Chapter 115: Salt Rush

The Changlu Salt Transport Commissioner's Office was abolished by the court the very next day, with the Grand Secretariat citing that it only drained the people's strength without benefiting the government.

As for the salt field's ten-odd thousand registered workers, Chongzhen deliberately kept them on, to be used when Gong Fanwu went to Changlu to dry salt. In his later life he had seen a map of the Changlu salt field—its area was enormous, by later standards fully several hundred square kilometers. Though there was no need yet to develop it to its later extent, in this ancient age lacking mechanized tools, manpower was indispensable.

In a small salt shop in the southern quarter of the capital, a long queue stretched all the way out into the street, over a hundred people—all local folk who had come to buy salt.

The fifty-year-old shopkeeper Li Cunzhi was so busy he couldn't even spare a moment for a drink of water. The shop had only three people in all: himself, his son, and one hired hand. On ordinary days business was neither good nor bad; after deducting all expenses over the course of a year, the shop could clear over a thousand taels of silver, and he was already quite content with that.

He was a distant paternal uncle of Li Huaipu, the Prefect of Shuntian Prefecture. Two years earlier, after Li Huaipu was promoted from Vice Minister of Justice to Prefect of Shuntian, Li Cunzhi, who lived far away in Fengxiang Prefecture, Shaanxi, had brought his son to seek out this nephew, hoping to obtain some position.

Li Huaipu had lost his father young, and his widowed mother had supported his studies and examinations by washing and mending clothes for wealthy households. Li Huaipu was naturally brilliant, and with his family's poverty, he studied with great diligence, and his path through the examinations was very smooth. He passed the jinshi examination in the forty-second year of Wanli, and from then on his official career advanced steadily—by the fifth year of Chongzhen he had already reached the high post of Vice Minister of Justice at the third rank.

In the seventh year of Chongzhen he worked his connections through Wen Tiren and was promoted to Prefect of Shuntian.

Though the Vice Minister of Justice and the Prefect of Shuntian were of equal rank, both third grade, the Prefect of Shuntian was a frontier-guarding grand official equivalent to a provincial governor-general or governor, with even greater authority and influence than a regional Governor. The single fact that he could directly face the Emperor put him ten streets ahead of provincial governors and governors-general. A mere frontier official could only see the Emperor once at his farewell audience; after that, meeting again was exceedingly difficult, unless one rose to the Grand Secretariat or the post of a Six Ministry head.

When Li Huaipu first began his studies, he received little help from his other relatives—quite a bit of sneering and ridicule, in fact. No one believed that a poor and humble family could produce a dragon or phoenix.

Although Li Cunzhi was already beyond the five degrees of mourning kinship with Li Huaipu's family, seeing how hard it was for the orphaned widow and child, he often helped them out. Li Cunzhi ran a small sundry goods business and had relatively ample cash on hand, and since he was not yet married at the time, he would from time to time buy rice, flour, grain, and oil to send over—which was already an enormous help to Li Huaipu and his mother in their extreme poverty.

Later, when Li Huaipu passed the jinshi examination and rose steadily through the ranks, his official position growing ever larger, he never forgot this paternal uncle of his, and his old mother would often reminisce about the help this uncle had given them back then.

He wrote to the local authorities, entrusting the local officials to look after Li Cunzhi well, and often sent silver through messengers to repay the kindness of those years.

Later, when the roving bandits struck Fengxiang Prefecture, Li Cunzhi's savings of many years were looted clean, and his wife fell ill and never recovered, passing away a few months later. With years of drought on top of that, living conditions had become extremely harsh. In utter desperation, Li Cunzhi thought of this nephew and brought his teenage son to the capital to seek refuge with him.

Li Cunzhi's arrival made Li Huaipu and his mother very happy. Li Huaipu had always felt he could never repay the kindness Li Cunzhi had shown him back then. When he heard that Li Cunzhi only wanted some position to save money for his son to marry and carry on the family line, he used his authority to open a salt shop for Li Cunzhi—the shop's steady income was enough to repay the kindness of those years.

After the Embroidered Uniform Guard had sent a notice to Li Cunzhi's salt shop last time, Li Cunzhi couldn't make up his mind and went to Li Huaipu to lay the whole matter out. Some of Li Huaipu's duties and powers overlapped with those of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, and he had already sensed the Guard's rising momentum over the past two years. As a civil official, though he had no fondness for the Guard, he understood clearly that without the Emperor's support, the Embroidered Uniform Guard could never have become a tiger with renewed fangs. He had no desire to be a fame-seeking upright minister, nor did he want to become a thorn in the Emperor's eye, so on certain matters there was no need to contend with the Guard.

He instructed Li Cunzhi that regardless of the salt's quality, and regardless of what others did, he should just spend the money and buy it. On the day of the salt merchants' gathering, seeing such fine salt, Li Cunzhi bought a hundred dan in one go. Salt this good and this cheap—even if it were bandits or mountain kings selling it, he would dare to buy. Wasn't doing business all about making money?

What he hadn't expected was that the new salt had barely been set on the counter before it was snatched up by the surrounding folk. The old coarse salt and bitter salt sold for seven qian a catty; salt this good sold for only two qian four fen—how could they not rush to buy? People who usually bought one or two catties were now buying ten or twenty, afraid the shop would raise its prices before long. Anyway, salt wouldn't spoil—if they couldn't eat it all at once, they could just store it.

Li Cunzhi's hundred dan of new salt sold out completely in less than two days. Calculating carefully, though the selling price was several times lower, the profit was actually much higher. That was because the old salt was poor in quality and high in price, but its sales volume was low.

Seeing how the new salt was being snatched up, Li Cunzhi was both delighted and anxious. The delight needed no explanation; the anxiety was that the new salt had run out, yet people who had heard the news kept coming in an endless stream to buy.

Li Cunzhi hastily hired a cart and rushed to the northern city warehouse where he had picked up goods last time, hoping to buy more this time. But when he arrived at the northern city, he saw that the carts coming to pick up goods had formed a long line, with carts constantly leaving loaded with salt packs piled like small mountains, while even more carts behind him were still arriving. The whole square before the warehouse was a seething mass of people, with constant shouting and cursing. Those at the front were coming to blows over parking spots. Everyone had some connection or other—who was afraid of whom?

Li Cunzhi didn't want to cause trouble for his nephew, so he obediently queued at the back. Though his nephew held great power, he couldn't smear his face for the sake of making money. The silver he and his son had earned over these two years already satisfied them greatly. With money in hand, his son's marriage had been settled—the daughter of a clerk in the Shuntian Prefecture office. The matchmaker had said the girl was plump and healthy-looking, and would surely bear him several grandsons in the future.

Several Embroidered Uniform Guard officers of the northern city Chiliarch's office sat in the shade, sipping tea and pointing and laughing as they watched the crowded chaos in the square. These were the Guard men sent to maintain order and watch over the grounds—teams of twenty, one team per day, each man receiving two taels of silver per day as a stipend. There was no help for it—there were simply too many officers. Apart from those escorting salt merchants from other regions, this had become a coveted assignment that everyone fought to get, so they could only rotate shifts.

Just then, a burst of angry shouts and cries of pain suddenly rose from behind, amid the clamor of men and horses. Though Li Cunzhi was old, in his youth he had spent years traveling far and wide, and he remained nimble. He quickly climbed onto his cart and looked back.

He saw the long queue behind him splitting apart to both sides as a dozen-odd burly men used clubs in their hands to drive the people and carts ahead of them aside. Anyone too slow or unwilling to yield was knocked flat by blows from clubs raining down on their heads. Twenty-odd carts followed slowly forward behind this group of men.

Li Cunzhi hastily jumped down from his cart and ordered the several carts he had hired to pull to the sides to make way for this convoy. Though he didn't know whose people these were, they were certainly not someone he could afford to offend.

The several Guard officers over there saw the disturbance and stopped their chatting and laughing, rising to walk over.

The convoy had already passed Li Cunzhi and was moving forward when several Guard officers blocked its path.

The Guard Squad Leader leading the group frowned and bellowed: "Bold as a dog's gall! Daring to make trouble here! Drop those clubs! Kneel!"

The dozen-odd burly men, hearing this, not only refused to put them down but gripped them even tighter, glaring fiercely as they faced off against the several officers.

The Squad Leader flew into a rage, drawing his embroidered saber with his right hand, and the others drew their blades as well. Holding the gleaming embroidered saber in a fighting stance, the Squad Leader roared: "Drop your clubs within five breaths! Otherwise I'll execute you for resisting officers!"

The dozen-odd men holding clubs changed color at once. Resisting officers they didn't fear—what they feared was the sharp blades in the other men's hands. Clubs could never match long, keen sabers; if it truly came to blows, their group couldn't withstand being cut down by great blades.

Zheng Laowu parted the crowd and walked out from behind.

After getting the full story straight, Zhu Gui immediately ordered Zheng Laowu to take men to the northern city. He instructed him that the quantity of new salt couldn't be very large, and with the market so hot, once he reached the northern city he should buy as much as possible—ideally buy it all out—and then, before the next batch arrived, sell it at a markup to the other salt shops.

Only upon arriving at the scene did Zheng Laowu realize he was too late—the broad square before the warehouse was already packed full of carts.

Never mind buying it all out—by the time it was the Duke's household's turn, whether any salt remained was anyone's guess. If he botched this matter again, the chief steward would never let him off.

So Zheng Laowu ordered the servants he had brought to clear a path with their clubs, to squeeze their way to the very front as quickly as possible.

Zheng Laowu walked up and stopped before the Guard Squad Leader, gently pushing aside the embroidered saber gleaming before his eyes, and said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes: "I am a steward of the Chengguo Duke's household, sent by His Grace the Duke to buy salt here. Would this young brother kindly step aside and not delay the Duke's household's important business? If His Grace takes offense, you won't be able to bear the consequences!"