PS: 5,000 words big chapter, one chapter top two chapters, two more tomorrow......

The morning is cold, with a hint of dampness, indicating that the rainy season is approaching.

At the end of May, the summer rain continued to fall, and all kinds of news came out one after another like white mushrooms after the rain, and they spread to Zhao Wuxian in Xiaqiu, which made people a little overwhelmed.

The first thing I got was a silk silk from Cao Guo Taoqiu, and the fly-headed seal on it was written by Cao Boyang himself, and the content was to invite Zhao Wuxian to his thirty-sixth birthday banquet, and some words of Zigong were attached to it.

Zhao Wuxian knew that as early as in "Poems. Xiaoya" records the words "auspicious day Gengwu, that is, send my horse", reflecting that noon and horses are opposite. There are already 12 zodiac signs in the Spring and Autumn Period, so naturally there is also the saying of the natal year.

Zigong explained in the letter: "Si Kou should know that there are twelve months in a year. sub, rat also; Ugly, cow also; Yin, Tiger also; Mao, rabbit also; Chen, insects also; 巳, chicken also; Noon, Ma also; No, sheep also; Shen, Monkey also; unitary, chicken also; 戌, dog also; Hey, pig. The twelve zodiac circulars, so the world attaches great importance to the multiple birthdays of the twelve, and in the whole year of last year, Cao Guo got a lot of taxes because of his extravagance, Cao Bo was happy, and this year he decided to expand and strengthen the venue, making a 'big arena' that has never been seen in the world, and invited the world's doctors to celebrate his birthday. ”

In the past year, the extravagance of the name of the shirt has achieved very good results, and it is said that in the extravagant place of Taoyi, its advocacy and dance skills are all playing the flute and drums, and there is no lack of people who play the piano and beat the building, fight cocks and lackeys, and play the six games. Just for Dr. Bodes and the people of the country.

Motorsports, horse racing, kakuto, and the Kemari tournament that is beginning to take shape are held. The nearby streets and alleys are often crowded with cars and people. The audience in the arena formed a curtain, raised a curtain, and sweated into rain. The businessmen such as Zigong and others who set up the industry were "very rich and practical, with rich families and high ambitions".

After describing these grand occasions, Zigong wrote: "If Si Kou is free, he can come to Taoqiu to have a look, and on the one hand, he can inspect our achievements, and on the other hand, he can also make Cao Bo and You honorable, and in the future, he can also get some convenience in Taoqiu's actions and goods." This is a reluctant invitation, Duanmu gives another greeting. ”

Cao Bo's invitation and Zigong's advice cannot be ignored. Taoyi is a place in the world where businessmen gather, and its position is very important in the strategy of Wujiao. In addition to the sources, it is also the terminal for the sale of paper, porcelain, and other specialties in Sanyi, and it is also a big market for the purchase of scarce raw materials, which can be said to be the economic lifeblood of the uncaring forces.

Of course. If this is all he wants, he will not leave rashly under the delicate situation in Lu State.

But at the same time, Zigong reported another incident: "The extravagant industry has also attracted countless foreign nobles to come to consume, and Ci has made a lot of friends because of the convenience of his position." Among them were several Wu people, who inadvertently revealed a message when they were drunk......"

……

The second thing Zigong told made Wu Xian make up his mind, anyway, it was only two hundred miles from Sanyi to Taoqiu. It's just five or six days back and forth. So Wuxian summoned Zhang Mengtan, who was in charge of Yuncheng, to Xiaqiu, and handed over political affairs to him on the one hand. On the one hand, explain the matter.

It turns out that by next month. The newly powerful state of Wu in the south will once again send envoys north, with the ultimate goal of going to the Jin state for a court. During the period, they will pass through the Song, Tao, and Wei Kingdoms, just in time for Cao Bo's birthday banquet, so the people of Wu will stay in Taoqiu for a while.

The authenticity of this matter, Zigong has already sent someone into the Wu realm to verify, and the identity of the pedestrian, he also inquired clearly, when the name was presented to the desk of Wuxian, it made Wuxian feel unexpected, but reasonable.

"The pedestrian of Wu happens to be a person from the Qu family, that is, the descendant of his son Hu Yong, who left behind there when Qu Wuchen went south to Wu State......"

In that year, Qu Wu, who ran for Xia Ji, was resentful of Chu State ordering Yin and Sima clan to destroy his clan, so he asked the Marquis of Jin to envoy Yu Wu, and the Marquis of Jin allowed him. So Qu Wu took advantage of the Ju State to go to Wudi, which was still regarded as a barbarian by the Central Plains at that time, and persuaded Wu Wang Shoumeng, who had broken his tattoo, to join the Ji Zhou Zongmeng of the Jin State.

Qu Wu also taught the scattered and disorderly Wu people to fight in battle and the method of chariot warfare, so that they could be strong and attack the flank of Chu. Before he left, he asked a famous swordsmith to cast the sword Shaoyu, and also left his eldest son Qu Huyong in the Wu Kingdom, and the descendants of the Qu family have been used as pedestrians to communicate with the Central Plains for generations, and eighty years have passed.

Speaking of which, the Qu family is very close to Zhao Wuxian, known as Bo Qi, and the Xing girl who affectionately calls her Wei, and the young Xing Ao who works at Taoqiu Zigong are all descendants of Qu Wu, and they were taken south by their father when they wanted to go to Wu to join their relatives. After the sister and brother were rescued by Wuxian, Bo Qi was already equivalent to his concubine, and the sword Shaoyu was also kept by Wuxian before Xing Ao became an adult, and it was hanging on his waist at this time.

Saving Wei and Xing Ao was an unexpected move, Wuxian didn't think about repaying it at the time, but who knew that there was an opportunity in front of him. So after learning the news, Zhao Wuxian inevitably moved some thoughts, perhaps, it was time to exchange this bloodless sword for some substantial benefits.

In the Spring and Autumn Period, people eventually related to the clan, not to mention that the blood relationship between the two sides has not passed five generations, and the separation is not too far. If Xing Ao and Naqu Xingren can meet the two clan branches in the north and south respectively, this is the beauty of adults, and it will definitely become a beautiful conversation among the nobles.

But this was only a means for Zhao Wuxian to get in touch with Wu Guoqu, and he was more concerned about whether he could open up a copper road to purchase copper and tin.

At the beginning of the crossing, Wuxian was still a little dismissive of bronze, but gradually he understood the reason why people in this era called it "dollar", because there was really no suitable replacement for it before iron smelting matured!

Wuxian is very eager for bronze and its raw materials, not only because the iron-smelting technology is not up to par, and it is impossible to make high-quality iron weapons, but also because the military armament is linked to the quantity of bronze. There is another reason, he has been forced to be helpless by the extremely backward monetary system of the Lu State, so he has to advance the coinage plan that was too premature.

This has to start with the sale of paper and porcelain, the cost of leather paper has dropped to the same level as bamboo slips, but the price can be several times more expensive than hemp paper and bamboo slips, but outsiders do not know the secret, and feel that it is a big advantage.

When one high and one low, two kinds of paper began to be sold in Lucheng. When the first batch of money was collected, Zhao Wuxian was greatly disappointed in the currency and commodity economy of the Lu State.

At that time, Ji Qiao calculated an account for him: "Lu Guotong shellfish is different according to the casting location. The quality level is uneven, but the average weight is about half a two. The general bamboo slips are two volumes of one copper shell. The original copper shell of the public paper was exchanged for ten pieces, the inferior hemp paper was twenty pieces of copper shellfish, and the price of the leather paper was two pieces of copper shellfish! ”

The Jin Kingdom has cast copper empty head cloth, shoulder foot cloth, etc., but the Lu State is known as the state of etiquette, but it still retains the shell coin system of the ancient era! Although it has gradually become a cast copper shell since Lu Xugong, it still looks backward. Therefore, even if you harvest 10,000 copper shells and copper-clad shells, and look at the shell mounds that are stacked together, you don't feel rich. It just feels funny.

If it weren't for Zhao Wuxian's own lack of bronze in the treasury, and Zigong, who was familiar with the economy, was not around, maybe he would have let the craftsman workshop divide a group of goldsmiths to melt and mint copper coins, and let them sweep the Lu country.

The yuan, half-tael, and five-baht coins chosen by the economy of the times in later generations are enough to eliminate the backward copper shells and shells of the Lu country. In the next two thousand years, coinage is a huge authority to accumulate wealth, but also the best means to grasp the economic lifeline of a country, what paper, porcelain burning, compared with it, have become a small fight......

What's even more gratifying. After all, coinage is a new thing that has just appeared less than 500 years ago. The rulers of this era did not have enough understanding of coinage, so they did not legislate to regulate the phenomenon of private minting, and as long as they had manpower and copper materials, they could set up their own workshops to mint them. Since then, the money has been rolling in.

But Wuxian was powerless, he lacked enough copper in his hands, and Sanyi did not produce copper and tin. There are also very few in the entire Central Plains. What's more, the uncle Sun of Lu Guoda, as well as the aristocratic merchants of Jin, Lu, and Cao, all attached great importance to this kind of armament material. Refuse to sell easily.

Therefore, Wuxian can only focus on Chu and Wu, the two major copper-producing countries, although Chu is rich in copper. But it's too far. Wu and Lu are adjacent to each other in the Huaibei area, not to mention that the political system of Wu is relatively primitive, if you can get on the line with the lord of the lord, it is no problem to secretly transfer some copper and tin with excellent handmade products!

So he made a decision to go to Taoqiu to meet with the Wu envoy and attend Cao Bo's birthday banquet by the way.

Zhang Mengtan also agreed very much after hearing Wuxian's reason, thinking that it was worth going, and promised that when Wuxian was not there, he would coordinate and arrange the military and government of Sanyi to prevent attacks by thieves.

At this time, Wuxian only wanted to go back quickly, but he didn't expect that there were two other important matters waiting for him to solve in Taoqiu......

……

Poetry, in May, the scorpion moves the stock, and in June, the sand chicken vibrates the feathers.

On the outskirts of Xinjiang in the Jin Kingdom, the small town that was lively in the past because Zhao Wuxian was in charge for a year seems to have fallen silent. When evening falls, only grasshoppers and mites can be heard in the grass, and in the dead of night, you can even hear courting pheasants flapping their wings.

In the winter of the previous year, after the news that Zhao Wuxian had been expelled for accidentally killing Fan's heir, the township was in an uproar.

At that time, Yang Tongue Rong and the others said indignantly: "The Fan family is ashamed of the killing of their grandson, and we are also ashamed of the expulsion of the sovereign!" The king humiliates the ministers to death, and the whole township is up and down, and the son loves the gentleman like he loves his parents, the son thinks about avenging his parents, and the subordinate thinks about avenging the lord, if the lord has a call, is there anyone who dares not to do his best? ”

So, half of the young and strong children in this township brought their own clothes, bows and arrows, and weapons, they bid farewell to Kun's father and wife, and under the leadership of Cheng Lu, Ji Qiao, Yang Tongue Rong and others, they went to Song and Lu in batches to seek refuge with the exiled lord Zhao Wuxian.

When they left their homes, the people of Chengxiang did not have the usual sorrow for sending their sons and nephews to recruit, but encouraged each other, and the father encouraged his son, the brother encouraged his brother, and the woman encouraged his husband, and said: "There is a lord with such a grace as a gentleman, even if he dies in a foreign country for him, it is worth it!" If the gentleman does not return, he must not return! ”

This posture is quite similar to the exile of Jin Chong'er, and the Fox brothers, Zhao Yuan, and Wei Wuzi swore to follow each other to the death.

The men left with the intention of "repaying the gentleman's kindness", and Chengxiang suddenly became a daughter township, laboring in the fields, and the haunts in the Lu only saw women, and rarely had eyebrows. Even the porcelain kilns that were well guarded in the past are half empty, and only some young Lu potters and Xiagong potters are left to learn the work of half-pulled porcelain, maintaining the output of "porcelain", but it has been declining.

This situation lasted until more than half a year ago, when the Zhao clan patriarch suddenly ordered Chengxiang to be converted into the adoptive town of his young daughter Ji Ying. And the female lord who arrived in a four-wheeled car wearing a red hood and a robe turned out to be the same as Zhao Wuxian when he arrived at the beginning of the year. It injected new vitality into the township that began to fall silent.

The temple has been renovated, and the cold stone case and green vegetable garden in the small courtyard are still there. There is still a fragrance wafting out of the kitchen every day, but compared to the previous big salt. It's a little more sweet and greasy daughter's atmosphere. The people who live in it are also people, and after the shameless, the gentleman Ji Ying became the owner here.

She brought a lot of people from the lower palace to serve, and the most trusted of them was the rumor that the unsympathetic gentleman was very favored before leaving, and even bathed to let Bo Mi who was waiting beside her.

Bo Mi is the daughter of the former Xing's fatherless, the martyred minister of the Cheng family, and the personal maid who has a skin-to-skin relationship, and she also has a name called "Wei".

But since Zhao Wuxian traveled south. This private name was buried deep and replaced with a more formal "Bo Mi". This was changed by the monarch Ji Huan, which means that she is recognized as a surname from the Qu family of Chu State, as well as the status of a noble woman who was once lost.

But Bo Mi did not have the slightest pride, her status has become higher, but she still hangs her head when she walks, and at this time she is holding a stack of parchment paper that has just been sent from Lu Guoxi, and she entered the room with only her foot clothes and stood beside the gentleman.

Bo Qi has lost the appearance of duckweed and weak willows in the past. Under Ji Ying's training, he has a little more aristocratic temperament. She was always dressed in a spotless white dress, and the plain cloth on her head was black, and the women did not know why she was dressed like a mourner. Only Bo Mi knows why he wears it like this. Because the gentleman likes to dress like this.

Unlike Bo Mi's white and low-key, Ji Huan is still wearing red makeup and sitting on the couch. Holding a rabbit pen in his hand, he was contemplating a piece of hemp paper.

"This is the parchment?" After taking the latest batch of paper made by Liqiu. She was beaming.

"Only, a total of four or five hundred were delivered. There may be more in the future. ”

"Wuxian was ingenious when he was in the Jin Kingdom, and from time to time he made things eye-catching, who wants to go abroad or so."

Ji Huan has a wooden ruler in his hand to correct the font line order, and the surface of the wooden ruler is cut with a knife to engrave a straight and uniform scale and then painted with lacquer, which can be used as a simple unit of measurement, and can also be used as a tool for aligning fonts and paperweights, which is naturally also a product of Lu Guoxi.

The quality of the leather paper is much better than that of hemp paper, and Ji Huan was itchy for a while, so he took it and dipped it in pen and ink, and began to draw porcelain models and glazes. She writes elegantly, with a light posture, without a trace of chaos, and her demeanor is elegant and natural.

After Ji Huan began to preside over the porcelain, this porcelain kiln, which gradually declined after leaving Zhao Wuxian's order, began to recover.

Because of the soil quality problem, the porcelain is mainly "white porcelain". White porcelain is not the first to be produced, as early as the beginning of the construction of porcelain kilns in small quantities, in the production of only need to pay attention to the color interference of iron in the glaze, the product will change from celadon to white porcelain.

Ji Huan actually didn't know how to fire, but she understood what kind of product she wanted to see, so the white porcelain became more and more delicate and well-decorated. They are gray-white, fine-grained, and glaze-gray, like ice and jade, which are quite popular with women.

And what complements it is the "black porcelain" of Zhendi that has only recently appeared.

It is the same as making white porcelain, as long as the iron content in the porcelain enamel is increased, it is fired into black porcelain. Perhaps it is contaminated with the atmosphere of martial soldiers, Zhendi black glazed porcelain is black and shiny, the shape is rough and vigorous, dignified and heavy, and the utensils pay attention to practicality.

Ji Ying commented on this: "I look at those black porcelain, there are patterns, but as a man, he is actually stupid and stupid in his heart, how can he compare to his daughter's delicate thoughts?" Therefore, Zhendi black porcelain is better than novel color, and white porcelain is better than unique shape, each with its own strengths. ”

She examined the model drawn on paper, gave it to Bo Mi, and asked her to take it to the workshop, where the craftsman tried to make it in the shape of it.

Bo Mi looked sideways, but saw that on the piece of vellum paper, a beautiful elf slowly jumped out of the pen, it was elegant and chic, white as a lotus, and it was extremely beautiful. I don't know what it will look like when it is actually fired, but I am afraid that as soon as the kiln is opened, it will cause a burst of amazement among the craftsmen.

At this moment, Ji Huan said to her: "The latest batch of Chengdi white porcelain will be shipped to Taoqiu, I want you to go there in person." ”

Ji Huan has learned from the letter that Wuxian will go to Taoqiu, and the letter also mentions the matter of Qu's descendants, although Wuxian did not say it explicitly, but the intelligent Ji Huan took into account whether this meeting with Qu can achieve satisfactory results, maybe it can rely on Bo Mi and their sisters and brothers to move them with "family affection", so they sent her to go.

Bo Mi naturally knew what he was going for, and he was surprised and frightened for a while: "The concubine ......"

Ji Ying didn't allow her to say: "Wuxian has been away for a year and a half, and I don't know when I will return. But now that the situation in Lu has stabilized, he is in the army all the year round, and his life must be rough and casual, and someone has to take care of him by his side, so I want you to go! ”

The voice turned into a commanding tone, and Bo Qi could only bow his head and dare not say goodbye.

She didn't know what the previous monarch was like, but now Ji Ying is gorgeous and mature, and she has undergone a transformation in more than a year, from a budding flower to a budding flower, and there is an unquestionable order in her words.

But in fact, what Ji Huan was thinking in her heart was that she couldn't get rid of the identity of the Zhao family's monarch and daughter, so she went to Taoqiu in person to meet Zhao Wuxian......

……

Wu Guoyan Lingyi is located in the south of the river, north of Zhenze, when Wu Wangshou dreamed of death, he wanted to pass on to his young son Jizha. But Ji Za did not want to be the king, so he learned the story of Tai Bo and Cao Gongzi, and cultivated in Yanling to avoid the throne.

Ji Za is now the person with the highest seniority, age, and knowledge among the Wu princes, and he is also the person who is most familiar with the northern Zhuxia rites, so the Wu envoys who went north to Taoqiu stopped here and asked him some etiquette questions.

At this time, an elderly doctor with white hair and drooping sideburns sat in a thatched pavilion by the water with a sword, and in front of him was the Zhenze of Haohao Soup.

On his right side sat a middle-aged man with a tall crown and a broad belt, dressed as a Chinese doctor, although he was a pedestrian with outstanding status in Wu State, he had a respectful attitude towards the old man. On the left is a young man in Tsing Yi with a cloth crown, he listened most carefully to the number of people present, his eyes were full of curiosity about the northern Zhuxia, although he was dressed as a scholar from the Central Plains, but the tattoo looming under the collar revealed that he was an indigenous Wu person.

And the big man on the side, with a stout figure and a short sword at his waist, was completely tattooed with broken hair, looking at the scenery of Zhenze with some impatience, and his eyes were on the swimming fish that jumped up from time to time - the tattoo on his cheek was a pair of blue-black double fish patterns.

His father, Zhuzhu, was here to learn how to cook fish......

At this moment, the white-haired old man suddenly stopped talking eloquently, raised his head and recited a poem and burst into tears.

The three people who sat with him were shocked, and the young man named Yan Yan was even more concerned and asked closely.

"Jizi, I don't know why I am groaning?"

Ji Za wiped away the old tears, flicked the long sword and sighed: "The old man's heart hurts slightly, it must be Yan Pingzhong's death, and there is one less confidant in the world......"

So, just when Wuxian and Bo Mi, who were in the two places, were about to set off, a funeral from Qi shocked the world in just a few days, and their trip had to be delayed for several days. (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you for the book friend Xunlang, Jiutian Yanyu, czdxh042408, chaotic otaku LYP, Wuyan & Childe Xiaobai for the reward! Thank you for your commuter passes!

Ask for collections, ask for subscriptions, ask for recommendations, ask for monthly passes!