"Mr. Wang, this is His Majesty's flesh and blood??" Looking at the fat white child who had just finished feeding and was sleeping soundly - Liu Baiyu didn't expect that his calculation was so wrong. He was stunned for a long time before he said slowly

.

"She is one of His Majesty's princesses!" Mr. Wang said slowly...

"What about your Majesty's prince? Didn't you say that the prince left the capital?"

When Mr. Wang heard this, his aging body swayed and he almost fell, and finally he said:

"Your Majesty's prince originally had no problems after taking your elixir, but then his Majesty fell ill again and couldn't get out of bed, so... just..."

"Who really dares to... This Long Live is still alive! Isn't Wei Zhongxian nine thousand years old! Why don't you go and get to the bottom of it?" Liu Baiyu questioned loudly!

"What can we find out through the investigation? The maid serving the prince was drugged, and then someone secretly opened the door. Your Majesty's prince has a weak body and is just recovering from a serious illness. Naturally..."

Mr. Wang stretched out his fist and continued to vent on a small tree nearby. He didn't even notice that his fist was covered with blood...

"When I returned to Beijing to meet the Holy Spirit, I reminded Your Majesty----but, but...some people's courage is as bold as the sky!"

"Alas!!!!" Liu Baiyu sighed, knowing why Tianqi endured the unexplained death of his son and refused to investigate!

It doesn't matter whether Chongzhen did this kind of thing. As long as you trace it, it means that you are going to attack Chongzhen and plan to establish a foreign vassal. Even if Chongzhen is completely unaware, there will still be those eunuchs who are bent on speculation, and the ministers will create countless

The evidence points to Chongzhen. Since Tianqi has no son, it is obviously more reliable to establish his own brother than to establish a foreign vassal whose blood relationship is far away. Does Tianqi have any other choice?

But if you don’t investigate, it means that your child died in vain. As a man, if his son is killed, he can’t be investigated! Even for an ordinary person, it is an extremely shameful thing, let alone a person who is in the 95th Five-Year Plan.

The most honorable emperor! This is politics, cannibal politics!

Liu Baiyu had never seen what Tianqi looked like, but as a man, he still felt the same and shed tears...

Liu Baiyu was full of sympathy for the Emperor Tianqi whom he had never met before, and finally gritted his teeth and did something that took great risks:

"I heard that Jiu Qiansui and the Holy Lady gave several maids to His Majesty. It is said that they are all suitable for men. I don't know if they are pregnant with Your Majesty's child. I am willing to write to the King to force him to admit it...

"

"Thank you very much, layman Qingshan. When your Majesty invited me out of the capital, he said that layman Qingshan is a scholar of heaven and man. If he can deduce these things, he is also a rare loyal person, and he will not hesitate to take huge risks...

..." Mr. Wang said with tears.

"Your Majesty won't let me submit a letter? Doesn't he know that if these children can't show it to the public, they will escape death???"

"Your Majesty said that the people are the most important, the country is second, and the king is the least. Since you have decided to give the country and the country to King Xin, you cannot let King Xin fall into the whirlpool of great etiquette again, without authority - the Ming Dynasty is in turmoil.

, I have to establish an older monarch. Since you want to establish an older monarch, even if your majesty has a son, he cannot have the title of prince..."

Mr. Wang spoke the exact words of Tianqi word for word.

"Then your Majesty's princess can't..." Liu Baiyu asked Mr. Wang

"Your Majesty said that the princess should be raised by you. It is best to be your daughter-in-law, not as a daughter. His Majesty believes in your character, but that may not be the case for your children's in-laws..." Mr. Wang replied.

"In that case, I promise your Majesty!" Liu Baiyu nodded.

"One more thing, Wei Zhongxian informs His Majesty that you, Qingshan Jushi, will be transferred from Sanpindu to be the salt envoys - the governors of the salt fields in Shandong! Your Majesty said that the salt industry in Shandong has been neglected for too long, and salts like Qingshan Jushi are needed.

Let the industry experts sort it out - by the way, there are too many private salt dealers in the world who do not abide by the law. It is impossible not to give Liu Baiyu military power. Liu Baiyu can be given a quota of three thousand salt men, and the quasi-Qingshan layman can cross the border to arrest the private salt dealers...

…”

Mr. Wang said carefully. After all, in his eyes, Liu Baiyu is a master of Confucian classics and should be rich in this kind of oil and water. However, Zhuoliu official who belittled his identity was very disgusted. Wei Zhongxian often had a wild mind and just had random thoughts. Your Majesty

Why is this so?

Mr. Wang naturally also knew that Liu Baiyu was in business. Liu Baiyu's snowflake candy and snowflake salt had actually become famous in places such as Nanjing and Guangzhou where trade was developed. However, in this era, what Liu Baiyu did was different from those who only focused on making money.

Money merchants are completely different.

First of all, Liu Baiyu's products are low-priced and of good quality, which is a boon to the common people. What's more, these common people do not eat alone. They always share their interests with local wealthy businessmen and big bureaucrats - there are no small businessmen whose interests are harmed.

He has no right to speak, so he is no different from a mute.

Secondly, due to the existence of the plane merchant system, the cost of Liu Baiyu's goods is quite low. Although Liu Baiyu has tried his best to sell it as high as possible so that others cannot see the problem, in the eyes of the common people who are the end users, they all think that

Liu Baiyu's profits are quite meager. He is not doing business, but actually doing good deeds.

Finally, the most critical point is that due to the existence of the plane merchant system, Liu Baiyu acquired things that were of very low value in this era, and could even be said to be almost worthless - such as deceptive banknotes such as treasure notes.

Baobao was Zhu Yuanzhang's magic weapon to use inflation to harvest business. At the end of Hongwu, when the currency was said to be stable, the currency value of Baobao fell to one-fifth of its face value. Of course, some people can say that this was because of insufficient population and the waste of large areas of land in the Central Plains.

reason,

However, at the end of Yongle period, Baochao fell to 1.1%. At the same time, the registered population reached more than 60 million, and the number of cultivated land reached the highest level in history. Is there still an insufficient population?

The fundamental reason is actually that the Ming Dynasty's salary reduction method treated rice as a general equivalent. The ancient people did not have the awareness of modern currency and did not know that currency is just a special commodity that is also determined by the relationship between supply and demand. They thought that administrative orders were the basis for

If you get one, you get a hundred, and in the end it actually becomes

It has become a plunder of the people. Therefore, the treasure banknotes are not much different from the weight reduction of money minted in history. Moreover, the treasure banknotes are not only used to rob businessmen, but also officials. Moreover, the treasure banknotes are not used to rob them all.

That was it, and later they used in-kind wage replacement to continue robbing officials of their wages.

Taking sumam and pepper as an example, the Ming government priced tribute envoys at 1 guan per catty of sappan wood and 2 guan per catty of pepper. The salary paid to the civil and military officials in the capital was 50 guan per catty for sumam and 50 guan per catty for pepper.

catty

100 strings, one in and one out, the profit is 50 times huge. Silk folding began in the sixth year of Emperor Xuande of Ming Dynasty. It is stipulated: "The raw silk in the transportation warehouse is used to pay the salary of the civil and military officials in Beijing. Each piece of silk is folded into two meters."

stone.

In the eighth year, the civil and military officials in the two capitals were ordered to discount their salaries. Fifteen guan of each banknote was converted into one stone per meter. The rate was still ten cents, seven points for silk and three points for cloth. Each piece of silk was worth 400 guan and each piece of cloth was one stone.

i Bai Guan." This is what is called

It is easy to see that after conversion, one piece of silk is worth 26.7 shi, and one piece of cloth is worth 13.3 shi. In two years, the salary has depreciated 13 times. This is really...

Seeing this, I thought of those bosses who maliciously refused to pay wages and took in-kind deductions. However, at best, they just gave unsold goods to the workers, but like the Ming Dynasty, the value was devalued 13 times...

It's really appalling.

[Pepper and sappan wood, as a kind of condiments and dyes, are mostly imported from foreign countries; in the eyes of the Ming Dynasty, they are a kind of luxury goods that can only be enjoyed by the palace. This kind of luxury goods are distributed as salary, and the imperial court stipulates

The ratio of discounts was far lower than the market price. The pepper and sumac that officials used to pay off their salaries could only be exchanged for very few necessities in the market. In fact, the imperial court used this discount method to cover up its treatment of officials' salaries.

Withholding.】

After Chenghua, officials suffered a great loss on this issue, which was also one of the public opinion bases for Zheng He's voyages to the West to be stopped.

Liu Baiyu bought a large number of treasure notes because the plane merchant system defined them as antiques - but as a modern person, he naturally knows the wonderful use of so-called vouchers in business to promote his own products. Liu Baiyu used his own candy stamps

, salt stamps are exchanged for treasure banknotes, the price is roughly the face value of the treasure banknotes

About %, compared with the Baobao that oversold to 1.1% in the late Yongle period, it has appreciated about 20 times. If Liu Baiyu's sugar stamps are added, the salt coupons can be exchanged for Liu Baiyu's goods first, which is actually equivalent to Baobao.

Half-price purchase...

Therefore, although Liu Baiyu earned a lot of money, in the eyes of the Ming Dynasty people, he basically spent it on collecting treasure money for the imperial court. In many places in Jiangnan where the commodity economy was developed, people even voluntarily gave Liu Baiyu Lisheng

Even the Lianghuai salt merchants who were damaged by Liu Baiyu's selling of snowflake salt dared to say that Liu Baiyu was loyal and traitorous, and they did not dare to accuse him of plundering people's wealth!

This is why Mr. Wang feels that Liu Baiyu should not take this job and go against Lianghuai salt merchants - you have a lot of money, and you have gone to the extent of doing good deeds everywhere. As for offending Lianghuai for this little money,

Did the Huai salt merchants, a vested interest group, cause damage to their reputation as great scholars?

Liu Baiyu naturally didn't think so. After all, with the establishment of Yanding and the title of Governor of the Salt Industry, he could place commercial and military thorns in various places. He could even simply use the name of combating salt smuggling to fight against salt smuggling.

Disobedient officials used various civil and military methods to form a navy in the name of anti-smuggling...

As for the so-called quota of three thousand salt cubes, Liu Baiyu, as a modern man, naturally knows the wonderful use of temporary workers...

Three thousand saltmen are required to fight against smuggling. Each person needs an assistant. It is not too much. Everywhere he goes, it is normal to hire a few people to farm the land. Liu Baiyu is famous for being kind to his servants. If his servants have money to buy things, how can they do it?

Is it normal for only caravans to follow the service?

Let's talk about it, how many people can be crammed into the establishment of these three thousand saltmen? Anyway, Liu Baiyu with the plane merchant system can afford to support many people, enclosing the land and so on, but he is afraid of being hit by some plane repulsive meteorite

Just kill yourself...

Of course, Mr. Wang didn't know this. He tried his best to persuade Liu Baiyu not to take this job, which would ruin his reputation. Liu Baiyu naturally couldn't tell the truth to him, so he simply turned cold:

"Old Master Wang's warning is of course correct, but in this court, are there too few Gonggun gentlemen who care about their reputations but do not do practical things? In just a few decades of life, how can it be a disaster to live and die for the benefit of the country?

Blessings should be avoided!"

Lin Zexu's famous saying hit him, and Mr. Wang couldn't say anything else. He just suggested that if Liu Baiyu could be cunning enough to have a son, he could send his son outside to raise one incognito, just in case something unexpected happened. Liu Baiyu naturally nodded in agreement.

Mr. Wang also brought another harvest to Liu Baiyu, that is, as many as 700 old eunuchs!

These old eunuchs are not the kind of handyman eunuchs who only do menial jobs. They all have skills that are close to life, such as cakes, high-end fans in the palace, furniture making, etc. The high-end ones are masters of water conservancy and arithmetic.

Metallurgy etc...

To put it bluntly, they are basically technical workers and engineers in the modern sense! These orthodox scholars have all gone to take the imperial examination. In the eyes of the imperial examination scholars, technical officials are synonymous with not doing their jobs properly. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty had no choice but to take out eunuchs to serve as technical workers.

and engineers.

But what is regrettable is that, just like the inheritance of technology in this era, even eunuchs will only pass on their skills to their cronies due to fierce competition.

And because eunuchs must rely on the relationship with the chief eunuch, the downfall of the chief eunuch often results in the dismissal of all the eunuchs of his own faction. The talented eunuchs find it difficult to feed themselves, let alone the use of their talents...

This time Emperor Tianqi fell ill again, and seeing that time was running out, the eunuchs in Wei Zhongxian's system were looking for another way out, and eunuchs who were at odds with Wei Zhongxian might not have a good end. After all, eunuchs' official positions were more competitive than civil servants.

The situation was fierce, and King Xin’s trusted eunuch Cao Huachun still had a lot of cronies that he had not had time to arrange, so
To be continued...