"The minister has failed His Highness's expectations, please punish His Highness."

As soon as Tiberius saw Li Yu, he knelt before him and pleaded guilty.

Tiberius staged this scene and asked for guilt, which directly made Li Yu and Xin'er a little stunned.

"I don't think I said I should punish him for not completing his mission, did I?"

Li Yu leaned into Xin'er's ear and whispered to ask, Xin'er put her hands in the pool, saying that it had been more than a year, who remembered what he told him at the beginning?

Li Yu straightened his body and asked in a deep voice: "Tiberius, you stand up, what crime do you have to ask for punishment yourself?" ”

Tiberius staggered to his feet and said, "The minister failed to fulfill the profit of 800,000 yuan as instructed by His Highness last year, and he failed to meet His Highness's expectations. ”

There were many Hu merchants who traveled to and from the Silk Road, and they were all engaged in transshipment trade. It is to purchase the local products of Datang and transport them to the Western Regions to sell, and then purchase local local products from the Western Regions and transport them to Datang to sell, earning a huge price difference between the two places. The only risk is that you may encounter horse bandits and marauding nomadic tribes along the way, hire a large number of guards along the way, and pay additional taxes along the way.

In addition, there are too many merchants engaged in the transshipment trade, and the competition is too fierce. There were Hu merchants from Qiuci, Khotan, Shule and other places in the territory of Anxi Duhufu, Sogdian merchants from the rivers of the Western Regions, and merchants from Persia, Tocharo, Tianzhu, and Rome who came from thousands of miles away.

On the Silk Road, caravans come and go almost all year round.

Tiberius's Wanquan Trading House wanted to earn 800,000 yuan a year on the Silk Road, which was so numerous, that it was too difficult for a strong man. What's more, the caravan of Wanquan Trading House only went as far as Persia and purchased local specialties to return, so the profits were limited.

The farther the caravan went west, the prices of silk, porcelain and other products produced in the Tang Dynasty increased exponentially.

In ancient Roman times, the silk produced in China was equivalent to the weight of gold, and only the emperor could afford to wear it, and other powerful people could not necessarily buy it.

"If you don't earn 800,000 yuan a year, it's excusable, Tiberius, you don't have to blame yourself, I forgive you for your innocence."

Li Yu was a little complacent when he saw that Tibilius was earning more than 200,000 yuan a year, so he set him a goal of 800,000 yuan in annual profits, the original intention was to spur him on, lest this guy be lazy and slippery.

"Thank Your Highness for your grace."

Tiberius breathed a sigh of relief, but he had not yet calmed down his fluctuating emotions, seeing that Li Yu seemed to remember something to ask, Tiberius raised his heart to his throat again, for fear that he would not satisfy King Yan with what he asked.

"When I summoned you early last year, you admitted that you had bought five thousand good horses for the king last year, and I wonder if you have fulfilled your promise?"

Li Yu asked with a smile, if Tibilius didn't do it, then he would be furious and directly cut off some of his shares in the Wanquan Trading Bank.

When Tiberius heard this, it turned out that it was a matter of buying horses, and he knew that King Yan was very eager for good horses in the West, so he always put the purchase of horses in the first place, and did not leak, and hurriedly waved his hand and said: "Your Highness, when it comes to buying good horses, the minister has fulfilled his words and lived up to your expectations." ”

"Oh?" Li Yu raised his eyebrows: "Let's listen, which good horses have you bought, and how many are there?" ”

"His Royal Highness likes the tall and sturdy horses, fast running, and long endurance horses such as sweat horses, Persian horses, and Arabian horses, so the purchase of good horses this time is mainly placed on these three kinds of horses. Counting the purchase of 3,000 sweaty horses, the Persian horses were lost on the way because of the long distance, but they also purchased 2,000 in turn, and the Arab horses were difficult to buy, and only 153 horses were purchased. There are also 1,000 Yanqi horses and 1,000 Western Turkic horses. All purchased horses can be bred. ”

"You bought more than 7,000 horses?"

Li Yu was a little surprised, and then asked: "My horse farm outside Chang'an City is not big, and it can raise no less than 7,000 horses. ”

When Tiberius saw Li Yu's shocked look at his success in buying horses, he was proud in his heart, and his face was still humble: "The minister knew that His Highness's horse farm could not raise so many horses, so he took it upon himself to buy a piece of grassland with a radius of 20 miles at the foot of Zhongnan Mountain, forty miles south of Chang'an City, as a horse farm, and more than 6,000 horses were raised here. ”

Li Yu was in a good mood all of a sudden, and he praised Tiberius, who really comforted me for what he had done in buying good horses.

Thinking that he has thousands of excellent sweat and blood horses and Persian horses in his hands, and the second level is the Western Turkic horse and Yanqi horse, after a few years of breeding and breeding, a few thousand horses can become tens of thousands of horses and hundreds of thousands of horses. At that time, the cavalry under his command will have an incomparable advantage in long-distance running and pursuit operations when facing Beihu.

Suddenly thinking of something, Li Yu asked urgently: "Tibilius, are the horses of those different breeds kept separately?" ”

Li Yu knew too well that Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty did not hesitate to expend military strength for the sake of sweat and blood horses, and the people sent Li Guangli to expedition to Dawan Kingdom, but the sweat and blood horses that were brought back did not pay attention to ensuring the purity of the bloodline in the improvement of local horse breeds. After a long time, it finally disappears in the introduction-hybridization-improvement-backcrossing.

In later generations, Western countries crossed two excellent horse breeds to improve more excellent new horse breeds, and paid great attention to pure-blooded horses to prevent them from backcrossing, thus breeding the world-famous British thoroughbreds, Russian Don Hippopotamus and other excellent horse breeds, which actually have the bloodline of sweat horses.

At present, the main war horses equipped by the Tang army are produced in Qinghai Cheng, which was bred by the horse husbandry supervisors set up in Hexi and Longyou, which was a cross between the Persian horses introduced in the pre-Sui period and local horses, and there is no trace of sweat and blood horses.

At its peak, there were as many as 700,000 horses in the horse husbandry prisons, and because the indicators of Qinghai were very good on the East Asian continent, the Tibetans often plundered them.

Didn't Li Bai compose a song of Geshu:

The Big Dipper is high, and Geshu carries a knife at night.

So far, I have peeped at the herding horses and dare not pass Lintao.

It is about Ge Shuhan who led the army to hit Tubo hard, although he coveted the horses in the Tang Dynasty Horse Husbandry Prison, but he did not dare to loot for a while.

"Your Highness, rest assured, all the horse breeds are separated from the purchase and transportation to Chang'an and put into the horse farm for breeding, and they are not allowed to cross to produce horses with impure blood."

"That's good."

Li Yu nodded, and thought about it, whether it is a sweaty horse, an Arabian horse, or a Persian horse, it is not the tallest and strongest horse breed in the world today. The Andalusian horses, native to Spain, are much taller and stronger than these three horses. There is also the giant Shire horse among the horses bred by the British in later generations, which is two meters high at the shoulder, weighs one ton, and can drag five tons of weight, which can be called terrifying.

The Shire horse is a native British horse breed that has been bred and improved over time and appeared in the early 11th century. It is conceivable that although the current England region has not yet bred a giant like Sharma, the native horse of England, as the ancestor of the Big Mac, is by no means a lightweight, otherwise it would not be able to breed a Sharma. There are also heavy breeds of horses from Western and Central Europe that were ridden by heavy riders in the Middle Ages......

Li Yu thought that the heavy horses produced in Europe were about to run out, and he could breed these horse breeds and make a bunch of tin cans for heavy riding, which could scare those lightly armed horsemen.