Zhan Zhumen

Chapter 757
Frontier barracks.

Mu Yan was reading Huo Xi's letter, the corners of her mouth curled up.

Jun Mingzhang wanted to fight his Xi'er, wanted to crush her, but in the end he didn't know who would fall first.I feel very happy.

Mu Sheng opened the curtain and came in, seeing his smiling face, he was stunned.

In my impression, his son had never smiled like this before.Mu Sheng stared dumbfounded, and stopped in his footsteps, allowing Mu Ang, who took a wrong step behind him, to hit his head on his back.

"Second brother, why did you stop?" Touching his nose, the armor on his body almost broke his nose.

"It's because you don't look at the road." Mu Sheng suppressed his emotions and said something to him instead.

"Yes, it's my younger brother who doesn't look at the road."

Seeing them coming in, Mu Yan hurriedly folded the letter in her hand and stuffed it into her bosom.

"A letter from my niece and daughter-in-law?" Mu Ang asked while rubbing his nose.

Mu Yan hummed lightly, and stood up to give up his seat to Mu Sheng.Mu Sheng sat down, glanced at him, and suddenly asked him, "What was written in the letter?"

Mu Sheng never asked him about these personal matters.

But thinking of his son's smile just now, he suddenly wanted to know what was written in the letter that made his son so happy.Mu Ang gave the second brother a strange look, and then looked at Mu Yan.

I thought Mu Yan wouldn't answer, but I didn't expect Mu Yan to say indifferently: "She said she liked the garden you gave her very much. She changed her name to Deyuan, saying that you gave it to her as a commemoration. She also sent me the words I wrote back. Someone carved it and hung it up."

Mu Yan had never had such a long conversation with Mu Sheng.

The two brothers looked at him in a daze.

There was a smile on the corner of Mu Sheng's mouth: "As long as she likes it, she likes it. Deyuan? Well, it's a good name."

"It's not bad." Mu Ang also praised, the vulgar is the elegant.

The two brothers are good at reading, and people outside call them Confucian generals. If the eldest brother is not gone, they might become civil servants.

"What's good?" Mu Zhan, Mu Jun, and Mu Xi lifted the curtain and came in one after another.

The small tent is a little crowded for a while.

Seeing that Mu Yan had regained his iceberg appearance, Mu Ang secretly sighed in his heart.He smiled and explained: "It means that the battle yesterday was fought well. If we go deeper, we will be able to return home in a few days."

"Really?"

Mu Xi was overjoyed, and slapped Mu Zhan: "This is great, we can go back to the mansion! I don't want to stay in this ghostly place anymore. When I get back to the mansion, I will have to sleep comfortably for three months." Three days and three nights. Ge Laozi, if you stay in this place, the mosquitoes will be so fat that they can’t fly.”

Mu Xi and Mu Kai talked heartily about what they were going to do when they returned home, while Mu Jun kept silent, looked at Mu Yan, his cousin whom he hadn't seen for many years, and smiled.

Huo Xi watched the servants plant the wheat in the garden.

Seeing that the servants of the farm were busy picking autumn tea, the maids thought it was interesting and all geared up, so they took the maids to help pick tea in the tea garden.

"Is there any chayin in Shizi's place?"

Xun Wu, who came to report the affairs of various places, nodded and replied: "Yes, there has always been a tea business in Shizi Industry. In the early years, the share of commercial tea was small, and it was all monopolized by the government. The imperial court also set up a tea horse department here. Specially trade tea for horses, and strictly control private tea. But..."

Xun Wu took a look at Huo Xi.

"But it's okay to say." Huo Xi said without stopping his hands.

"Yes. Because of the government's franchise business, some shops bully customers and eat at both ends. Not only the price of tea farmers is severely suppressed, but also the transaction of good horses. Earlier, two hundred catties of good tea could be exchanged for a good horse. , Now 150 catties, 120 catties have to be exchanged for a horse. This has caused dissatisfaction among tea farmers and horse owners, and the rise of private tea among the people, and smuggling has been banned repeatedly.”

"Smuggling has been banned repeatedly?"

Huo Xi paused for a moment, put the picked tea buds gently into the tea basket, and straightened her body.

Xiang Cao hurriedly stepped forward to help her unload the tea basket, Huo Xi washed her hands with the water poured by the girl, wiped them dry with a handkerchief, and walked out of the tea garden with Xun Wu.

"The gates should have been blocked layer by layer. How did this private tea flow out?"

In the frontier area, all the state capitals have guards, and there are many small tribal countries in the southwest. The exchange of tea for horses is an important trade between the imperial court and the Fan tribes and countries in the Western Regions. How can it be repeatedly prohibited.

"It's true that there are many passes, but here we have high mountains and deep forests, and there are many trails in the mountains. The Yi people cover each other, and the businessmen are entrained, and... some officials and businessmen will collude together. The ban is endless. Yes. So in recent years, the quality of the tea received by the Tea Horse Division has become worse and worse, and if there is no good tea, there will be no good horses.”

"So your family's son has started the tea business?"

"Yes, if it was the Taizu Dynasty, the son might not be able to do this business. During the Taizu period, he emphasized horse administration and took strict precautions against tea smuggling. Not only would he regularly send officials to patrol the pass to catch private tea, but also to deal with the exit of private tea from the pass. Anyone who neglects the supervision will be severely punished. Princess Anqing is the first princess of the Taizu, and Ouyang was ordered to die by the Taizu for smuggling tea with a horse. Once the Taizu Dynasty smuggled tea, it was a crime of common crime, and it was either given to death or exiled to the army. There's no point in taking risks."

"It's different now?" The policy is different?

"Yes. Now it's loose. If the tea horse company can't receive good tea, it can't exchange for good horses, so it let go of the share of commercial tea. Anyone who wants to sell tea can go to Chashan to buy it by themselves as long as they buy Chayin. Tea."

"All the good tea is collected by the tea merchants, and the tea merchants are allowed to freely trade with the Fanren Yima, so the tea horse department still can't buy good tea?"

"That's not the case. Tea merchants want to do tea business. First, they need to buy tea. Second, they need to follow the requirements of the chief secretary of the local government to call merchants to purchase tea. The purchased tea is transported to the Tea Horse Division. The Tea Horse Division may levy four or Fifth, the rest will be sold by the tea merchants themselves. In this way, the Tea Horse Division will increase its stock of good tea day by day.”

Huo Xi nodded to express his understanding.No wonder I didn't hear Mu Yan say that he has a tea business two years ago.It seems that one is that there is no silver in the treasury, and the other is that the demand for war horses has increased.

"Your family's son, also exchange for a good horse?"

"The good horses don't fall into our hands, and they are confiscated by the government when they are brought back. The princes ordered people to replace them with bad horses, and transport them to various places in the Central Plains for sale. As long as they are not used as war horses, they can sell them at a good price no matter what they do. A part will also be left for personal use in the Southwest."

Huo Xi felt that Mu Yan might have been born into the wrong family, since the way to make money is clear. "Your family has dabbled a lot."

Xun Wu scratched his head and laughed: "The prince said that to support so many people, he reached out to him everywhere, and he didn't do anything when he woke up all day, and the money in the account flowed out, which made people feel hurt. This is a business. If he doesn’t want to be someone else, he still has to do it. If someone has connections in his hands, of course he wants to get a share of the action.”

"Yeah, although your family has a big business, but when I look at the accounts these days, the daily expenditures are very large. It's scary to look at. As long as there is no account for a day, your family will not be able to pay for it. Those people may not even be able to eat."

"Yes. The eldest son said that he can rest assured that he will entrust all the properties to his wife. He also said that his wife is better at holding money than he is. Let us just listen to my wife."

Huo Xi gave Xun Wu a funny look, "You listen to your family's grandson."

"The son of the world listens to his wife, so naturally we should too."

The master and the servant were talking, when someone came to report suddenly: "Yibang Tea Masi sent someone to inform that they want to deal with a batch of low-priced tea, and asked if we are interested?"

Huo Xi and Xun Wu looked at each other, and asked the visitor: "Did you only send someone to notify our family?"

"No. I heard that the major tea merchants in Dian were notified."

"Oh? Then let's go back to the city first."

(End of this chapter)