Chapter 217: The New Challenge Before Us

The He brothers were the exception; He Chunhua didn't give them any. Wu Shaoyi picked up the bamboo tube and shook it; there was something inside rustling—solid, a large quantity but small in volume. "This is?"

"Open it and see, won't you?"

Everyone pulled the stopper, and a heavy smell of tobacco overflowed.

Wu Shaoyi said pleasantly, "Chewing tobacco?"

He took out a piece and chewed it slowly, nodding: "Good, good, truly top-grade! Thank you, Master."

He Yue could only watch eagerly: "Father, where did this come from?"

"This is a specialty of the Beijia Nation, sent all the way from the north." He Chunhua took a piece and didn't chew it, just played with it in his hand. "The Great Yuan and the Beijia Nation have an agreement to buy many things from there every year, and chewing tobacco is just one of them. Now the border line has been pushed to Xiazhou, and the task of sending people to the border market to pick up goods will fall on me. Besides, I only found out today that the official post stations in Xiazhou must also give priority to Beijia merchants; if a Beijia caravan is robbed, local officials must investigate it thoroughly."

The main function of the official post station was still to serve messengers; if they didn't provide drinking water, food, and horse changes, where would the X-hundred-mile urgent dispatches come from? However, the Yuan Nation actually had an agreement with Beijia that official post stations were not allowed to refuse Beijia caravans from staying.

This kind of privilege was not something the common people of the country could enjoy.

Zeng Feixiong didn't eat tobacco and frowned: "What's hard about making chewing tobacco, why not produce it yourself?" It was so time-consuming, laborious, and expensive to transport it from thousands of miles away.

"The things produced by Beijia are of the best quality and most popular. Look, even this bamboo tube is made of green jade bamboo unique to southern Beijia, with a color like jade and a sound like gold when knocked; the outer skin is only a very thin layer, and the weight is light." He weighed the green jade bamboo tube casually. "Look at the chewing tobacco produced by Yuan Nation, what is used to hold it, what is the quality, hmm?"

Zeng Feixiong had nothing to say.

"I've been in Shi Huan for the past few days, and I've seen that the nobles use Beijia chewing tobacco for social interaction, which shows its popularity. The bamboo tubes they use have to be painted and gilded to be played with. Wealthy merchants also use Beijia chewing tobacco to treat guests to show their wealth." He Chunhua weighed the bamboo tube. "Such a small tube sells for one tael of silver, and it gets more expensive the further south you go. If it's a gilded tube of chewing tobacco, the quality is higher, and the price doubles."

"This tobacco leaf has no impurities, first smoked and then roasted, and soaked in honey, the taste is truly good!" Wu Shaoyi was very intoxicated. "What kind of dog shit did I chew before!"

He was a mud-legged man before, what good tobacco was he qualified to chew?

He Lingchuan's heart stirred.

This kind of green jade bamboo tube was very familiar; wasn't it what he got when he received military merit rewards in the Panlong dream!

In Panlongcheng, there were people who specialized in collecting these bamboo tubes, processing them a second time, and selling them for money.

Yes, the chewing tobacco issued by the Panlongcheng Pengcheng Office was slightly different in color and shape from what everyone had in their hands, but it was a product from more than a hundred years ago, and it was reasonable for the craftsmanship to have improved after such a long time.

That is to say, the chewing tobacco issued by Panlongcheng to soldiers was also produced by Beijia!

Cough, he seemed to have heard Hu Min say that Panlongcheng also did business with the Beijia Nation, and the annual trade volume was not small.

The foreign trade of this country was really very developed.

He Chunhua sighed again: "Of course, the most important reason is that the Yuan Nation has to buy it. How much to buy every year and at what price to buy are all written in the agreement. Like the past few years, disasters have continued, and we have bought less from the Beijia Nation, and the payment has not been very timely, which has made the Beijia Nation very dissatisfied."

If it were the real Young Master He, he might have asked directly "Why do you have to buy it."

So He Lingchuan asked that too.

He Chunhua didn't answer directly, and was silent for a few breaths before saying: "It accepted Nian Zanli, the shepherd of Xunzhou, which is to put eye drops on us."

He coughed again: "We will face a more complex new situation after arriving in Xiazhou, which is one of the troubles. I say these things so that you can have a bottom line in your heart. No matter how to fight with Nian Zanli, we cannot easily offend Beijia. Alright, now it's time to talk about serious matters."

He nodded to the steward Old Mo on the side, who immediately went out, and soon led a person in: "Master, Manager Qian has been brought."

Then Old Mo closed the windows and stepped out to guard the door for everyone. After all, this was a post station, so he had to be careful about walls having ears.

He Chunhua pointed to the later arrival who was dressed as a merchant: "This is Manager Qian who was sent by the Zhu family to manage business in Dunyu. He has been in Dunyu for twenty years, and is more familiar with this Xiazhou capital than the locals."

"General Manager He is over-praising." Manager Qian bowed to everyone around, smiling warmly. "I have seen all the adults."

"Old Zhu specially ordered him to rush over from Dunyu at my request, to explain the situation in the city to us. So that you won't be unfamiliar with the place after entering the city with me, and have no way to carry out work."

He had built a pure friendship with the Zhu family after sending Zhu Xiuer back to Zhu Xiyan. The Zhu family also had business in the Xiazhou territory, and also counted on the new general manager to pull them, so they naturally tried their best to satisfy his reasonable requests.

He nodded to Manager Qian: "Say it, how is the war on the northern line, and how is it in Dunyu City."

Manager Qian spoke eloquently.

He Lingchuan already knew that the war on the northern line of the Yuan Nation was not going well, but he didn't expect it to be so bad.

The original Great General of the North, Nian Zanli, took the entire Xunzhou and defected to the northern demon kingdom, so the northern front line suddenly moved south from Xunzhou to the eastern part of Haozhou. You know, Xunzhou had been the border line for many years, but the troops in Haozhou didn't have much combat experience against the enemy, and as a result, the resistance here didn't form a climate, and it was broken by Nian Zanli in less than a month.

As Nian Zanli broke through like a bamboo, the battlefield pressed to the southern part of Haozhou without any accident.

That place was already approaching the border line between Haozhou and Xiazhou, which was He Chunhua's territory. As long as Nian Zanli took the last three cities in the southern part of Haozhou, he could lead the war to Xiazhou.

Nian Zanli should also know about He Chunhua's transfer to the northern border. This former border general was probably anxious to avenge his son's death, and launched wave after wave of offensives against southern Haozhou.

Currently, the one holding the southern part of Haozhou was Zhao Pan, a general stationed by the Wang Ting. It was said that he and Nian Zanli had their own victories and defeats, temporarily holding back the latter's pace of southward invasion.

Undoubtedly, Zhao Pan needed strong support from the rear.

Undoubtedly, he encountered the same trouble as Ke Jihai: weak logistics and short supplies.

And Xiazhou was behind the battlefield, duty-bound to bear a large part of the military supply. The Wang Ting ordered Xiazhou to cooperate fully.

"My family does cloth business in Dunyu, originally mainly silk and fur. After the war started in the north, Dunyu had to coordinate the transportation of cotton cloth and rush to make cotton clothes for all the cloth shops in the city, and my family was also one of them." Manager Qian sighed. "General Zhao urged for 30,000 winter clothes before winter, but until now the spring snow is about to melt, and the cotton clothes collected to the front line are only 7,000, less than 40%."

He Yue frowned: "The materials for fighting can't be all raised by Xiazhou, right?"

"Xiazhou is closest to the front line, and the task assigned is also the heaviest. Just cotton clothes were assigned more than 3,000 pieces. We spent a lot of effort to complete the task, and we also paid for the goods and manual labor out of our own pockets, and the government hasn't reimbursed us yet." Manager Qian continued, "Lack of clothes is one thing, but the grain gap is even bigger. I heard that the front line has already had a camp explosion once, and soldiers were so hungry that they took advantage of the night to defect to the opponent's camp."

If the military heart is unstable, the war cannot be fought well.

Mo Zhejingxuan asked him: "Wasn't Xiazhou a good harvest of grain in the past two years?"

"Yes, so the Wang Ting wanted Xiazhou to send grain to the front line nearby to solve the urgent need. But after sending it three times like this, the largest granary in Dunyu suddenly caught fire."

"I heard about it in Shi Huan, hundreds of thousands of stones of grain were burned to ashes." He Chunhua said expressionlessly. "After the King received the news, he was so angry that he smashed two cups and couldn't sleep all night."

Hundreds of thousands of stones of grain that could feed the front line for a year or a half were burned away in one fire, who could not feel heartache?

On the side, there were a few frozen autumn pears soaking in the basin. He Lingchuan picked one up, and heard Manager Qian laugh: "Where are there hundreds of thousands of stones? Nine out of ten of them were empty. I have reliable news that there were at most 20,000 stones in it originally."

"At most!" He held up two fingers. "The specific amount is unknown, even the grain manager doesn't know. After this big fire, it's flat."

Zeng Feixiong couldn't help but ask: "Where did the grain go?"

"The grain in the Dunyu granary has rarely been used in these years, so every year after the autumn grain is harvested, it only hangs an empty account in the granary, and then it is sold privately, and even old grain is taken to replace the new grain just entered the granary." Manager Qian said, "I don't know that General Nian would defect last year, and I don't know that Xiazhou would suddenly turn into a front line, so a lot of grain was sold to Xunzhou, and the inventory in the warehouse was seriously empty."

Several generals were very angry: "That is to say, the opposite side eats our rice and kills our people?"

"Who is the mastermind?" He Lingchuan crunched the pear. "There should be a leader, and it hasn't been done for one year or two years, once or twice, right?"

"Dunyu is the ancestral home of Minister of War Li Du Shan, Li my lord. The old family members are all here, and the business is very large, so the government dare not provoke them at will." Manager Qian swallowed his saliva. "The owner of the largest grain shop in Dunyu, Baoxiang, is surnamed Liu, but the actual controller is the Li family."

"They didn't dare to be blatant at first, and the accounts and grain exchanges were all small troubles. But after changing for several years in peace, other families were jealous and followed suit. Everyone came to exchange, and the accounts became more and more chaotic, and the inventory in the warehouse became less and less."

"This grain official should be killed." Wu Shaoyi's tone was gloomy. "Hehe, it's a familiar trick, a familiar taste."

He was under Hong Xiangqian's command before. Didn't the rebel army rise up because of several years of floods and droughts in the south, and the Wang Ting's heavy taxes? These chaotic phenomena, these tricks, these methods, they saw too much in the south.

Now he has turned into an official army, but the corruption in reality remains the same.

He Chunhua nodded.

It is often said that one can see the whole from a small part, not to mention that the old bad accounts of Dunyu have rotted into a big hole.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 218 =====