When Luo Shi and Niu Changgeng hurried to the dock, it was already dark.

The wharf workers and the other cargo ships were all moored to the ferry, but only one was left, swaying under the night wind.

Old Liu Tou was pacing on the shore, and when he saw Niu Changgeng coming, he hurriedly greeted him and said anxiously:

"Chang Gung, what do you say is this! You can't blame me for murder, right? The owner of the goods has already entered the city, if this matter is reported to the government, I am the crotch of the yellow mud, not is also! Can you come up with an idea with me? ”

Niu Changgeng looked at Luo Shi, and when he saw Luo Shi frowning, he urged:

"Take us to see it first!"

"Eh, good!"

Old Liu led the way, and Luo Shi followed behind him on the deck, and saw him bending over, and on the side of the ship, he turned over a dark board—

"It's inside!"

Luo Shi looked and saw a man shrunk inside, his head buried in the pile of clothes, so thin that he was only skinned and bone, like a dried corpse.

Looking carefully at the clothes he was wearing, Luo Xi actually felt a little familiar, as if it was the clothes of the Cao Gang?

Suddenly, the man's fingers moved!

Luo Shi's heart trembled, and she almost screamed in fright, deceived the corpse?

After calming down, she hurriedly reached out and lifted the clothes covering the man's head, and pressed her sword against his neck, feeling the faint beating of his major artery.

"Hurry up and save people, it's not dead yet! It's alive! ”

Lao Liu patted his head and said in surprise:

"Ah, I'm confused, I saw that this board was stuck from the outside, and when I saw that there were people inside, I thought that I was going to suffocate, but I didn't expect it to be alive...... Hurry up, Chang Gung help handle, let's carry people out! ”

They pulled the man out and immediately sent him to the nearest hospital for treatment.

The doctor checked up and down for a while, and only said one sentence:

"How many days has he not eaten? Go get some millet porridge."

……

After Luo Shi fed the man half a bowl of rice soup, he slowly woke up.

He opened his confused eyes for half a pillar of incense, and just when Luo Shi thought he was hungry and stupid, he reached out and grabbed her wrist, and said in a hoarse throat:

"I ...... I'm going to...... I'm going to Cao Gang ......"

"Cao Gang?" Luo Shi said in his heart, it was really a Cao Ding.

Niu Changgeng comforted him and said, "Big brother, you almost died, why were you locked in the deck again?" Where you're going, wait until you're well."

The man only seemed to repeat this sentence: "Cao Gang, Cao Gang, something is wrong...... Grain Ship ...... Big ......"

Luo Shi and Niu Changgeng glanced at each other, and felt that it was better to bring them back to the shop first.

She paid the consultation fee and thanked the doctor, and Niu Changgeng picked up the person on his back and left the hospital and walked towards the shop.

*

Covering the door, Luo Shi poured him a cup of hot tea, and saw that he was in a slightly better spirit, before saying:

"This is Tongzhou, as far as I know, the nearest Jiangpu rudder of the Cao Gang is also a hundred miles away, and the fastest boat will take three days to go."

The man stood up, clasped his fists and gave Luo Shi a half-salute, and said gratefully:

"The small one's name is Xue Dacheng, who is the chief armor of the Cao Bang Huguang rudder, and with this year's Cao boat going north, he met the Haikou ship thief in Cao Yun! The grain fleet was wiped out! The brothers were almost all buried in the sea, but I was good at water, and I floated on a wreck for a few days, and climbed onto a cargo ship, which was supposed to hide in the deck......"

He recalled the pain at that time, and his expression was very solemn: "Who expected to be unintentionally locked, so hungry for several days, fell asleep unconscious, until the girl rescued the little one to pick up a life"

Luo Shi was shocked when he heard it:

"The Cao Gang is a good hand at going to the rivers and lakes, how could they be wiped out and let a dry of pirates and thieves be caught off guard?"

Xue Dacheng clenched his fists, smashed on the table with resentment, and said angrily:

"There's an inner ghost! They dug holes in the bottom of several main ships in advance, fooled them with wax oil, calculated the time, and by the time the pirates arrived, our ship would also sink! In addition, the brothers are the first year to take the sea route, and they are not used to the wind and waves, and after a competition, they will fall behind, so that the thieves have a chance to take advantage of it! ”

"The grain—all overturned in the sea?"

Luo Shi asked, her voice trembling unconsciously.

Xue Dacheng hung his head in frustration: "Most of them are, and there are still a few grain ships left, which are also intercepted by Haikou"

Luo Shi's brain was in a mess, her idea was right, Huguang's grain will never reach Tongzhou, so how will the crazy grain price end?

Once the news came back, the confidence of the market collapsed, and everyone took the food stamps to exchange for rice grain, and the little grain saved by Ruifeng was simply not enough to cope with the food stamps issued now.

If you don't have enough food and no food, I'm afraid Tongzhou City will be in chaos......

"Girl, I have to go to Jiangpu immediately and bring the news over!" Xue Dacheng is probably the only survivor, he must inform the dragon head to make plans early, Cao Gang Yuncao has made a big mistake, and the court will definitely issue an order to correct the responsibility.

"No, once this news leaks out, Tongzhou City will be in chaos!"

Luo Shi resolutely objected, she told Xue Dacheng about the food stamps, analyzed the relationship, and was concise and to the point.

Although Xue Dacheng heard a little understanding, he also knew the seriousness of the situation, but he said contradictoryly:

"But this matter must not be hidden, when we met the Haikou, it was the Caoyun Governor Yamen who flew a carrier pigeon and sent it to the capital, and at the latest half a month, the imperial court report must arrive in Tongzhou! That's why I have to report to the palace before I report to the house, and ask the Cao Gang to come out with a remedy as soon as possible, I can't sit still! ”

Luo was silent, pacing back and forth in the shop, since she had become a prophet, it had become her unavoidable responsibility to stop the food crisis, so she turned her head and said:

"You make me think about it, and I'll answer you tomorrow morning!"

Xue Dacheng thought that in the middle of the night, there would be no boat to go to Jiangpu again, so he nodded and said:

"Okay, let's talk about it tomorrow"

*

arranged for Xue Dacheng to live in the shop, and Luo Xian returned to the courtyard.

The alleys were quiet in the middle of the night, and only the sound of beating was heard from afar, and Luo Shi walked all the way, thinking all the way.

Assuming that this matter was secretly planned by the Jiang family, she arranged for people to infiltrate the Cao Gang, or directly bought off her henchmen and traitors, colluded with thieves at sea, and robbed the grain ship at the right time.

During the time when the bad news spread from the capital to Tongzhou, she could frantically collect grain and hoard grain, add fuel to the fire, coax grain stores to issue grain stamps without control, and raise grain prices. After the newspaper is copied to Tongzhou, the people will definitely cause panic and rush to redeem the grain, and then the grain bank will not have this ability, and whoever has the grain will have the absolute right to speak in this market.

What Jiang wants is the absolute surrender of the entire grain industry in Tongzhou, and under the food crisis, the grain and rice market in Tongzhou City in the future may be surnamed Jiang, which is not a simple concept of making some money.

Luo Shi smoothed out her train of thought and thought hard about the solution.

It is an established fact that the grain ship was intercepted, and this bad news will spread to Tongzhou sooner or later, and if you want to contend with the Jiang family, there is no other good way than to follow the same path as her.

At a time when market confidence is still sufficient, this is the only way to hoard grain at any cost.

But her ability is limited, even if she relies on Lady Niangzi and Qionglin to make some money, but letting her run the market is a drop in the bucket, and it is not enough to see it at all.

In this matter, she still has to find the prefect Yu Youlong.

If he is willing to believe her, only a three-pronged approach can now turn the tide. First, Mo San of Ruifeng Grain Bank was ordered to immediately stop selling food stamps; second, secretly convened the powerful households to raise funds and go to the surrounding prefectures and counties of Tongzhou to collect grain; Third, send people to the official road post station to block the palace from entering the city, delay as much as possible, and buy time for grain collection.

Back in the courtyard, Luo Shi immediately wrote down these three points, and she planned to go to the prefect's yamen to find Yu Youlong early tomorrow morning.

The next day, the morning light was faint, and the autumn frost was misty.

Luo Xi waited early outside the Si Yan Gate room in the back house of the Yamen.

She is a woman who has no name to worship the post, so she can only use the name of Jiang Yueyan and Qionglin Hall to ask the porter to pass it on her behalf, and wrap a thick door bag and ask him to run errands and pass the word.

has money and is easy to do, and after only waiting for a cup of tea in the concierge, someone invited her to wait in the tea hall.

Yu Youlong had seen Luo Xi once, when Jiangzhou invited him to the Qionglin Hall. At that time, he was full of praise for the exam box and instant noodles, so he also had a little impression of her, so as soon as the concierge came, he immediately remembered such a beautiful and wise girl.

Dressed in regular clothes, he walked into the tearoom in good spirits and said with a smile:

"There is official business in the front hall yamen, so Miss Luo Shi has been waiting for a long time"

Luo Shi introduced the grass people Bai Ding, who was still a woman, so she could only kneel down and kowtow in a proper manner:

"Xiaomin visits the prefect, there is really an urgent matter to report, otherwise he will not dare to come to the door to disturb!"

"It's okay, you get up and talk back, this is not the yamen lobby, and I don't have official robes on me, you don't have to be formal, you have something to say slowly-"

Luo Shi stood up and nodded, alongside the current situation of the food crisis with her speculation, but concealed her suspicions that Jiang was the initiator.

This lecture lasted for half an hour, during which Yu Youlong frowned deeply, and did not interrupt her once.

He was promoted from the county order to the government, and he understood the suffering of the people too well, in the past, he was heavy in taxes and miscellaneous taxes, and he had to go hungry in bad years, and he relied on Huguang Cao to survive on grain, if this matter was true, it would be terrible.

"Now these are just your guesses, the only evidence is also the ...... named Xue Dacheng"

Out of a cautious attitude, Yu Youlong still asked more, but he had completely believed what Luo Shi said in his heart.

Luo Shi picked up the tea bowl and drank saliva, moistened her throat and continued:

"If I hadn't rescued him, Xue Dacheng would have been a dead man at the moment, he told me to accidentally bump into it, and the possibility of lying is very low. And you also know in your heart, now the price of grain in Tongzhou City is completely out of control, as far as I know, the average family in Niujia Village can no longer afford to buy grain and rice, they can only eat some coarse grains to survive, and the price of this japonica rice coarse grain is also rising wildly! ”

Yu Youlong slammed his fist in the palm of his hand, and said angrily:

"The sinister villain who regards the lives of the people as mustard and is mercenary, if I am told to catch who is making profits, he will be broken into pieces!"

"My lord, of course, the wicked must be punished, but the top priority is to stabilize people's hearts and the market first."

Luo Shi took out the book of construction from his bosom and handed it to him:

"I have listed some measures above, if you think it is feasible, you can consider it as appropriate."

Yu Youlong looked at it very seriously, he knew more about officialdom mediation and the means of governing the state capital than her, so he said:

"The general direction is right, the first one is to stop the distribution of food stamps, and I can do it with all my might, but the second one is full of difficulties, the businessman is treacherous and selfish, who is willing to pay for me to collect food?"

Luo Shi was a little disappointed, which was her naivety.

Yu Youlong paced back and forth in the tearoom with his hands behind his back, and he thought about it and muttered:

"If you really want to plot against these rich and noble families, it's not impossible, but you have to play some tricks, in addition to small tricks, you have to have someone who is willing to take the lead in paying money, preferably the richest and most powerful family in Tongzhou City——"

As if thinking of something, his eyes suddenly lit up, and he said loudly:

"There you have, Peach Blossom Crossing Liang House!"