Liangxiang County is more than 300 miles away from Tanggu Salt Farm, in this era, it is natural that there will not be half an hour from Beijing to Tianjin, the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Express can be taken, Huang Hai and other people can only ride horses or take carriages, walking 30 to 40 miles a day slowly towards the seaside.

Starting from Liangxiang, all the way to Wuqing County, this section of the road is still easy to walk, although only Anci County can be called a city in the middle, but there are still many village-scale residential areas along the way, which can provide food and accommodation for Huanghai and others who are in a hurry. After everyone left Wuqing County and continued to move southeast, the situation changed. The farther away from Wuqing County, not only the more desolate the road became, but even the road under your feet became narrower and more difficult to walk.

At this time, many places along the coast of Tianjin in the previous era had not yet been developed, and the population was not only not comparable with modern Tianjin, but also far from other areas of Youzhou in the same era. Especially in this era, the Yellow River flows from the Haihe River into the sea, whenever the Yellow River floods, it will cause a large area of the Yellow River on both sides of the river, coupled with the saline-alkali land formed by seawater inflow, so that the coastal areas can be used for cultivation The land is very limited, and naturally no ordinary people want to live in this kind of place. Therefore, before the crossing team established the Tanggu Salt Farm, except for a few fishermen who made a living by going out to sea to fish, there were basically no people living near the coast. If it weren't for the fact that the crossing team had set up several inns on both sides of the road from the salt field to Wuqing County in order to allow their salt transport team to have a place to rest and stay on the way to the salt from the Tanggu Salt Farm to the prefectures and counties, I am afraid that after the Huanghai group left Wuqing, they would have to sleep in the wild before arriving at the Tanggu Salt Farm - it is already the eleventh month of the lunar calendar and the twelfth month of the solar calendar, and the weather is already very cold, and it will be very hard to sleep in the wild.

Although the conditions of the inn prepared for the salt transport team were relatively poor, far inferior to the regular inns in the county town, but fortunately, the area was vast and there were enough rooms for everyone to live in, and Huang Hai and others were not spared the suffering of eating and sleeping in the open -- the reason why the inn was built relatively large was mainly to accommodate those large salt transport teams of hundreds of people.

In this way, leaving the county seat of Wuqing on the 10th day of the 11th month of the lunar calendar, the Huanghai party marched strictly according to the distance of 30 miles in one day, which is the distance between the inns set up by the group, and finally arrived at the seaside village where the Tanggu salt works were located on the 15th day of November.

It is said to be a village, but if you really walk up to it, you will find that this village can actually be called a big town store. Due to the large number of workers recruited for the production of the salt works, the area of the village has expanded several times, and it is no longer visible what it used to be. Moreover, it is precisely because of the existence of the salt factory that this small fishing village, which originally did not even have a name, now has a name that is well-known to many merchants and ordinary people who have bought the salt produced here - Tanggu Town.

When Huang Hai and the others were still four or five miles away from the Tanggu Salt Farm, Ding Xianding, the steward in charge of the daily affairs of the salt farm, led some of his low-level stewards and supervisors to greet him. Although the Tanggu Salt Farm is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Commerce and Trade, it is under the supervision of Xie Tianzhu, the former deputy director of the catering and entertainment department of the Ministry of Commerce and trade, and the current head of the salt industry department, Steward Ding, who has been reporting to Xie Tian, has never even seen Huang Hai and others in person. But as a subordinate, Ding Xian still knows very well that Xie Tian, Huang Hai and Huang Shan had been together in the first place. These three people, plus the young master named Gao Jun, the relationship between them is even closer than that of brothers.

Therefore, after receiving the order of Xie Tian, who was busy settling accounts with merchants everywhere, to come to meet Huang Hai and the others, Ding Xian did not dare to delay at all, and immediately took all the low-level stewards and supervisors he could find who had no urgent matters to deal with for the time being, and summoned a large number of salt workers - at this time, due to the weather, the salt works had stopped drying salt, but there were a large number of salt workers available - and went five miles out of the salt works to meet Huang Hai and the others.

Huang Hai and the others' team was still dozens of steps away from the welcoming procession, Ding Xian turned his head and confessed a few words to a cronie next to him, and then trotted all the way forward, and regardless of the snow on the ground that had not yet been civilized, he knelt down in front of the carriage in which Huang Hai and the others were riding, kowtowing while saying auspicious words of welcome. Rao is sitting in the first car Huang Hai and his cousin Huang Shan had already received the news of Xie Tian before, saying that he was too busy to greet him in person, and would arrange someone to greet him on his behalf. But the Huang brothers obviously didn't expect the person who greeted them to come so far. Therefore, when the guards first saw a large group of people standing in the distance, they thought that there were robbers robbing the road, all of them with guns loaded and knives unsheathed, and they formed a defensive formation side by side. Especially when Ding Xian ran over, even a few guards had already raised their guns, as long as Ding Xian had even the slightest abnormal behavior, he would die on the spot. ,

Fortunately, the guards were very calm, and they would not easily shoot at the comers before receiving the order of the Yellow Sea, and Ding Xian naturally saw the vigilant actions of these guards, and when they ran towards the convoy, they kept shouting loudly in their mouths, "Ding Xian, the steward of the villain Tanggu Salt Factory, is ordered by the Thirteenth Master to come to greet you", so there was nothing wrong.

Hearing Ding Xian's shout, Huang Hai had already drilled out of the carriage station and landed on the wheel. Although when the other party approached his team, he kept shouting that he was assigned by the thirteenth brother to greet him, but on the one hand, considering that this place was not close to the salt field, it was difficult to say whether the thirteenth brother would send someone to greet him so far. On the other hand, although when he telegraphed with the thirteenth brother, the thirteenth brother had mentioned that he was too busy to come to greet him in person, but would send a saltworks steward named Ding Xian to greet him, but neither he nor the others in the team had ever seen this steward Ding, and no one dared to be sure that the middle-aged man dressed as the butler who was trotting over was the steward Ding that the thirteenth brother said.

Therefore, while signaling his guards not to shoot, Huang Hai also ordered everyone to be vigilant at all times so as not to be taken advantage of by the other party. Moreover, after Ding Xian ran to the carriage and knelt on the ground and kowtowed, although Huang Hai judged from his behavior and words that the other party had no malicious intent, he still did not let the guards relax, and the guards still pointed the muzzle of the black hole at Ding Xian, who was already kneeling on the ground.

After Huang Hai looked Ding Xian up and down, he said indifferently: "This must be Ding in charge." On a cold day, don't kneel in the snow, get up quickly. ”

Ding Xian thanked him again, and then stood up. He first peeked at the appearance of the one who was still standing on the wheel, and compared it with the appearance of Huang Hai and the others described to him by Xie Tian, and then he smiled with a smile on his face, and said carefully: "The villain has been working in the salt farm, and he rarely has the opportunity to see other masters other than the Thirteenth Master, so he is not very familiar with the other masters in the 'Qing Garden'. If the villain guessed correctly, you are the Twelfth Master that the Thirteenth Master has been mentioning, right? ”

Seeing that this steward Ding, who had never met him, was able to guess his identity, especially when he said the title of "Twelve Masters", Huang Hai, who was originally somewhat suspicious of Ding Xian's identity, believed that facing this middle-aged man was indeed sent by his brother to greet him. So, while waving his hand to the guards to disarm them, he replied, "Steward Ding guessed well, it is a certain family." ”

After speaking, Huang Haihai pointed to the crowd of people who were lined up in two columns on both sides of the road not far away and asked, "Are all these people from the salt works in front of you?" ”

"Back to the Twelfth Master, these people are low-level stewards, overseers, and salt workers in the salt works." Ding Xian replied respectfully.

After receiving an affirmative answer from Ding Xian, Huang Hai couldn't help but be a little surprised, and said: "I just asked him to send someone to lead the way for these people, but I don't want him to send dozens of people to greet him, this old thirteen is really enough to toss." If all the people are sent to greet a certain family, won't the production of the salt works be affected? ”

"The Twelfth Master doesn't have to worry," Ding Xian said, "One, now the weather is already very cold, the sea is starting to freeze, and the salt works have been suspended last month. Second, the Tanggu Salt Works has thousands of acres of salt fields, which require a lot of manpower, so even the stewards and supervisors are counted, plus all the salt workers, the salt works have a total of nearly 3,000 people. This time, the villain brought only a few dozen people to greet the twelve masters and all the masters, and they said that even if the salt farm is still working, it will not have any impact on the salt production of the salt field. ”

Since he had been in Kaifeng City before, he did not know much about the size of the Tanggu Salt Works and the salt workers employed, so when he heard that there were thousands of people in the salt works, Huang Hai was somewhat surprised. However, surprised to surprised, Huang Hai's face did not show it, he pointed to the welcome team not far away and said: "The weather is so cold, there is no need to talk so much, and this wilderness is not a place to speak. The old thirteen have a certain heart, you stay and lead the way, and the others will let them go back to the salt farm. ”

Huang Hai's order Ding Xian naturally had to carry it out, so he confessed to Huang Hai, and then he trotted all the way back, sending the welcoming crowd back to the salt field, and then returned to the carriage where Huang Hai was riding, and gave the handlebar direction to the chariot.

The five-mile road, whether it is long or not, is not short, and it took Huang Hai and his party more than half an hour to complete it under the guidance of Ding Xian. Before the convoy arrived at the gate of the salt farm, Huang Hai, who stood on the wheel again, saw Xie Tian hurriedly coming out of the main gate of the salt field - although Xie Tian sent the steward of the salt field to greet Huang Hai and the others because of his busy affairs, as Huang Hai's brother-in-law, the brother-in-law came, and no matter how busy he was, he had to find time to greet him personally. Therefore, soon after sending out the welcome team, Xie Tian put down the work at hand and rushed to the gate of the salt field to greet Huang Hai and the others.