Chapter 284: Trade Radiation

Liu Chengzong was satisfied.

What satisfied him was not Kangning Prefecture, but Chengyun.

Border smuggling has always been one of the most profitable trades in the world. Over the past half year, the Ju'erwan market, backed by the Hehuang Valley and facing the Qinghai Mongols, had swelled like a snowball, its scale drawing nearly four hundred thousand people across internal and external supply and buyers.

This was likely the largest smuggling market in the world at that time.

Liu Chengyun — this young man whose build was not imposing, whose character was not tough, and who was even a bit stubbornly rigid — was the great hand controlling everything behind this market, just like a black-market merchant.

On the surface, the Ju'erwan market looked like an official market, but in reality, despite its enormous scale, Ju'erwan was still a private market. There were no taxes there. Goods were monopolized by Chengyun alone. Some came from Lion Army artisans, but even more goods came from Xining and even Lanzhou.

The greatest mission of the hundred-strong cavalry escort protecting Chengyun was, in fact, not to protect him, but to transport Ju'erwan's account books for Liu Chengzong to review.

In these account books, every transaction of goods bought and sold by Ju'erwan to both east and west over the past half year was recorded in exhaustive detail.

These account books had become Liu Chengzong's favorite bedside reading lately — not simply because of the money. Although the books represented enormous profits, different people see different things, and there are always different gains to be had.

What Liu Chengzong saw through the account books was the lives of the Qinghai Mongols and Tibetans, and the secret to controlling them.

The development of things in this world generally diverges from a person's original intent. Liu Chengzong had originally thought Ju'erwan would be built into the northwest's largest arms and luxury goods market — weapons, armor, and exquisite curios — to seek exorbitant profits for the Lion Army.

In fact, the profits on arms and curios were indeed enormous. In Chengyun's books, with a trade volume of only 7,640 taels of silver, they had reaped a full 5,500-odd taels in profit.

But these two categories accounted for only about three percent of the total trade volume.

By the time Chengyun brought the books south, their total trade volume over five months was 258,000 taels and change.

Moreover, the trade volume was growing month by month and had not yet reached its peak.

Take just one locally produced item: pickled vegetables. Chengyun bought them from around Xining at one qian per jin and sold them at the market for two qian per jin — and sold over twenty thousand jin.

Of course, there were also money-losers, like fresh vegetables. Chengyun procured over ten thousand jin but only sold five hundred. It was not that no one would buy them — supply simply could not meet demand. The remaining nearly ten thousand jin of fresh vegetables were all eaten by the Lion Army troops garrisoned at Ju'erwan and Haibei.

Cattle, sheep, and horse dung also had a large market scale, mainly self-produced by the Lion Army — nearly six hundred thousand jin, worth less than three thousand taels.

Firewood was far more valuable than dung: five hundred thousand jin was worth over five thousand taels.

Ju'erwan also produced a specialty mushroom. Chengyun had not even known about this. It was a steward of the Prince Su estate in Lanzhou who specifically requested to purchase mushrooms. The seven tribes of Riyue Mountain dug up over three thousand jin and sold them for five hundred taels.

When Chengyun recounted this, he grinned from ear to ear: "Bastards' money sure is easy to earn."

The area also produced placer gold — 250 taels, worth 2,000 taels of silver; borax — 20,000 jin, worth 4,000 taels of silver; over 1,000 jin of saltpeter and sulfur, all kept for their own use. Over 2,000 pigs were sold to them from the surrounding area, and like the fresh vegetables, they were requisitioned by Yang Yao, the garrison commander of the training camp, who made them into smoked meat as rewards for the soldiers — a loss of 3,500 taels.

But Chengyun did not care in the slightest about this bit of money lost on military provisions, because Ju'erwan had knockout products: dried noodles, vegetable oil, leather boots, wooden crates, sacks, leather ropes, and wool blankets.

From Xining to Lanzhou, the tusi and common people had all become Chengyun's outsourced production workshops, making for him 150,000 jin of dried noodles, 30,000 jin of vegetable oil, 12,000 pairs of leather shoes, 13,000 pairs of leather boots, 2,000 leather ropes, 6,000 wooden crates large and small, over a thousand pairs of yak-hair sacks, over a thousand bolts of coarse wool cloth, and over ten thousand wool blankets.

These goods, worth over 30,000 taels of silver, were all sold out completely — not a thing was left.

They also cost almost nothing — it was all profit. They only needed to pay the Xining side a little with the cattle and sheep they had bought. There was no downside except that it was unsustainable.

Chengyun dared not sell cattle and sheep aggressively to the east, which turned the Lion Army into the largest livestock farming specialist in Haibei. They now had over 1,700 head of cattle and over 60,000 sheep stuck on their hands.

This was also because the various Qinghai Mongol tribes were all rather unwilling to sell cattle and sheep. People's bulk goods were basically traded using wool and various types of hides.

Chengyun set the price of wool at one tael of silver per twenty jin, and had purchased nearly a million jin.

As for various hides — sheep, horse, cattle, fox, wolf, leopard, lynx, and other pelts — there were tens of thousands. Some were kept on hand, and some were sold to merchants who had come from Hanzhong.

The Hanzhong merchants had been lured over by Tusi Li to sell iron, and sold over ten thousand jin.

The day Liu Chengzong finished reading the account books, he called Chengyun over, and the two brothers talked through the entire night.

He could see from the books the future trade potential of Qinghai, and he could also see the greatest destabilizing factor for this market that belonged to him — the interior.

The market's exorbitant profits came on one hand from the Lion Army cutting off east-west communication, and on the other hand from the Ming Dynasty's trade embargo. His elder brother Liu Chengzu's occupation of Xining City had rendered the embargo one-sidedly ineffective for the Lion Army.

It was not he who had shaped the Ju'erwan market, but the special political environment that had created this market.

Even without him, in the storm-tossed environment of the late Ming —

in a few short years, as the court's internal rebellions grew more severe, a free market similar to Ju'erwan would eventually form in the northwest. This market would firmly bind together the Han, Mongol, and Tibetan peoples of Qinghai, benefiting the next dynasty.

Even with him here, such exorbitant profits could not last too long.

In the dim lamplight, Liu Chengzong pointed at the inflow and outflow directions marked in the account books and said to Chengyun: "Large quantities of pelts flow into Lanzhou and Hanzhong. Our self-produced goods also flow to Chuodan and the Qilian Mountains. In the future, they will also be sold into Kangning Prefecture, Hami, Turpan, and Ü-Tsang."

A vast commercial radiation network was taking shape.

"This is our best opportunity, but it is fleeting." Liu Chengzong spread his hands. "Our own manufacturing capacity is still far too weak."

Chengyun said, "After all, we have few people. But the sales channels to Lanzhou and Hanzhong are opening up, and we can also source goods from that side. Merchants will naturally bring goods here. No matter what they bring, we can absorb it all and sell it all."

At this, Chengyun lifted his face with immense pride and said, "Brother, next year, we can sell five or six hundred thousand taels' worth of goods to both sides — at least three hundred thousand taels in profit. What that profit turns into is up to you."

He spread his hands. "If you want it to become silver, it will become silver. If you want it to become arms and armor, it will become arms and armor. It can even all become jingal muskets and cannons!"

"That much silver is useless. A standardized market itself is more important than silver. I am preparing to issue pay to the army."

Liu Chengzong said, "Once soldiers have military pay, they too will become part of the market, buying fresh vegetables, fruits, meat, utensils. Silver will circulate continuously in the market, raising higher demands on handicrafts, attracting more artisans — far more important than leaving a pile of silver sitting around to breed."

"Lanzhou, Hanzhong — both are wealthy great cities. In this era..."

Liu Chengzong shook his head. "No one can guarantee that any great city will enjoy lasting peace and stability. A single uprising can destroy everything. Talent is more important than anything. Write a letter to your father-in-law, try your best to lure artisans over from the east. By the way, has Wang Ziyong arrived?"

"Wang Ziyong? No."

Chengyun shook his head, revealing a complicated smile. "Brother, you really hit the nail on the head. Wang Ziyong stayed in Lanzhou for half a month, then ran off to Liangzhou Garrison."

"Liangzhou Garrison? Didn't I tell him to come to Ju'erwan?" Liu Chengzong mulled over Liangzhou Garrison's location — it was northeast of Ju'erwan. "What did he go there for?"

Chengyun said, "Didn't you tell him to recruit people? He recruited over six hundred poor families from Lanzhou. Anyway, he copied their method — gathering a crowd in a village at night, chanting things about Maitreya descending and such. Someone reported him to the authorities, and he fought a battle with government troops."

"He lost."

Chengyun spread his hands. "So Wang Ziyong ran off to Liangzhou."

Liu Chengzong did not quite grasp the logic in this. He frowned and said, "If he lost, he should have run to Ju'erwan. You still haven't said why he ran to Liangzhou."

"To recruit troops in Liangzhou. He thinks the reason he lost to the government troops is that peasants can't fight, and no one believes his stuff anyway. Only starving people want to band together and make trouble. Aren't there ready-made border troops in Gansu? Border troops can fight."

Liu Chengzong said nothing and raised his thumb.

It was not praise for Wang Ziyong — he was mainly utterly speechless.

The development of events had once again taken an unforeseen path.

He had sought out Wang Ziyong not to have him recruit troops, but to bring more Han people to Ju'erwan — to farm, to herd, that sort of thing — to expand his own base.

He wasn't short of full-time soldiers, and even if he were, he wouldn't go to Gansu to recruit. In his mind, the Gansu border troops couldn't be touched before he controlled Lanzhou.

First, he couldn't afford to feed the tens of thousands of border troops there. Second, controlling the Hexi Corridor would cost far too much for him at this stage.

The Hexi Corridor was a liability for the Ming Dynasty. The government troops stationed there needed grain and fodder shipped in from Lanzhou and the Hehuang Valley every year, but considering its military significance, that expense became extremely worthwhile.

So in Liu Chengzong's eyes, Gansu at this moment was in the best possible state.

He didn't have to feed the troops, they kept bleeding the Great Ming dry, and they protected the north of Xining Prefecture. Whenever starving border troops, driven desperate by hunger, deserted and came his way, he would naturally welcome them in comfort.

But he couldn't absorb the starving troops from there on a large scale — that would weaken the border defenses.

The best situation for a piece of land was, of course, under his direct rule. If not, then the next best situation was under the Great Ming's rule.

After all, the Great Ming had been dead for many years now — just a stiff, broken corpse that spasmed now and then. They were the bones growing anew from this enormous corpse. They only needed to consider how to grow healthy flesh and blood for themselves; once they grew strong enough, they would naturally become stronger than the past.

Of course, even if it fell into someone else's hands, he could seize it back — but war would inflict enormous harm on the population that he couldn't make up for in a short time.

At least for now, Gansu Garrison, under the Great Ming's caretaker management, was doing an excellent job resisting external enemies. No one could snatch a single inch of land right under the noses of those starving border troops.

But if Wang Ziyong recruited troops there, it would be a different story.

Liu Chengzong was so anxious he just kept scratching his head. Leaning on the kang table, he said to Chengyun, "We can't take control of Gansu."

Chengyun had a very deep understanding of this as well. Just the two prefectures of Xining and Kangning had already exhausted all of the Lion Army's talent reserves. Right now, the Lion Army was going through unprecedented chaos and couldn't manage both the territory and a war at the same time.

Of course, they could still fight — their combat strength hadn't changed at all — but internally they were extremely unstable.

The moment they went to war with any major power, a single minor defeat in the north or elsewhere would cause the newly taken Kangning Prefecture to collapse in an instant.

They could even lose Xining. They had no military pay, no conscription system, no local laws — in fact, ninety percent of the territory they ruled had no county-level government offices — yet they had over a hundred thousand people nominally under their rule.

If they lost a battle, they'd be nothing. If they won, it would just be a tactical home-swap.

"Then what can we do?" Chengyun said, rather helpless. "You're not in Xining, and Second Uncle and Big Brother can't issue military orders to Wang Ziyong either. If Wang Ziyong refuses to obey, the impact on them would be too great."

Chengyun said, "Brother, you don't know — while you were fighting in the south, the family was walking on thin ice."

Liu Chengzong narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"It's not that there was any real problem, but we really should have left Brother Cao at Ju'erwan. At least he can keep everyone in line and considers the big picture thoroughly."

Chengyun spread his hands. "Either that, or leave Luo Rucai and Zhang Tianlin at home. When Big Brother says something, those two at least listen a bit."

"Commander Yang was the first to pledge allegiance to you, and Commandants Wei and Han are both utterly loyal to you, but their relationship with Second Uncle and Big Brother isn't that close. What would happen if we really lost a battle?"

Hearing this, Liu Chengzong relaxed and laughed. "I thought it was something serious. Don't we still have you?"

"You shouldn't have brought that up." Chengyun scratched his head as he spoke. "I'm stuck in the middle and it's the worst. I have to provide things for everyone, and I can't afford to offend anyone."

Chengyun's awkward expression made Liu Chengzong burst out laughing. Then he nodded. "Alright, I get it. I'll give this more thought from now on."

The truth was, it wasn't that he hadn't considered it — he just hadn't cared much.

The great enterprise of their whole group rested on him alone. If they lost a battle and he didn't die, he'd go back and everything would be exactly the same — nothing would change.

If he died, there would be no great enterprise left for these people to speak of. The Qinghai Pacification Commissioner might be his father, or might not. If it was, it would probably just be in that little place Ju'erwan — the lands around the lake might not hold.

Big Brother might become a Regional Commander guarding the western frontier, or he might lead a few chieftains in an offensive to the northwest.

Cao Yao might go off and have kids like he always said, or he might run off to some place where no one could control him, carve out his own territory, and realize his social ideals.

In short, the thing that could bind all these people together would be gone.

The one most likely to inherit Liu Chengzong's dying wish might be Chengyun, but they only had this one chance.

Miss this chance, dance on the northwestern stage for twenty years, and these people would ultimately be swallowed up by war.

Liu Chengzong said with a grin, "This time we still didn't think it through well enough. If I could choose again, we should have gone south with everyone except Big Brother."

"But it'll be better from now on. We have government offices, we have garrisons, we have military pay. Once Mister Yang finishes his life-experience tour and produces our legal code, the territory will stabilize."