"Jiangnan Road is the richest among the five roads in Ningguo, and it is also a road that Ji Tai has been cultivating for many years!"
In Peach Blossom Villa, Zhonglisu looked worried.
"Guangling Prefecture is under the jurisdiction of Jiangnan Province, but Guangling Prefecture is located at the northernmost edge of Jiangnan Province. Among the fifteen prefectures under the jurisdiction of Jiangnan Province, Guangling Prefecture is the most remote one."
"If you go to Shuzhou by land, you will pass through three states in Jiangnan Road!"
"How about waiting for the thaw next year and taking the waterway to Shuzhou?"
Li Chenan shook his head.
"Then we have to wait three or four months. I want to go to Shuzhou early and take Ruoshui to Yue in early summer next year."
Zhonglisu pondered for a moment, "There are more than 10,000 branches on the Jiangnan Dao platform. Since Ji Tai ascended the throne, he has been placed in the position of Jiangnan Dao platform!"
"In the past ten years or so, at least 60 to 70% of the cronies Yu Wanzhi has planted in the Jiangnan states are his!"
"Shang, the Shang family in Jiangnan now is not the Shang family at the time of Prime Minister Shang a hundred years ago."
"In addition... Jiangnan Road is rich, and there are more than 30,000 soldiers in each state!"
"Song Shiming, the commander-in-chief of the army in Jiangnan Province, was once a general of the eastern frontier army and a domestic slave of the second prince... Did you really kill the second prince at Shuangjiao Mountain?"
It's a mystery.
Li Chenan returned to Kyoto from Shuangjiao Mountain, but did not bring back the body of the second prince Ning Zhixing.
But the second prince did not return to Kyoto.
No one dared ask about it.
Because killing the prince is a matter of great disbelief in the world.
Li Chenan did bring back Ji Tai's eldest son Ji An, but he did not hand Ji An over to the Criminal Department for questioning. Instead, he placed Ji An in the Imperial City Department and was imprisoned in the cell of MI7.
At this moment, Zhonglisu asked about the second prince Ning Zhixing. Li Chenan pondered for a moment, raised his eyes, and whispered: "The battle for the throne is a big trouble after all. If there is one less person to fight for, it will always be less difficult for the eldest son of the emperor to return to the throne. Obstacle."
This is ambiguous.
He did not answer whether Ning Zhixing was dead or alive. Zhonglisu was a sensible person, so of course he could not ask further.
Li Chenan actually knows a lot about Jiangnan.
Because there was a lot of news coming back from the Jiangnan states in the Imperial City Department, and Wen Boyu had also been the housekeeper of the Shang family in Pingjiang City for three years.
The twenty years that Changsun Jinghong lay in the Imperial City Division were not in vain.
As the top priority of Ningguo's Five Ways, Ji Tai is deeply cultivating, and Changsun Jinghong is not idle either.
It's just that the emperor ignored state affairs, and the Imperial City Department caught many officials in the wrong, but could not report them to the emperor so that those officials could be punished as they should.
You can’t leave it to Ji Tai!
This resulted in Ji Tai's power growing wantonly throughout Jiangnan, and what the Imperial City Division did was just silently remembering.
As for the Jiangnan Shang family, Wen Boiyu had specially reminded Li Chenan, because the Shang family's rapid development in Jiangnan had a great relationship with Jiangnan Daotai Yu Wanzhi——
The Shang family and the Yu family are sons and daughters!
Wen Boyu also said that Shang's account books were very complicated, especially those involving water transportation.
In the entire water transport in the south of the Yangtze River, except for the Yuguangguang Canal, which was not controlled by the Shang family due to the water bandits in Shuangjiao Lake, all other water transport operations were owned by the Shang family.
And even though he, Wen Boyu, was the chief steward of the Shang family, he had no access to Caoyun's account books.
But he had access to the books of other businesses.
He saw some problems from the income and expenditure of those account books——
The silk and satin business run by the Shang family has been in recession in recent years due to the economic depression in Ningguo.
But the entire Shang family’s expenses are huge!
The meager profits earned from the silk and satin business alone would not be enough to support Shang's expenses.
It is obvious that the real money-making industry of the Shang family in recent years is not the silk and satin business, but the cannon boats in their hands!
Wen Jieyu believed that with the speed at which the Shang family was accumulating wealth, if water transport was a legitimate business, it would not be able to earn huge profits.
Because the national economic downturn will inevitably cause those big businessmen to shrink their business scale, the large number of commodities that need to be transported by water ships will naturally decrease, and the profits brought by water ships will naturally also decrease.
But instead of being affected, the Shang family has become the only one among the three major wealthy families in Jiangnan in recent years!
Wen Boyu suspected that half of Shang's ships were engaged in shady business——
For example, smuggling ordnance, or privately selling salt and grain from Jiangnan to other places, etc.
His reason was that Pingjiang City's Wangjiang Pier was responsible for safety, not the Pingjiang City police officers, but a group of martial arts masters!
The place was extremely well-defended, and the person stationed at Wangjiang Wharf was the eldest son of Shang Chunqiu, the head of the Shang family, and the next head of the Shang family, Shang Zhongxun!
In this regard, Li Chenan once again checked the files in the Imperial City Division's Heilou. There was no information about Wangjiang Pier, but there was one piece of news that made him pay attention -
From the Yangtze River, you can reach the sea.
Three days out to sea, there was an island named Dongli.
It is the territory of Ning State that hangs alone in the sea. There are families and cities on it, and it is the ancestral home of the Huai family!
Wyeth!
That is the Huai family of Duke Huai Guo!
During the Kyoto Incident, Duke Huai led his troops to surround Yunjibieye... It was said that Duke Huai's mansion, one of the five great Dukes, had fallen into despair ten years ago, and now it has faded out of everyone's sight.
But he brought so many soldiers!
So will there be more soldiers on Dongli Island?
Raising troops requires a lot of materials.
Their weapons, armor, food, etc... Could it be that they were transported via Shang's ships?
This matter is now being investigated secretly by the Imperial City Division's Military Intelligence Division 3.
"Since you dare to take advantage of Jiangnan, you must have a way to deal with it, so my uncle will not say more."
Zhong Lisu quickly exposed the matter of the second prince Ning Zhixing and stopped talking about the situation on Jiangnan Road. "Has it been confirmed now that the Sixth Princess recruited Huo Shufan from the Huo Mansion as her consort?"
Li Chenan nodded, "Generally speaking, there will be no changes, but after the prince's death, Huo Shufan's father, Huo Baiyang, the former close minister of the prince, is missing."
Zhong Lisu frowned slightly, "Huo Baiyang rarely returns to Guangling City. According to the news in Kyoto, no one seems to be able to decide whether this person is from Jitai or His Highness the Crown Prince..."
"What? Do you have some doubts about him?"
"Well, because the prince's death... was not suicide!"
Zhonglisu was shocked. Wasn't he committing suicide? That's homicide!
"Do you doubt Huo Baiyang?"
"This doesn't make sense!"
Zhonglisu said to himself: "Whether he is from His Royal Highness the Crown Prince or from Jitai, he has no reason to kill the Crown Prince!"
"This is also what my nephew is confused about... Ignore him, let's talk about it. The death of the prince will save a lot of trouble for the eldest son of the emperor to return to the court and ascend the throne!"
"This matter will stop here. Uncle, you just need to know."
"Well, by the way, do you know what happened to Shen Qianshan's family?"
"With the defeat of Jiangnan Qiuliang, the Shen family... has been in ruins!"
Li Chenan smiled slightly: "The Shen family is to blame. However, the Shen family still has children. These days are so busy that I forgot about Miss Shen Qiaodie."
"I remember that Shen Qianshan also had a son. I beat him up back then. His name was... Shen Jiye?"
