The economy is inseparable from politics, and businessmen are inseparable from the government.

The scholars, who are in the reserve of officials, are the most sensitive group to national politics. And businessmen, because of their own interests, also put their noses into the political circle all the time, feeling the air that exudes various smells.

As a supplier in the royal industry chain, Song Xianzhu's warning to the Guo brothers is certainly not groundless. In fact, he has a well-founded basis.

The two brothers, Guo Shiyu and Guo Shixiang, left behind their grand blueprint that had not yet taken shape, and fled to their nest like a fly.

They didn't know how Master Shu learned that Guo Shiyu had gone to school, and they didn't know why his father, who had always been kind and wealthy, actually sacrificed a family method that he had never used.

However, Song Xianzhu's reminder has made it clear that after the Sichuan chaos, it has calmed down on the surface, but the undercurrent below is still surging. Perhaps one morning, there will be another large-scale bloody storm.

The two brothers hurriedly corrected the caliber on the road and thought of a rhetoric. Since you want to drag the Shu Wangfu into the water, it is inevitable to be politically consistent with the Shu Wangfu and the Sichuan government. And Master Shu, as the prince of the world, naturally has to maintain a high degree of consistency with his old man.

The two brothers, you said a word, came up with ideas and solutions, and decided to make a big slap and open every pore of the old man.

At this time, Guo Shiyu secretly rejoiced, if he had fought with the palace in Renshou County for the thousands of acres of uncultivated land at the beginning of last year, how could he get the treatment of Master Shu coming to warn him today?

Since Master Shu cares about contemptible, doesn't contemptible have a great chance?

……

The gathering of hundreds of students in Wen Weng's stone room did not immediately cause much ripple on the streets of Chengdu Prefecture.

On that night, Chengdu Mansion was as prosperous and lively as usual.

At the beginning of the lanterns, pedestrians are weaving, and the lower lotus pond in the south of Daci Temple enters the most lively time of the day.

Zou Zhenggang, the head of the Dongchang stall who was captured in Yesanguan, wore an ordinary blue arrow sleeve with a short sleeve and a blanket on his shoulders, pretending to be a hiking merchant who traveled the mountains and rivers, and crowded into the crowd.

Sometimes he stopped by the pool to watch, and sometimes lingered among the dazzling goods of the roadside shops. A silver-inlaid horn comb, a Juanxiu women's fan, and a cardigan with longevity pattern buckles and gold threads have become his harvest tonight.

Are you buying another thing for that naughty bastard kid at home? Zou Zhenggang stood at the door of a toy store, hesitating, and the proprietress who was a little too enthusiastic had already seen his thoughts, and stepped out of the door to stop him:

"Ahh This guest officer, look at you coming all the way and not buying a favorite thing for the little boy to go back? The mother, wife and daughter are all there, and your little son should say that you are partial! ”

There is no feeling of silver and money skewers in the blanket, which makes Zou Zhenggang very unaccustomed. To put it bluntly, it is a kind of insecurity of going out without money.

Zou Zhenggang is not without silver, on the contrary, there is a lot. It's just that the silver turned into a few pink bills and hid them in the sleeve pockets, and they didn't have any sense of existence.

Thinking of the pink banknotes, Zou Zhenggang thought of Ye Sanguan and the arrow sores on his legs. He silently calculated the total amount of today's expenses in his heart, and with a dash of his heart, he walked into the toy store with his feet up. Since the powder money is the so-called errand fund issued by the Shu Wangfu, it is not spent in vain, and it is spent in vain!

Windmills, drums, porcelain figures...... Zou Zhenggang looked at the past one by one and carefully checked the workmanship and quality. The appearance and preferences of his son flashed in his mind.

"Since it's a little boy, I must like that thing to fight and kill!"

The proprietress was afraid that she would let go of the business, so she followed Zou Zhenggang closely like a maggot on the tarsal bone, and kept saying words that teased his desire to buy:

"Guest officer, please see, here is the Cloud Chang's Green Dragon Glaive Knife! This is the best-selling, Sun Wukong's golden hoop stick and Zhu Bajie's nine-tooth nail rake! Oh, there is also an embroidered spring knife worn by the brocade guards around the emperor......"

The word "embroidered spring knife" suddenly triggered Zou Zhenggang's sensitive nerves, and his eyes instantly flashed with a fierce light, startling the proprietress who was vigorously selling.

"Oh, it turns out that Childe is a little showman!"

The proprietress quickly reassessed the situation and made what she thought was the most correct estimate.

"The little boy will definitely glorify his ancestors and the title of the gold list in the future! There is a black yarn dotted honeysuckle hat with the champion in the store! There is also a red (Note 1) round-necked robe and a plain silver belt worn by the champion prince! Oh, and the red brocade that the champion wore obliquely on his shoulders when he paraded the street! ”

The outfit of the full-body champion is not bad.

Zou Zhenggang looked at the round-necked robe and emerald silver hat unfolded in the hands of the proprietress, imagining that his son would be dressed like this in the future, wearing red and hanging colors, riding on a tall horse, and walking through the streets and alleys of Beijing...... As his Lao Tzu...... No, you must go to the Dongchang Yamen outside the Donghua Gate......

Zou Zhenggang thought about his son's high school champion, his fierce gaze gradually softened, and the corners of his mouth pulled out a little smile.

There is a door! The shrewd proprietress immediately understood that she had pressed the right treasure. She stuffed the things in her hand into Zou Zhenggang's outstretched hand, and was about to boast about herself, but the big man in front of her had already asked the price.

"Not expensive, not expensive! From the hat on the head to the shoes on the feet, a complete set sells for only five taels of silver. The proprietress said lightly.

"What? Five taels? Not expensive? Are you robbing? Zou Zhenggang's eyes widened and he stared at the proprietress fiercely.

Speaking of silver, the proprietress has lost the humility of Fang Cai now.

She grabbed her clothes and hats, from the design materials to the stitch sewing, from the far-reaching meaning to the practical significance, and seriously tore up with Zou Zhenggang. The proprietress had a pair of flying mouths, and Zou Zhenggang's fists with thick knuckles suddenly unloaded, and she had already raised a white flag in her heart.

But Zou Zhenggang is not an ordinary person after all, he will not be so willing to admit defeat, he has to find a reason to win the love back. His eyes glanced at it, and saw that a glittering copper-glittered carriage on the shelf was very exquisite, so he said to the proprietress that he didn't want this set of top clothes, and replaced it with that toy.

Of course, Zou Zhenggang deliberately made a mistake. He weighed that a small toy was not worth a few dollars, so he pretended to buy a cheap item to make the proprietress feel heartbroken. Zou Zhenggang estimated that the toy would not live more than a quarter of an hour when it reached his son's hands.

Unexpectedly, Zou Zhenggang once again misjudged the market. When the proprietress heard that the guest officer wanted to buy a copper carriage, the corners of her eyes were crooked, and she praised Zou Zhenggang again and again for being a master of goods. While instructing the guys to wrap it up quickly, she spread the handboard in front of Zou Zhenggang:

"Five hundred taels!"

What the? Five hundred taels? Isn't it red copper, but pure gold?

The proprietress replied to Zou Zhenggang angrily: "Listening to your foreign accent, it seems that you are from Beijing." Our store is a century-old brand, only do honest business, never deceive!

To tell you the truth, this carriage model is made of the carriage of the prince and Miss Luo, and every part can be disassembled, but the dragon and phoenix ornaments are removed.

Whoever buys it can enlarge it and do it, and the fortune is one hundred thousand five hundred taels!

The bastard little ancestor of my family, just to catch a glimpse of this carriage, waited outside the Guangzhi Gate for three days and three nights! After returning home, I stayed up all night and did it for half a month!

So, for five hundred taels of silver, that's too cheap. If you weren't a merchant in Jingshi, let alone five hundred taels, even if it was one thousand taels, I wouldn't dare to sell it! ”

Zou Zhenggang finally bought a set of champion clothes for his son.

A carriage model worth five hundred taels, Zou Zhenggang couldn't afford to buy it if he wanted to. He swapped his coat for one shoulder, signaled to the people behind him that there was something wrong with the toy store, and went on shopping.

Han Wendou of the Shu'an Bureau asked Zou Zhenggang to go fishing on the street every day, and he also pretended to be very cooperative and dispatched every day. I found a store that stole the idea of the prince today, so the cost of shopping is worth it.

Zou Zhenggang felt at ease and continued to move forward slowly.

The sky is getting darker and the lights are brighter. The visitors of the lower lotus pond rubbed shoulders one after another, as if this was not in the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, but in a certain peaceful and prosperous era.

Zou Zhenggang's mind compared the depression and desolation of Jingshi with the bustle and prosperity of Shudu, and he felt a burst of emotion in his heart. Just then, something on the wall around the corner suddenly attracted him. It was a seal written in a white ash pen:

"Drag".

According to the agreement when he left Beijing, seeing the word "drag" means that the other group asked him to meet, and it was within two or three miles of the neighborhood.

Zou Zhenggang's professional instinct was revived in an instant.

Instead of looking left and right, he quickly swapped his coat back and forth, signaling to someone behind him again. After doing all this, he still maintained the rhythm of shopping just now, walking unhurriedly.

It's just that at this time, his gaze has shifted from the dazzling goods and beauties on the street to the target he is looking for. That's still an ordinary but very difficult to write seal character:

"Howe".

……

It was dark, and I couldn't see my fingers. There are no stars, no moon, and no reference in the sky to indicate the way forward.

A shadow runs along the winding and undulating path of the mountains, sometimes leaping into the grass, sometimes crossing the stream. The sound of heavy wheezing was distinct in the darkness of the night, as if an old cow was draining the embers of life to plough the endless earth.

That shadow was Chen Shida, who hastily escaped from the small courtyard under Baihe Mountain.

Chen Shida refused the errand to return to the hunting village on the grounds of foot disease. But the trees want to be quiet and the wind does not stop. In the afternoon, the bandit leader who had gone to Yazhou in the morning returned with joy.

Seeing Chen Shida, the leader was a little twisted.

The leader said that he had been captured somewhere in Qiongzhou City, and later learned that it was the battle of the Qiongzhou Guard. When they entered, there were no less than a thousand officers and soldiers on the field, in addition to a large number of captured strong men. Seeing that he was about to join the army, the leader took the risk of turning himself in and reported to his home.

The officer was a fat man with a loud voice, and he was taken aback at first, and then escorted him to the rear office for interrogation. The two then reached a preliminary agreement: the Hunting Village bandits accepted the recruitment of the Qiongzhou government and went out of the mountain to be reorganized into a section of the Qiongzhou battalion. Chen Huainian, the second leader, and Chen Huaijin, the fourth leader, first temporarily received the official position of deputy thousand households, and then reported to the imperial court, conferred official titles, and rewarded meritorious deeds.

The leader said to Chen Shida that since the defeat of Jiangkou and the slaughter of Chen Village, the brothers have accumulated anger in their hearts. Later, the new battle was a great victory, but the two leaders were not allowed to chase the defeated army, nor were they allowed to occupy the mountain and set up a village. The brothers nested in the deep ravine and ate chaff vegetables, and only relied on selling the captured knives, guns, guns and cannons in exchange for some silver and food, so they carried resentment against the two leaders.

Now that Qiongzhou is confronting the royal government, it is a good opportunity for the brothers to avenge the revenge of Chen Village. He hoped that Chen Shida, as the nephew of the head of the house, would persuade the two masters to let them conform to the will of the army and not do stupid things that block the road.

The leader is also a disciple of the Chen family, so he naturally speaks politely, but Chen Shida knows that it is not as simple as he said.

Today, the people in the cottage are divided into two factions, most of the Chen children are eager for revenge, and those with foreign surnames want to change the poor living conditions. A few people had pinned their hopes on Chen Huainian, but when Chen Huainian became terminally ill, this hope was gradually shattered. Now that Chen Huainian has become a lonely person, it is difficult to protect himself, otherwise he would not be in a hurry to send Chen Shida away.

If the news that the leader returns to the mountain to recruit An, then it is likely to be a fire merger, and the loser must be his second uncle.

It seems that there is no other way to stop the fire of the hunting village, save the second uncle and the fourth uncle, except to kill people and destroy their mouths, and send back false news.

After weighing the two, Chen Shida agreed and promised to wait for his foot pain to be relieved, and then return to the hunting village with the leader.

That night, Chen Shida wanted to kill him while the leader was asleep. But the boss is not a fuel-efficient lamp, and he has long been guarding against Chen Shida. Chen Shida's two fists were invincible to his four hands, so he had to flee.

The road was dangerous after dark, and Chen Shida got lost soon after he came out of the mountain. However, he thought that as long as he ran far enough until he ran out of the boundary of Qiongzhou, he would always find the soldiers of the palace.

He stumbled and stumbled along the way, only on his way, until he was tired and faint on the mountain road.

The next day, when the sky was dark, a team of farmers who had gone up the mountain to work finally found this young man covered in blood. They carried him back to the village and called the head of the village according to the rules. Under the order of the head of the village, everyone stripped Chen Shida of all his clothes and searched them. Soon, someone found a silk silk in the mezzanine of his clothes.

The knife disassembles the sutures. As soon as Zhuang Tou saw the words on the envelope, he immediately put it into his arms.

"This letter is for the prince, no one can read it! Prepare the horse, I want to report to the county seat immediately! ”

Soon, the county village reported to the head village. The general village quickly ordered that even people bring letters to Yazhou for interrogation.

Chen Shida didn't know that he ran in the opposite direction in the dark night. He did not go to Chongzhou and Chengdu, but went to the base camp of the Shu Wangfu in southern Sichuan, Mengshan Tea House in Mingshan County.

Note 1: 皁, later written as soap. 皷色, i.e., black. It can be guessed that the soap of ancient times was black, and it was a luxury.