When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 704 The ship is coming!
"It's almost time. It's really almost time. The negotiations between Her Excellency Catherine and several city allies are coming to an end. Please wait patiently for the last few days."

In order to appease his biggest backer and financial sponsor in Windmill Land, Armand could only stand up carefully and hand Ruffier a cup of black tea.

After staring at Armand for a long time, which made him a little scared, Rufiel sat down while staring at him, picked up the black tea on the table and drank it all in one gulp like a Norn pirate.

"It's almost there, you always say it's almost there, but do you know that I'm using the credit that Yilin has worked so hard to build up to guarantee you?"

"You have read the Pravda newspaper and you have also visited the sugar factory with your own eyes. Don't you still believe it?" Armand put away the confidential documents on the table. Public matters should be kept public and private matters should be kept private. These things must not be allowed to be seen by Rufiel.

Rufeel picked up the teapot and poured himself another cup, still drinking it all in one gulp: "If it weren't for Sister Catherine's sake, if it weren't for the good of me... Humph!"

Even though Catherine always suffers setbacks in Thousand River Valley and seems to have no sense of existence.

But among the Aiel people in Windmill Land, especially among several city alliances, Catherine is a well-known figure.

She is the inventor of the stock exchange and she is also a banker by training. She has strong professional qualities, which is reflected in the fact that her judgment on the empire's financial market is always correct.

Although it now seems that this may be because she hired a large number of astrologers to help her with calculations, even so, if she went bankrupt and became a consultant, there would be many oligarch families willing to pay a large sum of money to hire her.

Catherine's financial offensive on the windmill land this time was naturally targeted. Its main purpose was to help the local El people expel the forces of the Leia people. Otherwise, if the knife was not cut accurately and hit the windmill land, it would be a joke for the Leia people to take advantage of it.

Fortunately, these Leia business nobles and oligarchs are honest enough, and they really jumped into the trap set by Catherine.

With the help of the Aiel people in Windmill Land, Catherine has manipulated the overall public opinion in Windmill Land to keep the price of sugar unchanged.

Previously, Yilin said that the price of spices remained unchanged. They were all from the same place, so how come only spices remained unchanged while sugar changed? They must have received gold pounds from speculators.

There is a reason why Rufair has always been against the oligarchs.

On the one hand, they want to avoid hurting innocent people. With Yilin and the tabloids competing against each other, ordinary citizens feel that the water is deep and dare not get involved. But if they are greedy, don't blame Catherine for being ruthless.

On the other hand, Catherine was preparing to build a golden statue for her good sister and establish the status of Yilin as the largest newspaper in Fengchi Land for future use.

Previously, Rufair was able to keep his composure, but today, for some reason, he suddenly came running to the door in anger.

"What happened to you today?" Looking back at the calendar on the wall, Armand asked tentatively, "Is it... time?"

"Tsk!" Ruffier hit Armand's shoulder like lightning. "Speaking of this to a lady? Are you polite?"

Holding his shoulder, Armand walked around to the front of Rufaire: "What's the matter? Maybe if you tell me, I can still help you?"

"My Yilin magazine may have to stop publishing for a few issues..."

"why?"

Rufair's voice came out from his nose bit by bit: "I listened to your nonsense before, always advocating a price reduction for sugar, and my readers started to short sugar.

But those windmill oligarchs and nobles deliberately hoarded the sugar, causing many citizens to suffer heavy losses and finally have to sell the borrowed sugar at a loss, and some even went bankrupt.

Those oligarch families, especially the lackeys of the Leia royal family, deliberately instigated a few citizens who went bankrupt by shorting sugar to burn down my printing house last night, and then ran to the guards to surrender. I am now in a difficult situation."

"How do you know it was them who instigated this?" Armand frowned, took down a book called "The Essential Handbook for Windmill Land Merchants" (actually a list of nobles and oligarchs) from the bookshelf, and picked up a pen.

Rufair stared at him unkindly: "Because this morning, several of my editors and contributors didn't come.

When I asked, I found out that they all went to the newly built "Mast" newspaper. When I asked about the boss of the newspaper, I found out that it was those damn oligarchs who hoarded sugar.

The two of us can't write Yilin, and thanks to you, I have to pay the ship owners for advertising fees and liquidated damages."

Armand was stunned for a moment, then he thought for a moment, and handed the "Essential Handbook for Windmill Merchants" and the quill pen to Rufaire: "Who is targeting you? Circle it and I will send it to Lady Catherine."

Looking at Rufaire's confused look, the young Bishop Richelieu smiled again: "Don't worry, you are ours, and we will not let you suffer any injustice."

…………

"Is the Yilin newspaper closed?" Van Meer asked his brother Wolfhart.

Wolfhart chuckled, "Don't worry, everything has been handled properly. This morning she went to the court to sign a letter of forgiveness and released the arsonists. The Yilin newspaper has been closed for a week and it's impossible for it to open again."

"Little girl, you still want to fight with our Bastian family. We have lived here nine generations ago. She is from the Nauhe River and comes to our Dam City to beg for food." Wearing a silk robe with patches on the lining, Van Meer happily took a sip of the cheap red wine in the gilded wine pot.

The Bastian family was originally a group of knights living in the suburbs of Dam City, but since the cheap grain from the Flesh and Blood Court came in, their manor quickly went bankrupt.

Van Meer's grandfather was lucky and made a fortune by speculating in silk and spices, but Van Meer's father's generation lost everything in the previous gilded flower speculation disaster.

By the time of the Van Meer brothers, although they still had the title of nobility, they had nothing except a few silk clothes, their ancestral home and a small pharmacist's shop.

If these things were given to other families, they would certainly never have to worry about anything for the rest of their lives. But for the Van Meer brothers, the manor had already gone bankrupt and only the name remained. If they lost even the name, what kind of nobles would they still be?
But in order to make a living, Van Meer had to work as a black glove for the businessmen and wealthy families he despised the most, helping them to collect debts from those aristocratic debtors. In the past few years, he had saved a lot of money.

This time, Van Meer decided to go all in and put all his savings into long sugar.

This was a promise given to him personally by the big business leaders above him, that the price of sugar would never drop.

Van Mel was extremely convinced of this. These business tycoons controlled the supply channels of the sugar factory. If the market for sugar raw materials had not changed, it would be impossible for there to be so much extra sugar.

Therefore, he could never understand the motives of this little girl, Lufeil - what was she thinking when she boasted about increasing sugar production?

"Brother, what should we do next?"

"If we take over her newspaper, Stormwind will give us the futures contract. You keep an eye on the newspaper. As long as nothing goes wrong, our Bastian family will be able to have a seat at the table again." Van Mel rubbed his red hands. "Okay." Wolfhart rode away on his pony, but Van Mel continued to wait at the canal dock.

At this time, there were almost a thousand people gathered at the dock, all of them stretched their necks like a man waiting for his wife, looking towards the end of the canal.

These people are all speculators in this sugar war, some are long and some are short.

Van Meer found a flower bed to sit down, but his eyes never left the river.

He has to keep a close eye on it, as this is the last day for navigation on the Nauan River. If he doesn't come today, he will have to wait until the winter dry season, when it will be too late to transport the goods even if he wants to.

They waited from noon to dusk, and whenever a boat appeared, the crowd sitting cross-legged on the ground would rush forward.

After discovering that it is not a sugar ship, they will scatter like birds and beasts.

The sun gradually set, and there were fewer and fewer boats on the river, let alone any large ships.

Under the warm winter sun, Van Meer, who saw this scene, hummed a little tune and looked at the increasingly desperate short-selling speculators on the inland dock, with a smug smile on his face.

He could even pull cheese out of his arms: "Eating sauerkraut wrapped in cheese, the emperor can't compare to me."

The red light of the setting sun shines on the sparkling river surface, reflecting in everyone's pupils like blood.

Many speculators and citizens have already lost their balance, and some pessimists have even begun to curse Ruffield as "the sun on the beach". Even the most optimistic optimists can't smile at all.

The red sun falls towards the water surface bit by bit, and people's hearts also fall bit by bit.

When the red sun touched the water, the crowd began to disperse gradually, rippling like water waves.

Just as the waiting crowd was about to disperse, the sound of horse hooves and a broken voice rang out: "The ship is coming, the sugar ship is coming."

"Nonsense." Hearing the shout, Van Meer, who was lying down eating cheese, suddenly jumped up from the spot, rushed onto the flowerbed platform and shouted in the direction of the sound, "I've been waiting in the canal for a whole day, and I didn't see any boat coming!"

But when he saw who was shouting, he was stunned: "Wolfhart? Why are you here talking nonsense instead of watching the newspaper?"

"You weren't talking in your sleep, brother." Wolfhart was so anxious that his mouth was drooling as he spoke. "The sugar ships came by sea, not by the Nauan River."

"what?!"

Mounting on their own ponies, Van Meer and his two younger brothers rushed breathlessly from the inland canal to the shipping terminal on the other side.

At this time, the dock was crowded with people watching the show as if it was a festival celebration. They were crying and laughing, and some even hugged the trees on the street and banged their heads like crazy.

Seeing this scene, Van Meer's heart sank.

He stumbled to the dock and pushed through the crowd. The moment he saw the sea, he felt as if his throat was tied by an invisible chain, making it impossible for him to breathe.

Eight merchant ships from France were docked at the dock. At a glance, Van Meer instantly calculated from the draft of the ships that these ships could carry between 4 and 5 dan of cargo.

Boxes filled with fine sand as white as silver moonlight and damp sugar blocks were shipped out of the cabin. The tax collectors at the dock were working with their quills so fast that their fingers were cramped.

"Silas." Seeing a familiar dock clerk, Van Mel rushed over like a life-saving straw, "Here, how much sugar is here? Is this sugar?"

"Are you blind?" The clerk rolled his eyes at him. "Forty-eight thousand dan of sugar are being loaded and unloaded on the ship. Tsk, don't block the way."

Pushing Van Meer aside like a stray dog ​​on the roadside, the clerk trotted forward, while Van Meer stood there like a statue.

Wolfhart stepped forward cautiously and rubbed Vanmeyer's shoulder: "Brother..."

As soon as he finished speaking, Van Meer rushed out. He bent down and slid under the guard's armpit, knelt in front of a wooden box, and screamed like crazy: "Impossible, impossible, the annual output of Black Snake Bay is less than 4 dan, impossible!"

He kicked the wooden box over, used his hands and mouth to pry open the nailed lid, and then plunged his hands into the gritty white sugar.

Unfortunately, his hands did not touch the stone he imagined when he reached the bottom. As the guards and other ship owners looked on coldly, he grabbed handfuls of sugar.

However, the whole box of white sugar was full of genuine and valuable white sugar, and its quality was visibly much better than the white sugar from the Hongyeqiu Sugar Factory.

"Citizen, let me remind you that this box of sugar is about 10 dan (1120 pounds)." A ship owner with a thick French accent walked up to him slowly, "You have to pay, um, let me calculate, 150 gold pounds."

Van Meier, who was kneeling on the ground, trembled all over. He raised his head slowly, his eyes were bloodshot, and his voice was trembling with tears: "How much? How much do you say!"

Van Meer pounced on the ship owner and grabbed him by the collar: "Why is there only this much? Why is there only... um..."

He knelt down slowly, holding his stomach. The boat owner wiped his fist with a handkerchief in disgust and said, "Are you possessed by a demon? Are you not happy with the small compensation?"

Van Meer could not hear what the ship owner said. As a speculator for many years, he instantly calculated that the unit price of each pound of sugar was about 16 dinars.

16 dinars! 16 dinars! The current price of sugar in Dam City is 30 dinars per pound!
He had previously lent out 50 dan of sugar futures, and the buyer sold them for 1400 gold pounds. If the buyer wants to return the 50 dan of sugar to him today, he only needs to buy back 746 gold pounds of sugar.

"Cough, cough, cough, cough--" Van Meier started coughing violently.

His younger brother quickly stepped forward and held his brother's arm, but when Van Meer looked up, the bitter shock on his face turned into a smile.

"Brother, you..."

“Ah—” Van Mel clapped his hands, “I’m rich! I’m rich! I made 653 gold pounds, I’m rich, hahahaha!”

(End of this chapter)