Lu Yuanwai smiled bitterly, and quickly shook his hand and said, "This is not my business, my family is not in business." It was some merchants who ran the rice shop, and they hoarded all the grain and raised the price together...... It's none of my business to cause such a scene. I'm also having a headache about the price of food...... You see, there are hundreds of people in my family, and I have a lot of food to eat every day. ”

Zhu Yuanzhang was not surprised by such a statement, as soon as Lu Yuanwai said that the price of grain had skyrocketed, he guessed that most of it was stirred up by businessmen, in fact, before he rebelled last year, he used the Ma family to speculate on the price of grain to move Zhang Yingxiantun grain, and as a result, he successfully got 5,000 taels of silver from the Ma family to buy grain, and the price of rice at that time was also raised a lot by him.

But the price of grain in Zhu Yuanzhang's mind is at most a tael of silver and a stone. He really didn't expect that the price of grain had reached an outrageous price of three taels of silver and one stone.

He raised his eyebrows: "Which businessmen are frying grain, you report your name!" ”

How dare Lu Yuanwai not say it, and hurriedly reported: "The Li family in the east of the city...... Zhangjia ...... in the north of the city, "He said four or five families one after another, all of them are local families with heads and faces, one of which is actually the Xu family in the southwest of the city, and Xu Renjie who brought the township warrior army to fight against Zhu Yuanzhang twice.

"I made a note of it!" Zhu Yuanzhang said lightly: "Take these fifty stones back, I still want silver!" The price of the grain you quoted is too unreliable, and I have to take the money and buy it myself. ”

"King, you're not going to kill all these families, are you?" Lu Yuan said pitifully on the wall: "Don't say it's my name......

Zhu Yuanzhang smiled dumbly, this Lu Yuanwai is really timid and cute, he waved his hand, didn't say a word, turned around and left.

"Brother Zhu! Where do we go next? Wang Er asked beside him.

"Needless to say, of course I'm going to patronize these stockpiles!" Zhu Yuanzhang said lightly.

"Oh, yes!" Wang Er is a person with a strong sense of justice, and he said angrily: "In this kind of disaster year, these guys actually raise the price of grain, how miserable it will be to the villagers, this kind of person must be cleaned up." ”

Zhu Yuanzhang smiled dumbly: "I don't think so, they raise the price of grain at this time, although it is very hateful, but it is also an instinctive reaction of businessmen." The main reason why I went to trouble them was because they had more food in their hands. ”

"Scare?" Wang Er was a little flustered: "Instinct? ”

Zhu Yuanzhang nodded, in fact, Zhu Yuanzhang in the previous life hated businessmen very much, and even thought that all the businessmen in the world should be dragged out and beheaded even if they did not commit crimes, but as hundreds of years passed in the sky, he found that businessmen also have the value of their existence, and this value is not small. For example, the Western European countries, in fact, they were originally backward than the Ming Dynasty, but because of mercantilism, the Western countries created the Great Age of Discovery, which made the economy grow by leaps and bounds. Another example is the Stars and Stripes, which is an emerging country and lags behind other countries in all aspects, but because the United States advocates a mercantilist policy, it quickly catches up with many old powers and has a place in the world.

The advantage of mercantilism is that it stimulates the thirst for wealth among the merchants, which leads to a burst of great enthusiasm among the merchants, which is transformed into a source of motivation for the creation and invention of many new technologies, the development of the continent, and the creation of new armies......

Zhu Yuanzhang profoundly reviewed his disdain for businessmen, and decided to re-examine the world, once he has an enlightened vision, and then look at the matter of raising the price of grain, it is not so difficult to accept, if you empathize, the whole world is in famine, only our heavenly kingdom has grain, then when we export grain, how can we not raise the price?

At that time, would you like to talk to the people of other countries about 'we are all human beings and should help each other'? Obviously, no!

When human beings are faced with interests, they will first delineate themselves to a certain range, and then maintain their interests. For example, if you are a Shanghainese and the Shanghai team plays football with the Tianjin team, you must be cheering for the Shanghai team, and the Tianjin team at that time was an evil enemy in your eyes. But when the Shanghai team and the Tianjin team merge into one team and play football on behalf of the Celestial Empire and the United States, you will treat the players of the Tianjin team as your own family and cheer him on. And if one day, the football team of the Celestial Empire and the football team of the United States form a team, called the ground team, and play with the team composed of the Martians, you will also see the players of the United States as your own family and cheer him on.

Human beings are like this, first delineating the scope, and then paying attention to friend and foe. The merchants raised the price of grain because they did not classify themselves and the villagers in the same interest group at all, so they would do such a thing. The key to understanding the behavior of businessmen lies in whether you belong to the interest group of businessmen or the interest group of villagers.

Obviously, Zhu Yuanzhang is neither, he is the emperor, in his mind, the world is his, all people, whether businessmen or farmers, are his people, his ass will not be easily crooked to any side, so from his point of view, the businessman's actions are not heinous.

It is impossible for Wang Er to understand such a complicated matter, and Zhu Yuanzhang is not in the mood to explain it carefully to Wang Er, he just thinks of his original policy mistake, that is, imposing very low taxes on businessmen and very high taxes on farmers, and the result of this is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Obviously, this had to be done in reverse, with low or no taxes on the peasants and heavy taxes on the wealthy merchants, in order to make the whole country healthy.

An hour later, Zhu Yuanzhang led the team to Xu Renjie's door.

The Xu family built a very domineering and mighty building, the entire Xu family mansion, like a fortress, built a thick fort wall, the fort wall is as high as one zhang (nearly three meters), the wall head is also open uneven battle grid, the gate is actually made of iron, it can be seen that Xu Renjie since he was defeated by Zhu Yuanzhang last year, he is really lying on his back and vigorously engaged in development.

Not only are the fortifications beautifully built, but the people in the fort are also very energetic, although they have just been defeated by Zhu Yuanzhang once, Xu Renjie has already cheered up, standing on the fort wall with a spear, commanding the archers to occupy a favorable position, waiting for Zhu Yuanzhang's righteous army to arrive.

After Zhu Yuanzhang's rebel army arrived, the people in the fort did not come out, but quietly watched Zhu Yuanzhang set up a military formation and surrounded Xujiabao to death.

"Xu Renjie!" Zhu Yuanzhang laughed and said, "Look at your posture, are you defending the city?" ”

Xu Renjie's face is not very clean, after being defeated by Zhu Yuanzhang not long ago, he fled back in embarrassment, and he didn't bother to wash his face, so now his face is still mixed with sweat and black mud, and he looks very happy. Hearing Zhu Yuanzhang's question, he said sullenly: "That's right, although I planted it in your hands twice, but this time I can't plant it, I have a strong fort wall and a well-trained fort guard, I don't believe that you have three heads and six arms to fly in for me." ”

"I really have three heads and six arms!" Zhu Yuanzhang said lightly: "Believe it or not, if I give a few orders casually, your poor fortress wall will be broken by me." ”

"This ......" Xu Renjie wanted to say loudly: "I don't believe it!" ”

But he thought back to his two defeats, and the sweat ran down the ground. These two defeats, he didn't understand a little, the formation on the opposite side changed back and forth, how it was like a trick to break his hometown army, so far he still hasn't figured out what means the other side is playing.

Xu Renjie was in the first place, and a few squire-looking people behind him couldn't help it, and they came up together, and asked in unison: "Brother Xu, can you hold this castle?" If you can't hold it, open the back door quickly, let's escape. ”

It turned out that these squires were all families who lived not far from the neighborhood, and they had no armed forces at home, and whenever there was an attack by a rogue, they would run to the house of Xu Renjie, who was the most capable of fighting, to avoid trouble. After the news of Zhu Ba's return spread, the families immediately ran to Xu Renjie's house, but not long after they came, they saw Xu Renjie running back in disgrace, saying that they had been won by Zhu Ba for a while, and they couldn't attack anymore, so they could only defend Xujiabao.

These squires were really frightened, and when they saw Xu Renjie's confidence in guarding the fort a little shaken, they were even more frightened and almost turned around and ran.

"Don't worry, I can hold it, probably......" Xu Renjie wiped his sweat, cheered himself up, and then climbed onto the wall and shouted at Zhu Yuanzhang outside: "Your military formation has changed really much, I sigh to myself, but no matter how the military formation changes, it can't fly, I really don't believe that you can break through my fort, I'm here with you today!" ”

Zhu Yuanzhang shook his head with a smile, and gave a few orders to Ma Xiaotian, and the thirty henchmen immediately ran out and cut down trees on the side of the road, while he himself continued to chat with Xu Renjie: "Actually, you don't have to defend the fortress, I came today to talk to you about collecting business taxes." ”

"What business tax?" Xu Renjie is surprised.

"When you do business, you need to pay taxes!" Zhu Yuanzhang said very seriously: "Every transaction, a small part of it is used to pay taxes, this is commercial tax, in other words, the more things you sell, the more taxes you pay, the less things you sell, the less taxes you pay, and you don't have to pay if you don't sell things." ”

"!" Xu Renjie said loudly: "There are no such articles in the Daming Law, we merchants only need to pay a small amount of tax silver to the imperial court...... According to the regulations of the imperial court, my Xu family only needs to hand over two taels of silver, and I have paid it in full every year. ”

"Don't you think there's a problem with such a tax?" Zhu Yuanzhang smiled and continued: "A farmer pays five cents of silver to the imperial court for each mu of land, and if there is a hundred acres of land, he must pay a tax of five taels of silver to the imperial court, that is to say, the two taels of silver paid by your Xu family every year is only equivalent to the tax paid by a peasant with forty acres of land. But your income ...... How much higher than a farmer with forty acres of land? ”