Qin Lin's white boat went down the river from Nanjing, driving in the mighty Yangtze River, and when he arrived at Zhenjiang, there were three roads to choose from:

Continue downstream along the main channel of the Yangtze River, Jiangyin, Nantong, until the Yangtze River estuary of the Baishui Ocean, and then the boundless Oriental Sea.

To the south from Zhenjiang into the Jiangnan Canal, Changzhou and Suzhou can reach Hangzhou Bay -- almost all of the Chinese porcelain, silk and copper coins that come and go on this canal are exported to Hangzhou and Goryeo, among which the porcelain originally produced in Jingdezhen was called "Nanjing Burning" by himself after crossing the ocean, and can be sold at a very good price.

There is no doubt that both Chinese goods and Korean goods are the objects of maritime trade smuggling, because the trading port allowed by the imperial court to open the sea in Longqing is the port of Yuegang in Fujian, and Hangzhou and Ningbo in Zhejiang are not legal foreign trade ports.

The boats on the canal full of smuggled goods are all wearing official lanterns, with official ships and family ships as cover, and behind them are either standing squires and servants, or a certain current Shangshu and Yushi.

Jia Fugui looked at these ships greedily, he was so greedy, he was not qualified to go to the maritime trade business to get a piece of the pie, but if he got the concession through Zhang Juzheng's relationship, it would be a different matter.

Qin Lin pointed to the ships full of valuable commodities and asked Zhang Zixuan: "Look, the smuggling business is so prosperous, but the imperial court can't collect taxes from it, and let the rich businessmen evade taxes, but they want to loot from the sweaty peasants, isn't it ridiculous?" ”

"Easier said than done!" Zhang Zixuan smiled bitterly and shook her head, the current situation in the court, that is, an iron-fisted figure like Zhang Juzheng also felt embarrassed about increasing commercial taxes, "Maybe Brother Qin doesn't know, the first emperor Jiajing Emperor has sent eunuchs to collect mining taxes and commercial taxes many times, but the civil officials of the Qingliu Dynasty of the Manchu Dynasty have cried their fathers and called their mothers' letters, saying that they should not 'compete with the people for profit', they should be generous and kind, they should be close to the gentleman and far from the villain, and they should implement the ancestral law of 'valuing agriculture and suppressing business', so the tax supervisor had no choice but to give up, and in the end he did not receive much money." ”

"Competing with the people?" Qin Lin blinked in confusion: "Could it be that only rich businessmen are the people in Qingliu's mouth, and the farmers who sweat beads and fall eight petals are not the people?" ”

Zhang Zixuan smiled helplessly, "Brother Qin is right, Qingliu said that it is not possible to 'compete with the people for profit', because the so-called 'people' refers to themselves, who accumulate wealth through various means, but they want to pass on the tax burden to the powerless and powerless people; ”

Qin Lin almost fell into the river, it turned out that competing with the people for profits and valuing agriculture and suppressing business could become the opposite meaning in Qingliu's mouth, and sure enough, the official word had two mouths, how could it be said!

However, at present, as a small Jinyi Wei deputy Qianhu, these things are not something he can manage, so he just sighed and said: "I finally understand why Wang Zhi was forced to become a widow." ”

Officials at all levels engaged in lucrative smuggling and maritime trade by virtue of their status beyond the law, and Wang Zhi, as a civilian maritime business group, was of course hated to the bone as their strong competitor; And Wang Zhi's demand for the opening of the sea ban, that is, the people of the whole world can freely enter this industry, the officials have lost their monopoly advantage, and this will not move their lifeline?

Zhang Zixuan was originally looking at the ship full of smuggled goods in the distance, but when she heard this, she turned her head and looked at Qin Lin with eyes as bright as a morning star, and pursed her lips and smiled: "Brother Qin is really smart this time." ”

Praise me or hurt me? Qin Lin was speechless.

In addition to the downstream direction of the main channel of the Yangtze River and the Jiangnan Canal, the third waterway is the Jing Canal from Guazhou in the north of the Yangtze River.

In view of the fact that the scene of the crime was in Sanwan, the governor of Caoyun and the chief military officer of Caoyun both came to Yangzhou, Jiangbei, and Qin Lin naturally wanted to go to the Jing Canal.

The waterway of the Yangtze River can be rowed, can be used to swim down the river with water power, or can be sailed with the help of wind power, while the canal transportation relies more on manpower and animal power to pull fiber.

Jia Fugui negotiated with a chieftain, agreed on the price, and these slender men put ropes on the boat, and slowly dragged it from Guazhou into the Jing Canal with manpower.

This section of the canal is known as Sanwan, a man-made curved river channel, and engineering measures taken to eliminate the ground elevation difference, reduce the slope of the channel, and slow down the water flow.

Qin Lin stood on the bow of the boat to observe the terrain, and Jia Fugui kept explaining to him.

Yangzhou Sanwan is a section of the Grand Canal flowing through the vicinity of Yangzhou, starting from Wantou Town in the northeast of Yangzhou, and meandering southwest to Guazhou where it joins the Yangtze River.

Although the distance in a straight line is only more than 40 miles, this section of the river turns into a zigzag bend, extending the river to more than 60 miles. This curved waterway not only increases the difficulty of navigation, but also prolongs the duration of navigation. So, why did the ancients do such a thankless job?

The canal flows through the Yangzhou Sanwan area, since the Southern Song Dynasty when the Yellow River was diverted to invade Si, Huai, Whirlpool, Ying, and the lower reaches of the Huai River into the sea, the Yellow River's repeated outburst and flooding caused sediment accumulation, changed the original topography of this area in the south and low in the north, and constituted a three-level ladder of high in the north and low in the south, resulting in a short 20-mile river section, the height difference is up to five zhang, in such a section of the river with a huge drop, if it is opened into a straight road, it is difficult to ensure the smoothness of the canal water surface.

In order to solve this problem, the builders of the canal, after unremitting exploration and efforts, finally found the method of "straightening the road to make the curve", that is, to deliberately open a curved river channel according to the topography, and by increasing the length of the river, so as to achieve the purpose of reducing the slope of the river bed to adjust the water level difference, and the same reason as building a winding road on the high mountain to reduce the slope of the mountain.

Qin Lin looked at the terrain and felt that it was indeed a little suspicious, this section of the river was very slow to navigate, and it was turning around, if the White Lotus Sect took advantage of this, it would indeed be able to make some trouble.

But how did they move the ingots? There are also a lot of soldiers in the Cao fleet at night, and more than 30,000 catties of silver are not easy to carry!

The Sanwan Canal is high in the direction of Yangzhou and low in the direction of Guazhou, and the slender men pull the boat upstream, and it takes a lot of effort, Qin Lin stood on the boat and saw them sweating profusely.

After turning a big bend, the accident boat team stopped in front, all flat-bottomed boats, the appearance was exactly the same, many heavily armed soldiers were closely guarded, even a fly could not fly over.

"Damn, there must be internal annihilation!" Lu Fatzi shouted, "Brother Qin, you see, the defense is so tight, if it weren't for the internal annihilation, there would be a ghost!" ”

Qin Lin nodded, and shook his head again: "The conclusion is good, the inference is wrong." No matter how tight the defense is, it is not seamless, but the appearance of these ships is all exactly the same, if it is not for the internal annihilation, how can the White Lotus Sect know that the ship is loaded with grain, and that ship is loaded with silver? ”

The fat man was very thick-skinned and grinning, although we inferred that the basis was wrong, but the conclusion was finally crooked.

Qin Lin carefully observed the position where the cao boat was parked and the situation guarded by the soldiers, and soon noticed that the seventh ship from the front was the most closely guarded, presumably it must be the ship loaded with the stolen silver.

The canal is much narrower than the Yangtze River, these boats are parked on the shore, and the white boats are almost brushing the side of the boat, Qin Lin took the opportunity to take a cursory look at the situation on the other party's boat.

The fat man also stared at a pair of eyes, sighed in disappointment after a while, and asked, "Brother Qin, do you see anything?" I didn't find anything. ”

Zhang Zixuan lowered her head and smiled.

Only then did the fat man react, recalling that when he solved the murder case of Aunt Zhao of Wang Bengu's family not long ago, Qin Lin had said that nothing was also a clue.

"Then, I'll test you," Qin Lin smiled and patted the fat man on the shoulder: "The ship carrying the stolen silver has basically not found anything, what kind of conclusions can we draw based on this?" ”

The fat man counted with his fingers: "There are no traces of fireworks, knives and arrows, or collisions, which means that the ship has not encountered any violent attacks, and those Caoyin are completely in peace, and they have been robbed unconsciously." ”

Qin Lin nodded, the fat man's answer was exactly the same as what he thought, just looking at the appearance of the ship without any kind of damage at all, it showed that the White Lotus Sect's method was to take it by trick rather than by force.

Suddenly, there was the sound of gongs on the shore opening the way, and people in the distance shouted and neighed.

It turned out that the deputy envoy of Qin sent to inspect, Huo Chonglou kept Huang Gonggong in the middle, and Chen Wangmo, the chief military officer of Caoyun, accompanied him, but Li Qiu, the governor of Caoyun, did not come.

Qin Lin asked the slender man to pull the boat and leave quickly, Huang and Huo learned about the situation from the official face, and Han Feilian would come to report in the evening.

The boat stopped at Yangzhou Wharf, Jia Fugui led the way, and everyone found a Tongji Inn to stay.

After dinner, Han Feilian touched it just after night.

"That guy Li Qiu is really not a thing!" Han Feilian spat at the ground indignantly, and said, "Fortunately, Chen Wangmo has returned face." ”

Lu Yuanzhi, Niu Dali and others looked at each other in shock: Zhang Zixuan had already expected the reaction of the two civil and military forces, and what she said in the morning was completely consistent with the current situation!

Zhang Zixuan smiled slightly: "This is a common thing, not surprising. ”

Li Qiu, with the title of Governor Cao Yun and Admiral Military Governor Fengyang and other places, is a third-grade civil servant of the imperial court; And Chen Wangmo is the chief military officer of Pingjiangbo and Caoyun, and he is a noble military minister. The division of labor is that Wenchen is responsible for collecting the requisitioned grain together with the provincial grain routes according to the regulations, and then the Wuchen is responsible for escorting it into Beijing, that is, the so-called "Wendu urges, Wu supervises the transportation".

Now that Caoyin had an accident in the process of liberation, it was mainly Chen Wangmo's responsibility, and Li Qiu certainly didn't care much.

"So, did you find any clues from the officials?" Qin Lin asked again.

"There are no clues, completely blind, the Jinyi guard here has also investigated, and there is no clue at all," Han Feilian scratched his head, looking a little confused: "By the way, there is a drunk veteran who wakes up all night is very suspicious!" ”

(To be continued)