet commanders, chief petty officers, and firing command officers. In this kind of naval decisive battle, the Seven Seas Trading Company's internal order was to eliminate the enemy as much as possible while preserving themselves. On the one hand, the people of the Seven Seas Trading Company saw their ally's determination and rise, and on the other hand, they were also shocked by the Samir family's ruthless and somewhat irrational expansion of their strength, building fleets, and organizing ground armies. What they needed was a calm and rational friend, not a bomb that would blow up at any time. The Seven Seas Trading Company played an excellent supporting role, constantly containing and eliminating enemy fleets. Moreover, the combat quality of the Seven Seas Trading Company's fleets and the Yazhou First Fleet, which joined later, was much higher than that of the Samir family's short-trained sailors who were trained in batches to keep up with the fierce combat attrition in the Middle East. When the Samir family finally launched a full-scale attack, claiming to be fighting to the death, the Seven Seas Trading Company's main fleet had also gathered. The Seven Seas Trading Company's main fleet had as many as two hundred warships of various types, which was definitely an important force capable of influencing the battle situation. However, their first large-scale action was not to support the Samir family's large-scale counterattack to break through the enemy's blockade of the archipelago, but to quietly pass through the edge of the battlefield, annihilate a small fleet, and head straight for the Assyrian Sea, wanting to rendezvous with Ye Tao's fleet, which had already begun to move south and was preparing to enter the main battlefield, in the Assyrian Sea.

No one could stop them. Three and a half days later, when the Samir family's direct fleets shocked the enemy with their fearless fighting spirit, and finally allowed the Samir family to open up the passage from the sea to several auxiliary ports located further west, finally forming a complete controlled sea area, the Seven Seas Trading Company's main fleet and Ye Tao's reinforcements merged. This was almost the most powerful warship group in this time and space. After the two sides merged, there were more than one hundred and fifty Tiger Fang-class warships, and almost the same number of Cangshui-class and Lanshui-class warships, as well as a small number of large merchant ships and transport ships carrying supplies. At the same time, the fleet could also put together an airship team composed of thirteen airships, which already had considerable battlefield control capabilities. According to Ye Tao's calculations, if all the long-range firepower of this fleet could be evenly distributed, and if all of them used Fire Oil Bomb Type II, one salvo could cover several square kilometers of land, which could make a city lose its vitality... Unfortunately, they were now at sea, and the efficiency of long-range firepower was less than 20%.

However, when the fleet completed its merger and headed straight for Faleier, the enemy's main port opposing the Samir family, the enemy's commander-in-chief could not help but sway and totter upon hearing the news. No one could think of how many fleets should be sent to intercept in order to prevent Faleier Port, the most prosperous port in the Middle East, from suffering military disaster. In a wave of panic, Commander-in-Chief Alexander still made a surprising decision: except for a part of the fleet making efforts to delay the Samir family's main fleet, the entire fleet turned around to meet the enemy. Alexander decided to strike at the Seven Seas Trading Company's main fleet first. As he made this decision, the entire naval battle instantly shifted north by more than two hundred nautical miles...