gnovel Chapter 141 Response
Chapter 141 Response
Chapter 141 Response (Part 2)
On the fourth day of the tenth lunar month, two ships, one after the other, anchored off the coast of Songnan Village.
Shao Shuyi personally went ashore and spent half a day discussing with Jiang Bayue, asking his employees to load the timber onto a ship and deliver it to Sanlinli to find a site to build some houses.
Before he left, I left him fifty ingots of paper money as an advance expense.
On the fifth day, the fleet weighed anchor and set sail, heading straight for Matuosha.
On this day, a special guest arrived at the Zhehu Salt Warehouse of the Songjiang Branch of the Liangzhe Transportation Company.
Upon seeing this, the salt warehouse official Qu An immediately ordered the warehouse doors to be opened, pulling the man and his dozen or so followers inside. His expression was rather displeased as he said, "Why is Master Zhu so ostentatious?"
"Is the situation getting tense?" Master Zhu glanced at him sideways and asked.
Qu An nodded slightly, then looked at the people who had come with Master Zhu and said, "Put away all the equipment."
More than ten attendants, carrying swords and bows, remained unmoved.
"Put it away, don't scare people," Master Zhu lazily ordered.
The group then hid the equipment under the vehicle.
Qu An was then somewhat relieved.
Inside the salt warehouse, there were also some storerooms staffed by clerks, which was nothing out of the ordinary. At the clerk's signal, they began to fill sacks with salt.
"Hey Zhu Chen, couldn't you have brought some sacks with you? Why did you have to use the salt warehouse's?" Qu An couldn't help but say.
Zhu Chen ignored him, swaggered into the salt warehouse official's office, sat down directly, and said, "I'll bring it next time, okay?"
His men also began to help pack the salt.
According to regulations, one tael of salt was worth 400 catties, plus 10 catties for wastage, and was packed into two bags, meaning that each bag could hold a maximum of 205 catties. But after the warehouses were full, these people would always stuff some more in until they could no longer hold any more.
After filling a bag, they would carry it to an oxcart or mule cart and carefully stack it.
Seeing that his seat had been taken by Zhu Chen, Qu An dared not say anything more, but simply sat down beside him and said, "There was a reason why I told you not to be so ostentatious earlier."
"Hmm?" Zhu Chen sensed something was wrong, so he sat up straight.
"Didn't you sense anything was wrong on your way here?" Qu An asked.
"Stop beating around the bush, just tell me," Zhu Chen said impatiently.
Qu Anxin was angry, but only for a moment. After sorting out his thoughts, he said, "The Salt Transport Commissioner has just finished his inspection of Songjiang Prefecture and was about to leave when he turned back halfway. Now he has divided his forces to various places to strictly investigate salt smugglers."
Upon hearing this, Zhu Chen, the salt collector, twitched at the corner of his mouth and asked, "Who are they after?"
"At first, I didn't know," Qu An said. "These bandits came from the north, numbering about twenty or thirty. Their accents were mixed, but they were generally from the Pingjiang Road and Songjiang Prefecture area. They were armed with knives and spears, and wore headbands. They went to Xiashachang first, then..."
They bought salt at Yuanbuchang, Hengpuchang, and Pudongchang; it's hard to say how much they bought, but I estimate it was several thousand catties. Oh, and they also bought dried seafood.
Zhu Chen was very patient this time, and did not interrupt him, but listened quietly.
Qu An continued, "The Xia Shachang (the location of the Songjiang branch office) conducted a thorough investigation for several days, but failed to uncover the name of the bandit leader. It wasn't until a few days ago that Chen Si, a resident of Hengputing, was reported for selling smuggled salt to someone with a red headband. The supervisor immediately arrested him and, during interrogation, learned that a bandit had mentioned the name 'Brother Meng.' Only then did we realize that the bandit leader's surname was Meng, and that he was either from Suzhou or Songjiang."
"It might not be their real surname," Zhu Chen said.
Qu An nodded and said, "It's certainly not necessarily surnamed Meng, but we've only gotten this much information so far. Judge Zhao is overjoyed and has already started inquiring about whether there are any salt merchants surnamed Meng in Songjiang Prefecture."
"I'll say a few words, believe it or not," Zhu Chen suddenly said.
Qu An was taken aback, but quickly nodded and said, "Go ahead and speak, I'm listening."
"Firstly, the bandit leader may not necessarily be surnamed Meng," Zhu Chen said, holding up one finger.
Secondly, most of these thieves are new to this line of work.
Thirdly, it is very likely that it came from Pingjiang Road.
"Fourth, since they are armed and have so many people, it is impossible for them to appear suddenly. Check if there are any other cases that can be connected."
"One last thing." Zhu Chen held up his fifth finger and said, "Since you also bought dried seafood, you must have been making salted fish. Pay attention to where large quantities of salted fish with excessive salt suddenly appear, and investigate that area."
After listening, Qu An was filled with admiration.
As expected, salt smugglers know salt smugglers best; no one else could have explained it so clearly.
"I'll go back and investigate too," Zhu Chen added. "If anyone dares to sell salted fish in Pingjiang, Changzhou, and Jiqing, they will be punished severely."
After saying that, he looked at Qu An with a playful smile and asked, "Do the Li brothers know about this?"
Qu An shook his head and said, "You'll have to ask them."
"They probably already know," Zhu Chen sneered. "Those two brothers are useless. If someone hadn't stopped them, I would have drowned them in the Wusong River long ago. Let them help investigate. They've been hogging such a large area of Songjiang Prefecture; they can't be deaf and blind, can they?"
Qu An didn't find anything wrong with Zhu Chen's arrogant tone.
In western Zhejiang, he was indeed the biggest salt collector, and relatively "obedient".
The term "obedient" refers to those who, after accumulating wealth, acquire vast estates, shops, and concubines, indulging in pleasure rather than engaging in other horrific acts. Furthermore, they understand the importance of sharing profits with the government, making money together—who wouldn't like such people?
In eastern Zhejiang, the most famous was the salt worker from Taizhou, known as "Brother Fang." He wasn't as obedient as Zhu and Chen, but he knew how to behave properly. His relationship with the government could be described in four words: peaceful coexistence.
Thinking of this, Qu An also sighed, there were just too many salt merchants in Zhejiang!
In ancient times, there was a man named Qian Liu who made a living by selling smuggled salt. He eventually seized control of the two Zhejiang regions and became the ruler of the Wuyue Kingdom. He fought against the Yang Wu and Southern Tang for decades and remained unshaken.
These salt merchants of today probably all take him as their role model, right?
When Qu An was preoccupied with his own thoughts, Zhu Chen also felt a bit helpless.
He was an old-timer in the salt trade, but as the Yuan Dynasty declined, more and more new salt traders emerged, and they were aggressive, disregarded all rules, and were extremely impolite.
Fortunately, he was no less capable, and his connections in official circles were much stronger than those of these newcomers.
These younger generations simply don't understand one principle: fighting and killing are beneath us; cooperating with the government is the right path.
If you don't understand this principle, you'll get hacked to death on some street corner sooner or later.
"If there's nothing else, I'm leaving now," Zhu Chen said, calling out towards the window.
A moment later, two attendants entered and untied a large bundle, instantly scattering stacks of banknotes onto the table.
Zhu Chen laughed heartily and said, "Let's go."
"Go back to Liujiagang or—" Qu An asked.
"Jiangning." Zhu Chen's smile faded, and he sighed, saying, "Seven or eight bandits from Huaixi have swarmed over from Taiping Road. They are ruthless. Sometimes they ambush and kill merchants on the river, sometimes they rob in Dangtu and Wuhu, and they even stormed into Daxin City and kidnapped a salt merchant's son in a brothel. The government can't control them, so they asked me to go and kill them."
Qu An was taken aback.
Zhu Chen didn't take it seriously and left.
This wasn't the first time he'd done this. He'd previously helped the government deal with river bandits and mountain brigands because the archers from the patrol office couldn't defeat them.
Most of these bandits came from Huainan and Huaixi, and they roamed across the river, committing crimes one after another. They were fierce and difficult to control.
The government often asks these smugglers to help them. They might have been a little surprised the first time, but they're used to it now.
Qu An, that fool, is too low-ranking; he probably hasn't even heard of such a thing.
His relationship with the government was far more complex than that.
******
On the eighth day of the tenth month, Shao Shuyi, a "newcomer" in the private salt industry, was unaware that the government had commissioned a "senior" to inquire about his whereabouts.
He had just arrived at Liujiagang. After thinking for a while, he decided to take a small boat ashore and reveal himself inside the Qingqi Shop.
Whether the Zheng family had become numb to his unexcused absences or simply didn't care anymore after the off-season, almost no one in the azurite shop mentioned his disappearance for over ten days.
So he took the two new letters that had been sent to him and returned to the ship the next day, sailing upstream and arriving at Matuosa three days later.
The men who stayed behind, Li Fu, Wu Shangyuan, Zhao Xiaoer, Zhao Xiaosan, and two other seafarers named Liu Zhong and Sun Ersi, had just finished salting about 8,000 catties of salted fish (one catty of salt for one catty of fish). The fish were piled up in layers in the wooden barrels, which looked very pleasing.
"We're out of salt, otherwise we would have pickled the remaining four thousand catties of fish as well," Li Fu said as he led his men forward.
"Thank you for your hard work," Shao Shuyi said sincerely.
"It's just my duty," Li Fu shook his head.
"We've harvested over 10,000 jin of dried seafood this time. Let's go, take some men to unload the cargo," Shao Shuyi said, pulling Li Fu along.
"Okay," Li Fu replied, then couldn't help but ask, "Where's the salt?"
"More than 20,000 jin is enough," Shao Shuyi said with a smile.
He had already roughly calculated on the way that this would be enough to make more than 33,000 catties of salted fish, and there would still be more than 7800 catties of salt left.
The total cost of purchasing these goods is around 194 ingots, and the gross profit is around several hundred ingots, which is an astronomical amount of wealth for ordinary people and even small merchants.
Unfortunately, Shao's appetite had become too picky. He felt that the channels for buying smuggled salt were still not smooth enough. If he could set up an "office" near the salt field and develop downstream agents in various salt-producing areas, he could collect far more than just this amount of salt. In fact, if he could get in touch with the salt field, he would be on the right track.
It should be noted that the 34 salt fields in Zhejiang and Jiangsu produce more than 100 million catties of salt (350,000 yin) annually. If salt farmers secretly keep one percent of that, that's more than a million catties. He's making quite a fuss now, but he hasn't been able to buy much salt, which is really frustrating.
We need to think of more ways to make this business bigger and stronger, and create even greater achievements.
After unloading the cargo, the people on both Pingjia and Pingyi boats worked together to pickle the salted fish; no one was idle.
Shao Shuyi found a quiet place and opened the letter that Madam Liu had sent him.
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