Xianshuigu is located between Tianjin Sanwei and Dagukou, famous for knowing that this place has been an official brine salt field since many years ago, and the history of boiling salt can even be traced back to the Qi State in the pre-Qin period.

Xianshuigu is geographically close to the northern boundary of Yanzhenchang, and is a very inconspicuous place in the salt field under the jurisdiction of the Changlu Salt Transportation Division between the rivers from Yuguan to Haifeng, which surrounds the Bohai Bay for nearly a thousand miles. However, due to its special location, it is between the South (Cangzhou) and North (Qingzhou) Divisions of the Transshipment Division, and is located in the largest salt field in the north of the empire.

Twenty miles southeast of Xianshuigu, there was a retreating sea grass that originally belonged to the salt works here. This grass is not privately owned, because no matter how to make salt from decoction to drying, it is always inseparable from this grass for drying ash and crystallization, so this grass can also be regarded as one of the means of production. And because of the proximity to the salt field and the convenient location, since Jiajing, it has gradually become a place where private salt is gathered.

In the early years, the salt field used fire to fry salt, using the plate iron issued by the salt division, the plate iron is coarse, and a frying can get 100 catties of salt, but it is precisely because of this that this process has to be done in clusters, often each time several households for a 'group of frying'. In the method of frying salt, the three stages of brine, ash and fire can be completed by a single household, but this plate of iron is heavy, and a corner needs to consume more than 2,000 catties of iron, and the cost of private drum casting is very huge, so it is difficult for even wealthy stove households to buy it alone. Therefore, this has become a natural constraint, and it is a rule set by the government, 'Those who are not in the regiment are private salt, and they will be asked'.

However, Wang Xingping once heard Song Yingxing say that after Jiajing, with the use of open iron pots and the popularization of the new salt drying method, the output of ordinary stove households has increased significantly, resulting in a backlog of surplus salt.

Wang Xingping in Guizhou is the closest Sichuan is good, the well salt has always used the decoction salt method, and now the other salt divisions of the Ming Dynasty, in addition to the two Huai Salt Transportation Division, there are still 25 salt farms in Huainan to abide by the old system, and most of the salt farms across the country have been changed to the drying method. The progress of the production process has brought about the output of a large amount of surplus salt from the stove households, although the reform over the years, after the Jiajing Dynasty, the imperial court gradually allowed the salt to be opened in parallel with the surplus salt and silver solution, but also had to gradually liberalize the commercialization of salt. As a result, the salt industry, which was controlled by the imperial court, became dominated by domestic merchants who sat on the ground, and the salt merchants often gave loans to stove households to buy surplus salt, but they did not necessarily pay the full amount of silver, so the illegal salt also became more and more rampant.

Hearing these situations at that time, Wang Xingping was also glad that the salt introduction was handled cleanly and neatly, and also lamented that the inland was not as good as the coastal areas after all.

This is the case with the smuggled salt produced in this salty water valley, where the salt merchants who sit in the field collude with Fuzao, and have a relationship with the Bohai boat gang at the mouth of Dagu, and Liaodong, Shandong, and even North Korea have their own illegal salt marketing. It is not shallow to be involved with the officials and garrisons around the salt works, and it is rumored that in private, he often fights with foreign merchants because of the competition for salt profits, and even makes trouble.

I don't know if Xu Guangqi really didn't listen to the things outside the window or intended to test Wang Xingping's ability, he chose the training place he found for Wang Xingping in Tianjin.

It's almost noon, and although the sun is high, I don't feel much warmth.

Gao Jianhou and Li Jinxi stood in the crowd and looked at the fellow villagers opposite, the two groups of people were facing each other not far from the barracks, and there were even more people on the watchtower on the side of the barracks looking at this side from time to time, but they saw that Gao and Li were not on the side of the villagers.

Liang Xinglou is in his fifties, and he is still dressed in satin in this wilderness, regardless of his identity as a stove household. He is the general urging of the salt group of the place called the Heaven and Earth Group, and the Ming Dynasty has a salt division, and the stove households are also listed as salt registers, just like the household registration of the people.

In the past, a group of decoction of salt, each group set up a general urging, which was similar to the old and annual of the township capital. But as the years went by, the general urge, the son and the head of the regiment under him, the elders and other generations took advantage of public and private rights to encroach on the assets of the poor stove industry, and he gradually became rich and powerful, and Master Liang was such a textbook rich man.

It's just that unlike the salt farmers in the water towns who no longer ran salt and focused on business a few generations ago, he couldn't let go of the interests in it, and still invested half of his energy and the capital of the family into the promising cause of private salt trading.

Seeing that the weather is getting warmer now, it is the season to open the sun, but I don't want the dozen or so poor stoves in my regiment to flee in groups, and run to the new military camp of this Laoshizi to become a hill Ba, and the loss of population affects the salt book that is made every five years, but if it is delayed to deliver the goods to the salt merchants, it will be a great crime.

It is because of the children of his clan today, as well as a group of lamas from Tianjin who are sitting behind him, with these supports, Master Liang is confident enough to stand up for himself, and he speaks politely.

"The second year of high school, Li Si and the next few of them are all the sons-in-law of my family, and this military master also asks me to make it convenient for me to bring everyone back."

Although the new army has already had a scale of several hundred people, except for the slender man is the Liaodong rout, it has nothing to do with this matter, but he is not willing to come forward and use the local snake here. Today, I heard that the salt group was coming, and Ding Yi brought someone over to talk about things, Wang Xingping was not there these days when he was with drills, and the recruits had something, so he naturally couldn't ignore it.

But at the moment, there are only twenty or thirty people around him, plus those stove households Yanding, and some of the Yanding who fled from the regiment or elsewhere simply hid, only Gao Jianhou and Li Jinxi, who were brave enough to follow Ding Yi, came out with three times as many people on the opposite side.

Ding Yi's experience in the past few years is not afraid of the other party's battle, and said with a smile: "There are really many daughters of this master, I don't know which of these around you is the son of the second brother of the Gao family, and who is Li Si's brother-in-law." ”

The original tense atmosphere was relaxed after this sentence, and even someone on the other side laughed a few times, it turned out that there were many rich stoves here who accepted the children of poor stoves as righteous sons and sons-in-law, called acceptance, in fact, it was just a disguised way of saying that he was a slave, and it was also said that it was normal, but Ding Yi, a foreigner, laughed at it like this, which made everyone feel funny.

Master Liang's face sank when he heard this, originally this piece of grass was encouraged by his family from poor households for generations, and it was also an entry. In his opinion, the military camp has made himself suffer a secret loss, and now even his own house slave coolies have been seduced, how not to make him angry.

A few juniors around him saw the thoughts of the main family, shouted, and surrounded Ding Yi and them first.

On weekdays, when Wang Xingping was not in the camp, Ding Yi led the recruits to perform, but now he brought people out, and he did not explain in advance, because neither the slender man nor the Liao army nor those other places who hid to watch the wind did not dare to come out easily. Fortunately, the people of the Heaven and Earth Regiment still have a bottom line, and they only take sticks, and the military men on Ding Yi's side are the same, only the ash poles that they usually train are around.

After all, these people on the official face don't dare to show their blades easily, and with this premise, Ding Yi is determined in his heart.

After all, even the method of bluffing, more than half a month finally let these rough men distinguish between left and right, learn the most basic obedience to orders and conditioned reflexes, it is just to give it a try, and the gang of goods in front of them seems to be just right, just look at the posture they surround Although the posture is menacing, it makes Ding Yi look down on it a lot, and he himself took the way of scouts when he was in Guizhou, so the dignified confrontation is also very fresh.

'What is more useful than knives and guns is discipline', Wang Xingping taught Ding Yi this truth that does not need to be understood by these soldiers in a short time, they just need to know how to do it.

Are you willing to be caught?

How can you be willing, how can you be willing, since the day they fled to the barracks, Gao Jianhou, Li Jinxi, and dozens of poor salt farmers who also came from all over the surrounding salt groups have warned themselves from time to time that it is better to die if they go back to such a day.

Hasn't life changed? Of course there were, but in a worse direction.

Gao Jianhou heard his grandfather say that the pavilion where the soil was dried was originally for public use decades ago, and later it became the private property of the general urge, and the stove owner had to be paid another fee for using it.

The grass used in the ash and fire is all from the grass, which according to the ancestral system, the original field of each family has long been urged to merge and encroach, which is also a matter of the previous generation, and now the surplus salt must be exchanged for the rest of the salt on weekdays, but the year before last, the court began to collect the 'dang tax' in Changlu but everyone has a share, but at that time there was no general urging to bear it.

Finally, some surplus salt can be exchanged for some silver, and he plans to save enough money to say that he has a daughter-in-law, and he always stands up and says that he has taken over the salt class in the group, and the surplus salt of each family is underwritten by him, as for the price of salt in this underwriting, after removing the salt class, it is always less than the cost, and Master Liang is too lazy to explain to these bitter salts.

Li Jinxi opened a few acres of grain fields on the barren beach in order to supplement his family the year before last, and after the autumn harvest, he brought the tax collector to visit, saying that this was a theft of official land, and the grain was confiscated according to the routine, but at the end of the year, this land was replaced by the tenant farmers of the Liang family to plant, but no one said that it was a theft.

The most recent thing happened at the beginning of this year, because of the typhoon, the imperial court issued two silver to the poor stoves, but when it came to the declaration of salt registration, more than ten poor stoves in the Tiandi Group were robbed of the qualification to give silver by being poor and rich, and they almost starved to death before the spring in the name of a rich household.

Thinking about the piles and piles of the past many years, and then thinking about the situation behind this barracks, there should be a world of difference, and naturally no one hesitated at all.

When the fierce and vicious Tuan Ding and Lama really hit the door, when the kind and kind Lord Liang finally put on a black face and began to curse, those poor and only had one strength left to burst out with the most shocking power, this power stabbed out fiercely through the ash gun in his hand under the blessing of the queue training for half a month.

The head of the ash pole without the head of the spear seemed to be equipped with the sharpest point steel spear tip, and beat the group members who seemed to be outnumbered to the sky and cried to the ground, and about twenty people ran wildly on the post road with fifty or sixty people.

Gao Jianhou was so forgetful of the battle for a moment that he actually rushed out of the team, and a bluffing dog on the opposite side jumped off the wall and flashed his blade. The second year of high school saw the red, and the bluff was also captured by the people who arrived later, and with this person is a witness, even if the Liang family buys the officials again, they can't shirk it.

Four or five knights watched this wonderful performance on a mound not far from the post road, and one of the older scholars, who seemed to have not recovered from the battle just now, stepped forward after a moment and asked the young man next to him, "This is the soldier you trained in Tiancheng?" ”

"Can you still get into the eyes of Brother Song?" The young man looked back and smiled, but suddenly saw that there were four or five more horsemen running towards this side at the end of the post road, so he sighed and smiled bitterly, "It seems that trouble is coming." ”

[References]

1, "Daming Huidian"

2, "Ming Shilu • Shenzong Benji"

3, "History of the Late Ming Dynasty" Fan Shuzhi

4, "Wanli Ye Ed" Shen Defu

5. "Detailed Map of the Forbidden City Palace of the Ming Dynasty"

6, "Heavenly Creation" Song Yingxing

7, "History of the Ming Dynasty, Benji Twenty-first, Shenzong II"

8, "Ming Shilu • Guangzong Benji"

9. "The Stove Households and Salt Production in the Ming Dynasty" by Chen Shiqi

10. "The Status of Stove Households in the Production of Salt Industry in the Ming Dynasty" Xue Zongzheng

11, "Salt Zhengzhi" Zhu Tingli