"Good! Ali, since you believe in the Chief Divine, then the Chief Divine will reward you generously! And between our Tribes, we are all Brothers of the Gummy People, we’ll intermarry with each other and truly become one family!..."

Zuwaro smiled and nodded to Ali, the Chief of Harman. Ever since arriving on the Western Sea Continent, this land of tribal slaughter and lurking crises, he had been very willing to listen, very good at following the advice of local guides. And this Harman Chief who was so familiar with Great Ming Liaodong was precisely his most important guide for continuing southward into the Ming Dynasty, the biggest gain of this southern expedition!

Next, he needed to take Ali, along with the women and children of the Tribe, back to Divine Kutadai Port, to intermarry with the Kingdom’s Main Force. Spend great effort spreading the faith, win them over properly...

"His Majesty of Divine Revelation has instructed us before! The prerequisite for trade is indeed parity of power and Wealth; you can’t let yourself be easily robbed... Ali, then in your opinion, if we go southward for Tribute, with these bags of Gold granted by the Chief Divine... at most, how much can we safely bring in order to reach the Kaiyuan Market of the Ming Dynasty to trade?"

"Mm, let me think... If a Tribute party of two hundred riders goes south, we can probably bring twenty pieces of Gold Talisman, and two thousand taels of Silver?... No, that’s wrong! Two thousand taels is still too much!"

As he spoke, the Chief of Harman, Ali, felt his right eyelid twitch; he still thought that number was too high. You had to know, one thousand taels of Silver would be enough for one thousand Great Ming Border Army soldiers to get two taels each! Compared to the meager pay of the Ming Army, this sum was still too large, enough to make an entire battalion of Border Army move their hands. It had to be halved—ten, no, eight Gold Talismans would be enough!

"Ancestor Shaman, a Tribute party of two hundred riders, bringing eight pounds of Gold and eight hundred taels of Silver, should roughly ensure safety. Even if it’s exposed, it won’t make the Border Army strike too ruthlessly. And the Gold must not be in this Gold Talisman form, or it’ll be far too eye‑catching! It must be broken up, crushed, turned into rough sand gold, made to look like it was gathered in the deep forest, then divided into sixteen small pouches of eight taels each... afterwards, when we meet the Kaiyuan Town Guardian, we secretly slip him one pouch! Then all the later Tribute and rewards, including Ironware and even Iron Armor, will be easy to arrange! As for the rest, we’ll go to the big market and find fur merchants I know to sell it off! Don’t let anyone else know, it must be kept hidden..."

"What? So cautious, and we can only bring eight Gold Talismans to trade? This is really... like plucking a single hair off a sable’s tail to sell..."

Hearing this, Zuwaro looked astonished, then shook his head with a wry smile. In the Kingdom’s Divine Kutadai Port, there were still fifteen hundred pounds of Gold in storage; even this probing fleet carried a reserve of one hundred pounds of Gold as ballast. When trading with those Ezo and Japanese, every time he dealt in units of ten pounds, a hundred pounds, directly "throwing Gold with great Force, using Force to overawe people." But once he reached the very doorstep of the Ming Dynasty, far stronger than the Japanese, in a single trip he could only bring out less than ten pounds, and only dared to bring that much...

"The Chief Divine bears witness! Ali, when it comes to trading with the South, besides Gold, we really have nothing else to offer. But the Chief Divine indeed requires that we obtain as many Craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty in the South as possible, especially Shipwrights and Blacksmiths... Think carefully, is there any way? Or, how can we, inside the Great Ming Han Tribe Alliance, find reliable people to spend the Gold in our hands?"

"You need Shipwrights and Blacksmiths? Find big figures and use Gold to open up doorways?..."

The Harman Chief pursed his lips and pondered the Ancestor Shaman’s request for a long while. He did not question the Ancestor Shaman’s intention in wanting Ming Dynasty Craftsmen. Because Craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty were simply good, and very much in demand!

Every time the various Mongolia tribes went south to raid, whenever they encountered Craftsmen in the villages, they would spare their lives and carry them off to the steppe alive. The Shushu Jurchen Tribes also tried every possible means to take in fugitives with skills from the Ming Dynasty to improve the living conditions of their Tribes. And many impoverished commoners on the frontier, unable to survive without fields, would risk their lives trying to flee across the border wall for a living.

In recent years, the rising Dayan Khan of Mongolia had continuously dispatched Roving Cavalry, spreading a good deal of news about recruiting Han people to open up Mongolian land. It was said the various Mongolia tribes had indeed recruited quite a number of refugees from the Han Land. This had made the Liaodong Governor issue strict orders, forbidding all garrison and Mongolians from having contact, with notice even sent to all the Jurchen Tribes...

"Ancestors’ blessing! Ancestor Shaman, the garrison Craftsmen system of the Ming Dynasty is extremely strict about Craftsmen! They would rather let these Craftsmen starve to death in place than allow them to move elsewhere to survive, let alone migrate outside the border wall. And among them, Blacksmiths are the very heart of what the Ming Dynasty guards against! Great Ming Liaodong strictly forbids frontier garrison Iron Smelting, gathering all the Blacksmiths in the area south of Liaoyang, precisely to prevent Blacksmiths and Ironware from leaking out..."

"So, to get Blacksmiths out of Liaodong Town is as hard as climbing the sky! Even if you bribe the Guardian, it’s still likely impossible! However, with the Jilin Shipyard being dismantled, a large batch of Shipwrights were moved south and scattered among the various garrison Border Fortress... if we can think of a way, Shipwrights can still be obtained!"

"Oh?! Shipwrights from the Jilin Shipyard? How are their skills? Can they build the Large Ships we row?..."

"Uh... Ancestor Shaman, the longship you ride, for the Jurchen Tribes, that already counts as a Large Ship! But decades ago, when my grandfather was a child, he personally saw the Great Ming Huntong River Navy setting out from the Jilin Shipyard to go to the Nurgan Metropolitan Authority... among them were six Large Ships, each of which was probably two or three times the size of a longship, able to carry two hundred men!..."

The Harman Chief Ali shook his head. Speaking of the glorious old days when the Great Ming Navy patrolled Nurgan, his expression was quite complex. His Harman Tribe had offered Tribute for generations, from Yongle through Hongzhi, receiving investiture from six Emperors; they had never been some ignorant "North Mountain Wild Man," but model tribes on the lower reaches of the Huntong River, deeply Sinicized "Shushu Jurchen"!

Even the Jurchen Chief Eunuch Yishiha, who founded the Nurgan Metropolitan Authority, had come to the Harman Guard during the Yongle–Xuande Period, selecting some young Jurchen children to enter the palace. As for Ali himself, back in the Fourteenth Year of Chenghua, when he first paid Tribute and received investiture, he had personally written a Han‑language memorial of gratitude to the Emperor of Ming. Yet in the blink of an eye, fifty or sixty years had gone by, and that era when the Empire was like the noonday sun was gone and never returned. The influence of Jurchen Eunuchs at the Great Ming Imperial Court had almost entirely dissipated, leaving only some final embers.

"Ancestor Shaman, there are two old sayings in the Han Land, one is called ’a small stream flows long,’ and the other is ’getting rich quietly’! What? You ask why one must be quiet to get rich? Well... because in the Ming Dynasty, there is one set of rules in the open, and countless doorways in the dark. And there are far, far too many things that can be done through these doorways, only they cannot be brought onto the stage to be seen..."

"So, if you truly want to spend the Gold and get some Shipwrights out of Liaodong Town, or other Craftsmen besides Blacksmiths... my Harman Tribe does indeed have some ancestral ties with certain big figures in Liaodong Town. These ties are very distant, and normally of no use at all. But as long as there is Gold, those ties become doorways, and we can link them up with this Gold! And once the doorways are linked, we can make sure we spend our Gold steadily and safely! It’s just that we can’t give too much at once; it has to be done slowly—’quietly spending big Wealth’..."

At this point, the Harman Chief Ali paused, stared at Zuwaro’s beardless chin, and suddenly showed a baffling smile on his face.

"The Chief Divine bears witness! When that big figure of Liaodong sees you, he will definitely find you very familiar! Very familiar indeed!..."