On January 24, after receiving Yu Qiuyu as a hostage, the merchants of Sakai and Ishiyama immediately began their activities. They have been waiting for this moment for too long. Every businessman who knows the inside story understands what a business opportunity lies ahead of them. It's not just a huge deal, it's possible to make a fortune that rivals the riches of a country, or even become a businessman like Lü Buwei.

During the confrontation between Akihei and the Miyoshi family, the merchants in Sakai Town and Ishiyama Town who knew about it were even more concerned about the outcome of the battle than Akihei Rain and Yoshiken Miyoshi. If Yu Qiuping loses, then all the power he promised before will also be in vain. At great risk, they spent a lot of money to hire ninjas, and sent back information from the front line every day, in order to be the first to know what was going on.

However, when the news came one after another that Yuakihei had won a great victory, Miyoshi Yoshiken had been captured, and that Yuakihei had taken control of Sakai Town in negotiations with the Miyoshi family, the merchants were not as happy as they expected. Because Yu Qiuping is now in full swing, even if the contract is broken, the merchants of Sakai Town and Ishiyama Town will have nothing to do with him. In order to ensure that Yu Qiuping fulfilled his previous promise, the merchants unanimously decided to terminate the supply of grain and grass to Yu Qiuping, and forced Yu Qiuping to sacrifice his son as a hostage.

After the supply of grain and grass was terminated, the tension of the merchants even exceeded the moment when Yu Qiuping and the Miyoshi family faced off. There is already a rumor of the news in Maple Leaf Mountain Castle, and the hardliners led by Amano Keitoku are pushing Yu Akihei directly into Sakai Town to solve the problem once and for all. The merchants of Sakai Town were frightened and hurriedly prepared to spend money to hire mercenaries such as Saga and Nerai to help in the war.

However, all this tension stopped with the arrival of the carriage carrying Yu Qiuyou. Yu Qiuping sent two sisters-in-law as hostages in one go, and also ordered the two platoons of Fukushima Yasunari and Mizenzaki Nakahide not to approach Sakai Town, which is enough to show sincerity. The relieved merchants could no longer bear it any longer, and immediately made public the agreement between Akihei and them, and auctioned off the seats in the Diet to the merchants of all.

·

As soon as the news came out, the whole of and even the whole world were shaken. The daimyo of each clan immediately sent their own envoys to find out if the news was true, and the samurai and allies of the Oda family, as well as Ashikaga Yoshiteru, went to Oda Nobunaga and Akihei to verify whether all this was true. After receiving an affirmative answer, the samurai, merchants, palace officials, samurai, and even commoners all over the world discussed this matter even more fiercely.

It was a shocking move to cede the power of the family to a samurai from a foreign family, and to give up the power to legislate and approve the budget to a merchant in exchange for support. Miyoshi Yoshiken was even more enlightened after learning the news, and finally understood why the merchants of Sakai Town would leave the Miyoshi family and support Akihei.

Yu Qiuping didn't expect the world's reaction to be so drastic before, and he was secretly lucky in his heart. Fortunately, he had already reported to Oda Nobunaga before, otherwise if this matter was revealed, Oda Nobunaga would definitely have to test him.

This is why Oda Nobunaga, the new human being, would agree to such nonsense - in other words, any traditional Japanese samurai would probably be angry at Yu Qiuping's deviant behavior and order him to cut his stomach immediately.

However, even Oda Nobunaga does not seem to be able to accept such a system. He sent an emissary to ask Yu Qiuping to take back power from the merchants as soon as possible after stabilizing the situation. Although Yu Qiuping promised Oda Nobunaga on his lips, he didn't think so in his heart.

After a brief period of consternation, the merchants of immediately recognized the great opportunity that lay ahead. This is the power of the legislature! Every year, the taxes, the customs duties, the transaction taxes, the passages, the markets, and all the laws concerning the lifeblood of the merchants, are all enacted by this Congress! If you can squeeze in, I don't know how much benefit it will bring. You can make laws that favor your own merchants to grow your caravans, you can encourage trade to get on the road, and you can even use this to create laws to suppress your competitors! And with the status of a member of Congress and the huge power that comes with it, many people will have to come to do things for themselves in the future.

They have repeatedly confirmed that this congress has the ability to compete with Yu Qiuping - with Yu Qiuyou as a hostage; The treasury of the Yuqiu family will also be controlled in Sakai Town, and if you want to use the money, you must get permission from the Diet; If Yu Qiuping really wants to come hard, it's a big deal to take this money and transfer it to the Sanhao family, so that Yu Qiuping can't eat and walk around.

After the reconfirmation, the rest of the merchants in Sakai Town, Ishiyama Town, and Town immediately went to Sakai Town in person or sent their cronies to prepare to bid for the 100 seats in the Diet with a huge amount of cash. In addition to merchants from the region, many merchants from Shikoku, Chugoku, Hokuriku, and Ono regions also flocked to the area. However, Yu Qiuping did not dare to be so ostentatious, and he politely refused foreign merchants, and only allowed Sakai Town, Ishiyama Town, and merchants in his territory to participate in the bidding. Although this caused others to complain, it was firmly supported by the merchants of Sakai and Ishiyama, as well as Hanoi and Izumi.

The bidding in full swing immediately began, which also opened Yu Qiuping's eyes to the financial resources of the merchants. The starting price of 5,000 yuan is not much, and it is not too much, but there are hundreds of merchants who can come up with this price for auction. In the rich, there must be many people with a net worth of more than 5,000 yuan. But it's surprising that there are so many people who can take out 5,000 yuan out of their funds to participate in the big gamble. Seeing that the auction price is getting higher and higher, and it has gone straight to 7,000, Imai Munehisa and others feel that things are not good. Although the money in the treasury can only be used with the permission of the Congress, it is also the Yuqiu family's money after all, not their businessman's own money, so it is not a matter of spending it like this. Imai Munehisa originally wanted to secretly buy those small merchants so that they would not increase the price again. However, it was the iron-faced and ruthless crow judge Amano Keitoku who sent him to supervise it, and he immediately confiscated the money that Imai Munehisa had taken to bribe, and warned Imai Munehisa that there would be no next time.

In desperation, Imai Munehisa, Tsuda Munechi and others united a large number of wealthy businessmen with the largest business and held a meeting. Once they reached a consensus, they gathered all the merchants who had come to bid and explained their plans.

In this auction, everyone should stop bidding maliciously, the bidding price cannot exceed 6,000 yuan, and those who are willing to take out 6,000 yuan will enter the next round of negotiation. Among this part of the people, in addition to the six people who have already been designated as having seats by Imai Munehisa, the 94 seats in the Diet were elected by lot. The rest of the people don't need to worry, as the constitution that will be enacted later by Imai Munehisa stipulates that the term of office of members of the Diet will be five years. Five years later, the original 94 people will have to give up their seats to those who did not make the lot again.

Although there were still many wealthy businessmen who were dissatisfied with this, six people, including Imai Munehisa and Tsuda Munekazu, united a large number of small businessmen who could not stand the auction to put pressure on them and force them to accept this condition. After casting lots under the supervision of Amano Keitoku, the 100-member Diet was elected, and the Yuqiu family also received a treasury of 600,000 yuan. The first meeting of the Diet was held in a large mansion dedicated by Munehisa Imai, which was later converted into the Diet Hall. And the first thing that Congress did after it was elected was to make good on its promise and enact the first law in the constitution – a five-year term for parliamentarians.

Immediately, Yu Qiupei sent Sena Shiyi as a representative and applied to the Diet for two budgets. The first budget is the maintenance cost of Maple Mountain City - all the previous building materials have been used to repair houses for the people, so that Maple Mountain City is still half crippled after being burned down. The second budget is the military budget of the Yuqiu family in the first half of the year. This included the cost of military training, food, ordnance production, and a temporary budget for Yu Qiuping to act cheaply. Together, these two budgets are nearly 200,000 yuan. When Sena reported it, even his voice was shaking - he had never spent so much money in his life.

People are in good spirits on happy occasions, these businessmen have just obtained the power they have dreamed of, and they naturally have a good impression of Yuqiu's family. In addition, they and the Yuqiu family are grasshoppers on the same rope, if the Yuqiu family is defeated by the Miyoshi family, the power of their parliament will be in vain. How can the power they have spent so much effort to give up so easily? Therefore, the budget that Yu Qiuping applied for for the first time was immediately passed by the Diet by a vote of 98 to 2. When Sena returned to Maple Leaf Mountain Castle with 200,000 yuan of money and goods in a carriage, he immediately fell unconscious due to excessive excitement, and it took him a long time to regain his senses.

·

Immediately after that, the Constituent Assembly of the National Assembly was convened. Amano presented them with the civil code that the Yuqiu family had formulated in the territory before, as a reference for the basic law. The members of the National Assembly basically followed the laws of the Civil Code, and did not change the powers of the deputy officials, judges, civilians, etc., too much. As for the respective powers of the three institutions of Yuqiu's family, the parliament and the court, they are basically in accordance with the rules left by Yuqiuping last year.

However, when the legislation came to the businessmen's side, the businessmen were in trouble. If they could, they would love to abolish every tax on merchants and not enshrine it in law. But if there is no tax revenue, the Yuqiu family's treasury will not be able to make ends meet. The Yuqiu family didn't have enough money, so they couldn't maintain the army, and no one could protect their power. After many days of repeated deliberations and weighing, under the advice of Imai Munehisa, the Diet abolished all tariffs in the territory of the Yuqiu family in a law so that trade could be free. However, tariffs on imports and exports from Yuqiu's territory and neighboring countries remain the status quo. And there is even a subtle increase in the transaction tax on goods.

After several days of discussion, Imai Munehisa and Tsuda Munekazu gradually established their authority in the Diet and had a tendency to become merchant leaders. However, they still face a number of challenges. Sueyoshi Sunshiro and others from Ishiyama seem to be trying to enact a tax law for Imai Munehisa, Tsuda Mune, and the wealthy Sakai merchants who own a lot of property, which causes Imai Munehisa, Tsuda Mune, and other wealthy people to panic and have to hastily enlist other small merchants and ask them not to vote for Sueyoshi Sunshiro's proposal.

In Congress, no matter how rich you are, a seat is a vote. If Sueyoshi Sunshiro had proposed a tax clause for wealthy merchants, many small businessmen would have swarmed to vote in favor. Imai Munehisa, Tsuda Mune, and they couldn't afford it even if they had money - because Amano Keitoku explicitly forbade bribery.

However, Imai Munehisa and Tsuda Munekazu quickly figured out a solution. In the current Diet, there are more than 40 seats for merchants in Sakai Town, and more than 20 merchants in Ishiyama Town and the rest of the country. Imai Munehisa and Tsuda Munekazu spread the word that if Sueyoshi Sunshiro insisted on proposing a clause against wealthy merchants, they would unite with the merchants of Sakai Town and other places to formulate a tax law for Ishiyama Town. This scared Sueyoshi Sunshiro from Ishiyama Town so much that he immediately lost his voice.