For the people of Youbei who are in the midst of hunger and cold, have no tiles to cover their heads, and have no overnight food at home, what kind of imagination such as enriching the people and strengthening the army, chasing the Central Plains, unifying the Huayu Continent, and achieving hegemony for thousands of years is just a dream of flowers in the mirror and the moon in the water; Even if you can really make progress step by step and achieve your goal, it will definitely be many years later.

Therefore, the first step in the plan of the Youbei people to unify Huayu is how to survive this winter.

Whether it was the imperial officials who stood on top of the court and were the masters of the house, or the common people who built the foundation of the court and tried their best to thrive, they could no longer endure such a dilemma. The attitude of the Beiyan people towards them is like a leper dog who is hungry and punishes their own family! If they feel the slightest dissatisfaction, they will tightly close the gate of the East Customs, easily curb the only trade route, and completely lock the living space of the Youbei people. With such a powerful and cost-free sanction method, can Beiyan still need to send troops to the Northern Expedition? It's better to treat these northern barbarians as hens that can lay eggs, cows that can produce milk, exploit and extort at any time, and cut a piece of meat if there is nothing to do, which is more cost-effective.

Lin Siwei, the holy hand of rejuvenation, is the best at prescribing the right medicine in his life. After she fully figured out the predicament of Youbei, she wanted to exchange the natural materials such as furs, herbs, and wood that were embargoed and embargoed by the Northern Yan people and could not be bought by the Mobei people through sea sales and secret smuggling, and replaced them with the living materials that Youbei urgently needed at the moment; And with the help of this dark chess, he completely fought a lose-lose war of attrition with the Northern Yan people; With this battle, he completely broke away from the trade blackmail of the Northern Yan Dynasty.

Therefore, the whole meaning of the establishment of the Youbei Business Group at the beginning was just a seed; However, this is also a seed of life and freedom that can bring hope and future to the people of Youbei.

Yan Qi, the king of Youbei, who is like a family, secretly endorses and guarantees it; Li Xuanyu and shamanic shamans reorganized production; Lin Siwei, a woman from Nankang, is responsible for the formation of the Youbei Business Group team and handling all external transportation matters. It is in this way that with the strength of the people of the whole territory of Youbei, there is a small shop called "Huayan Firm", which is officially opened for business on the East Gate Street of Guangling City.

On the opening day, the big proprietor of Huayan Firm, who was responsible for cutting the ribbon for the two lions, was the Great Dharma Protector who had just stepped down from shamanism. This owner is not only young and outstanding, but even his name is a bit bookish, called Zhou Shutong.

Time flies, Baiyun Canggou, a small Huayan business, with the secret assistance of the power of the country on Youbei Third Road, has developed extremely rapidly; Within a few years, they gradually encroached on most of Nankang's leather market through a stable supply of top quality and low price, and gradually expanded their business scope based on this. A little-known new brand has completely gained a firm foothold in Guangling City, where wealthy merchants gather and gentry are entrenched. After that, with the trade route opened up by Zhou Shutong, the Youbei Third Road, which had suffered from the strong wall and clear field for many years, also got a little respite, and soon entered the golden age of rapid development.

However, Zhou Shutong's name is not bad, and he is a handsome, intelligent, decent and promising young man, but why did he get such a title as "Lao Kui"?

Speaking of which, his not-so-elegant nickname has a direct relationship with the Gusu Shen family! The ankle bone of Zhou Shutong's right foot was broken by Shen Gui's biological father, Shen Ang and Shen Yanqing, the second son of the Shen family!

Wealth can bring more choices to people, and it is even more sympathetic for Zhou Shutong, who was born as a clergyman. Originally, he was just an abandoned baby picked up from the wild by an old shaman, but he was born with psychic powers, shamanic disease, and was able to worship the famous shaman's disciple under the Bagh wizard.

The shamans of the Northern Shamanism, before Li Xuanyu's reform, were absolutely not allowed to enter the city where the common people lived. According to the rules of the ancient religion, as a shaman, the main duty of a shaman is to help all living beings in the world, coexist with each other, and not just serve the human family. In view of this, shamans are responsible for determining the size and quantity of the fisherman's annual catch, as well as monitoring the amount of timber that the logger can cut each year, and the amount of prey that the hunter can get. And even among the heirs of the king of Youbei, it is up to the shaman to decide which princes are qualified to become the spokesmen of the heavens.

In other words, at least before Li Xuanyu succeeded him, there was no difference between the shamanism of Youbei Sanlu and the Mobei shamanism that was already a mess of scattered sand and was about to be completely destroyed.

Therefore, even if he studied under the shaman Baji, Zhou Shutong also grew up in the difficult environment of climbing ice and snow, eating and drinking. It wasn't until Li Xuanyu ascended to the throne that Ba Ge was forced to retreat to the position of elder; At that time, Emperor Yan Qi of Youbei, in order to balance the forces within the shamanism, he pushed him, a young and seriously underqualified disciple of Bag, to the position of the great protector of the shamanism.

However, before the chair of the Great Protector was hot, he was sent to Guangling City of the Nankang Dynasty to carry out a secret mission. From Yan Qi's point of view, although the Third Road of Youbei was already in danger, he should not have such an idea of balancing several forces and playing with the emperor's mind at this time; But if this plan can be implemented, after all, it is also related to the future economic lifeline of Youbei Third Road; As the initiators of this plan, Li Xuanyu and Lin Siwei are sisters who have been friends for eight worships and depend on each other for life and death, how can they not fortify in advance?

However, he only forcibly promoted one of Bagh's disciples; As for his move, Li Xuanyu also gladly accepted and expressed his full support; Although this move is only symbolic, at least on the surface, the balance between shamanism and the imperial power of the Yan family has barely reached a point.

The reasons and thoughts in the hearts of these high-ranking people will not be explained by the young Zhou Shu at all; And for him himself, being able to go from a little-known little wizard to the number two person of shamanism, and shoulder all the future of the three roads in the north, is naturally a great wealth that he can't even dream of!

At least in the first few years, Zhou Shutong was still a promising young man who cherished his family and country and always missed his hometown fathers; However, after the days were long and his horizons were broadened, Zhou Shutong developed a strong sense of self......

Just imagine, what would be the result of sending a poor boy who had been shuttling through the mountains and forests all day long and had never even seen a few ingots of silver to suddenly be sent to Guangling City, which is full of flowers and beauty? What if he was given enough freedom of movement and a great deal of wealth at his disposal?

Facing the depraved life of drunken gold fans, facing the bright light of gold mountains and silver seas, except for Shen Gui, a cub who sells Ye Tian and is not distressed, what child from a hard background will not be tempted? The pervasive extravagance is like an invisible bone-scraping steel knife and a bottle of colorless and odorless deadly poison, which will quietly seep into the blood veins from every pore of the skin and go straight to the depths of the bone marrow......

Zhou Shutong's nature is not bad, and from his early work as a wizard, he has long developed the good qualities of hard-working and perseverance; Otherwise, even with the secret support of Youbei Sanlu, he would not be able to build a family business in the Nankang Dynasty on his own. However, those murderous poisons that corroded his mind, and those soft and sharp bone-scraping steel knives still slowly wore away his initial firm belief; The young talent who originally made a heavy oath to seek living space for Youbei Sanlu finally became a real businessman with the passage of time, a businessman who only had interests in his eyes and no faith.

It is an extremely painful thing for a merchant to transfer his hard-earned money to others and squander it; In the first few years of his mentality, Zhou Shutong, who had experience in shamanism, was still worried about Li Xuanyu's seemingly nonexistent supernatural powers; He was afraid that if he was disobedient, he would be killed by the great shaman who was far away in the three roads of Youbei, and he cursed and killed Liwei through various demon methods such as helping the beggar, praying for the spirit, going out of the horse, possessing himself, and controlling the soul.

If you don't have life, no matter how much wealth you accumulate, it will be cheaper for outsiders after all, right?

Until one day, a friend in business, for Zhou Shutong, who didn't think about tea and dinner, introduced a foreign monk with deep-set eye sockets and a towering nose; After several contacts, the foreign monk not only succeeded in convincing the originally extremely devout shamanic believer, the wealthy man Zhou Shutong, by performing various so-called miracles, but also changed his long-lived devout beliefs. Through a special medicine, he was cured of the epilepsy that he had fallen from the root of the disease since he was a child, which was called shamanic disease......

And the name of this particular medicine is Ahibiscus cream.

After converting his beliefs, Zhou Shutong unilaterally stopped the continuous blood supply to the three roads in Youbei; And most of the huge amount of public money that originally belonged to the common people of Youbei also flowed into the pocket of the Heavenly God Sect in the form of donations; In exchange for pieces of hibiscus ointment, he used it to purify his faith and consolidate the effect of healing.

Although Youbei Sanlu quickly launched an assassination and revenge operation, with the silver in his hand, he was able to hire countless people from the rivers and lakes who came to Nankang to beg for a living, as his own escort force; In addition, the two places are separated by thousands of mountains and rivers, and the frequency of assassinations is not much higher, and over time, Zhou Shutong has completely forgotten about shamanism.

About a year or so passed for him to live like this.

Early one morning, the rich man of Zhou, who had just consolidated the curative effect, ushered in a long-time business partner and came to the door to have fellowship in person. This person's surname is Shen, the second oldest in the family, with a single name and a character Yanqing. This person's surname is this Shen, who is the Gusu Shen family who has monopolized the fabric business in Huayu's mainland for many years!

Shen Ang, who came to visit in person, is also an important person that Zhou Shutong wants to make friends with but has never been able to get!