The prince who had secretly traded with Scarface before was King Huai, who held military power in Liangzhou, and was also the younger brother of the emperor of the current dynasty.

Under the influence of the previous dynasty, in order to prevent the dictatorship of civil officials and foreign invasion, the military power of the six border states was controlled by the princes and nobles of various regions.

The only army that the imperial court could directly manage was the standing armies of the provinces, and although there were many of them, most of them had not experienced any actual combat, on the other hand, the border soldiers were all elite soldiers.

If it was placed in the past, the imperial court could still rely on strong force to form an effective deterrent to these frontier nobles, and use military supplies to clamp down.

However, with the uprising and rebellion in the country and the factional disputes between the DPRK and China, the influence of the imperial court has greatly declined, and the army on the border has also lost control, and it has gradually been coerced by one interest group after another.

If you want to take back the military power in the hands of princes and nobles, unless the entire interest group is uprooted, it will only cause greater turmoil, and the court is powerless to deal with this situation.

Xiao Jiu wanted to understand the key, and felt that since this border prince had chosen to secretly collect pig iron before, he must have other plans, but the general trend of the world had nothing to do with him, and it was not something that he could control as a small person.

As long as King Huai, who is far away on the border, does not dare to tell the story of the existence of mineral veins in Wild Wolf Mountain, after all, King Huai privately colluded with mountain bandits, and the witnesses who hoarded pig iron were still mining in their own hands at this time.

Many people think that the ancients were not smart, but in fact, they were just limited by the low productivity of ancient times.

For example, the four great inventions of ancient times, the compass, papermaking, gunpowder, and movable type printing, any of which alone is enough to prove the wisdom of the ancients, so Xiao Jiu did not dare to underestimate anyone in power.

It's useless to say more, what Xiao Jiu can do at this time is to make himself rich as soon as possible, otherwise if the world is really in chaos one day, he will definitely be pulled by the county shou Wenjie to act as cannon fodder, and if he wants to keep himself, he must have enough strength or value.

The first batch of steel produced by the Hare Mountain Steelmaking Plant was not high, and Xiao Jiu handed it over to the recruited blacksmiths to create a batch of well-made steel knives and spear heads, ready to equip his team first.

Although Xiao Jiu's team has received new training, it has always been limited by the shortage of weapons and materials before, and at this time, when there are conditions, it is natural to arrange their own people first.

In ancient cold weapon warfare, it was not only a competition of the physical fitness of soldiers on both sides, but also weapons and equipment and the will to fight.

The fighting will of the soldiers of Hare Mountain is not bad, and at this time, they are equipped with steel knives and spears, and they also have a bit of the prestige of a soldier, and when the steel production comes up in the later period, Xiao Jiu will also equip everyone with a set of armor for use in battle.

In addition, Xiao Jiu also had a strong interest in the crossbow that Lao Ma gave him before, thinking about whether he could make a mold and directly mass-produce a batch of this killing weapon.

This kind of military crossbow has been studied by Xiao Jiu before, and the structure is not complicated, and all kinds of parts are pig iron made from molds, but they need to be of higher quality.

According to Lao Ma, this kind of crossbow is uniformly made by the ordnance department of the imperial court, and the pig iron used to make the crossbow requires a lot of manpower and material resources to be repeatedly forged and fired to ensure the quality.

If substandard pig iron is used to make the crossbow body and parts, the service life of the crossbow will be greatly shortened.

And the low-carbon steel refined by Xiao Jiu can just solve this problem, so after the first batch of steel is produced, the first thing that comes to mind is to make this kind of crossbow in batches, if a crossbow can be formed, the overall combat effectiveness of Hare Mountain will be greatly improved.

Time flies, and the shochu and iron tools produced on Hare Mountain also circulated to various counties and counties in Qingzhou along with Li Gui's Lingshui caravan, and even the neighboring Jizhou and Yuzhou can be traced.

Yangjun soju has been publicized by dignitaries and dignitaries, and has become an indispensable thing for ordinary banquets, and all kinds of high-quality iron utensils have also fallen into the homes of ordinary people.

Although most of the agricultural tools in this era were wooden agricultural tools, with the continuous increase in iron production, iron agricultural tools were gradually popularized, so as soon as the iron products of Dangyang County were put on the market, they were sought after by thousands of people.

After a preliminary inventory, the benefits from the sale of iron tools alone were basically the same as those from the liquor business.

With the arrival of batches of real money, Wen Jie seemed to have forgotten Xiao Jiu in Lingshui County, and he had not sent anyone over since he issued a wine introduction to Lijia Town, but Xiao Jiu sent someone to the county guard on time at the end of each month to send the "liquor tax" of that month.

Nowadays, most of the imperial courts in various places only care about land and grain, and do not attach much importance to commerce, and the "liquor introduction" used by Wen Jie to tax shochu also has a big loophole to exploit.

At the beginning, Wen Jie's wine introduction to Li Jiazhen was 6,000 jars per year, and the average profit was two taels of silver, of which eighty percent was extracted every year.

Originally, Wen Jie thought that giving such a number of wine citations had reached the limit of the revenue that this soju could make, but he still underestimated the pride of these dignitaries and dignitaries who spent a lot of money.

Although limited by production, it may not be possible to sell 6,000 jars of soju a year, but the price of soju has directly risen by one-third after being hoarded by dignitaries and dignitaries.

Wen Jiu was actually shocked that Xiao Jiu could pay the liquor tax in full every month, and at the same time he was distressed that the price of soju was set too low, and he felt that it was too high before.

Now the "protection fee" paid by Xiao Jiu is basically enough to cover the taxes of the entire Lingshui County, which also makes Wen Jie's business talent incredible.

On the other hand, the officials who had previously opposed Zhao'an Hare Mountain, when they saw boxes of real money and silver being carried to the county guard's mansion, they also instantly twisted their old faces into bitter melons.

At this time, Xiao Jiu's status in this Wen Jie's heart has risen to a higher level, and he will also vigorously support the Lingshui caravan with Xiao Jiu's support in the future.

In this era, although agriculture is more important than commerce, any official who wants to make a political achievement needs the support of a large amount of money, which cannot be satisfied by land alone.

Now what Wen Jie should think about is how to take the money out of Xiao Jiu's money bag and put it in his own pocket, you can say that Wen Jie is greedy, but it cannot be denied that he is a smart person, in this world where power is greater than financial resources, he is the handful at the top of the pyramid.

At this time, the season has entered winter, and this world has the same Spring Festival as Xiao Jiu's previous life, and there is still more than a month to go.

The Hare Hill Iron and Steel Works continued to produce steel, and copied the first batch of crossbows, and after testing, the effect was higher than the previous crossbows brought by the old horse.

Now Xiao Jiu's team has been expanded to nearly 100 people, just waiting for the follow-up production to equip them, everything is going on in an orderly manner, but a familiar figure has broken the peace of Hare Mountain.