When he arrived at the palace gate, Zhao Yingqi watched the princess walk into the palace.

In front of the palace gate, Elder Song bowed to the side to greet the princess, and then turned to look at Zhao Yingqi.

Zhao Yingqi smiled and bowed, and Song Lao also smiled and bowed to him.

When the princess and Song Laoyin were not in the palace gate, Zhao Yingqi turned around and walked out of the city.

At this time, it was only two quarters of an hour before the city gate was closed, and it was definitely too late to get out of the city when he walked through the Luofeng Gate in the middle, so Zhao Yingqi thought about it and decided to go out of the city from the west gate.

There is also a small town outside the West Gate, which is the largest wharf next to Tongyingfu City, where all kinds of materials are distributed by water and land.

There are three religions and nine streams, all kinds of people on the wharf, and they can also be seen in the south and the north, and all over the world.

And it is about to reach the 55th birthday of the monarch of Zhou State, and many countries have sent envoys and congratulatory gifts.

After the second prince and Li Yuanbai occupied the two counties of Jia and Nei in Chunneidao, the Ministry of Industry was already working on dredging the Tonghe River in Jiaxian County, and when the dredging of the Tonghe River was completed, the Zhou State could directly transfer from Tongyingfu to the Beihe River to the Lanxuan Canal and go straight down to the south of the Yangtze River, and even go west along the Lanjiang River until Lingzhou, the capital of the Yue Kingdom.

At that time, this terminal will definitely be further expanded and become the largest transshipment hub in the western part of the Zhou Kingdom.

The city gate will be closed at four o'clock in Tongying Mansion to start curfew, and the wharf in the west of the city will be busy at four o'clock, and the goods to be sold in Tongying Mansion the next day and the goods sent from Tongying Mansion to various places on this day will be loaded and unloaded nervously at night.

Zhao Yingqi wanted to go to this pier to have a look, but he didn't want to run into an acquaintance.

The doorman of the third prince, Dong Xiang.

In a hurry, he came out of the dock, carrying a large box six feet long and three feet wide, and waved goodbye to a person.

Zhao Yingqi hid a little behind a carriage outside the wharf, watching Dong Xiang hurriedly enter Tongying Mansion before closing the city gate.

Zhao Yingqi remembered the secret meeting between Dong Xiang and the concubines of the three princes during the hunting in the north of the city some time ago, and felt that a new copy should be coming, so he went into the dock to take a look.

This pier is different from the city, which is very lively during the day, and this pier is lively day and night.

Porters, merchants, peddlers, and all sorts of people walk around here.

Zhao Yingqi walked along the largest road to the end, and he didn't find anything, and he didn't find the person who waved away with Dong Xiang.

After thinking about Dong Xiang's box, which was quite exquisite, he went back to focus on looking for slightly high-end shops on both sides of the street.

Sure enough, the person who sent Dong Xiang out of the dock was found in an armory shop, and he should be a shopkeeper.

Zhao Yingqi looked at this weapon shop, there was a plaque "Lingrui Pavilion" in the middle above the gate, and there was also a medicine shop and a blacksmith workshop next to it.

The pharmacy was on the board and ready to close, and the blacksmith's workshop was still clanging with some ironware.

Zhao Yingqi walked into this armory shop with his hands behind his back.

This armory shop has a total of three floors, the hall on the first floor is placed with some weapon racks, the weapon racks are some simple swords, ring head knife, hand knife, lancet, three-foot sword, four-foot long sword, dagger and so on are rich in style.

Judging from the steel pattern on the blade, they are all very good weapons.

Zhao Yingqi walked in front of a knife, this is a waist knife, except for the slightly better steel quality and the slightly thicker back of the knife, there are no other characteristics, and the weight of more than ten catties is really a little light for the current Zhao Yingqi.

The shopkeeper was pulling the abacus behind the counter at the door, raising his eyes and secretly looking at this young man in a blue-gray riding uniform.

"This guest officer, the store is closed, if you are interested, how about coming back tomorrow?"

Zhao Yingqi didn't look at the shopkeeper, but just picked up a small hand knife from the side, this small hand knife is only a foot long, and the difference with a dagger may only be a one-sided blade.

"Why don't you do business when the door is still open?"

"The store has indeed closed, but there is a batch of raw materials that have not yet been unloaded, so I have to wait for the delivery person to come." The shopkeeper had already walked to Zhao Yingqi's side.

"It's okay, I'm just looking, and I'm not going to buy anything, and it's the same if I come back tomorrow."

The shopkeeper thought about it, so he had to entertain him: "This guest officer is a knifeman?" ”

"Well, the knife is easier to use." Zhao Yingqi put down the knife in his hand, looked around again, and deliberately showed his disappointment.

"What? The guest officer is not satisfied? ”

"Yes, the knives here are also good, but they are not easy to use, and the weight is not enough."

The shopkeeper took a step back, went to the blind spot behind Zhao Yingqi, and took a good look at it, feeling that this person should not be a master at a young age.

"The guest officer laughed, these weapons in our store are made of stainless steel, and many of the top three Sima and school captains in the forbidden army have come to our store to select weapons.

Zhao Yingqi didn't say anything, smiled, took out a ring-headed knife from the knife holder on the side, weighed it slightly in his hand, pulled out a knife shadow on the left and right in his hand, and slashed a knife diagonally towards the ground.

A sword slammed into the ground, leaving a shallow white mark on the bluestone slab in the store.

The shopkeeper was a little surprised, the internal force came out of the body and formed, this is the sign of the head armor master, but the power is not enough, it seems that the young man in front of him is already the peak of the second class.

"This old man is profound, so why don't you go up to the second floor with the little one to take a look?" The shopkeeper's face changed quite quickly.

"It's not convenient, your store is obviously closed."

"It's okay, it's okay, the master's martial arts are extraordinary, the rough blades at this level are really not worthy of the master, why don't you ask the master to go up with the little one?"

...

"Nothing..."

What Wang Tu hegemony and benefit Li Min are all gone, what does what he is doing now have to do with Wang Tu Baye, and it is even more contrary to the benefit of Li Min.

Obviously he was very tired, but Dong Xiang, who was holding Huanhuan, didn't fall asleep all night, but kept asking himself in his heart: Is all this the so-called serving the country?

Obviously, this is not.

Dong Xiang, who had been repairing for five days, finally calmed down, but once again fell into inexplicable self-doubt.

This was the sixteenth day of heavy rain, and Dong Xiang was ordered to lead 1,500 men down to the wharf to supervise the loading of ore.

The wharf was actually the pond that had been breached by the dam, and this pond was once filled with flat-bottomed cargo ships, large and small, and many sailors and porters wearing hats were bare-chested, loading the ore from the mine from the carts, wagons, and ox carts onto the cargo ships one by one.

Dong Xiang noticed that the sacks would become very heavy when soaked in rainwater, and the draft of the punt would become very deep, which would greatly reduce the efficiency of ore transportation.

After communicating with the lieutenant sent by the prince, it was decided to release the ore from the sack and load it into the cargo hold after a simple water control, which was then covered with tarpaulin.

On the first day, although the efficiency on the dock was relatively low, the loading capacity per ship increased, and buyers in the lower reaches of the North River said that the price of each ship could go up by half a percent.

This loading process became the norm on the dock, and then everything went according to this.

But what puzzled Dong Xiang was why the cargo ship had to transport to buyers in the lower reaches of the Beihe River, and why it was not directly transported to the upper reaches of the Beihe River. Passing through the Liujin Canal to the Golden State?

Jinzhou is the capital of the Golden State, in the name of gold is not only because the Golden State is rich in minerals, a discovery of gold ore is the most in the world, but also because the Golden State has the best smelting technology in the world, the gold, silver, brass, steel smelting technology of the Golden State is the best in the world, almost more than seventy percent of the pure gold in the world is purified and smelted from the Golden State.

Moreover, the imperial foundry in Jinzhou is a world-famous divine smelting workshop and a royal industry of Jinguo.

Dong Xiang, who had been muttering for a day, really couldn't hold back, so he asked the lieutenant sent by the prince.

"This ore is directly sent to Jinzhou, melted into copper ingots and then circulated all over the world, our Jinguo can only earn one money, but if it is sent to Nanfang Shuo, Wu, Chen and other countries first, the copper ingots they refine are far inferior to our Jinguo, so we still have to go back to our Jinguo Jinzhou to refine, so that our Jinguo can earn two pieces of money!" This is what the Captain said.

At first, Dong Xiang felt that it was very reasonable, and he made a very wise decision.

But after a few days, the more I thought about it, the more wrong it became, this is actually a complicated process, there is an extra ring of businessmen from other countries in the middle, and there is also an additional ring of royal industry in the country to strip fire consumption, charcoal fire costs, etc., in fact, the royal family for their own interests, cut a large part of the interests of the country, with the help of businessmen from other countries into their own pockets.

Dong Xiang suddenly felt sad for the dog, the second egg and the maid, everything they had was not for the country, but for the father and son sitting in the court, so that they could privatize everything, this Jin country was actually just the backyard of their two fathers and sons.

But Dong Xiang can't do anything, and he can't change anything, so he can only do his best to try to make these places he is responsible for have fewer dead people and pay more wages.

Speaking of wages, Dong Xiang understood why the people in the town felt more and more that his father and son were not like the surname Dong.

Thirteen years ago, when the mine was first opened, there were two or three hundred workers, which was so much wages. Thirteen years later, there were nearly 3,000 workers, and the total amount of wages granted had only quadrupled.

Thirteen years have passed, and the wages that were once earned by one person are now two and a half people grabbing, and it is inevitable that they will be exploited layer by layer, and the situation is very bad these years, the winter is getting longer and longer, and it is either a big drought or a big flood, and it is better to go to the mine to work on the land.

Dong Xiang, who knew all this, felt that it really didn't make sense for him to stay here.

This time the heavy rain finally passed, and the heavy rain of a month made the whole Qingling County seem to have changed, the uplifted mine outside the city has become a big pit with a radius of seven miles, the pond on the edge of Dongjia Town has become a large wharf by the canal, and the canal has almost become a tributary of the Beihe River.

The key thing is people, the people in Qingling County have begun to become silent, unlike Dong Xiang when he was a child, people now no longer smile and greet him with a "Xiangzi" when they see him on the street.

Dong Xiang felt that he no longer belonged to this place, so he chose to go to the western frontier of the Jin country, wanting to finally do something for the country in his own way.

Although his father, Lord Fu Ling, and Huanhuan didn't want him to go, he insisted on doing so, and no one could force him.

Dong Xiang's father, as a father, is still very qualified, at least after making sure that Dong Xiang was not a whim, he looked for relationships, and even went to Jinzhou to ask the prince in person, and arranged a lieutenant title for Dong Xiang, who was only a top three.

Although he didn't seem to be of a high rank, he was a quartermaster who was specifically responsible for transporting supplies and salaries to the west, with two thousand soldiers under his command, and one thousand to one thousand and five people in charge of ordinary times, so he could be regarded as a chief officer.

When Dong Xiang left, no one came to send it, and Huanhuan didn't come either, because Dong Xiang specially avoided the promised time and left with the night.

Before leaving, Dong Xiang looked back at the land that had raised him, and quietly made a determination in his heart, that is, when he came back next time, he could make this land belong to him again and accept himself.