Although there was a drought in the Great Song Dynasty this year, the situation was not as severe as after Zhao Zhen ascended the throne and before the change of the Yuan Qingli, and the arid areas were mainly concentrated in the north, and the further south the disaster was, the lighter the disaster.

Li Buqi held the Police Department in his hand, and through the data collected from various places, he knew very well that this year's Great Song Dynasty was a structural food shortage. The reason why it is said to be a structural food shortage is because, on the one hand, there is grain in the south and no grain in the north; On the other hand, the big landlords in the north occupy large tracts of land and can build some water conservancy projects, or the land is close to the river, and the crops can be watered, and the drought is not serious, so they have food at home, but the small landlords and yeoman farmers are unable to dig ditches to divert water because they are all fragmented plots, and the drought is serious, and there is no food at home.

This structural shortage of grain was at a time when grain merchants and large landlords seized the opportunity to seize the opportunity. Their routine is very simple, that is, they join hands to hoard Juqi, and when the government releases grain for disaster relief, they hoard it according to the price of the government, or even collude with internal and external parties to take the government grain at a low price, and when the government runs out of grain, they will speculate the price of grain to the sky. At this time, the common people could only sell their land or borrow usury to buy sky-high grain, and before the disaster subsided, the common people's land and even the population fell into the pockets of the big landlords and usurers.

In doing so, the big landowners and usurers seriously undermined the stability of the northern part of the Great Song Dynasty. Moreover, there were often people in the court in the families of large landowners, and although they occupied a lot of land, they could pay less taxes through various means, so the taxes of the Great Song Dynasty continued to decrease. This seriously undermined Li Buqi's plan to expand the territory, so Li Buqi had to give them some color to see and warn them not to go too far.

But fighting these big landowners requires careful planning. These people are all local snakes, and they have spokespeople in the court, if there is a mistake, it is not a simple matter of shame, but it may be bitten by these guys. Therefore, although Li Buqi wanted to do it for a long time, he has been holding back and waiting until everything is ready this year.

At present, Li Buqi has the Investigation Bureau of the Police Department in his hands to grasp the data of grain, silver coins, and field products in various places, and the Qianzhuang and the Cotton Chamber of Commerce and the Maritime Trade Association have provided millions of yuan in silver, and their tentacles reaching out to various places are also responsible for raising grain, the Fu'an Dart Bureau has raised water and land transportation vehicles and provided support all the way, there is the armed escort of the Police Division, there is the Maitreya Sect secretly collecting information and serving as a scapegoat, and there are economic experts like Mao Zhichun with a team to coordinate in the center, and what is lacking is the cooperation of storage facilities and local officials. But when Li Buqi persuaded the emperor to use his own way to help the disaster, these problems were solved.

The emperor ordered all the grain trucks and ships of Fu'an Qianzhuang under the control of Mao Zhichun to be issued with special flags, and the local government should facilitate the storage, transportation and sales of these grains, and the government should leave empty granaries for their use. In this way, even if the southbound official ship sees a grain ship with a flag on the canal, it has to avoid the road, and even if the local government does not sincerely give convenience, it does not dare to make things difficult on the surface, not to mention that there is also Bao Heizi sitting in the police department to keep an eye on it.

But even if there are such good conditions, Li Buqi does not dare to be careless, because this is the enemy of the big landlords in the whole world. These big landlords see that the tools they plunder have been scrapped, and it is strange that they do not fight with you. There are many big landlords in the court, and they don't dare to go against the righteousness on the surface, but there is no problem in picking bones in the eggs. Therefore, Li Buqi put the target of these grain delivery in Hebei first. Although Han Qi and Li Buqi in Hebei do not give up, the county officials are not as good as the current management, there are more officials from Qingyuan Academy, and they can help a lot.

As a result, with the continuous flow of grain from the south, it was transported into Cizhou and Xingzhou in Hebei. There is a predator here - the Han family in Xiangzhou, and now Han Qi, who came out of the Han family, is serving as the deputy envoy of Hebei Jingluo to pacify.

The Han family in Xiangzhou is also close to covering the sky in the local area, and most of the good land in Xiangzhou is in the name of the Han family and relatives, and there is no land to buy in Xiangzhou, so they can only stretch out their hands to several neighboring states and counties. Of course, the Han family is not the only predator in this area, they are all waiting to take advantage of the food shortage to buy land, and even take advantage of the famine to drive the people directly from the land. But these big landlords suddenly found themselves with one more competitor - Fu'an Qianzhuang. Fu'an Qian Zhuang not only provides low-interest loans, but also sells rice and grain at below-market prices.

In the past, they had a way to deal with this kind of outsider, but this time it was different, they were taken care of by the magistrate, and protected by the forbidden army and the police department.

It doesn't matter if there are magistrates and forbidden soldiers to protect them, but now all the landlords who often read the newspaper are afraid of the police department. As the saying goes, it's good that a strong dragon doesn't suppress the head snake, but the two officials in Liyang Junzhou and Tangzhou are also head snakes, right? And people even dare to make the county order, that's also the most powerful type of local snake, isn't it the same for the police department? confiscated the family property, beheaded those directly involved, and the rest of the family were all assigned to Leizhou and Salmon Island to be pardoned or not, it was chilling to think about.

Although there are many officials in the big families in Hebei, and the background is hard, if someone in the family commits a crime, it will also affect the people who are officials in the court. No one wants to go to the police department, and they all know that Li Buqi is not easy to deal with, so many people have dispelled the idea of making trouble.

But this does not mean that these big landlords have no choice, the big families want money and money, and they want land and land. It's not easy to transport grain these days, and these dirt buns who have never seen the world think that they have a lot of money - even many officials in Beijing think so - but they can't imagine how much capital Li Buqi has invested in this time. As Li Buqi expected, they began to join forces to buy food from Fu'an.

The grain in Fu'an was not transported so quickly, and the landlords quickly bought up the first few batches of grain, but when they had just raised the price of grain, another batch of grain arrived. They just buy them in batches, but there's no end in sight. In the end, some people began to mortgage their land and borrow money from Fu'an Qianzhuang to buy food, and they wanted to use Fu'an's ammunition to kill Fu'an Qianzhuang, such as Xiangzhou Han's family.

But to everyone's surprise, food is still coming in a steady stream. Now it is not a question of whether or not you can get money, but where to put the food. Grain is not gold or silver, dig a pit and bury it and use it before digging it out. If you want to store this thing, you need to have a warehouse, and you have to prevent insects, rats, fires, and mildew, which is troublesome.

Do you want to transport these hoarded grains to places where the price of grain is high and sell them? The official family has issued an edict, due to the lack of food, the grain here is not allowed to be transported, and the police of the police department are like wolves guarding various traffic arteries, and they can't transport it if they want to.

At this time, some people began to wake up, so a decisive counterattack followed, and a large number of impeachments impeached Li Buqi and Bao Zheng every day. However, these Danzhang Emperors only looked at them twice at most and did not send them, and he preferred to read the recitals sent back by the chamberlains sent to Cizhou and Xingzhou.

At the end of June, when it was reported that the large households in Xingzhou, Cizhou, and Xiangzhou had begun to sell grain at low prices, the emperor called Li Buqi and asked: "Here is a letter from the Hebei Pacification Division requesting the lifting of the grain embargo in Xiangzhou, Cizhou, and Xingzhou, how do you think we should reply?" ”

Li Buqi doesn't need to look at it to know what's going on. This time, the people of the Han family in Xiangzhou were also among the hoarders, and took out at least 300,000 yuan of silver and a large amount of land, Zhuangzi, and shops as collateral to buy grain. Now that the price of grain has been knocked down, the loss is not small, the Han family naturally has to find a way for Han Qi, and Han Qi can't stay out of it.

Anyway, he has already offended Han Qi to death, and Li Buqi is not ready to let go. He said: "I think we still need to teach some lessons to those villains who want to make a fortune. Moreover, most of Hebei, Hedong Road, and Shaanxi Road still need a large amount of grain disaster relief, if we can't squeeze out the grain in the hands of the big rich people in these three states for our use, then the disaster relief will only be a tiger and a snake tail. Your Majesty should know that the people who were trapped this time are all trying to make a fortune in the country, and they are not worthy of pity. ”

Hebei is not far from Bianliang, and Zhao Zhen naturally knew that this matter involved the Han family in Xiangzhou, and he was originally going to leave some dignity for Han Qi. But as soon as Li Buqi said this, he immediately followed Li Buqi's advice. Because for him, the emperor, disaster relief and stability are the most important things, Han Qi is talented, but it does not mean that the imperial court will not turn away from Han Qi. In the matter of disaster relief in front of him, Li Buqi is obviously much heavier than Han Qi.

Han Qi's method of disaster relief is nothing more than to open a long liquidation for relief, but not to mention that there is not enough food in the long liquidation now, even if there is food in the long liquidation, the emperor now knows that most of this grain will be taken away by powerful households.

After Li Buqi's provocation, he already hated these powerful people to the root, so he didn't mind teaching them a lesson. Even the emperor heard Li Buqi tell him that he had made a lot of money by buying the grain that had been sold at a high price and now buying it at a low price, and he was a little unsatisfied. He couldn't help asking: "Since you can still make money from disaster relief in this way, can you use this method in the future?" ”

Li Buqi saw that this stupid emperor was about to go down the evil path, and hurriedly said, "Your Majesty, no." Disaster relief is not a child's play, if the long-term liquidation is full, since the first time to release grain to the people, this is a major matter related to the morale of the people. At present, this method has to fight repeatedly with the greedy villain for more than a month, but in fact, it has delayed the relief of the victims and damaged the prestige of the imperial court, which is really a last resort. Therefore, this law can only be used as a supplement to the imperial court's disaster relief, and should not be given too high expectations. ”

Zhao Zhen saw that Li did not give up his resolute attitude, so he had to nod, but he was obviously a little unwilling, and said again: "It seems that if you don't abandon this economic law, you can make up for the deficiency by losing more than you lose, and it is indeed beneficial to the country and the people." I've got it! ”

Li Buqi looked at the emperor with an excited expression on his face, and was puzzled in his heart: "What? Could it be that the emperor is addicted to robbing the rich and helping the poor? You are also a little conscious, your own family is the biggest landlord and maggot in the Great Song Dynasty, okay? ”