Listening to Han Qian's detailed account of the rise and fall of the powerful forces of the old and new clans in Shu in recent decades, Feng Yi thought of the death of the Feng family, smiled bitterly, and said with emotion:

"Alas, my father didn't figure it out in the first place, otherwise he wouldn't have caused a catastrophe!"

I think that when the third prince just left the palace and went to the palace, he prepared to build the Dragon Bird Army, the Xinchang Marquis Mansion and the Late Red Mansion, and tried his best to come up with forty or fifty thousand dollars and grain every year, but it could be regarded as maintaining the Dragon Bird Army.

At that time, the people around the three princes were living extremely cold, and Han Qian was eager to break a copper in half to spend it.

Winning the opportunity to move to Deng Xiang and resist the Liang army, Han Qian even did not hesitate to open a money shop in the name of the Linjiang Marquis Mansion to subsidize the lack of military funds, and raised a total of 50,000 or 60,000 yuan before and after.

Who would have imagined that the Feng family's secret cash, including gold and silver ingots, copper coins, jewelry, and so on, in addition to hundreds of thousands of acres of grain farms, hundreds of warehouses, shops, and a fleet of as many as three or four hundred ships, was as high as nearly three million, which was enough to cover a year's income of the Great Chu Imperial Court?

If the Feng family had bet on the three princes at that time and were willing to take out three or five hundred thousand yuan of money and grain, the three princes would ascend the throne in the future, and the Feng family's status would not be under the Xinchang Marquis Mansion.

Of course, Feng Wenlan didn't bet on the three princes, but it didn't mean that Feng Wenlan was stingy, at that time, few people really saw that the three princes had a sign of soaring!

"Do you still have a grudge in your heart?" Han Qian asked.

"Resentment is naturally there," there were no outsiders indoors, Kong Xirong didn't know where he was sent by Han Qian to do things, and Feng Yi didn't need to hide anything in front of Han Qian, and sighed with emotion, "But when I mention the disaster suffered by the Feng family now, I just feel this in my heart, and I don't imagine the difficulty of the nouveau riche clan accumulating family wealth." ”

Han Qian laughed and said, "No matter how much land you occupy, it will take time for food to grow out of the ground. ”

"Also, the princely family, the prince who controls 100,000 acres of grain fields, can collect a rent of 100,000 stone of grain a year, and the annual Chengdu will be calculated, and it will only be 30,000 or 40,000 yuan when converted; After deducting extravagant expenses, how much can I save each year? Feng Yi said with a smile, "In the first battle of cutting the feudal domain, destroying the Ma clan, the three princes used the name of purging to collect Heng Yuelang and Shao Heng Prefectures, and gathered millions of wealth and goods in a short period of time, this is a very special case after all - there is another very key reason, just like you just said, the Hunan Provincial Prefectures have experienced only a handful of wars in the past hundred years, which are far lower than those in Jingxiang, Sichuan and Shu. However, when it comes to the way of cargo colonization, really speaking, what you do in Xuzhou can be regarded as the real way of cargo colonization! ”

Han Qian saw that Feng Yi could more or less understand the name of Xuzhou, and secretly felt that he had really changed from the past, and said: "I know the matter of Xuzhou in my heart, but I don't have to say more outside. ”

Han Qian would rather treat Xuzhou as a remote and barbaric place than pay attention to it.

Feng Yi nodded, signaling that he would not go forward, and he would not know the depth and severity.

His Feng family can become a huge rich man in Jianghuai, in the final analysis, it is also from the late period of the previous dynasty, the ancestor of his Feng family served as the Jianghuai salt and iron transshipment envoy, taking advantage of the control of Jianghuai's financial lineage, controlling the trade routes of Jianghuai County, with a fleet of three or four hundred ships and hundreds of warehouses as the foundation, buying cheap and selling expensive, so as to have such an accumulation.

Thinking that Han Qian took Xuzhou as the foundation, he initially tried his best to form the Xuzhou Boat Gang, so that the bulk goods of Chenzhou and Xuzhou could lead to Jinling, Junzhou and other places, in the final analysis, he took the same path as the Feng family back then, and there was no fundamental transcendence.

In the first two years, the scale of the Xuzhou Boat Gang seemed to be not small, but the foundation was far from being comparable to the Feng family.

Even so, the Xuzhou Boat Gang also accumulates three or four thousand yuan a year.

It's just that Han Qian didn't go to be a miser, and every surplus he had was either to redeem the Xi clan or subsidize the shortage of military supplies, and at the same time to continuously expand the scale of Yangtan Water Village and New Xi Village in Wufeng Mountain, expand the scale of weaving yards and shipyards, and build ironworks.

If Han Qian was limited to this, it would be extremely difficult to catch up with the Feng family.

After all, even if it is a monopoly on the trade between the Chenxu prefectures and the prefectures and counties in the upper reaches of the Yuanjiang River and the Central Plains, the scale is extremely limited.

Every year, 20,000 or 30,000 quintals of tea and medicine, tens of thousands of barrels of tung oil, 450,000 stone grains and grains, and a small amount of ivory, Hepu pearls, gold, silver, and precious metals and other goods produced by the southwest are traded, and the total annual trade scale is only 100,000 or 200,000 yuan.

Han Qian did many things in Xuzhou, and what really made him different from the Feng family was that in the past two years, in addition to building water conservancy, cultivating wasteland, and carrying out the land tax reform, he had concentrated on the development of weaving, ironmaking, mining, shipbuilding, poultry and other industries, so that the bulk goods that could be exported locally in Xuzhou in the past two years alone were worth two or three hundred thousand yuan.

At present, the cotton planted in Xuzhou has exceeded 100,000 acres, after the spring, the planting area will be doubled, and due to the high price of cottonseed purchase in Xuzhou, so that Chenjing Sishao and other states, the cotton planting area in the past two years has also been greatly improved, which will promote the development of Xuzhou weaving industry at a faster speed.

Feng Yi was promiscuous before he was twenty years old, but when the Feng family caused trouble, he fled to Xuzhou with Han Qian to avoid trouble, and his mind gradually opened, and he could see that what Xuzhou has done in the past two years is the place that is really stronger than the Feng family, but in the eyes of the world, Xuzhou may still be just a corner of the wilderness, right?

Han Qian didn't say it, Feng Yi could also see at this time that Han Qian helped the townsmen to contact Sizhou through Luobanan, and the biggest benefit to Xuzhou was to open up the trade route to Qianjiang through Sizhou, and then to Sichuan and Shu.

Located in the territory of Sizhou, the trail at the southern foot of Wuling Mountain is extremely dangerous, and it is more difficult to walk than the Xuefeng Mountain Post Road at this time.

Compared with the desolation of the road, the fierceness and unruliness of the Wuchuan (Qianjiang) bureaucrats are the main obstacles to this trade route.

If it is really possible to expel the Wu people from both sides of the Qianjiang River, or completely surrender, this trade route does not expect to be able to transport such huge materials as 350,000 stone grains and grains every year, and every year there are 100,000 or 200,000 horses of Qianyang cloth, which is only 450,000 catties.

These are the ways of Han Qian's predecessors, right?

Now the Marquis of Qingjiang thought that by controlling the mutual market between the two countries in his hands, he could force Han Qian to comply, but he didn't expect that Han Qian would help the Xianghou to pass through the Banan, and after opening up the trail at the southern foot of Wuling, the goods from Xuzhou would enter Shu, which actually depended on the relationship between Han Qian and Wang Yong, the Marquis of Changxiang.

Of course, if the Han family wants to avoid the mistakes of the Feng family, they basically still have to take Xuzhou in their hands, right?

Thinking of this, Feng Yi turned around and asked:

"I heard that before you went to Xuzhou to plan to cut the domain, Your Majesty and His Royal Highness promised you that the Han family would lead Xuzhou, but this is indeed the case?"

"There's no point in thinking about these things at this point!" Han Qian said indifferently, seeing that Feng Yi was puzzled, he couldn't explain much for the time being.

Han Qian looked forward to the time when he set off to escort the Qingyang County Lord back to Great Chu, the situation in Jinling could barely be maintained, and there were no earth-shaking changes.

Just, is this possible?

…………

…………

The tall and majestic Chongwen Hall is like a giant beast squatting silently in the depths of the imperial city.

Coming out of the Chongwen Palace, passing through a road sandwiched between the thick palace walls and with a little moss on the edge after winter, walking more than 200 steps to the north, entering a courtyard with several large locust trees and crape myrtle trellises in the corner, which is the main courtyard of Anning Palace.

It is said that it is a palace, and the Anning Palace is taller and more spacious than ordinary houses, but it cannot be compared with the three main halls built on tall pedestals.

In the end, the imperial city is still a little narrower, and most of the area is still occupied by the three provinces, six ministries and nine temples, as well as the Privy Council, Wude Division and other ministries and yamen, and the territory left for the palace is even smaller.

In the years since the founding of the country, the wars in various places have not stopped, the treasury has spent a lot of money, and if you want to expand the palace city, there is no money and food, and on the other hand, there are long-built mansions and mansions, and if you want to demolish them, the movement is very large, and it will also disturb the people's grievances.

The compromise method is to outside the imperial city, or even outside the city of Jinling, to renovate several gardens that were confiscated from the Shengzhou Festival at that time, and build a palace for visiting spring and autumn, and you can live for two days every other day to change your mood.

However, in recent years, Empress Xu often feels physically inconvenient, and she spends her time in the palace every day, unwilling to move around, don't say that the imperial city goes to the palace to relax, and even rarely walks out of the Anning Palace.

It is difficult to get a big sun today, the weather is not so cold, Xu Hou walked out of the yard, went to the plum garden next door, and saw dozens of plum trees that were spitting out rice grains like flowers and bones - the eunuchs and female officials of Anning Palace were full of strangeness, I don't know how Niangniang could have such a good Yaxing today.

Zhao Mingting and Niu Gengru came out of the Privy Council and entered the palace through the side door, and saw that Xu Anlan, the commander of the prince's east palace guards, and Yang Yuanwu, the prince with a sick face, were already standing quietly in the corner of the plum garden, and Xu Hou was stepping into the plum garden and breaking off a plum branch, leaning to the end of his nose and sniffing lightly.

Empress Xu's face was covered with a thick layer of lead powder, as if she wanted to grab the youth that had long disappeared from the void, but her face was even more stiff, but her face could vaguely distinguish the appearance of her youth.

"I've seen Niangniang and His Royal Highness the Prince." Zhao Mingting and Zhu Gengru stepped forward to salute.

Yang Yuanwu likes to be playful, indulges in wine, his body has always been weak, his face is sallow at this time, his eyes are also cloudy, he can't help yawning when he stands in the garden, and he doesn't know which woman's belly he wasted too much energy last night, so that he was so embarrassed when he was just summoned into the palace.

However, Yang Yuanwu was no longer successful, and when he learned that the city was full of voices of abolition and reconstruction, he was also so frightened that he couldn't possess his body during this time, and he insisted on going to the palace every day to ask for peace, and went to the Privy Council to follow Niu Gengru and Wen Duqiao to learn how to deal with national affairs.

Seeing Zhao Mingting and Niu Gengru coming over, Empress Xu discarded the newly picked plum branches.

Because of her age, Empress Xu's eyes that were as beautiful as a secluded spring were inevitably a little cloudy, but in an instant, an indescribable sharp aura was revealed, which was terrifying: "What is new in the Chongwen Hall today, I just heard that Jingzhao Yin Han Daoxun entered the palace early in the morning today?" ”