I am Emperor Shizu of Song

Chapter 112 Entering the city quietly, no shooting allowed.

Zhao Zicheng said that it took more than a month to finish up the political affairs in Hangzhou and to hand over the reins to his successor.

He only has 40 to 50 days left before he can take up his post and must arrive in Dengzhou and Laizhou before the first day of July.

Fortunately, Zhao Zicheng chose a very convenient mode of transportation, so he was sure he would arrive smoothly.

On the eighth day of the fifth lunar month, Zhao Zicheng led several hundred of his loyal followers, along with his wives and concubines, their stewards, and servants—a total of nearly a thousand people. These loyal followers he took with him had previously been recruited as "laborers" rather than regular local militia. It was only later, during the campaign against Fang La, that these people were temporarily enlisted in the army as local braves.

The wartime pay and rewards they received, besides the funds officially allocated by the imperial court, included a considerable portion subsidized by Zhao Zicheng himself. Therefore, after Zhao Zicheng stepped down, it was very easy for him to take these veterans to Shandong. The Ministry of War wouldn't be able to detect any problems, mainly because the overall scale was relatively small, only a few hundred people.

These people boarded dozens of carefully selected naval vessels and temporarily requisitioned merchant ships. They set sail from Hangzhou Port via Suzhou Port, officially heading north into the Yellow Sea, all the way towards Shandong.

When passing through Suzhou Port, he considerately stopped for two or three days.

Firstly, it was to give subordinates who were going to sea for the first time a buffer period, allowing them to stay on the ship for a few days and then go ashore to rest, so as to avoid severe seasickness.

Secondly, it also allowed his wives and concubines to return to their parents' home. Since the Murong sisters, Murong Qiu and Murong Yan, married him at the end of the first lunar month, four months have passed in the blink of an eye. The two sisters will likely be staying in the north for a long time and will not be able to return home to visit their parents. Therefore, a final visit before leaving on their long journey can be considered as fulfilling their filial duty.

During his stay in Suzhou, Zhao Zicheng also visited his mother-in-law, Duan Yuyan. Duan Yuyan was very satisfied with this son-in-law and gave him some gifts.

"This is the Manichaean secret method that you had sent at the beginning of the year. I have been studying it for several months, analyzing its secrets in detail, and writing down my thoughts, which may be helpful for you. I never expected that these martial arts originating from the Persians would have such similarities with the unique skills of my Central Plains, especially with the secret method of using the enemy's own methods against them that my Murong family uses. You and Yan'er should spend more time studying it in your spare time, and you may gain a lot."

As Duan Yuyan spoke, she pushed a pile of her own handwritten annotations of scriptures in front of Zhao Zicheng.

Zhao Zicheng knew, of course, that this item contained an interpretation of the most secret martial arts of Manichaeism, and that he might be able to verify it sometime in the future. The original source of this item was a gift from Han Shizhong earlier this year.

At that time, Han Shizhong followed Liu Yanqing and Liu Guangshi to Muzhou to pursue and kill Fang La, and ultimately annihilated him. Zhao Zicheng was not involved in the process and therefore did not know the details.

However, Zhao Zicheng thought that Fang La seemed to be quite skilled in martial arts, and since he started his rebellion by invoking Manichaeism, he didn't know if Fang La actually possessed any of Manichaeism's unique skills. So he secretly entrusted Han Shizhong to search for martial arts manuals if Fang La was captured.

Han Shizhong, grateful for Zhao Zicheng's patronage, was quite righteous and eventually gathered up everything he could get his hands on that looked like martial arts manuals and sent it to Zhao Zicheng in secret.

Even high-ranking officials in the court didn't care about such things, and Tong Guan certainly wouldn't care either, so no one noticed the tricks Han Shizhong had played.

Those figures from the martial arts world who valued their lives as precious as their own were nothing to the powerful ministers who held the power of life and death.

After Zhao Zicheng succeeded, he read the scriptures himself, but he didn't quite understand them. Then he thought of his mother-in-law, who was an unparalleled martial arts genius, and asked Murong Yan to send the scriptures back to her family.

Given Duan Yuyan's talent, she wouldn't normally have been able to analyze and understand such profound things so quickly. However, the martial arts of the Mani sect seemed to have some similarities with the Murong family's ancestral secrets. After removing the dross and simplifying the complex, Duan Yuyan compiled it into a supplement to "using their own methods against them," and then returned it to her son-in-law.

When Zhao Zicheng looked at it again, he found the logic to be very clear, and many of the previously ambiguous statements became directly actionable. Although some of the more subtle and profound content had been removed, it was at least much easier to learn.

Zhao Zicheng felt that this didn't matter. Many martial arts are inherently contradictory, and one shouldn't try to learn too much at once. He had already learned to use the opponent's own methods against them, so when he learned something similar, he would definitely have to base it on the Murong family's unique skills. Other techniques would only be icing on the cake.

During the two or three days he stayed at the Murong family's residence, he spent a lot of time studying the material, asking questions directly when he encountered anything he didn't understand. Murong Yan also studied the material with him, asking her mother questions when she didn't understand anything either.

Finally, the couple managed to sort out the situation and then bid farewell to embark on their journey again.

On May 15th, the fleet replenished its supplies and set sail again from Suzhou Port, heading due north towards the Shandong Peninsula.

The southerly winds of midsummer were perfect for the fleet's northward journey. The sailors were all experienced men from the Wang Chengxun family, who had even sailed to Japan and Korea, so sailing to the coastal waters of Shandong was a piece of cake. Of course, the Murong family also sent some of their former ship crew members to learn and train alongside them.

The Murong family also had a fleet engaged in waterborne trade, but mainly used canals. These servants were all good swimmers, though they had never been to sea before; a couple of trips with them would give them basic skills. The Murong sisters had never seen the sea either, especially Murong Qiu, who disliked martial arts and had lived a secluded life, rarely venturing far from home. Although Murong Yan was raised as a boy and had appeared in public before, she had also never been to sea.

After setting sail from Suzhou Port, it was their first time venturing into the deep sea. With no land within a hundred miles, the Murong sisters were genuinely frightened. Even climbing the watchtower to look out at the surrounding seascape required them to cower in their husbands' arms and be carried by them. However, after one or two times, they got used to it, and their fear gradually transformed into a natural curiosity.

During this era, people who went north to Shandong to take up official posts would normally travel along the Grand Canal to Jeju Island, then cross the Taishan or Mengshan mountain ranges to reach the Shandong Peninsula, or simply wait until the river flows into the Yellow River before going downstream.

Zhao Zicheng's chosen route to his new post avoided various bandit disturbances along the way, preventing the bandits in Shandong from noticing his arrival.

Zhao Zicheng now enjoys a formidable reputation in Jiangnan, and even beyond Jiangnan, his fearsome name is widely circulated in the martial arts world. If the Liangshan bandits knew that Zhao Zicheng had come to Shandong, they would certainly be on their guard.

But since Zhao Zicheng had taken the sea route, even if Liangshan tried their best to find out about him, and even if Zhu Gui, Zhang Qing, and Sun Erniang opened black shops all over Jizhou, they were destined to find out nothing.

During their time adrift on the ship, Zhao Zicheng, having nothing better to do, and his wife devoted themselves to studying the Manichaean techniques of teleportation, learning from their strengths and compensating for their weaknesses, and surprisingly made considerable progress. Murong Yan actually possessed excellent martial arts talent, but her strength as a woman was generally weaker, and her young age in the past two years had hindered her practical combat skills. Now, sparring and practicing alongside Zhao Zicheng, Murong Yan's strength has increased at a rate of almost doubling every year for the past two years.

Besides focusing on martial arts training, Zhao Zicheng also took the opportunity during his time at sea to carefully observe the current ship construction and navigation technology, looking for any areas that could be improved.

For example, in fields such as telescopes, compasses, and nautical timekeeping devices, Zhao Zi said that although it is impossible to directly manufacture high-end products used by modern people, it is still easy to observe similar products used by Song Dynasty people and make slight improvements.

Modern navigation devices still use magnetic needles placed on a water plate, which are very inaccurate. Zhao Zicheng and the captains of the merchant ships under Wang Chengxun discussed this and found some craftsmen to tinker with them. They created an integrated, encapsulated compass, which was at least at the level of the late Ming Dynasty and the peak of the Western Age of Exploration.

The telescope issue couldn't be resolved at sea for the time being; it would have to be addressed once on land. Zhao Zicheng also offered some pointers and improvements to the timing and latitude measuring devices. The Wang family's captains and boatswains were all astonished by the Prefect's innovations; they hadn't expected that the Prefect could even provide guidance on navigation.

Besides these small observation devices, after nearly a month of sea voyage, Zhao Zicheng had also gained some understanding of the technical shortcomings of the ship he was traveling on. In this era, the ships navigating the Yellow Sea, Korea, and Japan were mainly flat-bottomed sand barges. Zhao Zicheng, combining his knowledge of physics and mechanics from his later life with his experience playing Age of Exploration games before his time travel, could offer some suggestions for improvement regarding the traditional sand barges' stability and wind-catching capabilities. These matters would have to wait until after Laizhou.

When the fleet finally landed in Laizhou, it was already mid-June. Zhao Zicheng, with over a thousand of his former soldiers and retainers, discreetly entered the prefectural city of Yexian (present-day Laizhou), without alerting any officials from other neighboring prefectures, nor did any bandits in Shandong notice his arrival.

In this era, very few people take office by sea. Those who are watching his movements are specifically targeting the canals, and no one thinks to guard against the sea route.

So much so that when Zhao Zicheng appeared in Yexian City and went to hand over the administration to the former prefect, the former prefect was taken aback and was completely unprepared.

The former prefect hadn't even prepared a proper account of how much deficit to leave during the handover, because according to his spies, Zhao Zicheng wouldn't arrive in Laizhou for at least several more days, and there was no news of Zhao Zicheng and his party along the Grand Canal in Shandong.

The former prefect, eager to maximize his profits and exploit every day, delayed finalizing the accounts. As a result, he was caught off guard by Zhao Zicheng and his schemes were riddled with loopholes.

Zhao Zicheng came with a powerful presence. The former prefect also knew that this young master Zhao was the number one troublemaker among the current imperial clan. He was skilled in both literature and martial arts, and dared to fight Fang La abroad and kill Zhu Mian at home.

Therefore, the former prefect had no choice but to accept his fate during the handover, accepting whatever Zhao Zicheng said, and interpreting any unclear or inconsistent accounts in a way that was more favorable to Zhao Zicheng.

In the end, the former executive left with almost no ill-gotten gains, and all the money he had planned to pocket was returned.

After taking control of the military and political affairs of Laizhou, Zhao Zicheng was finally able to calm down and think carefully about what to prioritize in his next plan.

Logically, once he arrived in Shandong, he should have dealt with the Liangshan problem, which had not yet been eradicated. However, Liangshan was quite far from Laizhou, separated by two prefectures: Qizhou (Jinan Prefecture) and Qingzhou.

Zhao Zicheng also lacked the authority to actively cross the border and cause trouble for Liangshan, as Northern Song officials faced too many constraints in troop deployment.

If he were to temporarily set aside the affairs of Liangshan, according to the tasks assigned to him by the imperial court, he should have quelled the pirates along the Dengzhou-Laizhou coast, ensured communication with the Jin state in Liaodong, protected the routes for imperial envoys, and prevented the Goryeo people from interfering.

(End of this chapter)