Yefutidaolu

Chapter 303 Jin Dafu's Scheme
Jin Dafu pondered who was behind this.

As for Youmingdi, he hadn't even considered it. Youmingdi and the Jin family were practically in cahoots, and when the matter came to pass, he simply didn't believe that Youmingdi would target the Jin family.

Youmingdi and the Jin family are staunch allies in this matter, and there is no reason for Youmingdi to target the Jin family.

This is a blatant frame-up, utterly pointless. Jin Dafu is not so easily fooled.

"However, it's impossible that the other party didn't realize how clumsy this framing was, but he still did it anyway. Why?" Jin Dafu frowned.

He was a little confused.

But no matter what, we need to take action.

He waved his hand, calming himself down, and said to the scout beside him:
"In short, this matter cannot be ignored. Such a large amount of supplies could not possibly have disappeared into thin air. Seal off all checkpoints, thoroughly inspect the airships on the straight roads, and check all the supplies on the main roads and side roads to prevent them from being secretly transported out in smaller quantities."

"All goods declared for customs will be opened and searched. Ignore public anger. No matter which sect or family comes to plead for mercy, we will not give them any face. This matter is too big. If you want to talk things out, then talk things out. If someone tries to use their power to intimidate others, then we will make an example of them. As long as they are not important figures from the capital, everyone will be treated the same."

Jin Dafu issued orders, giving commands to the spies below one by one.

As the head of the Jin family, Jin Dafu was certainly not the fat, incompetent fool he appeared to be. In reality, he was meticulous, ruthless, and the strongest man in Liangzhou.

Of course, no one is perfect. Jin Dafu is not the smartest in the Jin family, but as the strongest in Liangzhou and a ninth-realm martial artist, he is undoubtedly the most qualified person to be the head of the family, and also one of the most difficult people in the Jin family to deal with.

Now that this matter has fallen into his hands, he will not let it go easily. No matter who is behind it, as long as they are not top immortal sects or super clans, he will skin them alive. No one can stop him.

The scout accepted the order and quickly withdrew.

Admittedly, this order will offend people; every family surely has something to hide. But it doesn't matter. Millions of gold worth of supplies, plus those dozens of giant beasts...

Even those giant beasts, the cost of raising them from scratch to their current state is nearly 300,000 gold, and they've lost one eighth-realm cultivator and three seventh-realm cultivators! Just how much has this damaged the family's strength?!

Jin Dafu felt a throbbing pain in his head whenever he thought about this.

However, he quickly let out a long sigh and forced himself to calm down.

Now, a Grandmaster of the Two Gates, lurking in the shadows, is making a move against the Jin family and has even framed Youmingdi. This is a problem that can't be left to him alone.

"Pass on my order to invite Huang Chengshi, a man of great insight, to come to my residence for a discussion," Jin Dafu called out again.

Upon hearing this, the servant waiting outside the door hurriedly ran off.

Jin Dafu patted his large belly, wobbled as he sat down in the chair, and waited for the arrival of the two important figures.

------------

Meanwhile, Gao Jian was observing agriculture in Liangzhou.

He walked around the market, observing the prices of rice, grains, and finished food products.

Despite his seemingly sophisticated demeanor, he was simply strolling around, casually checking out the market.

The market in Liangzhou is really just so-so.

People from all walks of life, from all walks of life, come to the streets to make a living.

All sorts of people gathered in the teahouse: merchants, craftsmen, medicine sellers, newspaper sellers, needle and thread sellers, snack sellers, root carving and wood carving sellers, jade and rare trinkets sellers, genuine and fake calligraphy and paintings sellers, singers, fortune tellers, massage therapists, pedicurists and shoe shiners, barbers and ear cleaners, business people, and judges of justice.

As Gao Jian walked through Liangzhou City, he realized that the city indeed had a distinct character.

For example, he felt that the underlying atmosphere of the capital was much more complex than that of Cangzhou. The capital had an atmosphere of coldness, order, various luxury goods, and a sense of composure brought by the goods of cultivators.

Cangzhou, on the other hand, possesses a unique tranquility surrounded by mountains and rivers. Leaving aside the outer city of Cangzhou, a fresh fragrance occasionally wafts through the inner city, like a very faint perfume, the scent left behind by the magic of the mountains and rivers.

At this moment, the feeling that runs through Liangzhou is a strong metallic smell, and the scent of the desert permeates the whole place, including the barrenness of the desert. For some reason, this smell always reminds Gao Jian of thirsty livestock.

In a sense, that is also true.

This was the first time Gao Jian had ever seen a place in the Divine Dynasty where even finding a place to eat was difficult. No wonder it was called... the desolate 'Liangzhou'.

Undoubtedly, Liangzhou City is a large city with a population of tens of millions. However, it is the smallest of the ten prefecture cities in the Divine Dynasty, and the overall strength of Liangzhou is also very weak.

The strongest person in Cangzhou is the patriarch of the Shui family, a tenth-level Qi cultivator and a two-stage Grandmaster. Even with this level of skill, people in the capital would still laugh at him as a "remote and impoverished place".

The strongest person in Liangzhou was only at the ninth realm, which shows that it was absolutely true that this place was desolate. Even the name of the prefecture contained the character "凉" (liang), which means "desolate".

Even so, it's impossible for the tens of millions of people in Liangzhou City to be entirely an agricultural society; the city's residents certainly need to eat...

And the food we eat must be grown by farmers.

The technological level of the Divine Dynasty is not low, and the production efficiency of its farmland is terrifying, often reaching the level of 10,000 catties per mu. The seeds that have been adjusted by the agricultural cultivators are extremely absurd. With the help of corresponding spells, they can be said to grow as soon as they are exposed to the wind, without much need for induced production or pest control.

Furthermore, the Divine Dynasty can regulate the weather, and its large number of cultivators, even those who haven't reached the first realm, provide significant assistance to various production activities, so there's never any worry about food.

However... the abundance of resources and massive food production did not bring about a prosperous life for the people, ensuring they had enough to eat and drink; instead, it made the powerful families increasingly wealthy.

As the saying goes, low rice prices hurt farmers, while high rice prices hurt the people. In other places, the exploitation of farmers at least brings about a surplus of grain. Places like Cangzhou and Shendu do not experience any major changes due to the price of grain. Because of their high productivity, ordinary people at least do not go hungry.

In Liangzhou, the powerful families wanted them all.

As you can see, the price of food here is so outrageous that it's to the point where ordinary people have to grit their teeth to afford a full meal.

At least in Liangzhou, the situation had escalated to the point where "cheap rice hurts farmers, and expensive rice hurts the people," with the aristocratic families profiting from the price difference many times over. Gao Jian had already roughly guessed what was going on.

For farmers, the Liangzhou aristocratic families could exploit them during the harvest season, when farmers urgently needed to sell their grain. Because the grain production cycle is very long, farmers are basically just putting in a lot of effort without any output during the grain growing process. Given their economic situation, borrowing is often unavoidable. Without even coercing them, they could easily manipulate prices to force farmers into a situation where they have to borrow money to be able to plant.

This leads to farmers facing very urgent repayment pressure when harvesting grain. Under such circumstances, as long as powerful families form a price alliance, they can purchase the farmers' grain at the most favorable price for themselves. Especially when powerful families form an alliance, it is almost inevitable that purchasing merchants will form a price alliance.

As a result, in order to repay their debts, farmers have to sell the fruits of their hard work at extremely low prices, and even that is not enough. They need to repay the old debts and then borrow new ones.

They had to work hard every day, and if they wanted to free up time or money to do other things, they would immediately face severe economic pressure. The fruits of their hard work would be easily taken away by the aristocratic group. They even had to sell their children because they could not support them, and they had to pay taxes, pay off debts, and support their families.

For urban residents who need to eat, they cannot grow their own food and can only buy it. The grain merchants who buy from them are all from powerful families who can arbitrarily inflate grain prices. As long as they form a price alliance, they can easily squeeze every last penny out of the citizens. This is because these citizens are not farmers; they have no ability to produce food and can only rely on buying it.

In this way, both farmers and city dwellers will lose the time to think and resist, and will be exploited endlessly, generation after generation.

The Liangzhou aristocratic families have extremely strong actual control over grain. Without the intervention of other forces, they are the most powerful production group in the market. They don't even need to use cultivation and strong people to suppress the grain. They only need to use the funds and privileges at their disposal to exploit both the middle-class citizens and the lower-class farmers.

It's so scary.

Gao Jian couldn't help but sigh, these people... really are ruthless.

Cangzhou and Shendu have already acted quite inhumanely, but at least they haven't gone so far as to tamper with 'feed' or 'fertilizer'.

Even if we consider ordinary people as pigs and dogs, or as crops, we should still fertilize them and feed them. We should also fatten up pigs before slaughtering them.

But in Liangzhou, they even snatched pig and dog feed, squeezing every last drop out of it.

frenzied.

However, the situation here will change soon; the first move has already been made.
Just as Takashi was thinking this, suddenly, the sound of a fast horse's hooves rang out from behind.

"Ah!" came a voice, a man's exclamation.

Gao Jian didn't even need to look back; the sound of hooves and the noise alone told him that a fast horse had bumped into him from behind.

In a split second, Gao Jian's figure appeared like a ghost, silently landing behind the man who had been hit. He was an ordinary street vendor with a copper kettle and a small table in front of him, seemingly selling iced water.

Liangzhou is cold at night and hot during the day, with a dry climate. So, making ice with saltpeter and then selling ice water was a common small business, just like tea stalls in other places. However, the people of Liangzhou don't have the habit of drinking tea because the area doesn't produce tea, and tea is very expensive. Everyone is used to drinking ice water directly.

Gao Jian grabbed the water seller with one hand and the galloping horse with the other.

The fast horse was immediately pinned down by a tremendous force, and pressed to the ground, unable to move.

The rider on horseback did a somersault and landed nimbly.

The water seller was pulled away by Gao Jian, avoiding the fatal collision. He only felt a blur before his eyes, and the horse that had been charging straight at him was already lying on the ground, while he himself was in a different position. He didn't see anything clearly in between, except that a jug of ice water had spilled. This was the water he had stolen all night, and he had even spent money to buy saltpeter to make ice at home...

If this pot of water is gone, my family will probably go hungry for two days.

Gao Jian's speed at this moment was beyond the reach of ordinary people. Even if the person riding the horse was a cultivator, he could not react to Gao Jian's speed. The horse only felt its legs suddenly go weak, but did not actually fall to the ground.

After preventing a tragedy, Gao Jian looked at the man riding the galloping horse and said to him, "A member of the Jin family? What are you doing here?"

"Gao, Lord Gao!" The man swallowed hard and immediately said respectfully.

“You almost killed someone. Apologize to him and make up for the water you spilled,” Gao Jian said.

The man glanced at the water vendor.

The vendor was so frightened that he tried to kneel down, but Gao Jian held him back. So he could only cup his hands, lower his head, and hurriedly say, "No need to pay, no need to pay, it was all my fault for being blind!"

The Jin family member gave him a "you know what's good for you" look, but after glancing at Gao Jian, he frowned and said, "I'm sorry, this is an apology, please accept it."

As he spoke, he took out several tens of coins and presented them to the emperor with his hands clasped in respect.

A pot of water costs about the same.

The vendor hesitated to take it, seemingly afraid of something.

But he was also perceptive; seeing the Jin family's demeanor, he knew that if he didn't take it... his fate would likely be even worse.

So he took the money with trepidation, but his expression was so mournful that it looked as if his whole family was going to die.

However... it's very likely not 'seems'.

So Gao Jian nodded: "If anything happens to him, you will be executed along with him. I won't ask why or who did it."

The Jin family member gritted his teeth and nodded: "We will obey your orders, sir..."

"Let's go." Gao Jian let the vendor go, watched as the vendor knelt down and kowtowed, and then hurriedly ran away.

Then, he turned his gaze to the Jin family members in front of him and said, "So, what do you want from me?"

The Jin family members then straightened their faces, put aside the trivial matter, and respectfully said to Gao Jian, "Sir, the head of the family invites you to the Jin family to discuss important matters."

"Oh? Since it's Patriarch Jin who invited me, although I have some other matters to attend to, I have no choice but to go. Lead the way." Gao Jian nodded thoughtfully and had someone lead the way.

Soon, Gao Jian followed the people and arrived at the Jin family mansion.

(End of this chapter)