Shuangyu Port is probably the world's largest "international free trade port".

Although the ports of Yuegang and Quanzhou in Fujian Province and Guangzhou in Guangdong Province are large, they are not so "free", and other ports cannot even catch up with the pirate den of Shuangyu.

Walking in the bazaar of Shuangyu, Xu Shiyang met many foreign merchants along the way: Fuso, Goryeo, Ryukyu, Nanyang, Siam, Cochin, and Champa are commonplace, and there are many maritime merchants from Tianzhu, Pars, and even Daqin (claiming to be the Orthodox Empire) further west, and Francois and other countries further west.

What's even more surprising is that Xu Shiyang even met several ...... of the Western barbarians who claimed to be Varangians.

"What a national hodgepodge."

Xu Shiyang looked at the black slaves kneeling in a vacant lot on the corner of the street for sale, and couldn't help but whisper to himself:

"Maybe I should bring those Tartar slaves over and sell them?"

Now, the Xu family still has hundreds of slaves of various ethnic groups in their hands, and these people are not of much use in the Xu family - as soldiers, Xu Shiyang does not trust them, and only selects a few people with better performance to be included in the trap soldiers; As producers, they are even more inadequate, especially those tartars, who are very inefficient in arriving land, and they cannot interfere with what little industry they have.

Rather than using the captives inefficiently, it would be a good deal to buy them for supplies.

The Tartars are famous, and pirates should be willing to buy a few decorative façades, right?

Xu Shiyang thought as he walked, and after passing those black slaves, he saw a grain store with a large façade, so he walked in directly.

This is a grain store belonging to a wealthy family in the south of the Yangtze River, according to Luo Haigou, this wealthy family has produced several jinshi, and now there are family members who are officials in the Great Zhou, and the background is very hard.

When the Li pirate group rose, this family contributed a lot from it and was one of the shareholders, so now the food supply of Shuangyu Port has always been controlled by this family.

Xu Shiyang went in and asked, because it is far away from the land, Shuangyu does not produce grain, so the price of rice is very high, and the brown rice of medium quality is sold for 2,400 yuan per stone here, and if it is purchased more than 1,000 stone at one time, the price can be reduced to 1,800 yuan, which is a little more than two and a half yuan.

In the past, the Xu family fleet directly bought Hunan rice down the Yangtze River, and the highest price was only one and a half stones, which was the result of counting the taxes and dots along the way.

"Monopoly trading is good profit." Xu Shiyang's helpless evaluation.

He does have a lot of money now, but food is a necessity, and if he pays an extra 7 or 800 yuan for each purchase, his little foundation will not last long.

After all, you can't expect to grab a ship every time you go to sea.

Then he walked into a hall opened by the Tianzhu people, the owner of which was backed by a powerful prince in Tianzhu and was one of the main agents of the Li Group's trade with Tianzhu.

Like all countries other than the Great Zhou in this era, the Tianzhu people came to the Great Zhou to trade, basically in a sad situation of only buying but not selling, and the loss of precious metals was very serious.

Therefore, the shopkeeper in charge of this merchant house was very welcoming to any trade that could balance the expenses, and Xu Shiyang was able to order 50,000 catties of fine Tianzhu saltpeter from him at a relatively low price - of course, if he wanted to get these saltpeters, it would be at least next year.

The goods that can be directly obtained are 5,000 pieces of Tianzhu homespun cloth, which has good toughness, but poor suppleness, and cannot be sold at all in Dazhou.

However, Xu Shiyang did not have the capital to be picky, and his troops could not even supply tents.

In today's Qi Province, any textile is a good thing that can be used as a general equivalent, and if Xu Shiyang can provide uniform for the soldiers of the new army, he can be sure that the social status of the soldiers will be greatly improved immediately.

Leaving the Tianzhu Merchant House, Xu Shiyang had to avoid the gathering place of the Pars and Fusang people, so as not to cause unnecessary conflicts, and walked directly into the Li Group's Merchant House, which is the largest in the entire Shuangyu Port.

Surprisingly, Li Feihuang himself was in the merchant hall, and Xu Shiyang bumped into her as soon as he entered the door, which made the latter feel that the other party was waiting for him here.

"What Xu Gongzi likes, it's really strange." Li Feihuang said with a smile: "There are a lot of saltpeter, and there are Tianzhu native cloth that can't be sold, I have a batch of good lake silk here, do you want to collect a little bit of Xu Gongzi?" ”

She knows the business she just negotiated.

"Maybe later, but I don't have that much money right now." Xu Shiyang replied with a wry smile: "If the girl has cheap food, I can collect some." ”

"How much money can I earn from food?" Li Feihuang shook his head with a smile: "We don't do grain business. ”

If you are in the grain business, with your advantage in controlling the sea, combined with the rice producing areas of Southeast Asia, the Li Group can even influence the political situation of the Great Zhou. Xu Shiyang sneered.

Of course, this pirate group does not have such great ambitions, nor does it have such a long-term vision, they are now based on the sea, control the sea power, but have not yet learned to use the sea power for maximum benefits.

It is said that their boss, Li Feilong, has been seeking the imperial court to recruit peace, and for this purpose, the Li Group has spent no less than five million yuan in wealth in the past ten years, and has not succeeded so far.

The pirate group in China is like this, the biggest wish is to "kill people and set fire to be recruited", which is very strong, but pathetic with little political ambition.

Perhaps, they themselves really don't believe that pirates can usher in a new era.

"What else do you want to buy besides food?"

Looking at her appearance, Li Feihuang seemed to want to sell something to Xu Shiyang:

"We have good tea and tobacco here, you can't enjoy it over there, right? Why don't you buy some and go back? ”

"We fought in Jiangbei, which is different from your Jiangnan maritime merchants."

Xu Shiyang found an understandable reason and explained:

"For us, the priority is to survive first. The second is to gain the power to defeat the Tartars. As for tobacco, alcohol, sugar and tea, it is indeed a good thing, but we really don't have the leisure to enjoy it. ”

"As a leader, you hold tens of thousands of taels of silver, and you don't enjoy it?"

"If I covet a moment, I will never have the life to enjoy the prosperity of the world." Xu Shiyang shook his head and said, "I admit that I have tens of thousands of taels now, but they must all be used to strengthen the strength of the army." ”

"If the girl really wants to sell me something, I want grain, coarse cloth, steel, copper, lead, saltpeter, and brimstone, and I will not refuse to come, and the rest will be free."

"All these things you buy, they don't have any oil and water." Li Feihuang said disappointedly.

The Li family's largest foreign trade business was silk, accounting for about half of sales, and the rest was occupied by porcelain, tea, sugar and some spices that were special to China (such as rhubarb and ginger).

What Xu Shiyang hoped to buy on a large scale was indeed not on the Li family's main sales list.