The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 517 The last carnival
December, the coldest time of the year.

Even the freezing of water couldn't dampen the good spirits of the noble gentlemen in Shache City, thousands of miles away.

Since the Yongtai Dynasty ruthlessly slaughtered a large sum of livestock as compensation, the lives of the noble lords have not been easy these past few years.

They have to pay taxes to the royal city.

To provide for the Khan and the church organization.

Expenditure will not decrease due to changes in the overall environment.

But those lowly herders who had been enslaved by them in the past disappeared without a trace, along with their entire tribes, in the blink of an eye.

I vaguely know that these people have migrated eastward.

But what can they do?
Who dares to ask the Iraqi garrison for their people!

The formidable strength of the Guanzhong garrison had long terrified the Khanate's archers and cavalry.

Everyone could only watch helplessly as the family's power waned, with nothing they could do.

They closely monitored the border trade cities that were opened during the Yongtai reign.

The various best-selling products brought back by the Hu merchants who participated in the Kansai Autumn Trade Fair were widely praised.

Most of the daily necessities were things they had never seen or used before.

Everything is very good.

The price of transporting the goods back to Shache was several times higher than the wholesale price.

Besides horses, the only other key commodities for the Kashgar Khanate's foreign trade were Khotan jade.

However, since the Kansai garrison captured the Iri Valley, Irima has been completely under the control of the Han people.

I heard that they also built a huge military horse farm in Yili, which has completely achieved self-sufficiency in warhorses.

It's difficult to sell a horse at a high price at the Autumn Trade Fair unless it's a fine steed like the Akhal-Teke.

The number of Akhal-Teke horses in the Khanate is currently less than two hundred, and they are not easily used for trade.

The situation is even more awkward for Hetian jade.

The raw jade pebbles of Hetian jade are formed from the original ore after weathering and erosion, and then washed and transported by river water to the middle and lower reaches of the river, where they are rounded over a long period of time.

The price of seed jade itself is not expensive.

To fetch a high price, they are mostly made into accessories or jewelry.

The skilled jade carvers were located in Jiangnan. For Hu merchants, exporting seed jade was not a lucrative business.

So they all come to the Autumn Trade Fair to buy goods.

How could the noble lords behind these families tolerate their hard-earned money flowing into the pockets of the Han people?
And then.

Several noble leaders, without informing their mediocre and cowardly Khan, conspired to pull off a big heist.

"Begging for alms" is a custom passed down from our ancestors.

It's just that they've changed the people they're begging to from Han Chinese to foreigners!

They deliberately chose a valley outside the Khanate's borders as the location for their plundering.

After killing people, they simply threw the bodies into the deep valley, thus avoiding the need to dig a mass grave.

In their minds, the hometowns of the foreign merchants were a hundred and eight thousand miles away from this place.

Does anyone know where these people disappeared from?

Even if we find the remains of these people, there will be no way to prove their innocence!

They truly hadn't expected that Marcoli, the one who slipped through the net, would survive and report their actions to Emperor Qianwu.

Marcoli, one of the few who slipped through the net, spends his days counting down the days to the revelry of these noble gentlemen.

The noble lords, who had divided up tens of millions of dollars, felt like they were celebrating the New Year every day throughout the winter.

Large and small banquets were held constantly.

Adorned with brocade and silk
Winter in Kansai is a busy time.

In the indoor shooting ranges of each camp, people practice shooting continuously for twelve hours a day, and the sound of cannons can be heard every two or three days.

Everyone is preparing for the qualifying competition for the western expeditionary force in early March of next year.

The busy winter passed faster than in any previous year when we hibernated.

After Fu Bao Neng and his foreign friend Orlando communicated daily in Latin.

After a month of assessment, 60,000 soldiers were selected for the western expedition.

After the imperial examination in Shangdu concluded, three students from Qingshan Academy achieved the second-class Jinshi degree, sparking a city-wide celebration.

After Gan Minglan personally supervised the planting of potato and chili seeds on two acres of land in the backyard.

Sixty thousand cavalrymen set off for Shache.