In the midst of the busyness, it soon came to the Mid-Autumn Festival of the year, and Zhao Ta cordially met with the leaders of the three newly incorporated caravans and set up a dinner to entertain them. The banquet is placed in the small square in the front hall, the bright moon is in the sky, and the red candles are shining around, which is very interesting.

After three rounds of wine, five flavors of food, Zhao Ta looked at a middle-aged man on the left, this person didn't look very good, his face was full of pimples and meat, but he was very strong, more than six feet tall, and he was now a big man of nearly one meter nine, and now everyone else has stopped chopsticks, but he is still holding a wine bowl in one hand and a chicken leg in the other, drinking and gnawing, as if he has never eaten anything in his eight lives, regardless of the disdainful gaze of others.

"Shopkeeper Sun, how is this wine?" Zhao Ta asked with a smile.

"Good wine, I have only heard of it in the past, I have never drunk it, and today I know the taste of Ludao, and I am afraid that it will be meaningless to drink other things in the future!" The big name of the shopkeeper Sun Erqian is said to be that when he gave birth to his mother, his mother had a difficult birth, and his father borrowed two coins of silver to hire a midwife to save his life, so he took it as his name!

"If this wine is sold to the northwest, what do you think will be the market?" Zhao Ta waved his hand and asked the attendant Xiao Huangmen to fill Sun Erqian with wine and asked.

"Second master, I can't afford to call me the shopkeeper, you still call me two money!" Sun Erqian put down the wine and meat in his hand and stood up and said, "Northwest people have good wine, they can go without food for three days, but they must not go without wine for a day, although the wine produced in Lingzhou is known as fine wine, but it is not a fart compared with the wine in our house, our wine is there, those barbarians are afraid that they will sell their wives, and they will also drink the wine in our house!" His words were interesting, but they were serious, which made everyone laugh.

"Erqian, is business easy in the northwest now?" Zhao asked again.

"Second master, the imperial court used troops frequently in the northwest a few years ago, and some of the fields were closed, and now the rest are also very abnormal when they are opened, and I am also because I have twice caught up with the closure of the field, and I have to sell the goods at a reduced price, and I have lost ???the capital." Sun Erqian said with a bitter face.

"Old Sun, I heard that you were caught by the border army because of the copper coins you were carrying copper coins and smuggling horses, and it seems that you spent a lot of money to get out!" Zhang Qu, the shopkeeper of another caravan next to Sun Erqian, revealed his old truth.

"Hehe, Lao Zhang, everyone knows the Tao of the Dao, the two of us are crows that fall on the pig, and no one is much whiter than the other!" Sun Erqian's face remained unchanged, and he sneered at each other.

"You two quarrel in front of the prince, what kind of system!" Sitting at the end of the tail, a guy dressed in a mancoat who looked like a Confucian merchant interrupted the two men.

"Lao Liu, we are not as good as you, we are going to Liaobang, the two countries have not fought for more than 100 years, of course the business is easy to do!" Zhang Qu snorted coldly and said.

"Shopkeeper Liu, you lost your capital this time, isn't it because you are shoddy, so that people can see the flaws and get a batch of old horses back!" Of course, Sun Erqian will not let go of the opportunity to hit the opponent, expose the old bottom in time, and dig up the roots.

"Old Sun, haven't you done these things, you know what you rely on!" Liu Song was robbed of Sun Erqian, of course he refused to let him go, and shouted with a white face, and the little bit of Sven Qi on his body disappeared in a blink of an eye. As it is said, buying and selling is business, and commercial activities are inevitably mixed with fraud, and bilateral trade at that time was no exception. Generally speaking, ethnic minorities are more honest, while Han Chinese are slightly more treacherous, especially those corrupt officials and corrupt officials, and they are even more unscrupulous in accumulating wealth. The Han people deceived the ethnic minorities with old tea, sub-brocade, and silver sandwiched with copper blocks, and they used sick horses and weak horses to "pay tribute".

Zhao Ta shook his head and didn't speak, letting the three of them 'eat dog' at the feast, he could also learn something real and useful from it. The Song Dynasty was in the need of military struggle, and imposed economic sanctions on the Western Xia at every turn, sealing the borders and closing the fields. In fact, the social and economic structure of the Western Xia is unreasonable and imperfect, and the agriculture is mostly concentrated in the small alluvial fans in the mountains in the Hengshan area, which can only be cultivated once a year due to the influence of the climate, and the grain output is not abundant, which cannot meet the domestic consumption needs of the Western Xia. The Western Xia's livestock industry played an important role in their economy, but they needed to trade with the Liao and Song dynasties to obtain the necessities of life. The Song Dynasty traded with them mainly to obtain horses, but once the trade with them was terminated, it could also be obtained from other sources, and the impact of the termination of trade was not large. ,

The smuggling trade is a high-risk, high-reward illegal economic activity, which is also the direct reason for the smuggling trade between the Song and Xia dynasties. Ethnic minorities in the western region mainly eat meat, and tea can help digestion. The silk weaving skills of the Han nationality are developed, silk fabrics have always been quite popular, the people of ethnic minorities in some areas take brocade as treasures, people die to wrap a piece of brocade to rest in peace, and the rich die to wrap a few more pieces in order to ascend to heaven, similar to this custom has stimulated their demand for brocade silk. When normal trade was banned, a silk horse in Western Xia could rise to more than ten or even more than fifty guan, which was close to the price of a horse, while a silk horse in the Song Dynasty was only one or two yuan. The difference in the price of tea will be even higher, and under the stimulation of dozens of times the profit, of course, it has attracted a large number of merchants in the Central Plains to trade in spite of the ban and participate in all kinds of smuggling activities.

"Where did the prince find so many profiteers to come back, so many good people don't need it, so he has to use these guys who have no morality, no quality, and no cultivation. The treasurer of the fleet has not arrived today, but I have heard that he is not a good person, and often does some business at sea! Zheng Lu, the chief steward who accompanied him, looked at the quarrel and blushed and had a thick neck, and the three guys who couldn't wait to flip the table said angrily to Zheng Shou on the side.

"The prince's move may also have another deep meaning!" Zheng Shou took a sip of wine and secretly pointed to the presence of the old god, and said to the prince who listened with relish.

"The prince used to tell us to pay attention to honesty in doing business, but you see where these people are good people, I am afraid that they will smash the signboard of our palace!" Zheng Lu sighed and said, he was also afraid that the prince would let them bring it badly.

"Hehe, don't worry about the big steward, I guess if the prince wants to pit someone, so I found these messy people to come back!" Zheng Shou said with a smile.

"Well, you have a point!" Zheng Lu snorted and said, the prince has always been difficult to figure out, but he always surprises people, and this time it may be the same.

The next day, Zhao Ta talked to the three of them separately, and when they came out, Sun Erqian looked frightened and trembling; Zhang did seem to have taken a big class, and what he learned had not yet been digested, and he still looked like a thoughtful nerd until he went to bed at night; Liu Song was not like the two of them, he was as happy as if he had eaten a duck's fart, and some people even heard him hiding in the toilet and laughing loudly??? The three of them lingered in the house for five days, prepared all kinds of goods and set off one after another, of course, each of them had an extra deputy by his side, and a few new faces appeared in the caravan, everyone understood that this was the 'supervising army' sent by the prince, but they could also understand, after all, they were still 'newcomers', and it was impossible to get the trust of the leaders immediately.

???????

It has been several months since the 'kidnapping case of the prince', and Chen Tang has been promoted to Beijing because of his effective leadership in solving the case, and that Xiangyang County has also been promoted and sent to other states to serve as a general judge. Those who should be promoted have been promoted, and those who should be rewarded have been rewarded, but when it came to Zhao Ta, there was no letter, and news came from Beijing, and several ruling people had different opinions, and they were discussed several times in the court. Some people think that the prince should send troops to protect him when he is out of Beijing, which has a precedent to follow in the previous dynasty, and there has been a precedent in this dynasty; The other part of the dissenting opinion believes that since Emperor Taizong of this dynasty, the princes have lived in the capital, and the safety has always been the responsibility of the Dianzhi Zhuban, and there is no precedent for the dispatch of the Dianzhi army. The two groups are still arguing, quoting scriptures and turning over ancient books every day, checking archives, looking for new evidence, but they put the safety of Zhao Ta, the party, behind them!

"Bureaucracy kills people, and this incident has been fully proven!" Zhao Ta sighed after listening to the report and said, now with the deepening of Prime Minister Cai Cheng's new policy, the situation is getting more and more 'good', Hedong Road, Hebei West Road, Jingdong Road have all appeared "group of thieves", as little as hundreds, more than thousands, to rise up against the government. Even the Gyeonggi area is a "thief" bank, and the rich people talk about it. Their own territory has expanded, and the business is getting bigger and bigger, which will inevitably attract the attention of people with a heart, at this time they may still be afraid of their prince's 'prestige', but one day they will not be able to hold back and come to the door to 'do chivalrous righteousness, for the heavens', at that time, with dozens of nursing homes in the house, it must be unstoppable, and the millions of family fortunes they have saved are to be snatched away by the family.

"Now the only way is to make a fuss about the armor protection law!" Zhao Ta thought a few times. After Wang Anshi promulgated the Law on Protecting the Armor in the third year of Xining, it was stipulated that five households would be one guarantee, 25 households would be one big guarantee, and 250 households would be one metropolitan guarantee. Baojia was a township soldier, and the Song Dynasty adopted two measures, "Shangfan" and "Teaching and Reading", in order to implement the "joint army with Ding" and "cooperate with the recruitment". At the time of the "agricultural gap", "Bao Ding practiced martial arts", and after passing the school examination, those who were strong in martial arts could be promoted or exempted from part of the tax service. In the eighth year of Xining, Hebei, Hedong, and Shaanxi five roads were ordered to carry out agricultural and idle drills, and from October to the first month of the following year, the volunteers and brave Baojia went to the prefectures and counties in batches to participate in the teaching and parade, and then changed the winter education time in Hebei and Hedong to November to February next year, and implemented the last (according to the current meaning is combat readiness duty) throughout the country.

After the death of Shenzong, the young Song Zhezong had just ascended the throne, and the anti-reform faction came to power, abolishing the regimental religion, although the "winter religion" was still implemented, but in fact it was also in a state of "relaxation and abandonment", and the armor protection system in the vast countryside is still retained to this day, that is to say, the training of village soldiers is still legal.