On the way, Gao Xun said:

"The matter of Jin Xuedi's mission is now in full swing, and noble businessmen from all over the country are flocking here, and soon the special envoys of various countries will also be here, you must be prepared."

"Are you afraid that they won't be able to rob it?"

"Although it's not enough to rob, but with such a huge benefit, everyone wants to make a profit. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and next time I don't know what year or month it will be, and all forces will definitely not let go of such a great opportunity, so it is better to be careful. ”

"Don't worry, Jin Xuedi's money bags are not in the hands of my Xianguo, which is what we say, in the final analysis, there must be something that someone wants. And Mooney is not a good stubble, his talent and learning are not inferior to me, and now he is an envoy to the Central Plains for the Jin Xuedi people, and he will never suffer. ”

Money is undoubtedly an excellent touchstone, but the good and evil of mortal nature have nowhere to hide in front of money.

At this time, King Xian and the others were excited in the center of the Imperial Garden, as long as they thought of a lot of gold and silver, they were in high spirits.

"Lu Aiqing, where is the Marquis of Yongxing?"

"Back to the king, Yongxing Hou just passed Zhengyang Street before, and now most of them have entered Yongtai Gate."

"yes, this time flies so slowly......"

King Xian paced back and forth, and Jiang Hai, who was nearly sixty years old, looked forward to his daughter-in-law like a frizzy young man. Zhao Xun'an sat aside, twisting his white beard and drinking black tea, the old dragon bell was leisurely, and he was not the slightest tempted by gold and silver.

However, the prince was guarding outside the pavilion, looking left and right from time to time and taking out a telescope to take a look, and when he saw Bailiyan's figure shaking, he didn't wait to look carefully, and the prince hurriedly came to report:

"Father, the Marquis of Yongxing is here."

"Quick, go with the widow."

"Obey my father."

Everyone got up and hurriedly went out to greet them, Baili Yan walked like flying towards each other, and saw the prince of Xian and stepped forward to salute.

"See the king."

Xianwang Long Yan Dayue, reached out to help:

"Hehaha...... Aiqing is quickly exempt. ”

"King Xie."

King Xian stepped forward and hurriedly asked in front of Bai Liyan:

"Aiqing, can you find out the details of Jin Xuedi's mission?"

"The envoy Mooney is very strict-mouthed, and nothing is said about gold and silver, but he has already understood that this time there will be a huge transaction other than herbs, and according to this, there will not be too little gold and silver."

"Hehaha...... Then go into the temple and speak. ”

With King Xian into the palace, everyone took their seats, and Baili Yan was sitting on the right side of King Xian. After everyone was seated, Bai Liyan said:

"This time, the Jin Xuedi Mission, most of the herbs purchased by our Xian country, but the quantity of our country is far from enough to supply the needs of the mission, so we still need to purchase medicinal materials from other vassal states."

"Then how much share can my Xianguo get from the medicinal herbs?" King Xian asked.

"Middle- and lower-grade medicinal materials can be divided into three, and middle- and high-grade medicinal materials can be divided into four, and no matter how much they are, they can't be supplied."

"That's less than half of that."

King Xian seemed to be too little, and Bai Liyan added:

"The quantity of middle- and high-grade medicinal materials is scarce, and although sixty percent is given up, the other countries may not be able to make up sixty percent of the total amount to supply the Jinxuedi people. Therefore, the herbal medicine trade should be there next year or the year after, but the number will not be too much, when our country opens trade, the Jin Xuedi people will trade directly with our country, and the insufficient part will be purchased by the Jin Xuedi people from other countries. ”

"How much gold and silver can you earn?" King Xian asked.

"Equivalent to the price of our Xianguo, my country can have 12 to 130,000 inches of silver."

"That's a lot." Lu Gao interjected, and then added: "At least the gold and silver lost by the treasury this year can be settled." ”

"What Lu Aiqing said is extremely true." King Xian said affirmatively, but he was not satisfied with the current situation: "But it would be too much to lose money." Yongxing Hou, now that the country's nobles and businessmen are flocking here, and within a few days, the envoys of various countries are competing to meet the widows in the hope of getting a piece of the pie, how is Aiqing going to deal with it? ”

"I wonder how the king and your colleagues will deal with it?"

Bai Liyan asked rhetorically, and Gao Xun answered:

"At present, it is not known what kind of goods the Jinxuedi people are coming to trade, so we have consulted with the king for several days, and we are ready to trade first with the Jinxuedi people with valuable goods, and then trade the cheap goods, and finally divide the shortfall to the nations. What does Yongxing Hou think? ”

"I can't make up my mind about this matter for a while, but I know very well that Mooney is going to buy all the herbs and ship them to the south before negotiating any other deals, so that the nations will be forced to trade herbs with him as soon as possible, and the price will be much lower. At the same time, it is beneficial for the Jinxuedi people to gain more time to alleviate the plague in the country.

At the same time as the herbal medicine trade, Mooni will definitely put more information about the goods in the city of Chenling, so as to prepare for the large-scale transaction in the future, so the minister suggested that the herbs should be mobilized as soon as possible to supply the Jin Xuedi mission, before that, the king can be in close contact with the envoys of various countries on the one hand, and on the other hand, the domestic merchants and nobles from all over the country will be hung out, so as not to open their mouths and share too much profit. ”

"I'm afraid this is not appropriate, Yongxing Hou." The prince said, and then said: "Close contact with the envoys of other countries, but to keep aside the domestic relatives and businessmen, how do the people of the country view it." ”

"Well, what the prince said is exactly what the widow meant. As the saying goes, fertilizer and water do not flow into the fields of outsiders, and if Yongxing Hou does this, the people will inevitably be resentful, which is indeed inappropriate. ”

"The king, it is not the injustice of the ministers, but the retreat is for the sake of fairness and earning more benefits."

"Oh, how do you retreat?" King Xian asked.

"Imagine the king, at present, most of the silk and tea in my Xianguo are in the hands of the nobles of the four counties of Beihai, Jiangdong, Suidang and Dongyuan, and the treasury every year except for the fixed amount of tribute, the rest are purchased with the treasury and sold in designated markets, and most of the income is not in the treasury. If silk merchants from all over the world join hands to raise the price, Mooney will definitely go to other countries to buy, so the loss will be our country. ”

Silk fabrics such as silk, Luo, silk, satin, brocade, silk, yarn and so on are still precious fabrics, and each horse is traded in gold.

Except for the Liang State, which implemented the monopoly of production by the government, the rest of the countries all implemented the aristocratic concession production, and over time, the nobles continued to multiply and differentiate, and the nobles who raised silkworms, burned silk, planted mulberry, and woven silk became more and more divided, and finally formed the production of complete privatization of the aristocracy, which was outside the jurisdiction of the government for a long time.

The root cause of this reason lies in the weak centralized power of various countries under the feudal system, and the greater rights of local magnates, coupled with the early division of the Liang State into princes and princes, there are even more feudal monarchs, but all nobles have the right to produce controlled products, and over time the formation of institutionalized unspoken rules are tacitly acquiesced by the monarchs of various countries.

Of course, it is not without the idea of recycling, after all, silk fabrics are still an important commodity in large transactions at present, and recycling them to monopolize production will undoubtedly increase more revenue from the national treasury.

But the recycling of each privilege is an institutionalized change that inevitably leads to a backlash from stakeholders and vested interests.

Silk fabrics as a bulk trade of goods, its profits are extremely high, the resulting privileged class, the power of the money at the same time also has money, the power of the money collusion between officials and business, in order to consolidate their own interests, the hand must be stretched to the core of the right, so there are always interest groups in the DPRK and China, and even the military generals themselves are from the silk aristocracy, come forward to obstruct the reform.

Therefore, there are very few countries that have succeeded in recycling silk fabrics, so the imperial court can only open its own weaving factories to raise silkworms, burn silk, plant mulberry trees, and have a market share of meals.

After Bai Liyan became the chief farmer, she tried to expand the production of the government-run weaving workshop several times, but in the end she was unsuccessful, and the problem was the climate.

The land for silkworm spinning in the whole country is monopolized by the traditional aristocracy, and the silk spinning and weaving must have a cocoon, and the nobles monopolize most of the climatic areas for silkworm farming.

If the official wants to make silk, it can only spend money to buy it, and the forced expropriation will inevitably cause a backlash, so the government-run weaving workshop is seriously under-operated, until the situation has improved after the discovery of the golden silkworm, but the traditional silk fabrics still control the vast majority of the market share.

Jin Xuedi people came from afar, thousands of miles back to the mainland, the cost of delay and loss on the road is huge, it is bound to shop around, not only the quality but also cheap, and at the same time use the time to trade herbs as soon as possible to find out the price of Xianguo, for its subsequent transactions to provide reference.

Those nobles and businessmen only thought that the Jin Xuedi people had a request from the Central Plains, and wanted to take advantage of the prestige of the Xianguo to sit on the ground and raise the price, but they didn't know that they couldn't wait for the price to sit on the ground, and Mooney might secretly negotiate a deal with other vassal envoys through the royal guest at any time, and it was too late to cry at that time.

"The minister thinks that it is better to kill the spirit of the powerful and rich businessmen in various places, wait and watch the movements of various countries, and then make a unified transaction at that time. If it is allowed to trade at this time, it will inevitably form an unfavorable situation in which multiple parties reduce prices with each other. ”

"Will it be traded by other countries first?" King Xian asked.

"There will be some, China's main production of silk, Luo, silk, silk, yarn five, the quality of the silk fabrics of the Liang country is better than our country as a whole, and it is the monopoly of the government weaving, its price is slightly lower, the quality is superior, followed by the silk fabrics of the country of Qi are similar to our Xian country, and then the two countries of Yan and Jin, the worst is the country of Changsun, so the main competitors of our country are Liang and the country.

The brocade and satin fabrics cannot be produced in our Xianguo, mainly in Zhiguo, Jin and Weiguo, which depends on what kind of silk fabrics the Jin Xuedi people are ready to trade. What Yichen saw outside the customs back then, Jin Xuedi people were more interested in brocade, satin, and silk, followed by silk, and Luo, yarn, and silk were dispensable.

If we want to win a better price, our country can not sell too early, nor too late, and must unify the sources of goods to sell together, so as to obtain the maximum benefits. ”

"But each family may not obey the arrangement of the imperial court."

The prince was worried, and Zhao Xun, who was old and serious, answered:

"What the prince said is that the silk merchants of Xianguo have their own forces, and the silk merchants of Dongyuan County have Luhou and Xuanting Town, and there is no big problem, and the rest of the silk merchants in Beihai, Jiangdong and Suidang are quite powerful, and many aristocratic silk mills have emerged in the capital county over the years, infiltrating into the Lingling, if the goods are unified in the name of the imperial court, they must be worried that the imperial court will use this as an excuse to collect the silk trade. However, if you allow them to trade alone, they will definitely suffer a loss, and this situation is very difficult to solve. ”

"Zhao Shuai, please rest assured, the reason why Yan killed them was to let the silk merchants know that without the imperial court, they were lambs to be slaughtered, and they only had the life to suffer."