“What do we do?”
Yang Qin bent down and squatted in the reed marsh. In the depths of the grass marsh across from them, six oar-sail boats had lowered their sails and were hiding there. A rough estimate put the two groups of river pirates together at nearly three hundred men. There was no way they could break through this section of river. He turned back to solicit Han Qian’s opinion.
At this moment, Han Qian was using a monocular telescope to observe for quite a while, then handed the telescope to Yang Qin.
Only after Yang Qin came into contact with the monocular telescope did he understand why, despite being so careful and cautious, his meeting with Ji Kun had still fallen into Han Qian’s view without him noticing at all.
How could he have imagined that such a miraculous object existed in this world that could make out people’s eyes vaguely clear from seven or eight li away?
As the saying goes, his skills were inferior, he was the official and himself the bandit. When Yangtan water settlement was first raided and breached, Yang Qin truly had no way to resent anyone. As Han Qian had said, did he really expect the Han father and son to surrender without resistance?
He couldn’t even deeply hate Ji Kun for his ruthless decision to mobilize provincial troops to suppress Yangtan water settlement. He only hated himself for being too greedy, for not realizing he was merely a small fish, yet arrogantly thinking himself a lake dragon, stepping with one foot into the entanglement between figures of Han Qian and Ji Kun’s caliber.
He only hated Zhong Yanhu for being too brutal—after breaking into Yangtan water settlement, he actually slaughtered everyone down to the women and children in the settlement without sparing a single one.
Han Qian didn’t answer Yang Qin’s words, nor did he try to guess what was on his mind at this moment. He simply concentrated on carefully filtering through the intelligence collected over these past two days in his mind.
Along the Yangtze River section between Huangzhou and Ezhou, the main waterway was only about ten li wide at its broadest.
Although there were intricate and complex lake marshes and wetlands on both sides that could be traversed, the water conditions in these areas were even more complicated. The slightest carelessness could easily result in being blocked by river pirates in the river lanes, while the surroundings were all swamps and grass shoals—even abandoning the boats to flee wouldn’t work.
At this moment, two fishing boats were stopped in the middle of the river outside. Four bandits were fishing in the gentle wind and drizzle, actually responsible for watching passing vessels.
Sailing ships fitted with spray boards, when sailing with side winds at maximum speed, could only manage about fifteen li in half a double-hour. Light oar-sail boats, using both oars and sails together, could travel an extreme distance of twenty-five or even thirty li in half a double-hour.
Under these circumstances, they couldn’t directly charge through this river section either.
At this time, news had already spread that his father had allied with Marquis Xinchang Li Pu to help the Third Prince scheme for the Dragon Sparrow Army. Some were even privately saying that Peace Palace simply didn’t want his father to smoothly assume office in Xuzhou. When they requested Ezhou and Huangzhou to dispatch warships as escort, both places made excuses that their provincial troops were weak and vulnerable to a single blow. However, if their side was willing to abandon the boats and go ashore to take the land route, they would be willing to dispatch troops to escort them to the provincial border.
If they truly abandoned the boats to take the land route, Han Qian and his group would have long since entered Poyang Lake and gone ashore at Hongzhou. Going ashore at Ezhou, dragging along twenty or thirty family members who were inconvenient to travel, without sufficient carts and horses—who knew when they would manage to reach Xuzhou, perhaps in the year of the donkey or month of the horse.
Han Qian’s forces only had this small number of elite troops. Once lost, there was nowhere to replenish them. He also hadn’t considered fighting a hard battle with water bandits. Forcing their way through the water bandits’ ambush point at night was somewhat unrealistic.
Han Qian and Yang Qin silently walked out of the reed marsh. On a small hill, they met up with Gao Shao, Tian Cheng, and Zhao Wuji, then crossed mountains and ridges back to Huangzhou City located on the north bank of the Yangtze River.
“How do we cross this section of river?”
Zhao Kuo, Lin Zongjing and others were guarding two boats at the dock outside the city with their men. Fan Xicheng accompanied Han Daoxun to stay at the courier station in the city, also accompanying Han Daoxun to visit friends to buy time. At this moment, seeing Han Qian personally leave the city to inspect the terrain and enemy situation, he ran over with concern to ask.
“If there’s truly no other way, Young Master, you escort the lord ahead while we stay in Huangzhou a while longer.”
When there was truly no alternative, Han Qian taking a few elite scouts to escort his father via land route to rush to Xuzhou first to assume office was also an option—after all, five or six people traveling by land made a small target and moved quickly.
However, this might also tempt the Department of Operations’ covert scouts to directly strike and intercept them on the road. It was just slightly more likely to succeed than directly breaking through by water route.
But Han Qian was considering another matter in his heart.
If they couldn’t manage to traverse the water route from Jinling to Xuzhou this time, how could they expect Xuzhou’s timber, cinnabar, medicinal materials, tin, copper, iron ore and other products to continuously flow via water route to Jinling in the future?
Therefore, even if this route was a mountain of blades and sea of flames, Han Qian had to brave it at this moment. If he cowered now, even if he could find a better opportunity to blaze this trail in three or four years, would he have such ample time?
“Have you bought back everything I asked you to buy?” Han Qian saw his father reading under lamplight, thinking his old man was truly composed, completely unconcerned that they were nearly running their legs off outside.
“We spent a whole day visiting wine celleries in Huangzhou City and nearly ran our legs off. Jishui Spring is the strongest liquor in Huangzhou City—we bought a hundred jars. We’ve also prepared a thousand jin of lime. Everything’s ready. However, with such a commotion, we inevitably drew attention and couldn’t shake them off.” Fan Xicheng said.
Buying over a thousand jin of quicklime to splash in enemies’ faces when encountering them still had considerable destructive power. But Fan Xicheng didn’t know what Han Qian intended to do by having them buy over a hundred jars of strong liquor in Huangzhou City. Take them to Xuzhou to sell?
Loading ceramic onto boats required making special wooden frames and stuffing them full of straw to ensure the wine jars wouldn’t break from the constant jolting during the journey.
Loading over a hundred jars of strong liquor onto boats now—if half made it to Xuzhou unbroken, they’d need to thank heaven and earth.
Besides, shouldn’t they be considering how to safely reach Xuzhou as the most important matter right now? When did they have idle time to consider selling wine for profit?
Fan Xicheng had accompanied Han Daoxun into Huangzhou today, spending the entire day leading people to busy themselves with this. He was quite depressed about it.
“I’m not afraid of Zhao Mingting’s people not watching us! Lead me to see.” Han Qian said.
Walking to the rear courtyard, over a hundred jars of wine were already piled in the corner, covered with a layer of tung oil cloth to protect against rain at night.
Han Qian broke open one jar of wine and tasted a bit of the liquor.
No matter how strong the world’s strong liquor was, it was extremely limited. Even after distillation, doubling the alcohol content, it still couldn’t be ignited.
Han Qian had Zhao Ting’er help him fetch a sea bowl, then took a package of lime. He poured most of a bowl of wine, slowly sprinkling in quicklime bit by bit until no more lime would dissolve into the wine. After letting it settle for a moment, he took a new bowl and poured out the upper layer of less turbid liquor. Taking a tinderbox to ignite it, he saw bright blue flames rise up.
“What is this? It burns even more vigorously than lamp oil!” Fan Xicheng hadn’t expected that the shallow half-bowl of somewhat turbid liquor the young master poured out would burn so intensely. Very excited, he asked.
Han Qian smiled inwardly, thinking darkly that the world’s lamp oil was mainly soybean oil and other plant oils—how could it burn more vigorously than high-purity alcohol? It’s not kerosene or gasoline.
“This is pure alcohol. You can also call it alcohol essence,” Han Qian said. “Following the method I just demonstrated, you can extract nearly twenty jars of pure alcohol that can ignite fire from these hundred jars of strong liquor. But remember, the lime must be added slowly. Don’t let the liquor boil. Stop when you see the lime can no longer dissolve into the liquor. After letting it settle for a moment, the upper clear-turbid liquid is the pure alcohol.”
“We can really extract twenty jars of pure alcohol?” If they had twenty jars of pure alcohol that worked even better than lamp oil, and the enemy was completely unaware, Fan Xicheng could already envision how they would easily defeat the enemy in this battle.
“After you extract it, pour out a small half-bowl from each jar to verify. When dividing it into small ceramic jars, remember to fill them only halfway, not completely full…” Han Qian couldn’t very well explain to them that quicklime reacts with water but not with alcohol, which is why this method could be used to purify alcohol. He asked Fan Xicheng: “How much did these hundred jars of wine cost?”
“The Young Master said to buy the strongest liquor in Huangzhou City. Jizhou Spring really isn’t cheap—these hundred jars cost a hundred sixty thousand coins.” Fan Xicheng said.
Han Qian frowned, his heart aching. If not for burning Yangtan water settlement and seizing fifty or sixty gold ingots that he kept hidden without returning to Yang Qin, with so many people eating, drinking, and defecating along the way, plus the lost mules and horses, he would have had to subsidize everything from his private funds and would already be bankrupt by now.
Yang Qin naturally didn’t know what Han Qian was thinking. Quite excited and curious, he squatted there continuing to watch the flames rise from the ceramic bowl containing pure alcohol.
He knew that space inside warships was cramped and most feared fire. Therefore, whether river pirates or the government’s water garrisons, their defenses against fire attacks were most cautious. It wasn’t possible to easily ignite enemy ships just by organizing twenty or thirty people to shoot fire arrows.
For a fire attack to succeed, they needed large quantities of incendiary materials for concentrated throwing, and these incendiaries absolutely had to burn rapidly, creating a major blaze in the shortest time that the enemy would find difficult to extinguish. Only then could they create fatal chaos for the opponent in an extremely short time, making it possible to defeat many with few.
Otherwise, even if the enemy’s warships were ignited and caught fire, if the flames weren’t large enough and didn’t spread fast enough, it would still give the enemy sufficient time to board and fight in close combat. Their side, even with everyone assembled, only had sixty or seventy people and two boats. How could they withstand the assault of nearly three hundred opponents with six fast oar-sail boats?
Yang Qin knew that strong liquor burned the throat fiercely when swallowed, but he didn’t know that pure alcohol extracted with lime could actually burn with such fierce flames. His heart went cold, thinking that if he had originally tried to forcefully assault Han Daoxun’s flagship, completely unprepared, the outcome probably wouldn’t have been much better than the settlement’s annihilation and everyone’s death.
“The river pirates have six boats. We still need to lure them into narrow waters before we can use fire attack to annihilate them in one stroke.” With truly twenty jars of pure alcohol that could ignite fierce flames, and the bandits having little defense, this battle would be easy to fight. Tian Cheng, who was usually low-key around Han Qian, couldn’t help but move closer to offer his strategy.
“You all discuss and come up with a definite plan for how to lure and ambush the river pirates. I’ve been running around all day and my legs are sore and numb. I need to have Ting’er help me massage and relax.” Han Qian yawned, leaving the specific battle plans to Zhao Wuji, Tian Cheng, Gao Shao, Fan Xicheng and Yang Qin to discuss. He pulled Zhao Ting’er into the room to massage his shoulders and legs to relax, thinking that if this team could be properly honed during this journey, before Emperor Tianyou passed away, he might be able to enjoy a few peaceful days and return to his former life of wild debauchery and luxury.