In a house that covers an area of five or six acres, the floor of the corridor in the courtyard is all paved with green bricks, except for a few pavilions and pavilions that are all wood, the buildings in the courtyard are basically brick and wood structures, and the newly installed stained glass on the windows of several small buildings is reflected in the winter sunshine.

In the summer, a few small buildings are hidden in a green landscape, and the large pond nearby is very cool, but now in winter, the large trees that have lost their leaves no longer shade the sun, and only birds fly from the bare branches to the ground to feed, and the whole yard is even quieter with the chirping of the birds.

In addition to such a house in Changzhou City, Wang Ze also has such a place for Wang Ze and his family to live in Jeju Island, Qinjin City and Pingyang City under construction.

In the past, during the construction of Jeju New City, Qinjin City, and Changju City, and until the recent construction of Pingyang City (near Tokyo in later history), many people advised Wang Ze to build a palace as soon as possible and establish the location of the national capital, but Wang Ze politely refused on the grounds that there was no formal statehood.

Just kidding, my brother is only temporarily laying the foundation in the East China Sea, and he won't stay here for the rest of his life, if he builds a palace here, he won't be able to live too long, so isn't it a waste?

Besides, in the past few years since the occupation of Jeju Island, craftsmen and slaves have been busy building a series of castles, and now they have to build roads on each island, especially the newly occupied east and west arteries on Choju Island are the top priority now, where is there still energy to build a palace for Wang Ze.

Therefore, under the suggestion of Yang Ku, Wang Ze built a relatively large mansion in each of the four more important cities as his home, although the house of five or six acres is far from the house of the wealthy family in Zhongyuan Prefecture, but it is already a big mansion in the East China Sea, which has always been a narrow city.

Yang Ku and the others drank in the living room in the courtyard, a small red clay stove was burning charcoal, and there was a small pottery kettle on the stove, which contained the mountain spring collected from the spring in the mountain not far away, but this tea Ah Niu was not used to drinking, he had always liked to drink spirits.

"Little Hou Ye, to be honest, I admire a smart person like you the most," Ah Niu took a sip from time to time with a freshly scalded wine jug, "This sugarcane can still make wine after squeezing sugar, and the rest of the mess can be used to make paper!" ”

The wine pot in Ah Niu's hand is filled with sugarcane wine from Lingnan, although it is far less than the rice wine in Fujian and Zhejiang and other real estate, but relatively speaking, the cost performance of sugarcane wine is the highest, not only because of the large output resulting in cheap prices, but also the taste makes many slang people love it.

It can be said that Wang Ze is taking the right step this step, for many slang people they can go without eating for a day, but they can't go without drinking for a day, in the past, wine consumption consumed a lot of food, for many slang people wine is a very rare good thing.

Nowadays, as long as the bagasse left over from the sugar is pressed, they can make fine wine, and they soak it in fine wine almost every day, how can this not make them happy!

Yang Ku carefully looked at Ah Niu in front of him, although it was the first time they met, but as a high-level civil official of the East China Sea regime, of course, he would also know some about the important people under Mrs. Xian, and the slang strong man called Ah Niu in front of him was obviously one of them.

Seeing Ah Niu's praise for the wine, Yang Ku smiled and said: "Since Lieutenant Gao Liang Xian loves these wines so much, he will give Lieutenant Xian a hundred jars and thirty catties of good wine every year in the future, so that Lieutenant Xian can drink enough!" ”

Ah Niu waved his hand again and again and said with a smile: "The sheep envoy is joking, he is just my wife's groom, where can he be called the county captain, or call me a Niu to come cool!" Besides, we slang people have to drink three or five catties for a meal, where is a hundred jars enough, look down on my amount of wine! ”

Wang Ze also laughed and said, "Uncle Niu, is there such a powerful groom as you?" Although you used to be a groom for your wife for a while, but now you are the county lieutenant of Gaoliang County, do you need to be so modest? In the future, Uncle Niu will give Uncle Niu a thousand jars of wine every year, otherwise it will not be enough to enjoy it! ”

After laughing, Wang Ze said to Ah Niu again: "I am a brother and sister with a servant, and I wanted to go to Gaoliang County several times to meet Mrs. Shilong (Mrs. Xian's title), but several times I had to stay here because of the Sanqi War and the East China Sea War, and now I don't know if Mrs. Tai is in good health?" ”

Ah Niu patted his thigh and smiled: "Ankang, in the first two months of this year, when the autumn harvest was over, I also followed my wife to help Ouyang Dadu to conquer the Zhan people of Jiuzhen County in Jiaozhou, and the natives there want to break away from my Dachen and join the Linyi country!" ”

As soon as he talked about fighting, Ah Niu's eyes immediately lit up and said: "You don't know, at that time, the lord of Linyi Country provided twenty war elephants for this gang of rebels, and a large number of weapons wanted to resist the king's master, but our lady has been able to fight well since she was a child, and it took less than two months to completely exterminate the natives there!" ”

In fact, what Ah Niu didn't say was that there were still thousands of soldiers of Linyi State hidden in the indigenous forces at that time, plus the strong troops of the local natives in Jiaozhou, all of whom were brave and ruthless, and with the twenty war elephants provided by Linyi State, the actual combat effectiveness was not weak.

However, even with such a battle configuration, with the cooperation of Mrs. Xian and the governor of Lingnan, Ouyang Yi, it was still quickly wiped out, and after this battle, Jiaozhou alone provided tens of thousands of laborers to Lingnan, which was undergoing large-scale development, and Mrs. Xian's tribe also obtained tens of thousands of young and strong slaves from Jiaozhou. 000 Literature

After sweeping away the aborigines of the rebellion in Jiuzhen County, Mrs. Xian withdrew her army and returned, and Ouyang led the army to invade the Linyi country, although the army had to retreat because the army did not adapt to the climate of the Linyi country, which was more humid and hot than Lingnan, but the Linyi country still lost tens of thousands of young people and countless old and weak in this battle, and the loss of wealth was not small.

After boasting, Ah Niu looked at Wang Ze and said with a smile: "Because of the loss of weapons in the rebellious war with Jiaozhou, this time my wife sent me to the East China Sea with the intention of picking up my little master to go home as soon as possible, and on the other hand, she wanted to buy more weapons from the little marquis!" ”

Wang Ze looked at Ah Niu with an expectant expression and said helplessly: "I'm afraid this is impossible, if there are a small number of hundreds of knives and guns, or even weapons with less than a thousand, I can be the master and sell them to you, but it is impossible to ask for more weapons, and we are also very short here!" ”

Wang Ze is heartbroken about the loss of Sanqi's iron mine, and now it seems that he not only restricted the use of his iron tools, but also lost a super gold mine, and now the entire Wang Yong and Wang Ze's forces are using the iron tools produced by the Changguang County Iron Mine.

The discovery of an iron mine and two coal mines near Zhenhai in Beji made Wang Ze very excited for a while, but when tens of thousands of Japanese slaves were mobilized to mine there for a month or two, he found that the iron ore in Zhenhai was actually very small, and it was mined out in a few months.

Wang Ze was greatly disappointed after knowing the situation, and the only thing that Wang Ze was pleased with was that the coal mine near Zhenhai was confirmed to be a relatively large coal mine, but the lack of iron greatly reduced its value, and it could only be used as winter heating fuel for immigrants from Zhenhai, Jiangkou, Sakhalin and other places.

Ah Niu was rejected by Wang Ze at first, he was very disappointed and a little unhappy, but after Feng Fu, who knew the situation, told him the truth of the matter, Ah Niu knew that Wang Ze had occupied such a large territory in the East China Sea and had not found a big iron mine.

Now the situation in the East China Sea is not polite, as long as the mainland blocks all the iron import channels, I am afraid that Wang Ze can only see if he can go to Luhan (Luzon Island) and other South Seas to find iron ore to try his luck.

Since iron weapons and weapons can't be bought and sold, Ah Niu was embarrassed for a long time before he said: "Now that our Lingnan development requires a lot of labor, didn't the little marquis destroy the Japanese kingdom now?" I think that as a powerful country in the East China Sea, there are always hundreds of thousands of young people in a country, and it will be an unstable factor for these people to have more in the East China Sea, so why don't you sell us some slaves? ”

Speaking of the back, Ah Niu is already talking to Wang Ze in a consultative tone, but Wang Ze feels awkward how he looks at it, this uncle is selling cuteness!

Wang Ze said curiously: "I remember that last year, more than 300,000 Han people entered Lingnan?" When these Han people arrived in Lingnan, everyone was allocated land, so wouldn't there be more Han people entering Lingnan this year, so Lingnan still lacks a large number of manpower? ”

Ah Niu said bitterly: "Little Hou Ye can't be counted like this, these Han people who went to Lingnan are all under the jurisdiction of the imperial court, although we slang people also received a lot of iron tools and seeds from the imperial court, but we are not good at farming, I heard that the Japanese people can endure hardships and can farm, so we bought it back to help the clansmen farm!" ”

Looking at Wang Ze's look of disbelief, Ah Niu said a little helplessly: "Okay, the main reason we bought these Japanese slaves is to expand the plantation, and now it is very profitable to plant sugarcane in Lingnan and squeeze it into jabers to sell to Wang Ze's caravan, and even to the merchants of Funan!" In addition, my wife also wants to start two fruit plantations, and the original slaves are not enough! ”

"Uncle Niu, didn't you say that this time Eminem went to Jiuzhen County to capture a lot of slaves? Why is it not enough? Feng Fu asked with some confusion.

Ah Niu was immediately half angry, he was really not afraid of genius-like enemies, and he was afraid of teammates who were inferior to pigs and dogs, but he didn't dare to say this to his little master Ah Niu.

Although Feng Servant exposed Ah Niu, Wang Ze was not angry, after all, the big guys have their own little secrets, he still smiled: "In this case, I will sell you 50,000 slaves, 10,000 yuan for each slave, if there is not enough money, you can use items of the same value to offset it!" ”

10,000 yuan sounds like a lot, but in fact, it is ten guan money after the Song Dynasty, although the purchasing power was relatively strong during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, but because there was a shortage of people everywhere at this time, the price of slaves was not cheap.

During this period, although there were a large number of displaced people in the Northern Dynasty, they were mainly concentrated in the Northern Qi Dynasty, and the other Northern Zhou, Southern Chen and Wang Ze were constantly absorbing people from the Northern Qi Dynasty to increase their own strength.

In the territory of the slang people in Lingnan, in the past, when Hou Jing was in turmoil, he was able to take advantage of the chaotic situation to loot the Han people as slaves, but now with Nan Chen's attention to the development of Lingnan, coupled with Mrs. Xian's repeated orders, no one who dares to fight the Han people without opening their eyes to the idea.

In this way, with the deepening of the development of Lingnan, the labor force is becoming more and more scarce, even the price of an indigenous slave in Jiaozhou is about 10,000 yuan, and the value of the Japanese who are more hard-working than the indigenous slaves in Jiaozhou is higher, and the actual price given by Wang Ze is also the price of sixty percent of the Japanese slaves.

Therefore, hearing Wang Ze's low offer, Ah Niu was also happy and said: "Since the little marquis is so generous, we slang people are not stingy, and we will calculate for you all the items that are offset by the local market price in Lingnan!" ”