Moreover, even if he didn't care about his reputation and didn't care about the attitude of the imperial court, if he continued to resell illicit salt, the profits of this business would not be as high as it is now-since Qiong Haijun could teach them the technique of drying salt, of course, he could also teach it to the imperial court after the negotiation was successful. Compared with the humid and rainy south, those coastal areas with abundant sunshine but little rain in the north will definitely not produce less once a large number of salt drying fields are built. Although everyone needs salt, and it is a permanent demand, when the entire Daming coast can produce salt, its price will inevitably plummet. At that time, it will be absolutely impossible to maintain such huge profits as now.

Those short-haired people put on a sympathetic posture, saying that "it is a good thing to let the common people afford to eat salt", they are rich and don't care about these profits, but what can we do with the Zheng family? Zheng Zhilong was very depressed and angry about this, so would he turn against Qiong Haijun because of this? - No, on the contrary, he has to keep up with the development of the Joan Navy more closely. Wen Desi's words that day really touched him a lot, he didn't want the Zheng family to become a little mantis that stood in the way of the behemoth of the Qiong Navy because of his short-sightedness, and then was easily crushed.

So Zheng Zhilong also decided to follow the short hair to collect the mountain together, and he would not do private salt in the future. But before that, he had to get back the money he had invested in building the salt works. Taking advantage of this opportunity, he mobilized all the available cargo ships in his family in a decisive manner, filled them with all the salt goods that had been produced recently, including Xiong Wencan, the governor of Liangguang, and Zou Weilian, the governor of Fujian, and others, and then mixed into the northbound fleet of the Qiong navy......

Along the way, every time a port was berthed, the Zheng family's fleet was almost blatantly reselling salt, and at the same time releasing the news that the Qiong Navy planned to negotiate with the imperial court and "turn private into public". As a result, as soon as the news spread, it was not anyone else who was most anxious, but it was precisely the officials and wealthy businessmen in those coastal cities. and those associated with the salt industry, who benefit the most from salt smuggling.

So naturally, Guo Yi and others, who represented Qiongzhen, were under a lot of pressure on the way north. Basically, every high-ranking official they met would mention the salt industry affairs openly or implicitly, implying that the Qiong Navy should not make decisions without authorization, and handed over the private salt business to the imperial court, so that the interests of too many people were lost, and how good it was for everyone to make money together happily as before. This kind of thing that smashes people's jobs, and smashes a large area, is very offensive.

Of course, Guo Yi will never accept this kind of accusation, and he has been prepared for a long time -- Chen Taotong sent a telegram to the Beijing court to impeach Qiong Haijun, and the committee has compiled a pamphlet for this purpose. Let Guo Yi take it with him. As long as he encounters someone who dares to tell him about this in front of him, he takes out the booklet, points to the article and the signature on it, and scolds him directly--who is selling teammates to grandma? Who first stabbed the matter in front of the emperor? Who took our goods, made our money, and then came back to attack us? The next head is obviously open to pick up customers, and you still have to set up a memorial arch above? Playing our Qiongzhen as a monkey, right? - Bah! Just shoot it and hand it over, and no one should play!

Guo Yi is not a good speaker, but he only needs to carry some of the remarks made by the "people" against the committee and the Ming Dynasty at the internal meeting of the committee. Those trolls can't do anything else. When you move your mouth, the combat power is absolutely barren, and when you scold people, there is both theory and practice, and there is no lack of witty words, which can be called invincible. Guo Yi only copied a few remarks casually, and then silenced the Ming officials who tried to find fault - they didn't take care of it.

If you change the background, it is not deep enough. Those powerful people still dare to play big and eat small. But who is Joan Navy? The thief who was recruited! And, to be honest, there are now a lot of people who are beginning to wonder if these shorthairs can be called "recruited" - if there are a few people who are not clear-headed, let them look at the galleons in the harbor behind them, and the more than a hundred huge guns on them. It's definitely honest.

So there's no hope of finding someone to be angry, at least not on the shorthair side. Those powerful eunuchs had to pinch their noses, ready to admit and accept this result. However, these people's thoughts are similar to Zheng Zhilong's - since the mountain is inevitable. Then try to recover the loss before recovering the mountain! It just so happened that the Zheng family transported so much salt, and the last vote, there will be no such shop in this village after that.

As a result, since the Zheng family's fleet joined, every landing of the Qiong navy would evolve into a festive carnival of local salt dealers, who were almost openly reselling illicit salt with a kind of "the end of the world is coming" madness, and the official forces not only did not stop it, but also joined in with all their might, and frantically dumped the inventory on hand with the Zheng family. As a result, before negotiations between Qiongzhen and the imperial court had begun, the price of salt in several coastal cities had fallen by at least 30%. At the same time, according to the laws of the economy, this momentum of price reduction is rapidly sweeping towards inland cities, and it is estimated that it will not be long before it hits Yangzhou, the nest of salt merchants.

The addition of the Zheng family's merchant ships also made the size of this fleet swell to an incredible point -- when it first sailed out of Qiongzhou on Hainan Island, it was four galleons with twenty or thirty auxiliary boats, and after Fujian, the fleet number was already close to two hundred! It is estimated that except for the Three Treasure Eunuchs who went to the Western Ocean, there has never been such a large-scale fleet in the history of the Ming Dynasty.

Frequent commercial activity slowed down the fleet to the north, so much so that even Moonheir was dissatisfied. But this time it was Hu Wen, Guo Yi and others who persuaded him in turn - the Zheng family and those powerful businessmen took advantage of the momentum of the Qiong Navy to sell illicit salt so wantonly, of course, it was impossible not to give Qiong the Navy a benefit. Although the people of the Qiong Navy are not short of money, the rules are the rules, and with these four galleons there, a large part of the profits must be paid this time.

This time to go north to the capital, the cost is bound to be huge, and Hu Wen, as the big housekeeper of the team, will definitely not mind having an extra amount of living money on hand. Moreover, a quarter of it has to be distributed to those Ming army generals and sailors on the "Great General", so even if Wen Desi himself doesn't care about this money, he can't stand in the way of other people's wealth.

Slow down, anyway, they were ready to go to Peking for the New Year--in such a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere, and the whole fleet sailed slowly north in a very leisurely manner, until they received the telegram......

On this day, the weather was not very good, and everyone on the Qionghai could not go to the deck to bask in the sun, so they shrank in the cabin one after another. As a pleasure boat, the Princess is definitely the No.1 of this era, and even the Qionghai, after being modified in battle, may not be able to match it in terms of ensuring passenger comfort.

The restaurant is filled with music and a scene of local Fujian opera, and many people sit around the stage and watch with relish - the lobby of the Princess is the center of the ship's activities, and it doubles as a dance hall and a conference hall. When it was first designed, Pang Yu and others even considered building a set of film and television projection equipment here -- they really had the corresponding equipment, and the technical conditions were not a problem. It's just that considering that the power supply on the ship is tight after all, and the most important thing is that all their film sources come from the entertainment room of the original Qionghai, and those films are old films that have been watched many times many times for the 139 passengers, and it makes little sense to build a luxury screening hall for this purpose, so it was later canceled.

But as an alternative, they eventually set up a stage here, and now there are shows every day: play, juggling, magic...... Manifold. The performers were invited from Qiongzhou, Guangzhou and other places, followed by the ship to Fuzhou, and then disembarked in Fuzhou to change to a local opera troupe, and then to Quanzhou to change ...... And so on. In this era, theater troupes or acrobatic troupes and the like need to wander around and tour. Being able to board the big ship of the Princess, comfortably obey one big city and transfer directly to another big city, without having to endure hardships on the road, those troupes naturally can't ask for it. Not to mention the fact that the remuneration offered by the Qiong Navy was quite high, and the members of the troupe were treated as guests at all times of the day, except for two or three regular performances a day, - standard cabins with private bathrooms, a variety of fine food and drinks provided free of charge twenty-four hours a day, and other entertainment facilities on board...... For example, they do not regard the literary and artistic workers of this era as inferior, nor do they mind sharing this superior material condition with those people.

Therefore, almost every troupe that has had the opportunity to board the Princess will eventually regard this experience as an unprecedented miracle in their lives, and they will naturally do their best in performance. However, the opera entertainment of this era is really incomparable with later generations. Whether it is singing or lyrics, it is difficult to enter the eyes of modern people, at most one or two shows, and the picture is fresh and lively.

Nowadays, the people who are concentrated in front of the stage are often the locals, such as those Ming Dynasty officials who were supposed to stay on the "Great General", and the maritime chiefs who have a deep background and have a good relationship with the Qiong Navy who have a deep background and have a good relationship with the Qiong Navy and other people who are in front of the stage - at the invitation of Guo Yi and Lin Hanlong, these guests were fortunate enough to visit once, and then the restaurant lobby of the Princess became the place they most yearned for, and they loved to run here when they had anything to do. (To be continued......) T