I owed the Internet yesterday and couldn't pay it. There is still another chapter after about 12 o'clock in the evening. Don't wait, I'll read it tomorrow.

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The population of Suzhou Fucheng was no less than one million. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, they were all the most economically developed metropolis, and their status was no less than that of the later demon capitals.

With the power of the government, it is not impossible to draw power and transport bulk goods to alleviate the temporary needs of the people in the city. However, it is really unimaginable that the unlimited sale, especially the magistrate's word is just accentuated and in an emphatic tone, which is really unimaginable.

However, the people came here for a livelihood. At this moment, after hearing the magistrate's words, their anger quickly subsided, and they were waiting for the magistrate's words behind them.

Compared to the gentry's hissing sound before, the magistrate's voice was heard by just using a tin speaker. The situation reversed, and the gentry quickly winked at a close confidant family member below, and the trusted family member immediately jumped out and asked the magistrate loudly: "Mr. County Master, millions of people in the city are hungry, how could there be so many goods? Don't bully the public?"

Since leaving the county government, Yu Guang, the magistrate, has always stayed on the gentry and knew this trick. Seeing this, he simply sat on the steps regardless of his dignity, and said that when the goods arrived and when they would get up, he would never sit here.

The magistrate has a good reputation in the market on weekdays. Seeing that his parents and officials are like this, no matter how excited the people with ulterior motives are, the people are rarely there. Besides, it only takes an hour to wait here and watch the magistrate fulfill his promise.

The scene was stalemate, which was definitely not what they wanted. But since that was already the case, the gentry had to wink at another gentry, who, after nodding, also winked at a close family member in the crowd, instructing him to seek help from the powerful people behind them.

However, before the gentry and wealthy responded, guards arrived at Qimen in the north and Changmen in the west of the city, and news of bulk goods entering the city spread as quickly as possible.

"What are you waiting for? Go and buy things quickly. If you go late, you won't be able to buy it."

The magistrate has already made a list of goods for sale, one is the streets of Suzhou, and the other is famous areas such as Tiger Hill and Confucian Temple. However, there are too many people gathered at the prefectures and counties, but they are not included. After receiving this news, the people scattered and rushed to a place not far from their homes. They even went home directly, asking men, women, young and old to go out together, and bought as much as possible to avoid selling out the goods and getting hungry.

When the people dispersed, the gentry also watched all this in a daze, especially the person in charge, who participated in the market strike several times, but how could he have seen such a situation? It was not until the magistrate pushed him to him that he could react.

"The county magistrate is polite to the hearts of his feelings, and is worthy of being the parents of this county. The students admire him very much."

The gentry reacted a little quickly, but the magistrate was stunned at first, and then sneered at them: "You should do it yourself when you go against His Highness, King Qi."

After saying that, the magistrate turned around and left, but instead of returning to the county government office, he rushed to the nearby sales point. However, the expression he turned around was full of ridicule of the mantis arm being a chariot, which made the gentry almost unable to look directly.

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The gentry's confidant family struggled to leave the crowd and headed straight to the nearest wealthy businessman's house. However, the wealthy businessman had a banquet yesterday and didn't go home to rest until dawn. At this time, he was sleeping like a dead pig. He had to leave here and headed straight to Wang Shimin's house.

Wang Shimin is old and left the table not long after last night. He thought that he had just used breakfast and was splashing ink for a while, but he was thinking about the trend of the city's strike. When he thought of Gu Shu's words, he always felt uneasy, which made him always write unhappy.

But at this moment, the gentry's confidant family came and said that the yamen mobilized a large amount of goods. Wang Shimin's right hand shook and his pen fell to the ground.

"Sunweng?"

"Go, go, go and take a look at Changmen Street."

After saying that, Wang Shimin walked towards the gate of the house in three steps, looking at his legs and feet, his sensibleness was definitely not like a 67-year-old man.

Changmen Street is a street that is directly east inside Changmen, the northwest city gate of Suzhou. It was the most prosperous commercial street in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Just as the beginning of "Dream of Red Mansions" said: "The place was trapped in the southeast that day, and there was a place called Gusu in the southeast corner, and the city called Changmen was the most prosperous place in the world."

Wang Shimin sat in the sedan chair and headed straight here, just to understand the tricks here. However, when he was suddenly in trouble, he was anxious and urged the sedan chairman many times along the way. At this moment, he was running wildly in the streets and alleys like flying. Wang Shimin sat in the sedan chair and was already drowsy and was almost disgusted by the bumps. In his stomach, he was consciously turning the indigestion that he had not digested yesterday to his throat.

But even so, Wang Shimin still forced himself to vomit. If he hadn't been afraid of actually vomiting, he wouldn't be able to speak, and he would have to continue urging the sedan chair bears to speed up.

The Wang family's house was not far from Changmen Street, but it was not close. The sedan chair owner ran all the way, and the shaking Wang Shimin almost vomited, but it was just when the feeling of vomiting seemed to be unable to bear it anymore. The sedan chair owners stopped suddenly after turning an alley and almost threw Wang Shimin out of the sedan chair, but they also swallowed the vomit back.

"Why did you stop?"

Before he finished speaking, Wang Shimin understood why the sedan chairwoman suddenly stopped, and the hawking sound not far away directly poured a basin of ice water on his sweat.

"The mushrooms in Chuzhou Prefecture are the birthplace of mushroom cultivation, and the fragrance is the best."

"Look, take a look, Jinhua ham, the soldiers of the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Kings Division are the Tartars who fought away after eating the ham from our Jinhua Mansion."

"The porcelain from Jingdezhen, produced by the Royal Vessels, is perfect for the old man."

"The rice in Huguang is worth one tael of silver and two stones, and the taste is no worse than that of local rice."

“…”

Wang Shimin listened carefully, but the more he listened, the colder he felt, especially the words "Huguang rice," which immediately shocked him on the spot. After a while, he said, "Huguang is familiar, the world is full of everything", and there was nothing else.

In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas experienced agricultural economic crop formation due to the prosperity of marine trade. At that time, mulberry battles for rice fields and cotton battles for wheat fields flooded the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas. In contrast, after long-term development, Huguang's land was also fertile, and it replaced the status of "Suhu Lake is ripe and the world is full". Huguang rice was sold well in the surrounding provinces, and the total grain output in Jiangsu and Zhejiang was declining year by year.

This phenomenon was not curbed until the Qing army went south. The Qing army and Nanming had witnessed each other in the Huguang area for more than ten years, and the local area was destroyed and grain production was greatly affected. In this way, without Huguang's commercial grain, the land of Jiangnan was short of grain, but people had to eat first. In addition, the Qing government's levy and taxation, and economic crop production was also affected. Therefore, the farmers in Jiangnan switched to plant grain on a large scale.

Among them, the most exaggerated and unimaginable thing is that according to records of people at that time, the Qinhuai River, which was extremely prosperous in the Ming Dynasty, even demolished the abandoned tiles and brothels during the period when the food was too short of food in the south of the Yangtze River, just to have more places to grow grain so as to provide for the daily needs of the Eight Banners Army, Eight Banners families and coat slaves in Beijing that did not work on farming. This shows the situation.

Wang Shimin came from the Chengping era. He knew very well what the situation would be like if Huguang resumed production. However, Huguang had less than two years of recovery and the recovery level was limited. More importantly, it was less than 1,500 miles from Suzhou to Huguang. From the strike in Suzhou to the news spread to the Qi Palace in Nanjing, the Qi Palace ordered the government in Huguang to finally mobilize grain and flow downstream. In this way, with the transportation capacity and information transmission speed of this era, it would take more than a month. It is impossible for a large amount of food to be delivered now.

After this suspension, they fought for this time difference, but now Chen Wen knocked a slap hard, which is really unimaginable.

However, based on Wang Shimin's experience and thinking about it carefully, it was not impossible. If only food was delivered, Wang Shimin might have to investigate whether Chen Wen used the tricks used in Nanjing to supply the Huainan army's food storage. However, after hearing about the things such as mushrooms and ham, an idea that he could never believe suddenly came to his mind.

"This is a trap, this is a trap!"

The more he thought so, the more he became more panicked. It was not until a long time later that he could barely recover, but his heart calmed down a little, so he quickly asked the sedan chairman to move forward and go to Changmen Street to check it out personally.

However, the entrance of this alley has been blocked by a temporary stall, and it is absolutely impossible for the sedan to pass through. However, Wang Shimin is old and the Changmen Street is more crowded than usual, and his body may not be able to support it.

"Go and see what else is there. Remember to ask clearly how much it has been shipped."

The butler took the order and left, and after a long time, he came back with sweat. However, the news brought back by the butler made Wang Shimin even more uncomfortable.

"Master, I asked, except for our Suzhou specialties, there are almost everything, even those in Songjiang Prefecture and Changzhou Prefecture. In terms of quantity, those guys just told the word "little man" and it's enough."

Hearing this, Wang Shimin's eyes suddenly turned dark. After he recovered, he quickly asked the sedan chair owner to carry him to Deyue Tower, which was the meeting place they agreed to. Now things have exceeded expectations and a countermeasure must be discussed as soon as possible.

The Wang family's sedan chairkeeper started running again, but when Wang Shimin arrived at Deyue Tower, the people in the core circle of the suspension had already arrived, especially the representative sent by the Gu family, who was like a frost-frost-beaten eggplant, and he lived up to the romantic style of the talented man in Jiangnan last night.

"First show the enemy as weak, then suddenly launch an attack. This is the usual method used by the King of Qi. This must be a conspiracy, it must be a conspiracy!"

With the lessons learned from Wuxi last time, Gu Shu was the least of the people present who dared to underestimate Chen Wen. At this moment, seeing the goods coming into the city, and seeing them falling behind Chen Wen with all kinds of methods, they were left behind Chen Wen. A month ago, the villagers scattered, and the yamen runners took water and fire sticks to disperse the tenants, and the garrison did not even have the chance to take action again.

"Enough!"

The Gu family is the founder of Donglin. Wang Shimin received the letter this time and saw the Gu family's visitor, which gave him enough face. But what he didn't expect was that the backbone of the Gu family was so bad, which really made him very angry.

"They are just blatantly setting up stalls at the door of the shop where you are waiting, why don't they send people to drive them away?"

Wang Shimin couldn't continue to attack Gu Shu, so he pointed his finger at the wealthy businessmen, but the answer he got was not what he wanted to hear.

"Xun Weng, there are officials from prefectures and counties everywhere. They said that when we open the door, they will let those outsiders move. Otherwise, if we dare to take action, they will take our shopkeeper and the guy to the yamen to beat the board, saying that they will be beaten to death on the charge of disrupting some market order, and who dares to take action?"

The short and fat grain merchant had a bitter face, as if he could squeeze out bitter water. Compared with other merchants, grain merchants were able to contact and send many more workers and helpers due to the characteristics of goods. However, the first-ranked grain merchant in Suzhou was now scared in front of the government, and the others were also speechless.

"Then let them fight. It's better to kill a few of them so that we can take advantage of the situation and force the government to compromise!"

After this statement was made, Wang Shimin, Gu Shu, the grain merchant and everyone present looked at the merchant from a private salt dealer who had just stepped into the door. His cold and fierce eyes swept over, which immediately made everyone present feel chill.

"Listen to Brother Cheng, everyone will call all the Qingpi idiots who can contact you. I'll bother Brother Cheng to find some heroes from the Salt Gang. This time, everyone will have a heavy reward. If you are injured, you will have double the rewards. If you die, you will have money to burn money. If you are a Wang family, you will have a generous gift from your parents, wife and children!"

This person who is usually looked down upon by Suzhou gentry and wealthy businessmen is a private salt dealer and has a close relationship with the organized salt gangs that eat salt. Compared with the vague man who is a fighter, the salt gang has to deal with the army guarding the salt field at all times. It is not uncommon for killing and robbing people, and the combat power is naturally far superior.

At this moment, after receiving the words "Brother Cheng" from this top scholar who had been in the cabinet minister at home, the "private salt dealer" immediately turned red, and the scar on his neck looked particularly eye-catching.
Chapter completed!