The Sea Shark Firm, which is now in the limelight, is a family business that is made up of twelve old shamans who have gathered a small group of fierce pirates who are wandering along the Jiangnan and Minjiang rivers, fighting bloodily and forgetting their lives to the death. As the captain of the twelve shamans under the seat of Li Xuanyu, Zigqi's original idea was just to open up a maritime trade route that was completely controlled by his side, so as to help the Huayan merchant gang, who had been pulled out of their bones and only had an empty shelf left, to gain some respite.

Jiangnan Province, since the time of the previous dynasty Dayan, has been a rich place in the world, and taxes occupy half of the country; And the pirates and pirates who parasitize the shipping routes of nearby ports are a stubborn disease that has existed since ancient times. Unlike the bandits and robbers of the Northern Yan Dynasty and the Youbei Third Road, although there are many factions of the Jiangnan water thieves, they never fight each other, but often allegiance to the same owner!

It turned out that the water thieves who gradually grew bigger and entered the eyes of the official family attracted the secret support of the local tyrants and squires and court officials through the method of distributing wealth with the pestle, and their original identity as water thieves naturally became the official caravan registered by the imperial court.

With strong support behind them, these water thieves in Jiangnan Province are naturally reluctant to do those dangerous livelihoods of fighting, killing, and licking blood from the knife edge. After the legal identity of these water thieves was officially recognized, they also put on brocade clothes, rode on the good horse incense car, and became one of the wealthy merchants and squires of Jiangnan Province; And their main way of making money has also changed from a shady black job to a serious waterway transportation.

To this day, the business of smuggling official supplies in demand is still in the hands of these pirate-born outsiders!

However, the water thieves from the Minjiang River do not have such a comfortable and comfortable living environment as their counterparts in Jiangnan Province.

Due to the coastline of Huayu Mainland, there are countless small islands nearby; These areas are either in the period of the origin of civilization that has just been civilized, or they have endured war and chaos for a long time. The vicious living environment, the scarcity of living materials, and the barbaric and bloody law of the jungle in troubled times have naturally cultivated a large number of hard-working people who are not afraid of death in order to make a living.

These foreign pirates, who have been harassing the people along the Min River all year round, are greedy, bloodthirsty, fierce and brutal; Despite their rudimentary weapons, their armor consisting only of their own chests and flesh, and their bodies being small and thin, they looked vulnerable to attack. But when you really fight them, you will suddenly find that the eyes of these people are all shining with bloodthirsty and fanatical gaze, like beasts and spirits without human emotions; Everywhere they went, men, women, and children, they were all treated like mustard in their eyes.

Over the years, the people along the Minjiang River, who were constantly attacked and plundered by foreign water thieves, also passively changed their original way of life. As long as you walk around the prefectures, counties, villages and towns along the coast of Minjiang Road, you will find that the yards and warehouses of every household are scattered with long and short blades shining with cold light; And among the neighbors, there is an extreme unity of watching and helping each other and responding to every call.

If it is a wide and strong Youbei man, and a short and thin Minjiang fisherman, he may be able to take advantage of his strength without losing money; But once ten against ten, even if it is a group battle of five against five, then the final winner must be these inconspicuous Minjiang people.

Because for them, if there is no sense of trust in life and death, and if there is no fierce and brave spirit that will not retreat, their ancestors, future generations, and grandchildren will not be able to multiply in this homeland and pass it on from generation to generation.

It is precisely because of the long-term existential threat from the outside that the concept of family and clan has long been melted into the blood of every Minjiang people; And with the way that the ancestors passed down by word of mouth and led by example, it has been passed down from generation to generation.

It is precisely because of their clan concept that is almost self-enclosed, that it seems that the kings of all dynasties are extremely jealous of the civil and military officials from the Minjiang River. Although the civil officials of Minjiang will kneel under the court three times and bow nine times on weekdays, and shout long live our emperor; Although the military attache of the Minjiang River, after stepping on the battlefield with a sword, he will never be half a point weaker than other brave soldiers who are powerful and powerful; But their slightly special place of origin is always reminding the king of every family: for these people, whether it is a great benefit or the threat of killing their heads, it is always impossible to match the use of a word from the clansmen; Even if it is just a fellow Minjiang villager who has never met in his life, as long as he can speak an authentic Minjiang dialect, for these court officials, it is far more important than the holy decree in the mouth of the monarch's father.

It is precisely because of the characteristics of this group that for the king, if he absorbs too many civil and military officials from Minjiang in the imperial court, it is no less than personally supporting a party faction; And it is foreseeable that the cohesion of this Minjiang faction will also be unprecedentedly terrifying!

As a king, it is natural that there need to be a number of factions in the court to fight for the party, so as to perform the art of imperial weighing; However, no Ming monarch will allow a monolithic, one-minded faction to participate in it!

On the temple, although there is no way out for the children of Minjiang; However, in the endless ocean at the doorstep, endless wealth floats in front of the door every day. In the Minjiang culture, there are only two kinds of people in the whole world: one is called clansmen and the other is called outsiders. Therefore, whether it is the regular merchant ships of the Huayu Continent or the black ships of pirates from various countries, for the people of Minjiang, they are all fat meat delivered to their mouths, and they can be eaten as much as they want.

is the so-called fighting tiger brothers, fathers and sons, no matter where the army is, if most of the soldiers and generals are fellow villagers and clansmen; Then when they faced a fierce battle, the fighting will and tenacity they showed were naturally far from being comparable to ordinary mixed armies.

Considering that whether it is a serious caravan or a foreign pirate ship, most of the guards on the ship are mercenaries who want to earn some money to support their families, and they are not willing to risk their lives for a business trip at all. How can such a group of people be compared with the Minjiang pirates who are related to each other?

I don't know when it began, the entire coastline in the south of the Huayu Continent has been firmly controlled by clans from all over the Minjiang River. They have always maintained a respectful attitude towards the official fleet; But once a merchant ship or a pirate wants to cross the border and dock, then you have to ask the opinion of the Minjiang people!

The water thieves in Gangnam Province cherish their feathers and have their hands and eyes open to the sky; The water thieves in Minjiang Province have amazing combat effectiveness, but they are unable to cultivate official power; Anyone can see that these two water thieves are really a match made in heaven! Therefore, after the initial period of open and secret fighting and bloody fighting, the strength of the two river bandits finally reached an armistice cooperation agreement, agreeing to mutual benefit and mutual assistance and sharing benefits.

That is to say, the gentry and wealthy families of Jiangnan Province and the clan elders of Minjiang Province began to count from the day when the two sides reached a cooperation intention; The entire coastline of the Nankang Dynasty has become a community of interests, and has become an iron plate monopolized by the children of the two rivers.

This unbreakable iron plate did not begin to appear a little crack until after Shen Gui was born.

However, the cause of this crack was not the internal disputes within the Liangjiang Alliance; It was broken by a steppe man named Zigeqi who led the brothers to break it with his own hands!

At that time, Qi Geqi and Qi Lingyan and their group of fourteen people faced the situation when they first came to Nankang, and it was not as difficult as Shen Gui, who felt the difficulty of fighting alone today.

The Huayan Merchant Gang, the predecessor of today's Sea Shark Trading Company, was originally an industry belonging to the Shamanism of Youbei; Even the initial start-up capital of the Huayan Business Gang was a large amount of private property that Lin Siwei paid out of his own pocket. And the shopkeeper of the Huayan Business Gang, that is, the "old crutch" who died in the hands of Shen Gui - Zhou Shutong, is also a native of Youbei, and he is also the great protector of shamanism during Li Xuanyu's period!

But from this point of view, Lao Guan is still an old-timer of Shen Gui!

In fact, it can be seen from the whole map of Huayu Continent that the geographical location of Youbei Third Road is actually very embarrassing; And countless lessons and lessons have also proved this: as long as the Northern Yan Dynasty closes the East Customs, then this group of poor barbarians in the three roads of Youbei can only starve in the snowflakes flying in the sky.

When Li Xuanyu succeeded as the great shaman of the god woman of Youbei Sanlu, it was at the time of the reign of Yan Qi, the emperor of Tianlong Wending, that is, Yan Qinghong's grandfather.

At that time, the Youbei Third Road had just become independent, and all trade routes had long been completely blocked by the Northern Yan Dynasty; Whether it is the imperial treasury or the money bags of the people, they can all be summed up in the four words of poverty. Although the products of the three roads in the north are abundant, it is in vain if they cannot be transported. Without the big customer of Beiyan, the East Customs that went to the South Seas and went to the west was heavily guarded, except for those poor relatives in the north who were more difficult than themselves; In the entire Youbei Third Road, there are only thousands of miles of frozen land, and the Taibai Mountain, which is covered with snow all year round, and the mountains of rotting and rotting skins and herbs in the reservoir.

In such a situation of internal and external troubles, how could Yan Qi, as the emperor of Youbei at that time, not develop the character of being careful and calculating? And the first emperor Yan Hunt's cautious bad fault was inherited from Emperor Wending's careful calculation; It's just that he learned his father's strengths and weaknesses.

The treasury was impoverished, the people were starving, and the shamanic sorcerers and goddesses were naturally not immune. Li Xuanyu, who had just succeeded as the great shaman, under the proposal of his sister-in-law Lin Siwei, together with Yan Qi and the three of them, planned and formulated a development plan to establish a Youbei business group and open up new trade routes in the south!

Of course, this development plan is not just as simple as finding a group of new buyers for the mountains of goods piled up on Youbei Third Road; According to Lin Siyou's outlook for the future, they plan to use this Youbei business group as a springboard to quickly accumulate a large amount of wealth; Only after the national strength of Youbei grows, the troops will go out of the East Customs and go all the way south, and finally win the Huayu Continent!

Horses cross rivers