In the 20th year of Shaoxing, in order to compete for the market, the Su family's fleet and another large-scale salt smuggling gang fought decisively at sea.
Although the Su family fleet won in the end, the cheap man was hit by a stray arrow and died unfortunately. My mother was so sad that she passed away soon after, and Su Yonglin suddenly became an orphan.
Su Dingguang only had one son, Su Shengren. After this blow, he was greatly saddened and unable to manage for a time. As a result, the Su family's trade share missed the best opportunity to expand.
The trade shares seized through the battle were seized by other gangs quickly, and Su Shengren's death failed to obtain any benefits.
From then on, Su Dingguang failed to recover and often fell ill. He barely persisted until the 24th year of Shaoxing, when he died of illness.
As soon as he died of illness, the Su family suddenly lost its official head. Su Yonglin was only sixteen years old at the time, and no one thought he could inherit the family business. People in the Su family's private salt group were panicked. This was probably the so-called suspicion of the young master.
To make matters worse, Sun Yuanqi, Su Dingguang's former assistant in the Lin'an court, became interested in the Su family's "young master's suspicion of the country".
He secretly instigated Su Dingguang's two important assistants to kill Su Yonglin, divide the Su family's sales share, promised to be their protective umbrella, and tried to obtain greater benefits from it.
But Sun Yuanqi didn't expect that Su Dingguang had been prepared for this.
The informants secretly placed by Su Dingguang around two important assistants during his lifetime told Su Yonglin about their conspiracy with Sun Yuanqi.
What Sun Yuanqi didn't expect was that Su Yonglin was not a peaceful character.
He joined the operation of selling private salt very early. After several years of experience, he already knew the entire process of selling private salt, and he was not without control over the entire Su's Private Salt Group.
Moreover, he has a clear goal and direction of action. He needs to sell smuggled salt to accumulate enough capital for him to go north to the Kingdom of Jin to carry out armed insurrection at an appropriate time in the future.
Therefore, he would never tolerate his death at the hands of a corrupt official.
He even wanted to go directly to Lin'an to kill Sun Yuanqi, and then go directly north.
But he quickly calmed down, knowing that there must be a suitable time for this matter, and there must be careful preparations, and he could not give away someone's head just for a slap on the head, so he endured it.
Sun Yuanqi cannot be killed, but the traitors within his own family are different.
Su Yonglin immediately made up his mind, never stopped doing anything, and took advantage of the core members of Su Dingguang's private salt group to have a meeting on the island to take the lead.
He arranged for his cronies Su Yong, Su Changsheng and others to suddenly attack during the meeting. The two assistants and their cronies were rounded up and killed on the spot.
When Su Dingguang was alive, Su Yonglin was neither impressive nor outstanding, so they relaxed their vigilance.
But they never expected that Su Yonglin was ruthless and decisive. They were having a meeting here and suddenly got angry and slashed with a knife without saying a word.
After a chaotic battle, Su Yonglin killed them and their cronies on the island.
After stabilizing the situation, Su Yonglin rushed to Lin'an to meet Sun Yuanqi.
He cried and told his story of "fighting back after encountering danger", presented a large amount of property and land deeds to Sun Yuanqi, and asked Sun Yuanqi to continue to protect the Su family for the sake of his grandfather.
Sun Yuanqi was a little embarrassed at the time.
He didn't know if Su Yonglin knew that he had instigated this incident.
But since Su Yonglin came to see him and continued to pay bribes, it meant that Su Yonglin planned to continue to maintain this ecosystem.
It doesn't matter whether you know it or not. The most important thing is to continue doing business.
Su Yonglin had no choice and needed him.
And he also needs the Su family's financial resources.
So he could only be secretly annoyed, feeling that those two guys were too useless and couldn't even fight a young boy, but on the surface, they comforted Su Yonglin and told him to do it boldly.
So this thrilling "change of dynasties" came to an end.
Su Yonglin continued to sell private salt and manage it up and down.
Sun Yuanqi continued to serve as the patron of the Su family in the central government, using the Su family's financial resources to manage his affairs and advance his career.
Soon, he was promoted from Wailang, a member of the Jin Department, to Langzhong, and made gratifying career progress——
Although his rank is not high, he has the power and rich salary. The big boss who appreciates him is very happy with his management, and his words reveal that he will continue to promote him.
As time passed, it was as if what happened before had never happened.
Those who sell smuggled salt sell smuggled salt, and those who get kickbacks get kickbacks. The central government controls the central government, and the local government plays the role of the local government.
Su Dingguang is definitely not the only official who personally operates the sale of illegal salt, and there is definitely more than one official who collects benefits from illegal salt dealers and acts as a protective umbrella.
It can be said to be a not uncommon phenomenon.
As far as Su Yonglin knew, officials in some places openly cracked down on the sale of illegal salt, but in fact they were deliberately trying to ruin the reputation of official salt.
They are very smart, passing off inferior goods as good ones, and conveniently raising the prices. While making some honest people suffer and making money, they also make more ordinary people unable to bear to buy official salt and instead buy them. Private salt with equity participation.
Same salt, earn money twice, earn with blood.
When Su Dingguang started his "entrepreneurship", he also played a double act with the local salt officials, deliberately ruining the reputation of official salt, crowding out the market share of official salt, making private salt popular, and everyone making a lot of money together.
That eating phase, tsk tsk tsk, is simply awesome.
Of course, Su Yonglin was embarrassed to say anything wrong about his grandfather, because he was doing similar things now.
They are also [state moths], driving official salt out of the circulation market and allowing ordinary people to buy their own private salt.
But it should not be said that the bad reputation of official salt cannot be created by one or two officials. This kind of forced buying and selling model cannot produce good products.
The salt industry in the Southern Song Dynasty was rotten from top to bottom, from the inside to the outside. It stinked and rotten from the beginning of the production process.
In some places, you will actually get sick if you eat the official salt.
Their private salt is white in color and has fine particles. It has been purified through technology and is much safer than official salt, and the price is much cheaper than official salt.
After Su Yonglin took charge of the private salt group, he often carried out activities to benefit the people, such as buy two, get one free, buy five, get two free, etc., which were naturally welcomed by the people.
These days, the average daily income of the people in Lin'an is only about one hundred cents, and the daily necessities for survival are about the same price. The people at the bottom are basically moonlight earners and cannot save much money.
In this way, official salt can still be sold at a high price.
So let alone Dinghai County, almost everyone in Qingyuan Prefecture eats the Su family’s private salt. There are also a lot of people in other areas who eat the Su family’s private salt. Moreover, they are all very grateful to the Su family’s private salt and take the initiative to help Su. Furniture and salt dealers hide their traces and evade detection and pursuit by official officials.
The common people are like this, and so are the bureaucrats.
In order to further gain their support, Su Yonglin not only gave away money, but also provided them with free [refined salt].
In this way, although Su Dingguang passed away and the Su family had no official figures for the time being, this official relationship was still maintained by Su Yonglin, and he had someone to help cover it up.
Every "thunder and fierce" strike by the court failed to fall on the Su family.
Su Yonglin also knew that the Jin Kingdom was more conscientious about salt than the Southern Song Dynasty. The price was relatively cheaper and the quality was better. Therefore, the people at the junction of the Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty almost all ate gold salt and not Song salt.
This gave rise to private salt trading groups on the border between Song and Jin Dynasties.
There are so many people doing this, and he, Su Yonglin, is not the best one by any means.
Of course, Su Yonglin's life ideal is not to be a pirate king selling smuggled salt. This is just a means to achieve his goal.
And now, it's time for him to achieve his goal.
Soon, Su Yonglin returned to the Dinghai County base camp and started taking action against the clock.
First, he called Su Yin, the person in charge of the Su family's intelligence department and his close confidant, to ask about the latest developments in the north.
"How are the preparations going at Zhao Kaishan's place? Is there any latest news?"
"Yes, Zhao Kaishan sent someone to inform us that he is planning to formally hold the event in April. The specific time has not yet been determined. He is currently making final preparations and asked me to go and meet him as soon as possible."
Su Yonglin nodded.
"How many men can he gather?"
"About ten thousand people."
"Ten thousand people? That many?"
Su Yonglin was a little surprised: "Is someone else going to join him?"
Su Yin nodded.
"Yes, in the past few months, Jin Ting moved several Jurchens who wanted to conquer Shandong, and two of them decided to settle in Juzhou and Mizhou. According to past practice, someone else will be unlucky. So Zhao Kaishan secretly lobbied, and several landowners in Juzhou and Mizhou decided to join Zhao Kaishan. According to rough calculations, he can gather tens of thousands of troops."
When Su Yin said this, Su Yonglin suddenly felt that the Jin people were almost giving away the land of Shandong to them.
He was more sure.
Of course, this cannot be said to be the fault of the Jin people. If a small tribe faces a big country, don't feel guilty?
Although the Song government was driven away, the Han people who originally lived in the Central Plains did not leave. They still lived there, with their ancestors rooted here for generations. The Jin people looked at so many Han people and murmured in their hearts.
To fight is to fight, and to rule is to rule. These are two different things.
It defeated hundreds of thousands of Song troops, but could it control tens of millions of Han people?
They had no experience, so they initially established the two Sun Tzu regimes of Puppet Chu and Puppet Qi to take charge of the Central Plains. Su Yonglin felt that the nature of these two Sun Tzu regimes was similar to that of Manchukuo supported by the Japanese.
During this period, the capital of the Jin Kingdom did not even dare to be placed in the Central Plains. The Huining Mansion in Shangjing, far away in Liaodong, fully demonstrated the guilty conscience of the Jin people about ruling the Han people in the Central Plains.
In order to prove this judgment, Su Yonglin sent Su Yin several times in the four years after Su Dingguang's death to sneak into the Kingdom of Jin to spy on the news, and conduct field investigations in Shandong, Henan, and Hebei.
The results of the investigation proved that Su Yonglin's judgment was not wrong.
Su Yin's on-the-spot investigation provided Su Yonglin with a large amount of first-hand information about the living standards and political status quo of the people in Jintong District.
Su Yonglin conducted detailed research and analysis on this, and various signs proved that Su Yonglin's judgment was correct.
The Jin people nominally ruled the Central Plains, but in fact this kind of rule was full of loopholes. It was like a sieve. Without poking, it would make holes everywhere.
So Su Yonglin sorted out all the information at hand and began to teach his core team.
