Yangzhou, the mansion of the Zhao family.

Zhao Xingzhou has not been born this year, he took a fancy to a woman during the Hangzhou Oiran Competition, although he was rejected on the spot by the young man who claimed to be a Qingzhou businessman, but he did not give up, if the woman he fancied was more powerful than him, it would be okay, but what kind of businessman is a businessman?

At that time, Zhao Xingzhou was already planning to kill Zhu Houwei and rob Sister Yu'er.

Who would have thought that young man would be the Eternal King! The woman he coveted turned out to be the concubine of King Yong!

Yongwang Weifu came to Hangzhou to see the Oiran, Nima didn't have such a in the world, but he was so dizzy that he didn't even find out the details and asked for someone directly, and threatened him!

At that time, Zhao Xingzhou only felt that the sky above his head had completely collapsed.

King Yong, the son-in-law of the first emperor, and the younger brother of the present, sealed Huzhou, but he is also a coiled dragon on the border of Zhejiang, what will happen if he offends him?

Don't talk about the bullshit background of the DPRK and China, even if his father is the head of the cabinet, it is estimated that it will not be more difficult for King Yong to kill him than it is to pinch an ant to death.

Zhao Xingzhou felt that he was dead, he was not so afraid of death, but he was afraid that the whole clan would be affected, especially the relatives of the court, if these clansmen were affected by him, even if he died, he would not have any shame to see the ancestors and ancestors, but he was afraid that he would not even have the opportunity to enter the ancestral grave.

So Zhao Xingzhou immediately began to deploy, to put it bluntly, it was to keep the fire and transfer the family property.

It wasn't until seventy or eighty percent of the elite children in the clan were transferred that Zhao Xingzhou found out that he was likely to be forgotten by King Yong......

After all, it was too simple for King Yong to kill him, and there was no reason not to do it all the time, and the reason why he didn't move all the time showed that King Yong didn't take an ant like him in his eyes at all.

Then King Yong entered Beijing, and then he was the prison country, and then he was called the emperor!

Zhao Xingzhou was completely relieved, it was obvious that the former King Yong, and now the Son of Heaven had indeed forgotten him, having said that, he was just a businessman, and it was not worth Zhu Houwei, who was the Son of Heaven, to bother.

However, Zhao Xingzhou did not take it lightly, the cunning rabbit still has three holes, not to mention that he is a giant who is up and down in the business sea, the Son of Heaven has forgotten him now, but maybe when he will remember it, so although he transferred most of his property back, he still let many clansmen scatter to Fujian, Guangdong and other places with a lot of property.

Naturally, one day, the Zhao family will really encounter a catastrophe, and they will also have a chance to make a comeback.

It turns out that Zhao Xingzhou is a smart person.

Facts have proved that it is a blessing and not a curse, and it is a disaster that cannot be avoided!

Chinese New Year's Eve night, Jinyi Wei came to the door, and Zhao Xingzhou already knew that the Supreme Being, who was now the Son of Heaven, still remembered him as a little person after all......

However, to Zhao Xingzhou's surprise, and even flattered, it was Qian Ning, the commander of the Jinyi Guard, who came to the door!

Qian Ning is the righteous son of Emperor Zhengde, the living king of Hades in the mouth of a hundred officials, and he personally came to Yangzhou to arrest his little businessmen?

This is a big joke, and Zhao Xingzhou doesn't think he will have such a big face.

Unless......

Zhao Xingzhou knew that he was afraid that Yangzhou City would set off a terrifying storm because of his affairs!

He guessed right!

In the first month of the first year of Jiajing, a super storm that swept through Jiangsu, Zhejiang and even Anhui completely shocked the people and officialdom.

In this super storm, 87 salt merchants were raided or severely punished, more than 500 officials were affected and lost their official hats, or directly escorted to the capital to discuss crimes, and 17 salt mine town guards were arrested and killed directly!

The charges of these people who fell in the storm are very simple, embezzlement or bribery!

It was naturally Emperor Jiajing who caused this storm, and the executioner of the storm was Qian Ning, the commander of the Jinyi Guard, who had disappeared from the capital for several months!

Obviously, Qian Ning became the knife in the hands of the new emperor, and this knife slashed at the head of the Daming salt industry.

Anyone with a slightly keener political sense knows that this is Emperor Jiajing's attempt to deal with the salt industry system, and these officials, eunuchs and merchants who were arrested, raided, killed, imprisoned, and beheaded are nothing more than sacrifices for the Son of Heaven to reform the salt industry.

And Qian Ning, who acted as a sacrificial knife, didn't do anything else in the past few months, he led hundreds of elite brocade guards south, the purpose was to collect evidence, and then strike a thunderous blow!

Obviously, he did a good job, after all, Jinyiwei eats this bowl of rice, and it is too simple to collect evidence, not to mention that what Jinyiwei is best at is that he can concoct evidence without evidence, and the salt merchant itself is a huge community of interests, who has no mud under his ass, and it is accurate to find one, and he can bring up a piece if he finds one.

The perfection of Qian Ning's errand naturally succeeded in arousing the hostility of Manchu officials.

This kind of hostility is different from usual, usually because Qian Ning is just a vicious dog raised by the royal family, he will bite whoever the emperor asks him to bite, and if he bites, it will be forgotten, generally speaking, it will not be large-scale.

But this time, Qian Ning almost uprooted the entire salt industry, touching the interests of too many people.

Almost all of the big names in the south have an inextricable relationship with the courtiers behind them, and they are intertwined with each other, forming a close chain of interests.

"Your Majesty, the salt system has been inherited for thousands of years, how can it be said that it will be abolished?"

In the imperial study, Zhu Houwei's eyes swept over the seven elders of the cabinet, and asked indifferently: "What do you Aiqing think the first assistant means?"

Prince Liang and the other ministers looked at each other, and then said in unison: "The ministers think that what the first assistant said is very true."

Zhu Houwei sneered twice and said: "The cabinet's concerns are very clear, the salt tax accounts for as much as thirty percent of the Ming Dynasty's taxes, and if you change it, you Aiqing is afraid that it will hurt the root, which is understandable, Yang Yiqing."

Yang Yiqing hurriedly got up.

"You are the head of the household department, I came to ask you, how many thousand taels of salt tax and silver have the household department received each year in the past three years?"

Yang Yiqing replied without hesitation: "Back to Your Majesty, the salt tax in Zhengde is 2.63 million taels in five years, the salt tax in Zhengde is 2.84 million taels in six years, and the salt tax last year is 2.81 million taels."

Zhu Houwei nodded, the Ming Dynasty's annual fiscal tax at this stage is less than 10 million taels, and by the time of the Apocalypse, the annual tax has been sharply reduced to less than six million, as for the Chongzhen Dynasty, the Chongzhen Emperor who was fooled and lame by the minister lowered the salt tax, almost abolished the commercial tax, and the treasury revenue was already miserable.

"Yang Shoufu, I ask you, are you really just worried that the reformed salt tax will cause a sharp reduction in the tax revenue of the national treasury?"

Yang Tinghe Zhengse said: "As the head of the cabinet, all I want is that the Ming Dynasty can be peaceful and secure, and the salt tax policy does not have too many drawbacks, so the minister thinks that there is no need to cancel or change it......