A few words, soft yet hard.

After Shen Wendu finished speaking, the businessmen in the audience were all confused.

They originally thought that this auction was a public auction, and they basically had some understanding of the opponent's situation in advance.

Even many wealthy businessmen, or people with backgrounds, have privately discussed the new salt's agency locations, and have tacitly determined their ownership.

Just wait for the auction to start, bid a decent price to fool yourself, save money, make the court satisfied, and then everyone will be happy to get the qualification to sell new salt.

But Shen Wendu's sudden move caught everyone off guard.

After all, if you write your respective prices on paper, there will be some uncontrollable elements to a large extent.

First of all, no one is sure whether the partner they have negotiated with before will suddenly temporarily increase the price and take away their originally negotiated share.

Moreover, some people with some backgrounds, even if they want to use their backgrounds to secretly threaten others to bid, are unable to do so.

After all, if it is a public auction, these people will naturally need to come forward in person when bidding. In this way, they can quietly threaten.

But instead of writing it on paper, who knows who will become his opponent?

Who knows whether his friends will betray him or not.

For a moment, no one in the crowd started to write. They all looked at each other, as if they were waiting for someone else to write first!

Although this auction is as simple as any other auction, just write a price, but compared to any previous auction, it makes everyone feel more difficult.

A simple number, without anyone urging, but it took a full two hours, and the auction ended only after the last person raised his hand.

The merchant who had finished the auction was no longer interested in admiring the beautiful people Shen Wendu invited from the Qinhuai River.

Each one of them looked like they had gone through a tough battle. It was obviously the twelfth lunar month of winter, but each one had a big head.

As soon as the auction ended, groups of twos and threes immediately began to gather together and began to roundaboutly inquire about the bids of other people around them.

But at this moment, the original partners, or colleagues in the same business gang, no longer had the closeness they had before.

There is a strong sense of vigilance, questioning, and defensiveness everywhere between them.

He was an out-and-out businessman, and no one was a believer. No one would doubt whether his former friend would suddenly stab him in the back if he had the chance, without making it public.

At this time, if you still hold on to the false trust of the past, such a person is either stupid or stupid.

In the private room on the top floor of the Huainan Guild Hall, Zhu Zhanji crossed his legs and leaned on a chair in an inconspicuous manner. He held a bowl of hot tea in one hand and took a sip from time to time.

One hand is holding a copy of "The Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms". Well, yes, this is the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" written by Mr. Luo who just passed away more than ten years ago.

However, "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is just the abbreviation of this book, and its full name should be called "The Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms"

After all, he couldn't sit still for two hours, so he naturally needed to find something to kill time.

In this era without mobile phones or computers, reading novels is a good choice.

It's just a pity that the authors of the current four famous works, "Journey to the West" and "A Dream of Red Mansions" were not born yet.

"Water Margin" has come out, but Zhu Zhanji doesn't like reading this book very much.

Here Zhu Zhanji is seeing Sanyin fighting Lu Bu.

At this time, the door opened, and Shen Wendu walked in holding the quotation paper that had been collected.

First, he respectfully placed the quotation paper in front of Zhu Zhanji. Then Shen Wendu stepped back a few steps and bowed, saying:

"Your Highness Taisun, the auction has ended, and all the quotes from various wealthy businessmen are here!"

Upon hearing this, Zhu Zhanji put down his book and picked up the quotation paper in front of him.

Then he opened a few pictures, focusing on places like Yingtianfu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Huguang, Fujian, Shandong, and Shanxi.

These places are all provinces with large populations. The lowest place has a population of four to five million, while the highest place, Yingtianfu, has a population of tens of millions.

Similarly, businessmen who want to bid for these places must bid the highest.

In some places with relatively small populations, such as Peking, Sichuan, Yunnan and other places, where the population is less than one million, there will inevitably be fewer wealthy businessmen bidding, and the prices will be lower.

When Shen Wendu saw Zhu Zhanji looking at these quotations, he explained: "Great Sun, when these quotations were collected, my subordinates had already ordered someone to sort them out. Among them, the highest quotation should be the snowflake salt agent from Zhejiang, which was sold by Zhejiang

The Longyou Merchant Gang won it together, and their bid was fifteen million taels of silver, followed by Yingtian Mansion, and Yingtian Mansion’s Snowflake Salt was bid the highest at thirteen million taels of silver!”

Zhu Zhanji continued to read the quotation paper and asked without raising his head: "Based on the highest price, how much silver is the total in each place?"

Shen Wendu was obviously prepared, and he said without hesitation after hearing this: "The total agency fee for ordinary yellow salt in various places is 47 million taels of silver. Among them, the agency fee for yellow salt in Yingtianfu is the highest, which is 5.7 million taels.

The total of silver and snowflake salt agents is 133 million taels of silver, and the total of the two is exactly 180 million taels of silver!"

"good!"

After Zhu Zhanji heard Shen Wendu's report, he silently calculated in his mind and followed his discussion with Xia Yuanji.

The interests of new salt are divided. Among them, when merchants buy new salt, whether it is ordinary yellow salt or snowflake salt, the Ministry of Revenue only gets 40 cents per catty.

In other words, except for the forty taels of silver belonging to the household department, the rest, whether it is the agency fee or the deposit that will be deducted by the merchant in the future if the merchant violates the agreement, including the profit after deducting the 40 taels of silver from the snowflake salt and the household department.

,

These were distributed according to the ratio of three to three to four between the Ministry of Revenue, him, and his grandfather!

In other words, he has a 30% share of the 180 million taels of silver, which is almost 54 million taels of silver.

"hiss!"

Calculating the results silently in his mind, Zhu Zhanji shocked himself.

Although he knew that salt would definitely make money, he didn't expect that it was just an agency fee. He only took 30% of the share, which was a profit of 54 million taels of silver!

And this agency fee is only for two years of agency rights!

On average, that is to say, based on agency fees alone, he can basically acquire an average of 27 million taels of silver every year.

This is a pure agency fee, it does not cost a dime, and it is completely earned from nothing.

This does not include other things, including the margin and the profit of Snowflake Salt after forty taels of silver. If other profits are included, the annual profit will definitely exceed 50 million taels of silver, right?

Zhu Zhanji was also a little lucky in his heart. Thanks to his keen eye, he reused Shen Wendu and asked Shen Wendu to come up with the idea of ​​selling one salt for two!

Otherwise, if you just rely on ordinary salt auctions, the profit will never be so big.

This can be seen from the bidding results of yellow salt and snowflake salt. The bidding price of snowflake salt has basically reached three times that of yellow salt.

If he goes according to his previous ideas, perhaps the agency fee this time will not exceed 70 to 80 million taels of silver at most.

At the same time, the wealth of Ming merchants also made Zhu Zhanji increasingly envious.

It’s no wonder that later generations’ inspections revealed that the Shanxi merchants alone, and the eight major families combined, had far more than 100 million taels of silver in stock!

This is just Shanxi merchants. You must know that there are Shaanxi merchants and Hui merchants with the same strength as Shanxi merchants.

"It seems that the Ming Dynasty is not really poor, it's just the court and most of the people who are poor!"

Zhu Zhanji sighed silently in his heart.

These businessmen are usually very secretive, and their own Taizu suppresses them with all their strength.

It seemed that each of them was miserable, but after experiencing such an auction, Zhu Zhanji truly saw the potential strength of these Ming businessmen.

No wonder some people in later generations will say that capital had already begun to sprout in the Ming Dynasty.

If Zhu Zhanji himself is allowed to control so much wealth for a long time, Zhu Zhanji himself will definitely have some thoughts.

Not to mention bribing some officials, at least it is definitely for some scholars to invest.

"No, capitalism is not allowed. The biggest capital of Ming Dynasty can only be the Zhu family. Anyone else who dares to play with capital must let them know how to be a leek!"

Zhu Zhanji silently made up his mind, and then continued to look through the quotations!

After a while, he said a little strangely: "If I remember correctly, Sanxuan Liuweisi is also in this auction, why is there no one bidding?"

The three Xuan and Liuwei divisions that Zhu Zhanji mentioned refer to the southwest region of the Ming Dynasty.

In this regard, despite looking at the Ming Dynasty, it seems that it is not the most outstanding among all dynasties in terms of economy, population, land area and military.

But the territory of the Ming Dynasty was definitely not small. Not to mention Nuergandusi in the north and Sanxuanliuweisi in the south, they were infinitely close to the outlet of the Indian Ocean in later generations.

The great ancestor of my family went on an expedition to the east and west, and it was not as simple as expelling the Tatars and restoring China as in the history books!

Because the chieftains in the Yunnan-Guizhou region were still loyal to the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty.

In order to unify Yunnan and Guizhou, Zhu Yuanzhang sent generals Fu Youde, Lan Yu, Mu Ying and others to lead an army of 300,000 people to march south.

Under the command of coach Fu Youde and pioneer general Lan Yu, the Ming army quickly captured the entire Yunnan-Guizhou region.

After learning that Yunnan and Guizhou had been recovered, Zhu Yuanzhang was extremely pleased. While ordering Fu Youde's Lanyu squadron to return to the court, he also sent an edict to his adopted son Mu Ying, ordering him to lead the remaining soldiers to guard Yunnan for generations.

The Mu family thus became the "Gong of Guizhou" in the Ming Dynasty who was closely related to the country, and the hereditary chief military officer bore the seal of the Southern General.

This is also an important reason why Yunnan can surrender.

The so-called Sanxuan and Liuweisi were specially set up to govern these chieftains.

The three Xuanfu divisions are: Nandian Xuanfu Division, Ganya Xuanfu Division, and Longchuan Xuanfu Division.

The Six Welfare Departments are: Che Xuanwei Department, Myanmar Xuanwei Department, Mubang Xuanwei Department, Babaidian Xuanwei Department, Mengyang Xuanwei Department, and Lao Xuanwei Department.

Going south from Sanxuan and Liuweisi, you only need to pass through a short section of dense forest to reach the outlet of the Indian Ocean.
To be continued...