Qinzong Zhao Huan learned that the former Liao State North Court King Yelu Yu Jian is currently the head of the army and horses on the right side of Youzhou, Jin Taizong gave him the position of Taishi, he first gave a heavy gift to Jin envoy Xiao Zhonggong, but Xiao Zhonggong refused, but Qinzong did not give up, and after many inquiries, he learned that Xiao Zhonggong was good wine, so he sent him a hundred jars of spirits.

Xiao Zhonggong couldn't stand it, so he asked Qinzong: "What does Emperor Song mean?" ”

As a result, Qinzong asked Xiao Zhonggong to bring a letter to Yelu Yujian, which was to persuade the former king of the Liao clan to rebel against the Jin Kingdom, and the Great Song Dynasty would definitely help him! The original letter reads:

The Emperor of the Great Song Dynasty sent a letter to General Jin Wuwei on the left, and the marshal on the right to supervise Yelu Taishi:

"In the past, the Holy Emperor of the Martyr Ancestor Zhang and the Great Liao had a good relationship, Dunxin and harmony, more than 100 years, the border feast, the common people were blessed, the righteousness was the same family, there was a military revolution struggle, and the harmony was long, and there was nothing in the ancient world.

The Jin people are not moral, they call the soldiers, detain the heavens, and destroy their country. In China, the oath of peace is old, and the righteous teacher is used to save the danger, and the traitorous minister Tong Guan and others violate the country's order, frustrate the messenger, make enemies, buy gold and silk, and divide the land. The covenant of Jin Kui is hidden in the temple, and it is not obeyed, and the people and gods are resentful, and the Jin people **, dare to wanton Lu Liang, disturb the border, and reach the capital, then only for this reason, the emperor of the Taoist Emperor mourns the former wrong, because of the inner Zen.

At the beginning of the reign, he was in the big position, but he cherished Yongtu, remembered the legacy of the ancestors, thought about the old good of Daliao, dropped out of food and sighed, and forgot it all the time. All those who misled the country and caused disasters by the ministers the day before yesterday have been punished, thinking of the rise and fall of the future, and being kind to neighbors and neighbors, thinking that the two countries are infinitely blessed.

This ambition was established, but it was not reached, and the people Xiao Zhonggong and Zhao Lun came, and they were able to say that the remnants of Liao and Yan and Yun did not forget the virtue of the Yelu clan, hoping to fake the Chinese edict and support the elderly. The public expectation belongs, it is appropriate for the people of the country to be as good as the Jinwu Eunuch Eunuch, suitable for harmony, good use of Xin Yi, taste the Jinwu Eunuch Eunuch before the Liao generals, a number of great merits, seek to establish the King of Jin, it is really the plan of the Great Liao Sect, unfortunate things do not restrain, avoid disasters and go to the country. To make the plan of the day before yesterday, the king of Jin has a country, then Tianzuo will enjoy glory and support, and the Yelu clan will not die, but Yu Tianzuo will not harm his loyalty, and the plan of the Yelu clan will be loyal.

The Ying of the clan, the face of heaven and man, is appropriate to inherit the Liao State, Keshao before resting, in order to comfort the thoughts of the bereaved people. Fang Jin's general army is outside, and there is the help of the southwest to recruit the Taishi with the same surname, and the cloud is left in the Shangshu to be loyal to the Zuo, one virtue and one heart, which is enough to achieve great things together. With China's momentum, why can't it be done? The time is not lost, but the master wants to do it. The book is not exhaustive, and it has made Xiao Zhonggong and Zhao Lun compromised. The days are steaming, and I hope to protect Sui. ”

The first half of the letter is to recall the friendship between the Great Song Dynasty and the Great Liao Brotherhood, and then tell about the brutality of the Jin people and the destruction of their motherland! Heaven and man are angry, the Great Song Dynasty as a brotherly alliance is also for its grievances, the second half of the Yelu Yu see as the hero of the Great Liao State, now the power is in hand, with a heavy army to restore the country, the Great Song Dynasty is willing to help it! and entrusted Xiao Zhonggong and Zhao Lun to talk about the secret letter to him, and explain the plan in person.

Xiao Zhonggong felt that this was a major time, and after returning to Jinguo, he immediately went to Yelu Yujian, reported the matter, and asked how to deal with it?

Yelu Yu pondered for a long time and said: "The Liao country has a grudge against me, and the Jin country has a favor for me!" The husband has clear grievances, how can he be such a capricious villain? ”

"What does the king think about this matter?" Xiao Zhonggong asked.

"Give it to Lord Wanyan Zongwang, you send it directly, remember, I don't know about this matter, only you and Zhao Lun know!"

Xiao Zhonggong then handed over the secret letter of Qinzong to Wanyan Zongwang, and after Yanzongwang read it, he was overjoyed, and he said to Xiao Zhonggong: "We have never been able to take the three towns in the north of the Great Song Dynasty, but they gave us 200,000 taels of silver and 200,000 quintals of grain, so that I lost the excuse to attack the Great Song Dynasty again. ”

So the Jin State actively prepared to attack the Song Dynasty, and Jin Taizong still took Wanyan Zonghan as the marshal of the Western Route Army, and Wanyan Zongwang as the marshal of the Eastern Army, and the troops were divided into two ways to attack the Song Dynasty! Since there are currently nearly 300,000 horses on the border of the Great Song Dynasty as a precaution, the preparation time for this attack on the Song Dynasty is a little longer.

Hebei Road Xuanfu envoy is Li Gang, after he got the news that the Jin soldiers are assembling and preparing, he quickly reported to Qinzong, Qinzong was shocked when he heard the news, and the court hyped up a mess, and the surrender faction accused Li Gang and others of provoking Jin Guo with a military force, demanding severe punishment of Li Gang and others, and making peace with Jin Guo, but Qinzong understood why Jin Guo wanted to attack again, but it was too late to regret it.

……

Outside the Golden Gate of Hangzhou Yong, the residence of the embassy in the southeast, Xiao Ming received a letter from Alima in the Western Regions, claiming that there was a shortage of salt and tea in the northwest, and hoped that Xiao Ming could organize a large number of merchant groups to deliver such goods to the northwest region, and Xiao Ming wrote a letter to Xue Bingchang in charge of the Northwest Trade Bureau to solve the problem.

But he called up some of the recent account books about Ri Changlong's tea and salt trading and looked at it, but found that something was very wrong, so he called Jiang Yijing and asked him why Ri Changlong couldn't get involved in the tea and salt trade on a large scale?

Jiang Yijing told him that the tea is okay to say, before the new tea of tea farmers around the country every year, Richanglong specially has someone to buy, these are mainly for part of the trade in the north, but in recent years, the tea market has risen in various places, and the tea in the southeast has been monopolized by several large tea merchants, except for the tribute of the best tea, the rest are engaged in overseas trade in Guangzhou Port.

The salt is different, the central government of all dynasties has implemented a monopoly on salt and iron, the Great Song Dynasty has gradually canceled the monopoly of iron tools in recent years, but this salt is still the official salt trade controlled by the government, Renzong, the imperial court relaxed the supervision of the official salt trade, a large number of private salt appeared, the profit of salt trading suddenly rose, and the salt division used to balance the price gap between official salt and private salt appeared in the government.

In the years when the salt industry was the most developed and developed, on the entire canal, the barges transporting salt were one after another, but the trade of salt was really profitable, the government collected the salt in the salt workshop at a low price, and then mixed it with sediment and other things, and then sold it at a high price, so as to obtain huge profits, the people were naturally not stupid, they would rather buy private salt with good quality and good price, and the government had received the benefits of countless illegal salt dealers, and they did not care about it at all.

Not only is the salt industry, during the Huizong Dynasty, all kinds of workshops and industries run by the government all existed in this phenomenon, such as sugar, rice, tea, etc., private transactions without official permission will naturally be confiscated and confiscated, but this kind of thing is repeatedly prohibited, the official family can not sell the private family, all the official camp is at a loss, the officials do nothing at all, they can be greedy, they can make money, this is the basic phenomenon of the Song Dynasty officialdom at this stage.

Xiao Ming doesn't care how rotten the ** of the Great Song Dynasty government is, salt is a very violent industry, how can Ri Changlong not participate? Nowadays, salt production is basically handmade, and in front of the large merchants with large-scale industrial operations in Richanglong, others do not have any competitive advantage at all.

The ancient salt industry from the earliest Sichuan Shu well salt to the later sea salt, all of them use the boiling method to make brine, the color of these salts is black, the crystals are irregular, and even the smell of the earth is very strong, for this Xiao Ming immediately began to look for a piece of coast along the coast of Zhejiang, built a row of factories here, and decided to use the unpolluted seawater at that time to carry out large-scale salt production.

First of all, several large water storage tanks were built with cement, and seawater channels were built to bring in seawater, all of which were provided by Xiao Ming and Ding Jianpeng, and the craftsmen could construct according to the drawings, and there was no technical difficulty at all.

Evaporation Ponds, Conditioning Plates, Crystallization Plates, Crystallization Ponds...... The noun sounds quite complicated, but in fact it is nothing more than some large and small cement pools. However, the location of the construction should be slightly chosen to ensure that there is enough seawater to fill the reservoir at high tide, and the salt flats themselves cannot be affected by tides or storms.

In order to lift the seawater in the reservoir to the evaporation pond, a number of pedal waterwheels were built to lift the seawater in the reservoir to the evaporation tank, and then pumped into the regulating plate (also known as the regulating grid) and the crystallization plate (also known as the crystallization grid) one by one, and finally entered the brine pond. The salt brine is clarified by the brine pond and poured into the crystallization pool, and it only takes 12 hours on a sunny day for the brine in the crystal pond to condense into coarse salt.

Once this experiment is successful, the next step is to use a steam-powered device to fully automate salt production, where the coarse salt is removed from the crystallized wooden frame and crushed to become a snow-white and fine salt surface! This kind of scene is such that any local craftsman who works can't help but burst into tears when he sees it! I have eaten that kind of official salt mixed with sand for several lifetimes, and such snow-white and fine salt is the first time I have seen it out of my mother's womb!

Although the classics record that there are examples of using the sun-drying method to obtain salt in the Northern Song Dynasty, it is strange that for a long time, the sun-drying method was only used to the salt of inland lakes and salt wells, and for the largest seaside salt farm, the ancients have always been accustomed to the backward way of "boiling the sea for salt". At most, it is only to use the sun to dry a relatively thick salt brine, and then it is still necessary to use firewood to boil to obtain solid salt, so the ancient salt farm workers were called "stove households", Ding Jianpeng told Xiao Ming.

Ding Jianpeng said: "The historical data is sometimes incomprehensible, the salt method used to dry the beach began to spread in the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, and it was only popularized on a large scale in the Xianfeng period.

Stove owners have been boiling salt for generations. Take brine from sea and land, fry it in the sun, boil it in the sea, and turn it into salt...... These people must have suffered a lot when they were children. I am deeply impressed by the hardships and hardships of salt making, and now that Xiao Ming can get such good snow salt by doing this, I will probably be a little stimulated!

"There is a shortage of salt in the northwest, why don't you go directly to Qinghai Lake to get salt?" Ding Jianpeng asked.

Xiao Ming slapped his forehead and shouted, "Damn! I forgot that they are so close, you can reach Qinghai by looking through the Qilian Mountains, and it is much more convenient to go directly to Qinghai Lake to get salt! I'm going to write to Alima when I get back! Just let them go straight west from Xuanhua Mansion! ”

With salt, even if you don't have to trade with the Western Regions and the Northwest, you can still do business with Goryeo and Fuso and overseas Nanyang, this is not a problem, the key is to obtain a salt monopoly license, this is not a joke! It's not impossible to sell salt privately, but you must obtain a special license from the government, and you have to pay taxes, and the merchants will definitely apportionment the cost of this tax to the people, but who is Xiao Ming, the most powerful second-class official in the southeast region, these are simple things for him.

There is also a time limit for large-scale salt production, that is, from June to September, during the typhoon season on the southeast coast, the time to start work is minimized, but at other times it is all day long, and the snow salt made is packed into bags and marked with the symbol of the day of prosperity, and then large-scale smuggling, smuggling on the road is almost impossible, but smuggling at sea is very prosperous.

As a result, a large amount of snow salt of the "Richanglong" brand was smuggled to Goryeo, Fuso, Luzon, Ryukyu and other places in exchange for a large amount of silver and gold, because this salt was so easy to sell, and the price was much higher than the price of rice! Many merchants are waiting in line to wholesale "Richanglong" brand edible snow salt.

Xiao Ming seems to be complacent, but there is one more thing in his heart that has been in his heart, in fact, this matter is not new to put it bluntly, that is, the porcelain industry that Richanglong has long laid out! Porcelain is the main product of Richanglong's large-scale overseas trade, and this thing must be grasped in the hand......