The rat-bearded tax collector, when he heard the words "Lu Wangfu", he felt a stirring in his heart, and then savored the informative words of "my own lamp", and he quickly unloaded the last bit of arrogance.

"Dare to ask what the honorable driver is?"

Zheng Haizhu said: "It is written on the road, my surname is Zheng, this son's surname is Wu, we are ordinary people in Jiangnan." This time the princess's birthday, coinciding with the craftsmen at home pondered the fresh lanterns, we sent them over, and by the way, we also transported the Hangjin and Zhejiang rice collected by the clansmen to the shop in the north. The latter is indeed a commodity, and there is no need to hide it from the tax collector. ”

The rat beard squeezed out a smile and said: "It's not a few embarrassments, it's really a matter of duty, let's run an errand for the imperial court, it's not good." One more question with the honorable driver, over there in the Lu Wangfu, who is the ...... who came to contact you? ”

Zheng Haizhu said generously: "It is the long history of the palace, Master Zhang, a native of Shanyin, Zhejiang, and I am a cousin of the Zhang family." ”

The rat beard squatted at the banknote every day, coming and going with all kinds of people, etc., honest, slippery, timid, arrogant, noble, lowly, he had never seen anything.

The woman in front of her has a set of high-quality dresses, which are worth at least twenty or thirty taels of silver, and her words and deeds are also graceful and generous, and she is indeed like she is used to dealing with nobles.

Zheng Haizhu saw that the raging arrogance of the rat's beard had been extinguished, so he turned to a more and more gentle tone, and discussed in a low voice: "Everyone is watching, the tax master and his men have already boarded our ship, and they returned empty-handed. I was tired of filling out a public receipt, and I asked the guy to hand it in according to the number. ”

When the mousebeard heard this, he was overjoyed.

This step is built happily, and I don't hurry down yet,

He whispered a few words to his attendant, and the attendant went ashore and brought back a tax deed with the amount written in a moment.

Zheng Haizhu took a look, thirty taels.

Okay, this figure is quite fair, and it should squeeze out the water that officials at each level want to embezzle.

"Xu San, pay the tax, collect the official receipt, don't forget to thank the tax master."

Xu San complied, and the last action was naturally to stuff a few pieces of broken silver that Fang had just picked up from the deck back into the sleeve of the rat's beard.

……

Zheng Haizhu left Jiangbei this time, crossed the sea from Dengzhou with Wu Bangde, and went to Liaodong to see Mao Wenlong, which was indeed only the second stop.

The first stop is the Luwang Mansion in Yanzhou, located in the southwest of Shandong Province.

In the summer month, when Zheng Haizhu reconfirmed from Zhang Dai that his father Zhang Yaofang was still the long history of the Lu Palace, he included this itinerary in his business trip plan.

"I am a person who wants to make the business bigger, there must be few boats often walking in the canal, Lu Wangfu is not far from Jining Pass of the canal, Zhang Gongzi, please Ling Zun to introduce you."

Zheng Haizhu said directly, Zhang Dai did not shirk, and also helped to come up with ideas, saying that the late autumn of this year happened to be Princess Lu's thirtieth birthday, and he could write to his father, saying that the specially hired Shanyin craftsman made the birthday lanterns with Zhejiang characteristics, and entrusted Miss Zheng to escort the door.

Zheng Haizhu was overjoyed, praising Zhang Dai's good method, revealing the elegance that the magnates loved, it seemed very natural to visit.

So, after arranging the Songjiang Firearms Workshop and the Zhenjiang Insurance Cooperative, she took the first step to explore the path to the Ming Empire's clan with great ambition.

The clan was a large group in the Ming Empire.

Zhu Yuanzhang laid down the country three hundred years ago and divided his descendants into various places.

Among them, Lu Fan can be said to be a branch that starts low and goes high.

The first King of Lu, the tenth son of Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Tan.

Zhu Yuanzhang liked Zhu Tan very much, so he set his fief as the Yanzhou area, which was not far from Nanjing and guarded the main canal route.

However, after Zhu Tan arrived in Yanzhou, he was obsessed with the psychedelic story of immortality, and under the flickering of a group of wandering magicians, he took many pills, and almost lost his sight before the age of eighteen.

The scammers were scared, so they could only continue to make up blindly, falsely claiming that if they collected 999 boys' "liferoots" and refined them into pills, King Lu would eat them, and his eyesight would be restored to the same as before.

Zhu Tan and Princess Tang then set up a playground in the house, and on the pretext of having fun with the people, they brought young boys from the homes of poor people and the homes of the Shandong garrison, castrated and removed their genitals, and then put the children back.

This thing was too unconscionable, and the soldiers and civilians of Shandong soon gathered at the governor's yamen to cry out for grievances.

After the governor played, Zhu Yuanzhang was so angry that he vomited blood, and Zhu Biyu criticized: "These two couples, the capital crime must not be escaped, and they are worthy of Ling Chi Xinguo's princess (that is, Princess Lu)." ”

Of course, this was said to calm the anger of the people of the world. In fact, because Xinguo Gong Tang He is Zhu Yuanzhang's brother from the beginning, the Son of Heaven did not really kill Princess Lu, the daughter of Xinguo Gong, but secretly ordered Princess Lu to commit suicide.

As for Zhu Tan, he soon died under the effect of the heavy metal bursting elixir.

Zhu Yuanzhang gave the first king of Lu a bad name, "absurd, shameless, absurd and deaf" "desolate", in order to calm the anger of the people.

However, the successive vassal kings after King Luhuang have a good reputation.

And the current King of Lu, Zhu Shouhong, who is the employer of Zhang Dai's father Zhang Yaofang, will live until the Chongzhen period.

Such a connection, in Zheng Haizhu's eyes, how can he not try to discover it?

What's more, she, a small retail investor who was often full of energy stocks before the crossing, has no association with the "Yanzhou" where Lu Wangfu is located, which is really a little unreasonable.

……

"Miss Zheng, to the north of Huai'an, there are many small mines mined by private households, but they are basically abandoned because of the rampant collection of mining taxes and eunuchs in the past few years."

After the boat left Huai'an Banknote Pass, Wu Bangde paced to Zheng Haizhu's side and pointed to the direction behind the plain in the distance.

Before setting off for Zhenjiang, Zheng Haizhu had already told Wu Bangde about the itinerary.

Compared with ordinary investors like Zhang Dai, Wu Bangde is a side-by-side fighter that Zheng Haizhu values more, and she naturally confesses more to Wu Bangde.

Therefore, Wu Bangde knew that Zheng Haizhu went to make friends with Lu Wangfu, but he actually valued a resource in Yanzhou: coal.

Wu Bangde originally grew up in Jiliao, and lived in Jingshi for a while when he was a teenager, so he is much more familiar with coal as a fuel than Jiangnan Shishu.

He told Zheng Haizhu with certainty that the imperial court did not manage the matter of digging coal tightly, and there were very few official coal mining kilns in the Ming Dynasty, even in the Xishan and Mentougou areas of Beijing, ninety percent of the coal kilns were self-mined.

At the same time, he can even talk to Zheng Haizhu about how to ventilate the small coal kiln and how to use bamboo to discharge poisonous gas (i.e., gas) from the technical level of what he has seen and heard.

However, Wu Bangde never knew that there was coal in Yanzhou.

At this moment, Zheng Haizhu turned his head and said to Wu Bangde: "Yes, you see, there is coal in Huai'an near Xuzhou, there is coal in Henan in the west, and there is also coal in Boshan in Shandong. In my opinion, there must be coal and there are two reasons why no one opens the kiln. ”

Wu Bangde said: "What's the explanation? ”

Zheng Haizhu said: "First, the terrain is superior, the winter moon is warmer than Jianghuai, the people who are solid and frost-resistant, unlike the people of Beijing, need to burn coal for heating in the winter months, and the princes and rich people, although they are more delicate, but there is no shortage of silver, they go to buy good charcoal; Second, both the Lu Mansion and the Confucian Mansion are in Yanzhou, and I listened to the storytellers in Shandong in the past in Songjiang that the kings of the Lu Di clan and the Yan Shenggong (referring to the title of the eldest descendants of the Confucius family) dug a pond to raise koi fish, all of which were regarded as a major event, for fear of shocking the dragon vein. ”

Wu Bangde listened, and smiled shallowly: "What is the Lu Palace, the Confucian Mansion, there is a long live grandfather, the large and small coal kilns in Xishan, there are not thousands, there are hundreds, and I haven't heard the emperor say that the dragon vein has been disturbed." ”

Zheng Haizhu also smiled.

One of the things she admires about Wu Bangde is that this person often has an instinctive reaction not to buy the so-called authority, customs and routines.

To a certain extent, Zhang Yanke is a bit similar to him, but Zhang Yanke is not as young as Wu Bangde, who has seen the treacherous rivers and lakes and the cold in the army, so if it weren't for the last moment of the country's demise, Zhang Yanke, who was safe in brocade clothes and jade food, would not have the ambition of adventure like Wu Bangde.

Zheng Haizhu quickly smiled and said to Wu Bangde: "Zhilong told me that the artillery factories of the Franky people in Haojing often have a headache for fuel, because the furnace needs coal, and the coal from Guangfu must be transported from Jiangxi, which is more troublesome than buying copper for casting cannons from the Wa Kingdom. At present, we want to open a firearms factory in Songjiang, and if we want to buy a large amount of coal, it is most convenient for Yanzhou to pull it to Jining and go down the canal. ”

Wu Bangde understood.

Zheng Haizhu and they want to build cannons, Wu Bangde and his father-in-law Qi Jin both understand that it is a precautionary move, and they are quite recognized.

Wu Bangde just didn't expect that Miss Zheng had drawn so meticulously, just like when her grandfather led the troops to fight, where the camp was stationed, where the grain and grass were stored, and where to send them at night, they all had to think deeply.

Zheng Haizhu's style with a military temperament made Wu Bangde feel very cordial.

"I'll talk about it when I go to Yanzhou," Wu Bangde added some encouragement to his tone, "The imperial court is short of money, and the expenses of the clan have become a matter of repeated criticism. A small coal kiln in Xishan can have 5,000 taels of silver every year, if there is really coal in the underground of Yanzhou, Lu Wangfu is not stupid, will he ignore the cornucopia? ”

Zheng Haizhu nodded: "At that time, you don't have to disclose that you are the descendant of the Qi family, so you will say that you are the shopkeeper who accompanies me to run the business, and you will go up and down the Lu Wangfu to blow the profit of the Beijing Division Xishan." ”

After that, Zheng Haizhu left the deck and went to the cabin to change the expensive woven gold horse face dress that Yan Siqi gave at the earliest.

This set of fooling the tax collectors along the way, she has to go to King Lu's Mansion to support her scene, and she can't get dirty.

Wu Bangde turned around, still standing with his sleeves back, as if he was looking up at the boatman plucking the bamboo sail, but in fact, he took advantage of the falling eyes to look at Zheng Haizhu's back.

When dealing with the tax collectors in Huai'an, Wu Bangde saw Zheng Haizhu appear in a brocade dress at first glance, and there was a moment of trance.

He remembered the last woman he remembered, also wearing a horse-faced skirt with embroidered armor and gold trim.

The father-in-law praised with a smile next to him: "In the past, Amei was like a tomboy, following Bond to dig out a bird's nest and catch toads, but now the female college has changed eighteen, and she looks like a flower and a moon." We Bond are truly blessed. ”

In the past three years, this scene has often appeared in front of Wu Bangde's eyes, like the ice of the winter moon, piercing in the depths of his heart.

After the severe pain subsided, Wu Bangde felt that only in the remaining long years, sacrificing his loneliness and sorrow, would he feel better.

He stood on the deck and was distracted, until he saw Zheng Haizhu get out of the cabin again, wearing a dark cloth skirt, and walked to Xu San's side, discussing how to sell rice after arriving at Jining Banknote Customs.

She's not her, not at all.

Wu Bangde said to himself.