This woman is not beautiful, and she has the temperament of a lady. Entering the wine shop, although she wanted to restrain herself, she still couldn't hide the anxiety on her face.

The woman was in a hurry, and seemed to pin all her hopes on this unknown charlatan, even if it was raining, she had to get off the boat and find someone to ask her about the matter.

"Heading north, that's a general direction, actually...... It's better to go to the capital, does the young lady have relatives in the capital? Let them help find out, maybe there is news......"

Old Xu Tou's words were not too constructive, but for this woman looking for her father, it was tantamount to a guiding light.

Shen Xi shook his head and continued to walk in the direction of his own pharmacy in the west of the city.

On the way, he was also thinking about the woman: "This woman's father may have been secretly arrested by the imperial court, even if she can find it, life and death are unknown, wouldn't it make her happy?" ”

Finally returning home, Shen Xi entered the pharmacy, because it was raining outside, there was no customer in the pharmacy.

Xie Yun'er was talking to Zhou, and when she saw Shen Xi coming in, Zhou's scolding came first: "It's getting more and more unruly, I used to know how to say hello to my mother when I went out, but now it's good, find someone to come back and let me know and run away?" ”

Shen Xi looked helpless: "Mother, it's not me who took the initiative to go, it's Su Gongzi who has to pull me to the cruise river." ”

Zhou was going to scold, but suddenly remembered something, and asked curiously: "Han Wa'er, you make it clear to your mother first, what is the cruise river?" ”

Xie Yun'er pursed her lips and smiled, and took the initiative to explain to Zhou.

When Zhou knew what was going on, he waved his hand disdainfully: "What's so interesting about cruising on the river?" It's better to be swaying on the boat than to stand on the ground. Han Wa'er, go in and study, go to school tomorrow, after this exam, just wait for next year's exam, you know? ”

Shen Xi picked up the umbrella in the back hall and returned home in the light rain. Wu Zizi thought about the official woman who was looking for her father.

The woman's father, even if arrested, should not have been convicted, otherwise his family would have been sent into exile, or he might have some background behind the official. The imperial court didn't want to make a big deal out of the way.

Lin Dai didn't have such good luck, her father was arrested by Jinyiwei, and even her family had to be displaced with her.

It rained heavily for several days.

In the past few days, Shen Xi initially went to the school to attend classes, but after too much rain, the roof of the school began to leak. Feng Huaqi can only let students go home for self-study.

Because of the continuous heavy rain, the shops along the streets of Fucheng are basically closed, although the pharmacy is half-open, but the business is very light, occasionally people who suffer from acute illness will come to ask for medicine, Zhou and Xie Yun'er are more often to sit down and chat.

But Hui Niang still had to be idle, not only to deal with the affairs of the Chamber of Commerce, but also to contact the government to discuss the details of opening a silver account in the surrounding prefectures and counties and the branch library of the Chamber of Commerce.

As the rains continued, the water level of the Ting River skyrocketed. Along the lower reaches of the river, prefectures and counties have been affected.

Originally, the river section around Tingzhou Mansion was quite peaceful, but the heavy rain kept falling, and the government began to gather people to go to the river to fight the flood and provide disaster relief, and the chamber of commerce also contributed money and efforts.

In the past, when there was anything to do in the government, the first thing that came to mind was to donate to the gentry, but with the rise of the Tingzhou Chamber of Commerce, the government seemed to have found a more convenient way.

The government needs to use a large number of sand bales to find someone to repair the embankment, and it also needs to find someone to dig and transport, and there are idle lifu on the side of the chamber of commerce. The government directly transferred manpower, did not pay wages, and directly let the chamber of commerce take care of itself.

In order to fight the flood, the lion opened his mouth and immediately asked the chamber of commerce for two thousand taels of silver. At the same time, he extorted more than 1,000 taels from the gentry in the city, totaling more than 3,000 taels of silver.

Although the Chamber of Commerce made a lot of profits, it was still a little unbearable to suddenly take out two thousand taels of silver.

Hui Niang has been anxious for a few days, on the one hand, she is anxious about the continuous rainstorm, water and drought, and the traffic has basically come to a standstill, and more importantly. She had to raise the two thousand taels of silver for the extra expenses.

“…… The government wants our lives. Or...... Let's just dissolve the Chamber of Commerce, it's not enough to be angry all day long, as long as these officials open their mouths, we have to run around, but we didn't see a few officials go to the river embankment, but they go to each house to urge donations diligently. ”

Zhou's face was gloomy.

The Chamber of Commerce wants to pay 2,000 taels, but due to the purchase of real estate and the running of schools, boat dealers and carriage and horse dealers, the activity funds in the account of the Chamber of Commerce are now only more than 2,000 taels, and the next step is to pay the cost of sand bags and the wages of the lifu, plus the daily operation of the carriage and horse shops and the boat dealers, this silver does not dare to move too much.

However, if you want to donate money from within the chamber of commerce, the shopkeepers of each shop will shirk in every possible way.

Originally, if there was an accident in the city, the family would give a few dollars or one or two taels of silver at most, but now it's good, the Chamber of Commerce was established, and when there was a natural disaster, the Chamber of Commerce made a big deal, and many people were indignant. In their opinion, since the trouble was caused by Hui Niang, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Hui Niang had to bear it herself, and Hui Niang should also take the lion's shoulders.

This fully illustrates the nature of the Chamber of Commerce, which can share prosperity but not suffering. There is money to be made together, and when there is calamity, one is clearer than the other.

Xie Yun'er didn't have any complaints, after all, she didn't have any shares in the Chamber of Commerce, especially the silver number. She asked softly, "What did my sister decide to deal with?" ”

Hui Niang sighed: "I'm going to ...... And he took out of the silver trumpet, two hundred taels of silver, and filled the vacancy for the time being. In the past two years in Fucheng, I have indeed made some money, and I should give back to the people. ”

Shen Xi sneered beside him: "I don't think it's giving back to the people, it's giving back to those corrupt officials, right?" ”

"Count me in." Zhou complained, but she was not ambiguous at this time.

It is understandable that the government has no money in front of us and has no money, but the problem is that the government is taking this opportunity to collect money.

Although Gao Mingcheng has no notoriety for governing the place, he is not a clean official, otherwise where would Gao Mingcheng have the money to make some connections and pave the way for him to continue to be an official?

Shen Xi can also detect the clues from Gao Chong's generous shot, a prefect, the annual salary is not more than 100 taels, his grandson goes to the Jiaofang Division, and the casual shot is ten taels, saying that he is a Qing official, then there is a ghost.

In these years, officials wanted to collect money, mainly from bribery and filial piety from their subordinates, as well as tribute from local gentry and merchants, and also from some people who asked for money from the government after encountering problems.

If you want to start with corruption, you basically start from the treasury, and the government covets grain and materials from the large and small warehouses in the city every year, which is an extremely large amount, and the imperial court arranges local warehouses in order to cope with the famine. It has become a key target for moths.

At present, Gao Mingcheng is greedy for a sum of money through natural disasters, and then he will step down, and the warehouse will be replenished, and he will be greedy for a sum of money...... At that time, Gaoming City will be in the name of "natural disasters" in Tingzhou Mansion in recent years. Reaching out to the chamber of commerce and the gentry in the city to ask for money to replenish the treasury, there are many unspoken rules and tricks.

What remains in the treasury after the previous one moves out is simply a bad debt, and the next one will fill it, and the next one will use this as a reason. Reach out to the local government to ask for money, and then sell all the materials allocated by the imperial court, and then leave the deficit for the next term.

Again and again, even if the imperial court knew that there were so many shortcomings below, it was very difficult to reform, mainly because the imperial court lacked the courage and courage to reform.

When Hui Niang heard Shen Xi's words, her face was a little helpless: "Even if you know that the official government will fill your pockets?" Merchants are at the bottom of society, and the government is the sky, and I only hope that the people along the river will be fine......"

Hui Niang is kind-hearted, knowing that she will be slaughtered this time. She gritted her teeth and recognized.

This made Shen Xi deeply realize how important it is to have an official in the family in an official-based society. If he can really enter the imperial examination in the future, even if he is just a fictitious official with no real power, the local government will be a little jealous, who dares to open his mouth and ask the chamber of commerce for money?

In the end, Hui Niang admitted her loss and requisitioned more than 1,000 taels of silver from the silver number, plus the silver raised by the Chamber of Commerce, a total of 2,000 taels.

Originally, Hui Niang was in a hurry to send the silver to the government, but Shen Xi had a different opinion:

“…… Maternal aunt. You handed over the silver at such a one-time time, and the government will definitely continue to ask for it for various reasons when they see that we are so happy to sell the silver. Even if we want to send it, we can only send it in batches. It is better that the quantity is not uniform every time, and it is not an integer, and there are both scattered silver and copper plates in between, so that the government will feel that we have worked hard to get together the silver, and they will not make it difficult in the future. ”

Hui Niang felt that Shen Xi's words were very reasonable.

In fact, although the government knows that the chamber of commerce makes money. But people who are not in business do not know how profitable all walks of life are.

In the eyes of those people in Gaoming City, even if the Chamber of Commerce makes more money, how much can it earn? It is estimated that Gao Mingcheng's staff also carefully calculated an account for him, how much the Chamber of Commerce can profit, let him ask for it, it is best to get four or five percent of the Chamber of Commerce's profits, so that Gao Mingcheng not only has the "political achievements" of controlling the flood, but also can make money, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone.

But those who are officials can't imagine that the Chamber of Commerce has made quite a lot of profits in this more than a year. In the case of the silver number alone, after almost a year of lending, the total share capital has expanded from the initial 3,000 taels to 10,000 taels, and each share can make a profit of more than 10%. With Hui Niang and Zhou's fifty percent of the shares in the silver number, they made a net profit of more than 5,000 taels of silver in this year.

And that's not even counting the profits of printing workshops and pharmaceutical factories that have been generated by monopolies.

The silver number is not only a money shop for silver and copper plate exchange, but also has some functions of a pawnshop and a modern bank.

In the case of rolling profits, the money earned by the silver trumpet is very lucrative. If all the money lent out below is recovered, Hui Niang can almost be regarded as the richest man in Tingzhou Mansion, and from the time she started to run the Chamber of Commerce, it has been less than three years.

On the government side, as Shen Xi expected, only a small part of the silver sent was used to build dikes and relief for the victims, and more was used for the people in the government.

Originally, if this rain had passed like this, Gao Mingcheng and his subordinates would indeed be happy.

However, after the rain around the capital city of Tingzhou stopped one after another, the heavy rain in the Wuyi Mountain area in the upper reaches of the Tingjiang River plummeted, and with the flash flood, the water level of the Tingjiang River did not fall but rose.

After another two or three days, the rain came to the whole territory of Tingzhou again, and the river flooded in a few days, not to mention the farmland and villages outside the city, even the capital city of Tingzhou was also affected, the water poured into the city, and the water level continued to rise from the initial knee-high, to the waist-high back.

Gao Mingcheng was completely panicked now.

He originally felt that this flood was a gift from God, so that he could not only get political achievements before leaving office, but also help him continue to choose a place to become an official, and also make a lot of money.

Unexpectedly, this flood came too violently, almost ruining his career dream.

**************

PS: I solemnly recommend my friend to send thoughts on the new book "The Return of the Fairy World" (ISBN: 1003374314): The soul of the immortal world generation of giants in the sky is scattered, and a wisp of soul returns to the original body on the earth, Tang Xiu was surprised to find that 10,000 years have passed in the fairy world, and only one year has passed on the earth.

Link: http://www.qidian.com/Book/1003374314.aspx (To be continued.) )