Liang Chuan would comfort Duan Peng, but in fact he himself couldn't make up his mind. As soon as he returned to the port office, he told Su Wei the situation.
Su Wei has long been worried about this matter.
There are countless prisoners and their own soldiers on Penghu Island, and the amount of rice they consume every day is an astronomical figure.
The day after the pirates withdrew from Qingyuan, Su Wei and Liang Chuan asked for instructions and transported all the food they had accumulated on hand under the escort of warships.
It turns out that it is so easy to raise soldiers in Fengshan. Everyone can pick up a hoe after putting down their weapons. They grow sweet potatoes on the mountain, which is completely self-sufficient. As soon as the fight started, Liang Chuan immediately felt like he was out of breath, because the food was almost It takes half a day to eat, which is the result of careful budgeting!
Looking at the whole of Qingyuan, where are we going to find food now?
"Should we send a sea ship to transport food?"
Su Wei thought for a long time, rubbed off several handfuls of his beard and said, "This is impossible. Once you go outside to adjust the food, people outside will be unwilling to transport the food in."
"Then what should we do? The brothers below come to us every day to collect food. Look, Song Tiegen will come to report the food deposit again soon. There will definitely not be much left. If the delay continues, our brothers will also become anxious!"
Su Wei said angrily: "Who would have thought that our land of plenty would be short of food. It has not been a war for hundreds of years, and it is unimaginable to reach this stage!"
Liang Chuan said: "Master Duan just called me over to talk. He is even more worried that the food shortage will cause a civil uprising! This is not unreasonable. We have managed to secure Qingyuan, but we can't have internal trouble! "
"You remember those merchants from the Hanshui Gang when we were in the northwest!"
Hanshui Gang?
Liang Chuan was reminded by Su Weiyi, and he really remembered something.
"I remember that this group of people made a fortune by smuggling grain at that time. Without this group of people, our logistics would not be so smooth!"
Liang Chuan looked at Su Wei's treacherous face and narrowed his eyes. The two seemed to have a tacit understanding.
Su Wei's old face flashed a sly smile, and he said: "You let Mr. Duan continue to guard the door, and then continue to spread rumors to the city, saying that pirates will attack again in the near future, making the people really think that there will be a war to be fought. .”
“Wouldn’t food prices be higher if we do this?”
Su Wei raised his eyebrows and said, "The price of food should be as high as possible!"
Liang Chuan asked in confusion: "If something goes wrong, Duan Peng won't chop me up!"
"No, the sea is not peaceful now. Businessmen outside know that there is a war in Qingyuan. They know that the prices in Qingyuan will definitely skyrocket. They will definitely make a lot of money by transporting things in. However, transporting things by land is not that easy, let alone Maybe if you drag the things that are delivered to your doorstep and then drag them back, the money earned in this way will not be enough to cover the costs. If you wait ten days and a half, it will be much easier to handle by then!"
This old boy is indeed sinister.
"What should we do now?"
"When the time comes, you should let people spread rumors and raise prices. Just tell people that the prices of things have increased. Then let Yelu Chongguang sneak out of the city and go to Tingzhou, Jiangxi, Hangzhou and other places to sell rice. When the news of the skyrocketing prices spreads, if the merchants make money, they will immediately fly over to places as ferocious as the ambush in the northwest, and the Qingyuan battle is nothing compared to it!"
"I'll do it right away!"
Yelu Chongguang and his gang rushed out of the city gate that day, and then the city gate was closed tightly again, as if they were facing a formidable enemy.
I don't know when rumors began to spread in the city, saying that there would be another disaster at sea. They even told the time and place in a certain way, so that Duan Peng didn't know the details. When he heard the news, he quickly called for help. In the city defense, several city gates were tightly sealed with stone bars to prevent them from being destroyed by gunpowder!
Half truths and half lies are the most bluffing!
Liang Chuan asked Xia Dehai to go to Sunjiang and release a few cannons at Haikou in the middle of the night according to the rumored time. The cannons shook the sky and the earth. As soon as the sound of the cannons was heard, hundreds of thousands of families in Qingyuan were frightened. Every household closed their doors and windows, fearing that someone would come again. casualties.
The common people didn't know the truth, so they thought it was a pirate attack!
It’s over. The original price of a bucket of rice was sixty or seventy cents, but now it has tripled. You can’t even buy a bucket of rice for more than two hundred cents!
It's like a scene in troubled times, and other items such as charcoal and medicinal materials and salt have increased even more outrageously!
Just in case, Liang Chuan sent a fleet to transport grain to Penghu Island first, and along the south river to Lingnan to pull grain. At this time, there was no need to go to Lingnan. There were many merchants in Chaozhou ready to bring grain. It was shipped here, but they didn't dare to transport it randomly for fear of being pirated on the road!
Yelu Chongguang's troops were divided into five groups. Except for the sea, they sent people to Zhejiang in the north, Jiangxi in the northwest, and Jianzhou and Tingzhou. When they arrived, they told people that countless people died in the war in Quanzhou, the price of rice soared, and the people After hearing that, they were all grabbing local food, for fear that the war would spread to the local area.
The local grain supply will not be doubled, let alone more than ten times like Quanzhou Prefecture!
The businessmen immediately sensed the business opportunity. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make money!
Although it is dangerous, the business philosophy is to take advantage of the sword and make dangerous moves. There is no reason to make money by lying in bed comfortably!
This account is easy to calculate. A dou of grain is transported to Qingyuan and sold for 200 Wen. A porter can carry a stone in a bamboo basket, which is ten Dou of grain, ten Dou on each side, which adds up to 4,000 Wen. , four pieces of money!
As for the cost, a bucket of grain originally only cost about 30 cents. After deducting the wages of a porter, it was about 50 cents! In addition to the dry food eaten on the road, it will cost at most dozens of pennies. After all, just one trip to Qingyuan can make Mihang nearly three thousand dollars!
This kind of profit is a great opportunity that comes only once in a hundred years!
Why doesn’t Mihang choose to use snail horses for transportation?
Because in a real emergency, the efficiency of cattle, horses, mules and donkeys is far less than that of humans!
The porters have been engaged in this kind of heavy physical work for many years. For them, as long as they are not marching in a hurry and are slowly carrying the goods, it is a piece of cake for them to walk hundreds of miles a day.
And the most important thing is the cost!
It costs money to hire a horse team and a mule team, and you also need to hire an ox and horse master to look after you on the road. The weight you can carry is at most a hundred pounds more than the porter. No matter how heavy it is, the ox and horse cannot bear it.
"The First Cause of All Realms"
After all, the horse team costs one animal and one groom, which is equivalent to the cost of three people. The extra profit is only half the benefit of one person, and the speed is not as fast as that of the porter!
The porter usually earns twenty to thirty cents a day, but not everyone is as generous as Liang Chuan and gives so much money. At this special time, he can be given fifty cents. The porter is already too excited to sleep. I feel like I have to rush to do this job, for fear of falling behind and losing my place.
How far does it take to pick up grain? From Fuzhou to Quanzhou.
This stretch of road will take nearly two hours even if you drive on the expressway in future generations!
Would the porters feel aggrieved when they picked them from Fuzhou for fifty cents? No, the price was too tempting! Until after the reform and opening up, the neighbors of Liang Chuan's family, those elders, were still engaged in such terrible and heavy labor. It sounds incredible, but this was a normal manual labor back then, and they still had stable jobs. A decent job that the boss is willing to hire!
This is just food, food, clothing, housing and transportation. All commodities are now in short supply for Qingyuan. As long as they can be transported in, not to mention selling them, selling them at a high price is not a problem.
On the official roads and on some trails over the mountains and ridges, groups of porters began to frantically carry grain and various goods to Qingyuan. If they were just one day late, the price might drop by half. For the sake of profit, the merchants treated the porters They were promised huge profits, but they all risked their lives. Incredibly, they could still run along the forest path carrying two hundred kilograms of grain.
When he was young, an uncle of the Liangchuan family had been working in the fields ever since he could remember. He carried running water, soil and fertilizer, and later he carried grain after harvest. Incredibly, he carried two large loads. Liang Chuan was afraid that the pole would be crushed every time he saw it!
Human potential is really unlimited. When Liang Chuan grew up, every time he saw ancient books describing how huge and heavy the weapons of ancient generals were, Liang Chuan would always believe it if others didn't believe it!
Because he has really seen it, and coming to this era, he has witnessed the diligence of the ancient working people, which can create so many splendid civilizations!
Over the course of a day, the porters arrived outside Qingyuan City one after another, but they were surprised to find that several city gates were locked tighter than anything else, and they could not be transported into the city at all!
The person guarding the city is Gao Chun, as well as Guo Can and Yang Lin who came to assist!
Needless to say, Gao Chun, who opened it once and almost finished playing with everyone, but this time, even if she said nothing, she wouldn't let a female fly in. Guo and Yang were ordered to do things, and they didn't dare to do something that was so stupid. They were also waiting for the next step, and they didn't want to make mistakes at this time.
Qingyuan City is like an iron barrel now. The merchants outside are doing such evil things as buying and reselling. How can they dare to speak out? Countless people are crowded outside the city, unable to advance or retreat, so they rush around in a hurry!
As the days dragged on, there were more and more porters outside the city. They brought things over, but no one dared to let them carry them back. How much would the loss of a porter team of hundreds of people cost! This does not include the loss of goods on the road! Sun, rain, frost and dew day and night, a little bit can cause the food to deteriorate, and if you transport it back, you will lose all your money!
Gao Chun was afraid that pirates were among them. After asking around, he found that most of the people from outside the city came here carrying food, and there was quite a lot of food. If a large number of people poured into the city, it might be able to alleviate the food shortage in the city!
He immediately reported the information to Duan Peng, and Duan Peng also thought that the superiors did not transport food to Qingyuan, but these businessmen came so quickly, and money still has appeal!
Duan Peng didn't open the door right away, because when he opened the door, the price of food entering the city still couldn't drop, and the people who suffered were still the people. If it were delayed for a few more days, when the situation really stabilized and there would be no more wars, then the food As soon as there is an influx, the price may come down.
