When Li Xiucheng saw Li Mingcheng again, his condition had improved, although he was still weak, and coughed twice from time to time, at least he could sit up and talk by himself, and he didn't have to lie in bed all day.

Although the illness is like a thread, but the weaker the body, the more flexible Li Xiucheng's brain is, and Li Xiucheng has always paid attention to listening to the opinions of others, so he listened carefully to what Li Mingcheng saw and heard in Wuxi, and also listened carefully to Li Mingcheng's speculation and construction.

"Therefore, from the perspective of the younger brother, that Li Yongji is just relying on the support of foreigners to have his current power, and his essence is just a yellow-mouthed child with vain ambition and no knowledge of the height of the sky. Although his troops can fight, they spend a lot, and the combat effectiveness of the elite army is smashed out of silver, so the defense is more than enough, and the attack is insufficient. As long as we can endure it, slowly consume it with him, and then find someone to find a foreigner who supports him, and persuade the other party to support us, we can defeat him sooner or later. ”

"If that's the case, that's fine, I'm afraid it's not that easy." Li Xiucheng smiled lightly, "Now that the other party's team has become a climate, it means that the capital of foreigners on him is not small, if it were me, he would not let go lightly and support others casually." You say he's a thirteen-year-old yellow-mouthed kid? What's wrong with being thirteen years old, I was born and died long ago when I was thirteen years old, and thirteen-year-old talents abound in heaven, so don't think that the other party will underestimate him when he is young. ”

"How can this be the same? I found someone to check, as far as I know, Li Yongji has always lived in a honey pot in the past and has never suffered hardship, how can he compare with his eldest brother! Li Mingcheng nodded hurriedly, "If you want me to see, nine times out of ten, the troops of the Jingwu Army are controlled by foreigners, and Li Yongji is just a puppet put by foreigners in the foreground." ”

"Oh? What basis do you have? ”

"It's very simple, as far as I know, there is an authentic foreigner in their team, that foreigner is powerful and powerful, and he is still a lame, but he usually doesn't come forward much, and he can't see him lightly, but the other party can enter and leave Li Yongji's tent at will, and others also turn a blind eye to this, and I only see it once in a while. In my opinion, that foreigner is the real master!

Big brother, you think, no matter how talented Li Yongji is, it is impossible for him to suddenly get so many foreign guns and cannons from scratch, right? None of us had heard of his name before he sent out his army, and it was as if the elite army had suddenly emerged from the ground. His family is not a rich family, why do they suddenly have so many good things? Why do foreigners support a child? Doesn't it look at his young age and being obedient and easy to manipulate? I heard that in his old home, there is still a team of pure foreigners guarding the lair, maybe that team is to watch over his parents. ”

"Well, that's possible." Li Xiucheng nodded, "If there are foreigners behind the Jingwu Army, then their behavior makes sense." Foreigners are thousands of miles away from us, what do you want here? Isn't it just a word of wealth? If this is the case, then it is logical that they will ask us to exchange food and weapons for gold and silver treasures. ”

"That's right, it's still the eldest brother who is wise!" Li Mingcheng said, "So we don't have to be afraid of him at all, just trade with them with peace of mind." Hmph, no matter how proud Li Yongji is, he is just a puppet, and when foreigners don't need him, the end will be absolutely miserable, just wait and see. ”

"Hmm." Li Xiucheng nodded again, "By the way, you said that you brought a few people from the other party when you came back this time, and they brought a new machine from a foreigner, which can communicate with the other party for thousands of miles?" Is it true or false? Can you show me? ”

"That's true." Li Mingcheng nodded, frowned, and said, "That kind of machine is said to be electricity, that is, the electricity that thunders in the sky, but it is much less powerful, and then there is a very long antenna that transmits what signal...... Anyway, I can't tell you the specifics, anyway, after using that thing, I can indeed talk directly to people thousands of miles away, I tried it myself, and it really works.

However, although this thing is strange, I think there must be something strange in it, and I can't get it right, otherwise how can it use any electricity, and how can it be transmitted thousands of miles? What if there is any puppet technique that can invisibly control others? Big brother is weak now, I don't think it's better to get too close, if you have anything to say, I will convey it, and in the same way, if he has anything to say, I will tell you as soon as possible. I'm the only one in contact, and if there's something strange about me after a long time, you can tell it, big brother, and you won't be affected by it. ”

"That's fine." Hearing what the other party said, Li Xiucheng also seemed to be a little worried about this kind of foreigner thing that uses thunder and lightning and can transmit sound for thousands of miles, "Then it's embarrassing for the virtuous brother, but since this thing is so evil, in case it ......"

"Big brother, don't worry, we are brothers, I won't help you do this, who else will do it." Li Mingcheng's face was awe-inspiring, "In short, even if there is anything strange about that machine, it will come to me alone." The great cause of the kingdom of heaven can be without me Li Mingcheng, but it must not be without you, the prince! ”

……

Thanks to the radio communication, Li Yongji and Li Xiucheng have established direct contact, although Li Yongji has not spoken to Li Xiucheng himself so far, but the meaning of each other can still be accurately stated.

This is a rare thing, after all, they belong to two hostile camps, and they want to engage in secret cooperation, in this case, the heads of state of the two sides can establish a direct communication of colleagues, can avoid a lot of misunderstandings and troubles, and the cooperation between the two sides will be more secretive.

In this case, the two sides talked about the deal several times, and finally Li Xiucheng agreed that in a month's time, that is, at the beginning of August, he would withdraw from Changzhou and hand over Changzhou to Li Yongji, and Jiangyin and Huzhou would do the same if their own people could fight before then. After that, he promised not to take the initiative to invade Li Yongji's territory, but Li Yongji must also promise not to attack Li Xiucheng's territory again, or in other words, if the two sides want to attack each other, they must greet each other in advance, and everyone will negotiate the conditions and discuss it.

Li Xiucheng in Jiangsu can call the shots, but Hangzhou, that is, Zhejiang, is not under his control, he doesn't count, because that is his cousin Li Shixian's strategy, he can't control his cousin, Li Yongji wants to continue to play that set of superficial struggles, private cooperation tricks, must re-talk to the other party alone.

Although the peaceful acceptance of the city's deal was not completely negotiated, other deals were well negotiated, such as the grain deal, Li Xiucheng proposed that in order to express the sincerity of both sides, he wanted to buy 30,000 stone of rice with Li Yongji at the price of 4 taels of silver and one stone of grain.

The amount of this grain transaction is said to be small, only 120,000 taels of silver, and most of them are offset by treasures such as gold and jade, which is a small amount for both sides, so this transaction is more of a pathfinder to confirm the sincerity of the transaction between the two sides.

The process of trading was very simple, Li Yongji sent a team to hide the grain in two secret locations in advance, and then the people left, and then informed Li Xiucheng of one of the burial locations; When Li Xiucheng got the information, he sent someone to the first secret place to find the grain, and told Li Yongji the location of a gold and silver treasure that had also been hidden in advance, and Li Yongji sent someone to get it.

In this way, using radio communication and the dispatch of henchmen, after three successive operations, everyone completed the grain transaction worth 90,000 taels of silver, and the whole process was unaware, and everyone was also familiar with the road, which can be regarded as a preliminary establishment of a relationship of trust.

Since the first transaction was completed, Li Xiucheng immediately started the second transaction, which continued to exchange 4 taels of silver for one stone of rice, and purchased 100,000 stone of grain at one time, and at the same time ordered 10,000 stainless steel guns, 5,000 French guns, and machetes were not ordered, probably because he felt that the price of 15 taels of silver was too uneconomical.

This was a big deal with a total of 600,000 taels of silver, of which only 100,000 taels were real silver, and the other 500,000 taels were all equivalent to gold, jade, coral, mahogany, ebony, bloodstone and other treasures.

It is precisely because most of them are treasures that need to be valued, so the transaction process is very slow, divided into several stages, usually the Taiping Army estimates the value by itself, and then hides it, Li Yongji gets it here, and then evaluates it on the spot, and then passes Guò Li Yongji to quote back the price on his side, if the other party agrees with his own valuation, continue, and continue to talk if he disagrees.

Generally speaking, it is Li Xiucheng's side that is easy to talk to, basically Li Yongji's side estimates how much it is worth, as long as it is not too bad, they can accept it.

In this way, Li Yongji's side took advantage of a lot of advantages, and the value of this batch of treasures was far more than 400,000 taels, according to those appraisers, if this batch of things were sold to Beijing or the country where they were sold, the price would at least double, and if these things were shipped to modern society...... Li Yongji really couldn't imagine how much money he could get.

Not to mention anything else, the light of the best Laokeng glass imperial green jade jewelry, large and small add up to no less than hundreds, the value of these things alone is difficult to estimate in modern society, not to mention that there are hundreds of bloodstone and Tianhuang stone.

However, silver is a hard currency, and things like gold and jadeite seem to be valuable, but they don't actually have much effect. In the troubled times, the golden jade, now this war is in chaos, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is still playing the holy treasury system at this time, these treasures and playthings are difficult to exchange for silver from the ruling area of the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom, and the value has long fallen, it is better to send them out in exchange for food and weapons.

It should be said that Li Xiucheng may have just suffered a major setback at this time, or because he did not conquer the prosperous place of Suzhou, his mind still maintains a trace of sobriety, and his life is relatively simple, he has not built a lot of buildings, nor has he engaged in so many concubines of Wang Niang, and he does not look so seriously at those gold, silver and jewelry and other things, and they have searched for a lot of gold, silver and jewelry before the siege of the city, especially the battle of Changzhou, so in terms of valuables, there are still a lot of collections. He was not stingy at all when he sent these things.

In fact, for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, due to the special system, they have a lot of gold, silver and jewelry, but unfortunately because of the blockade and war, they themselves do not have much food, and they cannot exchange food with the outside world, so they all exchange high prices for food in the later period, and use ultra-high prices to attract those adventurers to transport grain to their territory.

For example, Gordon of the foreign gun team, before he joined the foreign gun team, he had transported grain to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and made a fortune, and later Britain and France strictly controlled it, so this kind of trade was gradually reduced, because this road was cut off, Gordon joined the foreign gun team.

In short, after opening up such a channel for exchanging gold and silver treasures for food and weapons, it will be of great benefit to both sides, not to mention Li Yongji, in exchange for those precious treasures such as gold and jadeite, if you get it in modern society, you don't have to sell all of them, even if you only sell a part, if you take your time and go to the international market, it will be easy to get tens of billions of dollars, and if you sell them all smoothly, it is not impossible to reach hundreds of billions.

Li Yongji heard Zhang Xinda say that the jade and jade market in modern society is quite huge, as long as it doesn't ship too much at once, take your time, even if it is hundreds of billions of dollars, you can completely eat it.

This is not an exaggeration at all, not to mention anything else, China's jadeite market alone, there are more than 3 million related employees, a year alone in the Chinese market jadeite sales of more than 20 billion US dollars, and every year is growing rapidly; In addition, jadeite has also become popular in modern Europe and the United States, and the annual jadeite trading volume in Europe and the United States also has a share of more than 30 billion US dollars.

This is only the formal way of the jadeite market, if you add the black market, it is even more difficult to say, because there is no way to count in detail. The industry generally believes that simply speaking, the global market share of jadeite is at least more than 100 billion US dollars per year, and it is still increasing, which is basically in short supply. The main reason for restricting the rapid increase in the annual transaction volume of jadeite is that the annual output is too small, and it is impossible to increase sales quickly by relying solely on the value-added method of scarcity and expensive.

This is only about jadeite, not counting bloodstone, Tianhuangshi, and mahogany ebony, although the market for those treasures is not as good as jadeite, but it is also quite large, not to mention the global hard currency of gold.

Therefore, as long as Zhang Xinda is not too greedy, and carefully releases this batch of jadeite jade from the company, he will only obtain huge profits, but will not have too much impact on the market, after all, for modern society, there are only a few jadeite rough mining places, and there are not many new mineral sources, because of this, the Myanmar government has restricted the mining and export of jadeite rough.

Similarly, for Li Xiucheng, he also gained a lot, not to mention the priceless foreign guns and stainless steel weapons, that is, those grains, if he bought them through other channels, with the current situation, it would definitely be impossible to 4 taels of silver and 1 stone.

Don't look at Li Yongji's income from grain alone, but in fact, in the territory of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, due to the long-term shortage of grain, the price of grain in Nanjing City has reached 8 taels of silver and 1 stone, and other places are not much better, such as Anqing, the price of grain is also more than 6 taels of silver and 1 stone. In this way, the 4 taels of silver and 1 stone given by Li Yongji are really the price of conscience.

In another history, after Li Xiucheng laid down southern Jiangsu, especially Suzhou, he continued to transport grain and grass back, which alleviated the grain shortage in Nanjing, and the southern Jiangsu region also became the main food supply base of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Later, the Taiping army lost southern Jiangsu and had no supply of grain and grass, so it quickly fell.

It can be said that if it were not for the Qing army to increase the blockade in the later period, if it was not for the strict shortage of food in the later period of the Taiping army, then with the combat effectiveness of the Taiping army, even if the Hunan army and the Huai army plus the help of foreigners, it would not be possible to take Nanjing so quickly and destroy the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. For example, Hong Xiuquan, as the king of heaven, also didn't eat, had to take the lead in eating weeds, but accidentally ate a bad stomach and died, if Nanjing at that time had enough grain and grass, it is really hard to say what the final result would be.

All in all, even if the two secret transactions between Li Yongji and Li Xiucheng were initially established in a relationship of trust, both sides felt that they had taken advantage of it, and they were quite satisfied with this way of cooperation.

On the surface, we are still a hostile relationship, but in private, the two sides have become good trading partners, and Li Yongji called this kind of cooperative relationship in hostility a strategic partnership, and the cooperation between them belongs to strategic partnership......

Just when the two sides were ready to continue to try to expand and continue this new type of strategic partnership, the imperial court's reward for Li Yongji finally came down.