Yefutidaolu

Chapter 122 Return to Cangzhou
Now, it is winter.

The north wind swept across the earth, the water from the eaves gradually cooled, and all that could be seen was the thick mist, and the springs had dried up.

When Gao Jian first arrived in Cangzhou, it was still autumn. At that time, one could see many mature farmlands and harvests everywhere.

But now, it has been winter for a long time.

The river has frozen and snow is falling continuously. Although there are not strong winds all the time, the occasional gust of wind can make people's teeth and bones ache and suffer the winter.

Cangzhou is located in the northwest of the Divine Dynasty. It is a bitter and cold area, unlike the warm and rich seaside area of Yuezhou.

Although it is a little chilly in Yuezhou at this time, the place is not very cold all year round, and the warm wind from the ocean is always blowing in Yuezhou.

But in Cangzhou, snow has already started falling.

At this moment, the entire outer city of Cangzhou was shrouded in wind and snow. People stayed at home to keep warm and survived on surplus food.

Those who have no surplus food have to go out to work in winter to earn a meal.

Some families were really poor and had only a few sets of clothes, all of which were single items. So the whole family took off their clothes and gave them to the able-bodied male in the family to wear when they went out to work. The women and young children in the family huddled together, and those who had bedding covered themselves with it, while those who didn't huddled in the straw, waiting for the men to go out and get food.

Because of the existence of these poor people, there are still many people busy in the outer city of Cangzhou, and quite a number of them are doing manual labor and carrying firewood.

There are no large forests near Cangzhou. After all, they have all been cut down. With tens of millions of people, the amount of firewood burned every day is astronomical. Even though the Divine Dynasty is vast and rich in resources, the forest in an area is always limited.

But Cangzhou is so big, with forests stretching for hundreds of miles everywhere in the wilderness. During the cold winter, large quantities of firewood are continuously delivered to Cangzhou from other counties to burn charcoal and provide heating for the city.

But so much firewood always needs people to move it. Normally, there is water transportation, so a boat can transport it directly. But now it is winter and the rivers are frozen, so we can only rely on mechanical beasts to deliver large quantities of firewood to the city, and then have manual workers carry it into the city.

A small portion of this firewood was directly given to people in the outer city for burning, while the vast majority was used to make charcoal.

There are also some tricks to keep warm.

The richer ones would burn good charcoal, such as silver charcoal, which required digging soil and stacking it up, and loading it into a mud tower. The mud tower was often 20 to 30 feet high, like a small building, and was sealed with mud to gradually dry it, so as not to be broken by fire. Then, the best hardwood was used as pads layer by layer, and firewood was spread on the bottom. The fire was calcined red, and the fire was blazing in the pot. Then, the fire was simmered for three days, cooled down, and the tower was destroyed to take it out, and then good charcoal could be made.

If charcoal is burned in this way, the charcoal will be as hard as steel. Once it is ignited by blowing fire, it can burn for a whole day without going out, without smoke or odor, and you can touch it with your hands without getting your hands covered with ash. The charcoal is covered with silver threads, hence the name "silver thread charcoal". Some people are more particular about it, and will cover medicinal herbs in the mud tower. The charcoal made in this way is not only smokeless and odorless, but also has a fresh fragrance.

However, the consumption of firewood is huge, with seven out of ten pieces of firewood being consumed, so the cost is not low.

If the conditions are just average and you are not very wealthy, you can only use ordinary charcoal, which produces ash and smoke and is easy to break. If you touch it with your fingers, your hands will be covered with black ash. But charcoal is better than firewood after all.

The poor people can only use firewood.

When firewood burns, black smoke billows and people cannot open their eyes because of the choking. The chimney must be opened, otherwise people can be choked to death in the house. The smell is strong and pungent, and firewood burns quickly. Silver charcoal can burn for a whole day without going out, while ordinary charcoal can easily last for an hour or two, but firewood cannot even last half an hour.

Furthermore, if the family is really poor, they don't even have firewood to burn. They can only burn some dead branches and leaves that fall from the firewood. They are not fire-resistant and will burn out in a few minutes. The smell is huge, and the fire is small, so it is far from enough for heating. Most of the people who freeze to death every winter are these people.

These charcoal, firewood, dry branches and the like are used by people from outside the city.

For example, the nobles in the inner city don’t need things like charcoal fire. They use magic and formations to keep warm.

Especially the gardens of those aristocratic families, these gardens can even be divided into four seasons. Various scenery, various exotic flowers, and various ecological environments are all concentrated in one garden. One garden has hundreds of colors and is very gorgeous.

The biggest impact of seasons on them is the change of the energy of heaven and earth. This change will affect their practice. As for the temperature? That doesn't matter at all.

No matter how cold it is, it won't chill them.

At this time, the more than 100,000 laborers in the outer city of Cangzhou were the lifeline for firewood and charcoal needed by so many people in the outer city.

Therefore, this is also the time of the year when they make the most money.

"Hayaha!"

"Hi!"

"Don't swing!" "Hey hey hey hey!"

"Brothers!" "Carry the wood!"

"Pull it in front!"

"Hey!"

"Swing it from behind!"

"Hey!"

As the horns sounded, we saw groups of laborers and trackers in the outer city of Cangzhou. They were only wearing thin clothes but did not feel cold at all. They were divided into teams of dozens or hundreds of people, and each team was pulling a huge trailer.

The trailers were filled with charcoal and firewood, piled high. Each trailer probably contained hundreds of thousands of pounds of charcoal and firewood. There was a flat iron plate underneath the trailers, which made it convenient to move things.

The trackers and laborers lined up and followed the leader's shouts. They pulled the boat one step at a time and moved slowly and rhythmically forward.

In the middle of winter, the laborers were wearing only thin clothes, but they were steaming all over. The heat from their bodies collided with the cold air from the sky and the earth, producing a lot of white smoke. The white smoke enveloped the surroundings, forcing the bosses of the Chamber of Commerce who were supervising the workers to take a few steps back.

Several shopkeepers from the Chamber of Commerce were seen chatting with Li Jun. He smiled and said, "Mr. Li, this year's efficiency is much higher than in the past. These people under you look so fat and powerful. Is your business good this year?"

Li Jun waved his hands and said, "I am a rough man, so I cannot be called a master. If you want to respect me, just call me foreman. As for the business, it is almost the same, except that the food is better."

The shopkeepers of the Chamber of Commerce immediately asked indirectly, "Doesn't this look like he's eating better? I see that his blood and energy look like he's been practicing some Kung Fu?"

Li Junze smiled, waved his hand and said: "Hey, who doesn't practice some Kung Fu? Without Kung Fu, wouldn't you be crushed by something weighing hundreds or thousands of pounds?"

"Hahahaha." There was laughter all around, although there was nothing funny.

Li Jun also started laughing, although he also didn't think it was funny.

But the laughter at this time was not so much laughter as it was an end to the topic, meaning that these people would not continue to ask questions.

Li Jun watched the laborers working below and wondered how much money he could earn from hauling all this coal and firewood this winter.

But he was not happy.

The numbers on the account gradually increased, and the laborers' cultivation also improved day by day. These docks outside the city have been incorporated. There are people supporting them from above, and the brothers below are also working hard. There are already several people in the first realm, and they are all training apprentices. To be honest, in the outer city, these laborer gangs can be regarded as a well-known force, and he, Li Jun, is even qualified to enter the inner city and bring people to help the masters in the inner city to do some chores.

It was then that he realized that those foremen who were above the first realm and acted arrogantly in front of them were only qualified to do some odd jobs in the inner city.

When he actually got hold of the account books of these hundreds of thousands of laborers, he realized that for a foreman, a profit of two or three gold coins a year for a dock was already a lot.

There are thousands of docks in the outer city, and the net profit is about two to three thousand gold, which is for the whole year.

But what about the running water?

There are thousands of docks and more than 100,000 people. If each person eats ten coins a day, that means one million coins will be consumed in a day, and one hundred gold coins will be consumed just on food every day.

In a year, with more than 100,000 mouths to feed, more than 30,000 gold coins will be spent on food.

If you calculate all the income and expenses of thousands of docks, the annual turnover must be more than 100,000 gold!
How much revenue was this? Why did the foremen only get two or three thousand?
In fact, these two or three thousand gold were the result of constant deductions and exploitation by the foremen. As a result, each foreman would only get twenty or thirty gold in a year, which was only enough for each of the more than one hundred foremen with the first level of cultivation to earn a share.

Where did the remaining more than 90% of the turnover and profits go?
The answer is that they were all taken away by the inner city.

To manage the docks, you need to rely on connections in the inner city.

The daily food supply must go through channels controlled by the inner city.

These chambers of commerce need to obtain approval from the inner city before they can ship goods in.

Without the inner city, you can’t do anything and you can’t do business at all.

Today, the rules haven’t changed.

In order to allow the laborers to do business safely, Li Jun also asked them to pay so much.

In fact, the reason why Li Jun can be in charge of the current business, besides his relationship with Gao Jian and Shui Gongzi, and the fact that the Hundred Gods of the Outer City can suppress the villains from causing trouble, there is another important reason... the Inner City acquiesced.

As long as the docks in the outer city continue to contribute the same amount of money to them every year, the masters in the inner city will not even bother to look at the changes in power among the foremen and laborers.

As long as the money is in place, it doesn't matter who is doing the work. The most you can ask is: "Did someone change?"

Li Jun's answer at the time was: "Yes, it's a change, sir."

"Oh." The nobleman nodded and never asked again.

No one cared about the minor disturbance in the outer city, and the people in the inner city didn't care who was in charge of the dock.

Because no matter who it is, it doesn’t matter, everything is ultimately held on the leash of the inner city masters.

Even so, Li Jun was still trembling with fear. He knew that his foundation was unstable and he could not stand firm. Many people were thinking about the dock.

The reason why he can stand firm now is because Mr. Shui is "protecting" him openly. Although Li Jun has not seen Mr. Shui many times, he knows that his safety is due to the fact that the high school captain killed the foreman and the former Baishen to establish his authority, and now he has the support of Baishen, and Mr. Shui has also made a greeting behind the scenes, so that he can develop so smoothly.

But even in such a smooth situation, he found out after making monthly estimates that even under his leadership, the internal consumption of resources by the trackers and workers at various docks was greatly reduced, and because there was no competition, he raised prices in many businesses, but at the end of the year he still only earned two or three thousand gold.

However, the income of the trackers has doubled, and with the lower prices due to centralized purchasing, they eat much better than before, and there are people to take care of them if they get injured, so their lives are much better than before.

These two or three thousand gold are in the public account. If we squeeze the boatmen and laborers a little more like the foremen did before, we can get about six thousand gold.

This is the limit.

These two or three thousand golds must be used to train practitioners and deal with various accidents. If the business is to be run for a long time, there will definitely not be much extra money in the account and it all has to be spent.

And where do you spend the money?

Without a doubt...it's still the inner city.

Everything is in the inner city! Whether you spend money, earn money, or even don’t spend or earn money and just deposit money in a bank, no matter what you do, all your money will eventually flow to the inner city!

Li Jun was even horrified to find that the masters in the inner city took out 10,000 gold coins and scattered them all in the outer city to the poor, and then ignored everything and went back to sleep.

When they wake up, the ten thousand gold will return to the inner city by itself, and the masters of the inner city don't even need to do anything.

At Li Jun’s wharf, most of the water flows to the inner city.

Most of the trade flows of the chambers of commerce that do business with the docks will also flow into the inner city.

The roadside vendors selling soup noodles, the theater that used to be Xiao Tianfu’s theater, the wine sellers, the carpenters, the shoemakers, everything... it was all like this.

No wonder the foremen in the past were not as rich as imagined. No wonder all the foremen only earned a dozen or twenty gold coins a year, and they had to squeeze these hard-working people hard to get a little bit of profit.

The bulk of the money will always flow to that place.

For Li Jun, the inner city changed from a beautiful and luxurious paradise to a terrifying devil's den.

This devil's den, in a way that Li Jun could not understand, seized the wealth and flesh and blood of the entire Cangzhou. The process was silent, reasonable, legal, and there was nothing wrong with it.

But the more he couldn't find any faults, the more terrified Li Jun felt. He even woke up from his dreams several times. He didn't understand what kind of method this was...

Whenever he thought of this, Li Jun's mood couldn't improve, so he hadn't laughed for a long time.

In the eyes of other trackers and laborers, "Brother Jun'er" became increasingly busy. Although he was still as friendly and trustworthy as ever, he seemed to be shrouded in a layer of haze.

clap clap!

Li Jun patted his face to sober himself up.

No matter how scared you are, you can't do this at this time. This is the most important order of the year.

However, at this time, the shopkeepers of the nearby chambers of commerce suddenly pointed to the sky.

They said in horrified voices: "Over there! Over there, there is a dragon in the sky!"

(End of this chapter)