After sending off the fleet heading west, Wang Ze was busy comforting his mother who was in a bad mood, and he was also busy dealing with a series of things in the Xia Kingdom, and it was not until the end of the year that Layue finally relaxed again.

At this time, it was already the twentieth day of the twenty-third year of the summer calendar, and there were still three days before Xiao Nian, and before Wang Ze could relax, a case heard by the Intermediate Court of Qinjin County in the East China Sea attracted Wang Ze's attention, but the case heard made him a little crying and laughing.

Strictly speaking, this is a civil economic dispute case.

The plaintiff is the Maoshan Iron Mine in the upper reaches of the Xia Guotong River, and the defendant is a group of Nanyang merchants registered in Qinjin County, who are accused of maliciously selling counterfeit and shoddy products, and their goods are actually a group of Nanyang indigenous blacks.

It turned out that all this was related to Wang Ze's previous series of big moves.

With the division of the ten princely states of the Xia Kingdom, the Xia Kingdom successfully expelled the Persians who had occupied the waterways of Yemen for more than ten years, and completely opened up the maritime trade routes between the entire East and the Roman Empire, so the maritime trade between the East and the West developed in a blowout situation.

Stimulated by these favorable factors, various industries such as agriculture, industry, workshops, shipbuilding, and navigation in Xia prospered at a faster rate.

Stimulated by the sea trade, the industries of various counties have also entered a fast lane.

Wool textiles from the livestock area, paper from Lake County, silk from Xia County, whale oil products from Whale County, soap, tea from Yizhou, fur from Eguchi-gun, porcelain and glass from Choshu County, etc., almost all of the industrial factories are full of effort to produce.

With the continuous development of maritime trade, the shipbuilding industry of Xia Kingdom, which has been lined up for more than two years, is in urgent need of a large number of young and middle-aged workers, and the countless merchant fleets of Xia Kingdom at sea have almost occupied the entire sea surface of the East China Sea, and in the vast sea area between the East China Sea and the Red Sea, more than sixty percent of the ships are the fleets of Xia Kingdom.

In addition, the Xia State also had to maintain its own large army and maintain stable agricultural and animal husbandry production, and the large-scale development of mineral deposits and mines in various places also required a large number of human resources to maintain.

As a result, the Xia Kingdom, which had a total population of 18 million, once again experienced a large-scale labor shortage.

This is still stimulated by the Xia Kingdom's repeated orders to release hard-working slaves, so that the slaves can work hard in order to work freely, otherwise the shortage of labor in the Xia Kingdom will be even greater.

By this time, the women of Xia had already taken on a considerable part of the work in fact.

The vast majority of textile workshops, the silk industry, and agriculture and animal husbandry in many places have been undertaken by the women of the Xia Kingdom, but there are many more heavy physical jobs that they cannot undertake, and the Xia Kingdom has also legislated to prohibit women from engaging in these high-risk jobs.

As a result, the labor gap has widened.

If there is demand, there is a market, in this case, soon a fleet of ten large ships came all the way to the port of Qinjin County from the Western Ocean, the fleet came back from the Zhiyuan Islands, but the goods on the ship surprised the people of Xia Kingdom.

The seller was Hou Cheng Chong, who was far away in Kunlun Zhou, and the buyer was Iwami Yinshan in Changzhou County, and they wanted to buy these hard-working Kunlun slaves to mine the silver ore in Iwami Yinshan.

Because the labor gap in the Xia Kingdom is too large, and the work in the silver and gold mines is hard and the wages are not very high, the people of the Xia Kingdom who are becoming richer and richer have no one to do these jobs at all.

The first batch of Japanese slaves in the silver mines had been depleted in more than twenty years, a very small number had been freed, and the rest of the tens of thousands of people were dying of old age, and the declining labor force had caused the directors of the gold and silver mines to use their brains elsewhere.

This batch of Kunlun slaves sold from Kunlun Continent can endure hardships and be able to work, although they eat a little more, but compared with the value created by their work, who cares about those worthless grains, so immediately after the Hidden Kirishima Gold Mine also purchased a batch of Kunlun slaves to mine gold.

After all, the more the maritime trade economy develops, the greater the demand for gold and silver currency, and with these pressures, they have to continue to exploit these gold and silver mines.

Stimulated by the success of these two mines, the mines in Xia Province that require a lot of unskilled labor have purchased Kunlun slaves in large quantities, and all mines such as coal mines, iron mines, copper mines, etc., need such slaves, but the price of Kunlun slaves has skyrocketed, which also surprised Cheng Chong, the initiator.

Originally, Cheng Chong was worried that there was nothing in his territory after he became a country, and it happened that the nearby black tribes came to rob his things, so he defeated these Kunlun slaves, and finally heard that the people of Daqin liked black slaves very much, so they simply sold them to the Zhiyuan Islands, where there were many merchants in Daqin, so they could exchange a few grain money!

Who knew that these slaves were bought by the Xia people, and they caused such a big event later, but in this way, including Zhu Rui, these people suddenly discovered that those nasty Kunlun slaves in their territory turned out to be good treasures that could be sold for a lot of money.

As a result, several princes who were divided into Kunlun continents also began to arrest Kunlun slaves and sell them to the Xia Kingdom under the stimulation of such profits, which for a time became an industrial income at the beginning of their founding, and at the same time, the soldiers of these Hou States were trained.

With the rapid growth of maritime trade between the East and the West, a slave trade route from Kunlun to the East began to take shape, and although the Xia government did not encourage such behavior, it still acquiesced in this fact because of the serious shortage of labor.

However, there are always a group of people who are good at drilling camps, they don't do legitimate business that can make money, and they want to do some crooked ways, after Kunlun Nu appeared in the Xia market, a group of Nanyang merchants also quickly had their own means of cheating money.

After all, the Kunlun slaves were transported from the distant Kunlun Continent, not to mention the time spent on this long voyage, it was not easy to capture these brave Kunlun slaves during hunting, especially some young Kunlun slaves were even more popular.

Young Kunlun slaves are easier to train, so some large families and sea merchants are more willing to buy such Kunlun slaves, and then train them into small servants who are suitable for themselves.

With such a high-end demand, these Nanyang merchants quickly found a way to make a fortune, and they set their sights on the local indigenous blacks in Nanyang.

Yes, the local natives of Nanyang have dark skin, and if the young man is deliberately put on makeup, he will become a young Kunlun slave from Kunlun Continent, so they use this method to make a profit.

At the beginning, because the shipment was relatively small, everyone would not have thought that even Kunlun Nu had counterfeit and shoddy products, so these people quickly earned a lot of income.

Facts have proved that shit can't change to eat shit, originally just wanted to make a vote and stop it, but this kind of profit is too easy to earn, so they gradually became bigger, and even took over a large number of Kunlun slaves from Maoshan Iron Mine.

But what they didn't expect was that things would soon come to light.

Thinking about it, it is understandable, because the Kunlun slaves they sold before were all sold as young ones, and the price was even much higher than the price of ordinary adult Kunlun slaves.

Even if Kunlun slaves are slaves among these people, they are treated the same as ordinary small servants, and they don't have to do too tiring work, so even if these fake Kunlun slaves are not tall, the master will only think that they are not suitable for the water and soil.

The batch of Kunlun slaves purchased by Maoshan Iron Mine is different, they are used to do heavy physical work, and how do the Nanyang natives do it, so these imposters have been completely exposed in less than two days, which can make the management of Maoshan Iron Mine angry.

The merchants immediately denied Maoshan Iron Mine's questioning, so Maoshan Iron Mine sued them to the Qinjin Intermediate Court in a fit of anger, because these merchants belonged to the management of Qinjin County.

The news soon reached Wang Ze's ears, and he was immediately taken aback, could it be that the profits from the sale of Kunlun slaves had increased to this point? There are even fake and shoddy products!

Funny enough, the merchants bought the goods from the Nanyang garrison when they were cleaning up the surrounding natives, so there was a lot of evidence in the hands of the authorities.

In the face of a mountain of evidence, these merchants finally lowered their heads helplessly, and finally admitted that the Kunlun slaves they sold were counterfeits, but how to convict them next stumped the judges of the Qinjin Intermediate Court.

Because most of the slaves in the Xia Kingdom were plundered through war in the past, and because of the shortage of labor, the sale of these slaves within the Xia Kingdom was relatively rare.

However, the judge was worried that there was no explicit provision in the law for the sale of slaves, and in the end, the judge of the Qinjin County Intermediate Court finally sentenced several merchants to exile to the island of Western Yanmar for the crime of illegally selling counterfeit and shoddy goods.

After learning the whole story, even Wang Ze couldn't cry or laugh, this law was really not enough to keep up with the situation, so under Wang Ze's urging, Xiao Jing began to be busy with legislation again.

This is the time when a new era is opened, and any kind of law starts from here, and everything Wang Ze does and says now will have a great impact on the future, so Wang Ze can't afford not to pay attention to it.

After this case passed, Wang Ze no longer paid attention to it, he was busy now, especially with the development of the Xia Kingdom's economy, it seemed that the establishment of the bank was imminent.