He had never been to Jiangnan before traveling through time. This was the farthest time Mao Jue went out in more than 20 years. For this trip, he had a good show. Five sail battleships including the Black Pearl borrowed six blessing ships from Dongjiang. The 800 personal soldiers of the fourth regiment of Pandahai were borrowed from the original sailors, and a total of 1,900 entourages. However, this action was not to save face, but to make money.

The ballast stones were almost thrown away. The full corn wine was filled with ginseng, which was full of ginseng. There were many like big radishes. The more land they went north, the more mountains they were. In this era, wild ginseng had not been destructively harvested, and ginseng was not so scarce. This thing was one of Mao Jue's money tree.

Even so, Mao Jue didn't want to fish out of the lake. Last year, he harvested a large number of ginseng seeds and went to the forest. Next year, he probably would have more ginseng.

The best deck warehouse on the upper floor is a pile of exquisite wooden boxes filled with urla grass, full of crystal clear crystal glass lampshades, and dozens of lamp holders of different sizes outside, the largest one of the largest in his officers' club.

In fact, the crystal lamps of this era are not practical. Without electricity, you can only add lamp oil. The brightness is not as bright as the electric lamp. Refueling is a tedious task. It takes ten people to light up two giant lamps every day, which requires ten people to work hard for an hour. The spent lamp oil costs two taels, and the spent lamp oil costs seven hundred and twenty taels a year.

However, this little money is thrown from the temple as a snowflake film to see what kind of Jinxue is. For the rich businessman in Jiangnan, this little money is probably not worth mentioning. What you want is this arrangement! Arrangement!

Finally, there are the treasures of the entire north, Mao Jue's northern mirror, this time, the one-person-high coat mirror, the half-person-high dressing mirror, and the palm-sized face mirror each. This is simply generous for the sales of one or two yuan a year.

With these things, Mao Jue was ambitious. This time he would at least kill the wealthy businessmen in Jiangnan. At least he would have to give him a million taels of snowflakes and silver back to Tieyi.

Moreover, when equipting such a fleet, Mao Jue's most important purpose is not to go through the canal.

Since the Yuan Dynasty, the Grand Canal has been the largest thoroughfare connecting the north and south. Qianlong went to the south of the Yangtze River for seven times and walked through the Grand Canal. There was even a saying that Beijing City was a canal. Zhu Di built the capital city and most of the wood, bricks, tiles, rock, and porcelain used to arrive at the capital through the Grand Canal. This place can definitely be called the artery of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.

Mao Jue has read many novels in later generations. In order to gather money, the protagonist set up a card to collect taxes on the Grand Canal. However, this move is actually quite backward. They can think of the ancients who had long thought of the taxes stuck on the Grand Canal, which were stacked up in layers, and I don’t know how many of them were.

The chapter on burning lamps and grasses in the Ming Dynasty's miscellaneous notes "Jinling Trivia" vividly reflects this social phenomenon.

When Lu Er, a businessman in Suzhou, found out that the Jinling lamp grass was out of stock and the price rose, he sold a batch of lamp grass in Suzhou and went north to Jinling to make profits.

The price of this batch of lamps and grass cargo, plus the money employed by the Grand Canal, was 8 taels of silver. When I was on the road while sitting on the boat, Lu Er was still happily planning to earn eleven taels of silver when he arrived in Jinling, but before the ship could reach ten miles, he heard the boatman shouting loudly.

"It's tax!"

It is normal for officials to collect taxes these days. Several servants inspected Lu Er's goods and collected a few coins of silver. Lu Er didn't care. After paying the money, he continued to move forward. However, he didn't walk ten miles and the shipkeeper shouted again.

"It's tax!"

This time, Lu Er felt a little annoyed. How far had he gone? He had to pay tax twice? Just like the shipkeeper inquired, the shipkeeper also had a bitter face: "This is the tax that the prefect Lu sent to someone to increase!"

The prefect? ​​He couldn't afford to be punished, so Lu Er had to pay the money obediently. The boat went north again, but it didn't take more than ten miles. The ship shouted loudly again: "It's time to collect taxes!"

This time, it was another card sent by Eunuch Zhang, so he couldn't afford to offend him, so Lu Er had to buy money again.

After stopping in three steps, in the second half of the night, Lu Er had no idea how many times he had paid the tax. When he sat in the cabin, his face was as white as earth, but the shipkeeper shouted again.

"It's tax!"

His face turned into pig liver, and Lu Er went to the deck sadly. Fortunately, this time, the shipman smiled and told him that he had heard it awkwardly. This was when he arrived at Shuxue Mountain, which was homophonic!

However, Lu Er had already paid a tax of four taels of silver, and his goods were only eight taels of silver in total. Here, he was still thousands of miles away from Jinling. According to this method of collecting, he would probably have to pay at least a dozen taels in Jinling. Even if his lamp grass was sold twice, he would have to pay a few taels. Thinking of this, Lu Er burst into tears and burned all the lights in the boat on Shuoxue Mountain. He returned to his hometown in a deserted manner.

On the Grand Canal, it is really called a big fish eating small fish. Even the Fan family of Yangzhou's big merchants would inevitably lose their skin. Mao Jue was a local emperor in Tieyi, but in the Ming Dynasty, there were too many deputy generals, and I don't know how many big fish could eat Mao Jue. To give a closer example, during the Japanese invasion of Jiajing, the Zhejiang Inspector Hu Zongxian was only from the third rank at that time. Yu Dayou, the second rank general and the Pingman General, ordered him to go around. Mao Wenlong did have some connection in the court, but his biggest backstage was Wei Zhongxian who had fallen. He would not miss him. If he walked on the Grand Canal, he would have to take shaved off his underwear. If he walked on the Grand Canal, he would have to take shaved off his underwear.

Moreover, I want to scrape a lot of things from Jiangnan in the future. This time I go closer to the sea, which is also a way to explore in the future.

However, Mao Jue's first stop was not going straight to Jiangnan, but heading towards Li to the south.

Since he beat the Tokugawa shogunate hard last year, both him and Li Chao have actually been chewing fat while facing the Northeast, and the bloody scars were bitten in the northeast, but the sharp teeth and claws were still scared. Mao Jue borrowed about 5,000 soldiers and sailors from Dongjiang, and left two Xiongjin mercenary regiments on Tsuma Island and Jeju Island. This spring, Hemomo's Sixth Regiment was rotated to Rongshou again. However, almost a year has passed, and Japan seems to have no response.

It’s really a matter of taking money to eliminate disasters! After taking Mao Jue’s benefits, he was afraid of causing trouble. As soon as he became a military judge, Li Shanhai made all his efforts. Although the Li Chao boardhouse ship from Minglianghai was not as good as the river crucian carp, there were always more than a dozen ships every day, transporting the wood, ash, rocks, metal and other materials that Mao Jue wanted to transport to the two islands.

Most of the more than 5,000 soldiers were used as coolies, and Mao Jue paid 100,000 taels of silver to recruit local employees. Now, a considerable fortress has stood up in three port tidal flats on Jeju Island and the north of Tsushima Island.

After traveling south for seven or eight days, Mao Jue's fleet arrived outside Jeju City, twenty miles away from the sea, and was stopped by another 70-meter sailing battleship belonging to Tieyi Army Town.

At this time, Jeju had changed a lot from the last time Mao Jue came. The low and dilapidated Jeju City was directly blocked. A mud-gray military fort, eight meters high and four hundred meters long, blocked it. In front of the military fort, a seawall of several kilometers also expanded the port.

Under the leadership of the Water Tiger, Mao Jue's fleet was then sailing like an inner harbor.

It was almost time to catch up with the ruthlessness of the Opium War. The inspector followed his command to climb the city tower. Under the shed, facing the sea, there were sixteen cast iron red cannons on the other side. In the east mountain of the port, facing the woods of the port, one by one, was hiding in it at the level of steamed bunkers. Looking closely, the gray cannon barrels appeared from the head of the bunker.

Mao Jue came from later generations, had eaten and seen them, and had watched several versions of Normandy Landing. This kind of artillery bunker is common. Although the sea is vast and without traces, it is actually traceable. The Japanese sailing technology is actually not as good as it is. If you want to invade the Lee Dynasty Peninsula, you must pass through Tsushima Island and Jeju Island, and use it as a springboard to attack the land.

There are actually not many places for the army to land. Even in World War II, we can only choose Normandy, a heavily defended beach with the German army as a breakthrough point. There are reefs and cliffs everywhere. If we attack Jeju Island here, we can only land at Jeju Port, Jaro County, Yanhai County, and even the iron armored ships, which are the size of the Japanese pirates last year, will have to be hit like the heavy rain of the Ming army on this beach. Even if they barely rushed to the beach, they would have to remove seven or eight stops during the ten stops.

A group of Japanese pirates who were still in shock in the artillery fire came to attack this hard fortress, and Mao Jue was not optimistic about the Japanese army.

I was very relieved about the construction efforts of my subordinates. After inspecting Jeju Fort and staying here for two days, Mao Jue took a boat south again.

This time I didn't go straight to Jiangnan.

In the Ming Dynasty, it was strange that Liao Town was under the jurisdiction of Shandong, so Mao Jue had to go to Denglai first and report to Denglai Governor Sun Yuanhua.

Later generations had the opportunity to come to Yantai once, but at this time, Dengzhou was completely different from the Yantai metropolis in memory. The vast urban area is now just a piece of wilderness, a few miles away from the shore. You can only see the dilapidated and low Dengzhou wall standing tremblingly on the shore like a terminally ill old man.

The port is also very narrow and dilapidated. Mao Jue's sail battleship still couldn't enter, so he could only dock on the edge of an island off the sea and then take a big blessed ship to get close to the shore.

She didn't plan to stay here for long, so Mao Jue simply left her plain clothes on the Black Pearl and landed with dozens of personal soldiers. As soon as she got off the ship, a large group of poor people in tattered clothes surrounded her.

"Official! Master! Good luck, what's the job to eat? Please give us some!"

Several people who were still strong and surrounded the front, constantly bowing and bowing. The accent made Mao Jue feel very familiar. The hair spear was a little annoyed and wanted to drive it away with a whip, so he reached out to stop it.

"Everyone, I have no goods to move!"

Seeing Mao Jue bowing, these poor people couldn't help but look disappointed on their faces, but they didn't dare to complain. They couldn't help but walk towards the broken houses beside the port. However, Mao Jue reached out and grabbed one of the leaders and asked in surprise.

"I heard from the accent, are you from Liao?"

"A general is also a Liao person?"

When he heard this, the guy in the lead suddenly became excited.

The governor of Denglai Sun Yuanhua and Dongjiang were not in a match, and Mao Jue had no intention of going into the city to get his hot face and put it on his cold butt. He simply sent Maoliu and took his seal to Dengzhou to change the official documents and guards.

Because I had to go on the waterway, Mao Jue brought a lot of food on the boat. He ordered some to move it down. He caught fire at the port and boiled corn on the cob with the sea water. The fragrance made the poor people who had been hungry for a long time, just like they encountered iron nails on magnets. They saliva and didn't care about the scalding. They held the juice-dripping stick and chewed desperately.

Sitting in the corner of the wall, a child who was only five or six years old was as thin as a reed rod. His shriveled hands reminded Mao Jue of the African victims under the lens of later photographers. He gnawed a stick of corn cleanly, and still bit the corn core in the middle with unsatisfactory intentions.

While this scene was shocking, it also made Mao Jue happy that he was lucky that Suyi did not travel with him, otherwise this girl would not have cried like a tearful person.

"Thank you, General! Thank you, General!"

The man was just holding back and was still a filial son. He didn't chew the food that was in his mouth first, but instead sent it into the broken houses. Mao Jue watched him stuff the corn to a thin old lady. The two of them shoved him a few times. The man simply ran out of the shack, but ran directly to Mao Jue, kneeling on the ground and kowtowed a few times.

"Okay, they are all from my hometown! Who can help me without helping me? Get up quickly!"

He reached out and pulled the man up. Looking at his embarrassed look, Mao Jue asked in surprise again.

"You, why did you fall to this point?"

"General, it's hard to describe it!"

After more than two hundred years of development, Liaodong was already prosperous by the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the registered household registration could have almost two million people. According to the hidden households in all dynasties and slaves did not register, it is possible to have a population of three million to four million people.

However, when the Liaodong war broke out, the most densely populated Liaoshen Plain was occupied by the Later Jin Dynasty, and millions of people were displaced. In the battle of Liaoyang, Nurhaci massacred 70,000 people. In addition, Xiong Tingbi and Wang Huazhen and Guangning were defeated, a large number of Liao people avoided the war and fled back to the pass. Liaodong Town belonged to Shandong. The population here was mostly immigrated from Shandong, so hundreds of thousands of Liao people fled to Shandong.

However, by this time the Ming Dynasty was already full of disasters and difficulties, and the land annexation in Shandong also reached an extreme. The wealthy families and rich people had fields, and the poor had no place to stand. The locals lacked arable land, let alone those outsiders. Moreover, for two hundred years, the local sentiment was almost indifferent, and most of the Liao people were not inviting them.

Many Shandong people even blamed the Liao people for the crimes of the war in Liaodong, and the two sides were in conflict, and the Liao people's livelihoods here became increasingly difficult.

This person is named Yang Mengzi. It is already good to be able to stay in Dengzhou, be a coolie porter in the port, and earn a living ration that can barely fill your stomach.

"General, our Liao people are suffering! More than 400 people in our village fled together, and they ran away halfway, and more than 100 people died of illness. Over the years, more than 200 people died of sleepiness and hunger! Only dozens of people are left!"

Looking back at the bitter brothers who were lying in the same place and gnawing corn, and the thin mother who was so thin, Yang Mengzi couldn't help but sigh.

"Are there many Liao people like you nearby?"

"I don't know anything else. There are at least 30,000 in Dengzhou, right? Governor Sun was kind and recruited more than 3,000 Liao troops. The rest were either like villains who helped move military food and goods at the port, hungry and full, or they were tenants for the locals in the countryside and made a living!"

The hometown fell, left home, and lived under someone else's roof. This kind of feeling would probably be miserable if anyone had been. Following Mao Jue on the wood aside, it was rare for someone to listen. Yang Mengzi said it in detail again. Mao Jue shook his head and pinched his chin and began to think.

After a while, Mao Jue raised his head and stared at the thin foreigner in Guan very seriously.
Chapter completed!