Li Bao swung his stick into the air, and Zhou Fei disappeared like air, and before he could react, he felt a sharp pain in the bend of his legs and legs, and he was unsteady on his feet, and he fell to his knees with a plop.

At the moment when he swung his stick, Zhou Fei passed under his crotch and pierced two crossbow arrows into the crook of his knee, Zhou Fei twisted like a leopard, "Click! In two clicks, Li Bao's arm was removed.

Li Bao's arms were dislocated, he screamed, and fell to the ground, everyone around him froze, and Li Bao, who had always been extremely strong, was knocked down with one move.

The mountain bandits exclaimed in surprise, raised their weapons and rushed over, Li Bao suddenly shouted: "Don't come here, all go back!" ”

The bandits stopped one after another, only to find that the other party had pressed a knife against the leader's throat.

Zhou Fei dragged Li Bao to the mountain col and handed it over to his subordinates to take care of, he picked up the crossbow arrows and shouted to the bandits: "Anyone else who wants to come up and try, I will accompany you!" ”

One of the bandit leaders shouted, "That man, let our leader go, and we will go our separate ways." ”

Zhou Fei said loudly: "I will let him go, not now, before we leave Fukou, whoever dares to mess around, I will kill him with one sword." ”

Zhang Lei suddenly understood, this Zhou Fei is amazing! Captured the leader of the other party as a hostage, not killed the other party. This is the clever way, otherwise the other party will die, and none of them will be able to live.

Zhang Lei also had the spirit, stepped forward to lift Li Bao's iron rod, kicked Li Bao, and grinned: "Boy, hurry up and make a decision!" It is estimated that your second master is waiting for your death. ”

..........

Li Bao finally compromised, he ordered his henchmen to take his subordinates back to the cottage first, and he was forced to become a hostage and follow Zhang Lei and his party on the road.

Li Bao dislocated his arms and riding on a horse, Zhou Fei's two men escorted him on the left and right, and Zhou Fei rode at the rear, holding crossbow arrows in his hands, vigilantly observing the surrounding movements.

Zhang Lei was very interested in Zhou Fei, so he specially slowed down his horse and walked side by side with Zhou Fei.

"Xiao Zhou, what do you do in the army?" Zhang Lei asked curiously.

"Enlightened proprietor, I was originally a scout captain."

"I see!"

Zhang Lei suddenly realized that Zhou Fei was a scout lieutenant, no wonder he was so powerful.

But he was even more curious, "Who did you offend to be forced to escape from Wei with your wife and children?" ”

Zhou Fei hesitated, he decided to tell the truth to Zhang Lei.

"Don't hide it from the proprietor, I offended Tian Xu, to be precise, Tian Xu wants to kill me, my subordinates are poisoned by him, and I escaped alone."

"Why did you kill you?"

Zhou Fei smiled bitterly and said: "Frankly speaking, I don't know, I estimate that some things may be related to the Tian brothers' struggle for the throne, but I'm just a small person, I don't know anything about the situation, and I don't know why he killed me?" ”

Zhang Lei nodded, "Thanks to your courage this time, I am safe." ”

Zhou Fei hurriedly bowed and said, "Since I am responsible for protecting the proprietor, this is my duty, and the proprietor doesn't have to take it to heart." ”

Zhang Lei knew that it was too early to say something, he glanced at the burly Li Bao and asked, "What should he do?" ”

Zhou Fei smiled and said, "The proprietor knows why I was able to knock him down with one blow?" ”

Zhang Lei was stunned for a moment, and asked puzzledly, "What do you mean?" ”

"I mean, I have studied this Li Bao a long time ago, he is actually a chess piece planted by Zhu Zhu in the north of Xiangzhou, originally I received the task of exterminating him, last August, I studied this person for two months, but then Tian Xu picked up 300 people from the Tiger Benwei to form the Flying Eagle Battalion, and I was also among them, and the task of exterminating Li Bao was not completed."

"So you know his weakness?"

Zhou Fei nodded, "His biggest weakness is that he likes to fight alone with people and show off the strength of his iron rod." ”

Speaking of this, Zhou Fei couldn't help laughing, "Although his upper arm is very powerful, his lower plate is unstable." ”

"Do you think you should kill this person?" Zhang Lei stared at Li Bao's back and asked.

Zhou Fei pondered for a moment and said: "This depends on the position, I used to be the Wei army, and from the position of the Wei army, of course, I want to pull out this stinger, but if it is from the position of the Jin army, it is better to keep this stinger." ”

It was Zhou Fei's last sentence that saved Li Bao's life.

Two days later, Zhang Lei and everyone left Fukou first, Zhou Fei took Li Bao's arm and returned the iron rod to him, these two days were his great shame, but he was also deeply afraid of Zhou Fei in his heart.

Li Bao didn't say a word, and dragged the iron rod and strode away.

Zhou Fei looked at Li Bao's back and walked away, he still felt a little strange in his heart, Li Bao's subordinates were dressed in shabby clothes and had messy weapons, not like they had Zhu Zhu's support.

And hasn't Chiyan Village been in the south of Xiangzhou all the time? Why did you run to the north near Fukou again?

Zhou Fei really couldn't figure it out, and he didn't bother to think about it, shook his head and turned the horse's head, chasing Zhang Lei and his party who had already gone away.

.........

In December, Chang'an's commerce became more and more prosperous, and as the New Year approached, the trading of various bulk goods was extremely active.

Chang'an's commerce is not only to serve the locals, it is also the material distribution center of Guanzhong and even the entire Jin Kingdom, grain, oilseeds, salt, cloth, cotton, wine, tea cakes, livestock and other dozens of bulk goods from all directions sent to Chang'an.

At the same time, merchants from all over the Jin Kingdom procured goods here and shipped them to various states and counties.

Chang'an's West Market is particularly lively, with a lot of people every day, a large stream of people, and large bags of goods are carried by mules or donkeys, leaving Chang'an.

The main reason for the improvement of the city in the past few months was the decision of the Tobe Division to move all kinds of machinery, stationery, musical instruments, porcelain, pottery, lacquerware, woodware, jade, cloth, and silk goods to the city.

In particular, cloth, which is the first major category related to people's livelihood in clothing, food, housing and transportation, has a wide variety, including coarse cloth, fine cloth, colored silk, silk and satin, embroidery, Shu brocade, carpet, velvet blanket, tent, boots, shoes and hats, cotton, cotton, wool, sheepskin, leather and so on.

There are also auxiliary workshops such as clothing estimation workshop, garment workshop, quilt workshop, shoe making workshop, tanning workshop, cotton ginning mill, cotton tire mill, etc., which have also moved to Dongshi.

This is also the inevitable transformation of the East Market, in the past, the East Market was mainly selling high-end luxury goods, when the luxury goods could not be sold, the East Market and the West Market will no longer focus on the difference in grades, and carry out category adjustments, and transfer the daily necessities that have nothing to do with food to the East Market.

Although this category shift has caused many fewer shops in the West Market, the benefits are also obvious, not only has the East Market been revitalized again, but also the number of empty shops in the West Market has increased, and the scale of many stores has also expanded, and the situation that it is difficult to find a shop in the West Market has also been alleviated.

The shops on Xi'anmen Street are mainly focused on retail rather than wholesale, and they are basically retail sub-stores of the big stores in the West Market, selling boutiques and specialty products, and their customers are mainly aimed at Chang'an locals.

In this way, a pattern of wholesale in the east and west markets and retail in Xi'anmen Street has gradually been formed.

Approaching the New Year, almost all the senior officials of the Counsellor's Hall have gone to various markets to inspect, which is also Guo Song's request, all kinds of decisions can not be divorced from reality, many things do not go to see in person, to understand on the spot, and the decisions made will inevitably be divorced from reality.

Guo Song took several entourages to inspect the East City, and the adjustment of commodity categories was a major decision made by Guo Song in order to save the East City, the property rights of the East City and the West City were owned by the Department of Households, and it was the consistent tradition of the imperial court to rent and not sell, as the landlord of the East City, as the actual manager of Chang'an, the Jin Dynasty Mansion had the obligation to revitalize the East City.

Compared with the deserted situation a few months ago, the East Market is now very lively, and the cloth shops, color silk shops, silk shops, and cotton shops are crowded with merchants who come to wholesale goods.

Guo Song came to the cotton shop, the cotton shop is also a long street, hundreds of shops, mainly engaged in cotton, cotton, cashmere, wool, duck and goose down and other goods, cotton alone has more than 20 shops, mainly selling filled cotton, selling cotton tires.

In recent years, Anxi has begun to grow cotton and wheat on a large scale, and recently Beiting has begun to introduce Persian sugar beets, once successfully planted, sugar will appear in large quantities, which will greatly improve the lives of the people of the Central Plains.

Cotton planting is very common, the military has long been popularized, and now it has begun to be popularized on a large scale in civilian use, and the price of cotton has also dropped from the initial price per catty to 100 yuan per catty, even the bottom families in Chang'an can make a cotton jacket for each person in the family.

Quilts and pillows have long been popularized in middle-class people's homes, as for the wealthy and powerful families mainly use cotton and fluff, the emergence of cotton is mainly to meet the needs of the middle and low-class people, before the emergence of cotton, cotton and fluff have always been the filling of winter clothes and bedding, but the price is expensive, are used by the upper class, and the middle and low-class people can not afford it.

After the advent of cotton, there were finally high-quality and inexpensive winter supplies, which greatly improved the quality of life of the middle and low people.

However, cotton cloth is still not competitive with fine linen, the main reason is that the output of cotton has not yet completely risen, and now the middle and low-class people in some big cities such as Chang'an and Taiyuan use cotton, but there are still various small counties, as well as the vast rural areas, as well as the Central Plains, the broader areas in the south.

Therefore, as a filling for winter clothes and winter quilts, cotton is still in short supply, and it has not yet been considered for large-scale weaving.

It was rare for Guo Song to be so leisurely, strolling through the bustling crowd and watching the bales of cotton being shipped out of the store.

At this time, he saw a group of people surrounding a shop, whispering something, Guo Song stepped forward, only to find that this was a cotton gin, and eight pedal cotton gins were operating at the same time.

Guo Song was surprised to find that the cotton gin was a little different from the cotton gin he originally designed in Gaochang, the principle is the same, but the workmanship is more delicate and ingenious, originally used a log to rotate to squeeze out the cottonseed, now the log becomes a calf-thick copper stick, after the copper stick squeezes out the cottonseed, the cottonseed will roll out along a chute next to it, and soon fill a pot.

One fellow was spreading lint evenly on three copper sticks, while another was trampling on a wheel with a copper rod to turn, and this kind of cotton gin was very efficient, and it was able to roll ten pounds of cotton in no time.

At this time, someone behind him suddenly slapped Guo Song on the shoulder.