Two days later, in the study of the Yamen in the center of the three cities, everyone gathered.

Guo Er, who was in the dust, said: "Lord Qi, Helian has summoned his headquarters, and more than 30 tribes under him, with a total of about 50,000 cavalry, and the grain and grass equipment seem to be ready to stop. ”

Guo Jia heard this and said hurriedly: "Oh? How many people are in its headquarters? How many people are there in the rest of the ministries? ”

Guo Erdao: "Hui Ergongzi, and the company's department has a total of about 20,000 cavalry, and the rest of the departments, the big ones are two or three thousand, and the small ones are five or six hundred, a total of about 30,000 people, and they plan to divide into three routes of army to the south." Xianbei Shan gathered 30,000 cavalry at the royal court one after another, and 10,000 cavalry on the east and west roads, and they were already assembling. ”

Guo Bin nodded, plucked a grass stalk from Guo Er's shoulder, and said, "Good job, go down and rest." ”

Watching Guo Er turn around and leave, Guo Bin turned back to Xi Zhicai and said, "Zhicai, what do you think?" ”

Xi Zhicai stroked his beard on his chin and said slowly: "In my opinion, except for the 30,000 troops led by He Lian himself, the rest are not to worry. ”

Guo Bin said: "Well, the day I want to come to Qianman to go back is the time to send troops to Helian." Once we have made the preparations, let's go ahead with the original plan. Qianman, you can let it go. The last sentence was said to Zhang Shiping.

Zhang Shiping said loudly: "No! ”

Guo Bin nodded, got up and said, "This battle is very important, all of you work hard!" ”

Qianman, who had dealt with the tax affairs, couldn't wait to go north out of the city with a dry of silk, tea, wine and other luxury goods from the Central Plains that day and night. Guo Tiantian had already followed Guo Bin's order all the way. The next day, a group of Han caravans and Xianbei trade teams in the city noticed that the gates of the central city, which had never been closed during the day, had not been opened since the morning.

In addition, there were suddenly many more city patrol soldiers wearing woolen military uniforms, armor and serious expressions on the streets. It seemed that overnight, the entire city was under martial law.

At noon, a shocking and inexplicable news flew all over the three cities outside the Saiwai as if it had grown wings: recently, Xianbei Dadan Yu will lead an army of 150,000 to attack the three cities outside the Saiwai.

At this time, the people began to panic, and the leaders of the Xianbei caravans, while instructing their men to pack the goods in the warehouse, gathered at the door of the trading house, inquired about the news from the official, and asked to leave the city; The behavior of the merchants in the Central Plains was much calmer, they mostly came to the yamen and directly asked to see Zhang Shiping and Su Shuang, but as for packing the goods and leaving in a hurry, it did not happen.

The fact that Guo Bin came to the three cities outside the Saiwai was not made public, and the objects that the merchants have been dealing with are Zhang Shiping and Su Shuang, and it is also because these two people are businessmen that the caravan leaders do not have too much psychological pressure. If you know that the famous Marquis of Yangzhai County and the county guard of Yingchuan in the Central Plains, who made great contributions in the extermination of the Yellow Turban Army, and at the same time is the most sought after by the world's major wealthy families, Guo Bin has arrived, and with their status, they are not even qualified to hand over the famous post. I'm afraid that the patriarchs of the major families behind him have arrived, so they are qualified to negotiate with Guo Bin in person, right?

Zhang Shiping and Su Shuang were ordered to stabilize the hearts of the people in the city, so they each led people to bring the leader of the Xianbei caravan and the leader of the Central Plains caravan into the hall of the trading house and the yamen respectively.

Looking at the Xianbei businessmen chattering below, Zhang Shiping raised his hand and pressed down unchanged, but he didn't see everyone stop. At this time, a burly Xianbei man with a meaty face stepped forward and said loudly: "Zhang Shiping! We came to your city to trade, and you dared to close the gates of the city and not let us out of the city, did you want to swallow our goods privately? You Central Plains people are timid and cowardly, but I don't eat you! ”

When everyone heard this, they were immediately excited, and they only heard someone humane: "Sha Hanlin is right, we Xianbei people are not easy to mess with!" ”

The name of this Sha Hanlin is naturally transliterated, he is the chief of a small Xianbei tribe, very close to the king's tent of Helian, and he is very dog-legged to Qianman on weekdays.

Zhang Shiping's eyes narrowed, and he secretly said in his heart: "The lord said that after Qianman left, there should be Xianbei people in the city to respond, but I don't think so." Now it seems that the lord is still far-sighted and thoughtful. Although the number of this Shahanlin tribe is small, this time it brought nearly a thousand people to trade, and it must be a problem to dare to be the first to come out at this time. I just don't know, who else is there besides this one on the surface? ”

Not to mention Zhang Shiping's battle of wits and courage with a group of Xianbei chieftains in the hall of the trading house, just the original caravan leaders who were brought into the yamen by Su Shuang.

The role of the yamen in the central city is almost the same as that of the Central Plains, and merchants only come to the trading houses on weekdays, but they rarely come. And the residents of this city, because they were the soldiers of the Yellow Turban Army who were captured in the Yellow Turban Rebellion, their respective property rights were very clear, and the city was under militarized management, so they rarely came to the yamen because of disputes. Therefore, the yamen of the three cities outside the Saiwai are much more leisurely than the county yamen in the Central Plains, and they are almost useless.

Although most of the leaders of the Central Plains caravans came for the first time, they were familiar with the arrangements in this yamen. The yamen of the three cities outside the fortress are the same as the county yamen in the Central Plains, and the layout is roughly the same. It is common for business people to enter the county government, not to mention that they are the descendants of the local wealthy families, and they are selected and entrusted with important tasks by their respective patriarchs.

Most of the elites of these major wealthy families in the Central Plains failed to study in the clan studies, so they followed the study to do business, so not only did they have extremely rich experience in business, but their knowledge was much better than that of many rotten Confucians in the countryside. They traveled from south to north and saw a lot of things, so when facing Zhang Shiping and Su Shuang, they were much more comfortable.

As Su Shuang entered the yamen, after passing through the main hall, he entered a rather wide courtyard. Surprisingly, however, there were more than a dozen large round tables in the courtyard, each surrounded by ten long-legged couches in simple costumes for one person to sit on.

At this time, people sit on the floor, and the furniture is low. Ordinary people sit on a seat or in a bed. In addition to mats and beds, some wealthy families will sit on couches.

In fact, the couch is a kind of furniture, in the Wei and Jin dynasties and even the Han Dynasty, it is divided into two kinds: the couch and the couch, the couch is wide and long, and the couch can only accommodate the body. Fu Qian said in the "Popular Text": "The person who couches is close to the ground." "The legs of the couch are very low, and there are those for one person and two people to sit together. It is lighter and easier to move than the couch, with a backrest behind it and leaning on both sides, so it is commonly known as a chair and also called a ring chair.

The long-legged chairs with handles that are common in the countryside in later generations and matched with square tables are not unseen by these well-informed business elites. Naturally, there was no such furniture in the Central Plains, but they often found this kind of light seat in the trading house opposite the yamen.

Because the trading line is full of people, both sides of the transaction have both Han people from the Central Plains, and Xianbei people from the grassland, if they are in accordance with the etiquette of the Central Plains, they have to take off their shoes when they enter the door, but it is inconvenient. Besides, the Xianbei people are vulgar and uneducated, they don't know the etiquette of the Central Plains, and most of them are the chiefs of the tribes, where can they be easily restrained?

Therefore, the trading house simply removed the mats that can be seen everywhere in the Central Plains, and after leveling the land, it was smoothed with the cement of Fulong Villa, which was not only clean and tidy, but also inexplicably high-end. Even the Xianbei people with mud and sand on the soles of their shoes can easily clean it with a broom, so there is a rare clean and extremely "high-end" place outside the plug in this era in the entire trading house.

The chiefs of the Xianbei tribe, who had never seen cement before, came in and stepped on the concrete floor under their feet, and were surprised to find that no matter how hard their feet worked, they could not rub the dirt under their feet as they did in a tent. It wasn't until the staff of the trading house in the city introduced them to cement that they suddenly realized: it turned out that this was a newly invented building material in the Central Plains.

In this way, the cement of Fulong Villa has found a large number of buyers. After all, staying dry in a tent after rain is both a high-end lifestyle and a way for chiefs to demonstrate their special status. What's more, the staff of Yangzhai Construction Co., Ltd. also promised to build them a wall as high as the three outer cities. With these walls in place, they are no longer afraid of steppe wolves that threaten the lives of herders at any time at night.

For this alone, Yangzhai Construction Co., Ltd. has made a lot of money, and they have not only opened the construction industry all over the Central Plains, but also expanded their business to outside the Central Plains. Of course, they knew that it was not approved by the imperial court to build a city outside the Saibei people, but there was not a word in the imperial court's decree that it was forbidden to build a city for the Xianbei people, so no merchant from the Central Plains had ever thought of this transaction before, or there was no such opportunity.

Therefore, for the construction of the city wall of the Xianbei tribe by Yangzhai Construction Co., Ltd., the merchants were tight-lipped under the entrustment of the patriarch of the clan, and no one dared to discuss this matter.

But they were overthinking. Although Guo Bin often does some things that cut first and then play, he is cautious enough to act. How could he hide such a thing as helping the Xianbei people build a city? As early as when he and Ding Yuan wrote a book to the Huns to build a city, he wrote a special excerpt to explain this issue to the Son of Heaven. In addition, the generals He Jin, Yuan Shao, Lu Zhi, Cai Yong and others, he also wrote private letters separately and analyzed this matter painfully.

The reason is simple, that is, to settle the nomadic horse-riding peoples in the steppe, so that they can have their own place to settle private property, and can develop and multiply in one place. In this way, they can be imprisoned in the land in disguise. If someone dares to rebel against the imperial court in the future, even if the imperial court sends troops to attack, they can find a place, right?

If we think about it further, if this method is popularized, the future wars with the grassland peoples will largely change from the field warfare that the steppe horse-riding peoples are best at to the siege warfare that the Central Plains people are best at. This alone made everyone in the DPRK and China applaud.

However, this kind of thing has not yet passed the court discussion, and it is impossible to blatantly promote it on a large scale. At present, the practice of the three cities outside the Saiwai is just a trial trial.