choke element

"Goed directly to Haizhou?"

"Yes, Yin Chang left Kaifeng in July and arrived in Jiaxiang. Many of his old subordinates when he was the military governor of Xingde Army heard that he had been dismissed from their posts and came to greet him one after another. But he did not respond, even Even my family members who were resettled in Jinan were missing, so I rushed to Haizhou along the waterway, passing through Xuzhou and Pizhou, one day in advance."

"Hmm..." Guo Ning flipped through the file and asked again: "The ones staying in Haizhou seem to be a group of people recruited from the Song Dynasty who arrived later. I remember that there are no heroes from the Southern Dynasties among them. Scholars, are they mostly poor scholars, small traders and the like?"

Xu Wei bowed slightly: "This group totals 346 people. Most of them come from Bashu, Jinghu and other places in the Song Dynasty. They gathered at various ports along the way. They arrived late. As His Majesty said, most of them are He is weak and incapable of wielding a sword or a stick."

"Old Yin is a shrewd man. He specially selected this group of people and must have an idea of ​​what to do... But the whole thing cannot be left to him. Let Zhao Bin keep an eye on it..."

"Yes."

"However, although Lao Yin is disgraced, his spirit has not been lost."

It is a serious crime for a soldier to make his own opinions without permission. Previously, Guo Ning asked Li Yun to bring several ferocious forest captives to see Yin Chang, which actually contained some murderous intent.

Before Li Yun arrived in Kaifeng, many of Yin Chang's cronies, old subordinates, and other military officials involved were already dead. Guo Ning is not a good old man, but a strong lord who appears generous on the outside but is ruthless on the inside. Then dealing with a deputy left behind will not bring any psychological pressure to him.

It's just that as the commander-in-chief of hundreds of thousands of warriors, Guo Ning doesn't want to cause chaos in his family's base. In addition, Yin Chang suddenly rose to a high position that year because Guo Ning used Yin Chang as a golden horse bone to recruit the remaining members of the Red Coat Army. Guo Ning did not want the whole incident to become too violent and attract generals with Red Coat Army background. They have doubts.

Only then did Guo Ning give Yin Chang a chance to die in an accident. But Yin Chang, with luck and vigilance, actually seized this opportunity and saved his life.

Fortunately, Yin Chang was only confused for a time, and now he understood, he behaved appropriately along the way, and stopped trying to manage his network of contacts. In this case, Guo Ning is not concerned about himself.

Over the years, he has come to understand more and more that most groups are essentially grassroots groups brought together by different people driven by fate and with the same interests.

The same is true for the martial arts group formed by Guo Ning. After all, the military aristocracy of the old era and the military regime derived from it are not the red army of the new era, and they cannot ask for too much.

As the leader of this group, Guo Ning often raises scholars like an eagle. When you are hungry, you are used, when you are full, you are relieved. The balance between this is very interesting.

The reason why military aristocrats are military aristocrats is because their interests come from expansion. They hope to continue fighting to ensure the status of the army, and hope to satisfy their interest demands from expansion and conquest.

This is by no means a bad thing. If the military aristocracy loses its desire for expansion, it means that they are on the road to corruption. If they can only squeeze the people and drain the flesh and blood of the dynasty, what is the difference between them and the greedy bureaucrats of the Southern Song Dynasty?

Guo Ning is happy to see the enterprising spirit of the warriors, but the goals he plans for the warriors are not just the land and the people. The place where warriors can show their talents is not only in the domain.

Yin Chang's goal of making meritorious deeds was set a long time ago. But right now, the opportunity is right.

Guo Ning turned around and stared up at the huge map hanging on the wall.

This map is the result of Guo Ning's repeated verification of the contents of his dream memory with many contemporary maps. It is extremely perfect in terms of proportion, accuracy, mutual integration, closeness, height, obliqueness, straightness and other rules. accurate. The scope covered by the map includes the Great Zhou Dynasty, the Great Song Dynasty, the Xia Kingdom, Khwarezm captured by Mongolia, and even Dali in the south and Srivijaya in the South China Sea. If it spreads to the outside world, it will undoubtedly become a treasure pursued by interested people.

On the map, the ocher-red territory of the Great Zhou Dynasty occupies a huge area, which is similar to the previous time when the Great Jin Dynasty was at its peak. But those who are qualified to see this map will not think that the national power of Dazhou is similar to that of Dajin.

Although the founding of the People's Republic of China was only three years ago, the Great Zhou Dynasty took Han'er as the foundation, and its political power was more stable than that of the Jin Kingdom; the Great Zhou Dynasty relied on warriors as its backbone, and its military power was stronger than that of the Jin Kingdom; the scope of interests of the Great Zhou Dynasty was simply unlimited. It is simply beyond the imagination of previous generations.

The sources and routes of these interests are marked one by one with long blue lines on the map. The lines drawn with small regular script pen represent annual income of around 10,000 yuan; the thicker lines with medium regular script pen represent annual income of around 100,000 yuan; there are also several lines drawn with large strokes, which represent more than one million yuan Horrible numbers.

If this number was known to the Shipping Department sent by the Southern Dynasty, I am afraid that a huge turmoil would immediately arise and a large number of loopholes in the trade would be rigorously investigated. Long and short lines intersect with each other, like a big net. The area covered by this net is much larger than the territory of the Great Zhou Dynasty. Most of the areas with dense lines are outside the territory of the Great Zhou Dynasty.

When Guo Ning was appointed as the Dinghaijun Jiedushi, he rose to prominence with huge trade profits. When the Great Zhou Dynasty was established, the entire country still attached great importance to industry and commerce. It can be said that the operating rules of the Great Zhou Dynasty are different from those of countries that have been based on farming since ancient times.

In other countries, the larger the land and the more people, the more benefits they can accumulate, and then use the benefits to support the ruling institutions and violent organizations, and use this to acquire more land and people.

If the monarch is wise and the ministers are capable, this expansion will snowball faster and faster, gaining momentum. Until a certain point, the benefits obtained from the land are equal to the cost of maintaining the land, the snowball can no longer continue rolling, and the country's expansion reaches its limit.

But Dazhou is different. Guo Ning is not in a hurry to snowball, nor is he in a hurry to get the country to this limit.

The source of Dazhou's interests is not only the land itself; the sources of Dazhou's interests and the territories it controls do not completely overlap. In addition to snowballing, Guo Ning has other options.

In addition to land and farming, Dazhou regarded industry and commerce as the pillar of its interests. The interests of industry and commerce are not affected by national borders at all. For example, Qingyuan Mansion of the Southern Song Dynasty and Fuzhou, Quanzhou, Guangzhou and other places. On this map, there are extremely thick lines across the ocean, leading to the rule of the Great Zhou Dynasty. Tianjin Prefecture, Denglai Prefecture and other places.

In addition to the thick and heavy lines of the same specifications connected to the Southern Dynasty, there are two other ones. One leads to Korea and the other leads to Japan.

Goryeo was an important foreign trade partner of the Zhou Dynasty, or in other words, a partner who joined hands to gain benefits from the Song Dynasty in the Southern Dynasties. As a large country in the east of the sea, many of Goryeo's specialties were sold in the Zhou and Song Dynasties, and were also exported to the South China Sea through sea ships.

Among them, the one with huge output and particularly huge profits is the so-called Goryeo celadon, or Goryeo secret color porcelain. This is a fine product that has been obtained since the time of Emperor Zhenzong of the Song Dynasty in the Southern Dynasty. He set up envoys in Dengzhou and Mingzhou and specially organized a fleet to sail to the far north. For more than a hundred years, Song Dynasty and Goryeo maritime merchants traveled to and from each other. There were dozens of batches every year, transporting millions of Goryeo porcelain of inestimable value.

In the eyes of the Song Dynasty and Nanhai merchants, Goryeo celadon, together with Duan inkstone, Jiancha, Ding porcelain, and Zhejiang lacquer produced in the Song Dynasty, were the most famous products in the world. They believed that "although other places can do the same, they will never be as good as it." .

Dazhou strives to stabilize the production and sales of this item. Last year, the company spent huge sums of money to get a share of the pie and bought a celadon factory in Kangjin County, Jeolla Province. This one factory alone can bring in nearly 100,000 guan of profits every year, and there are ten factories of the same size in Jeolla Province!

It is a pity that the majority of the sales of many important goods in Goryeo, including celadon, ironware, paper, etc., have always been in the hands of a few wealthy merchants. Behind the wealthy merchants, who firmly controls everything, is Cui Zhongxian, an old friend of Dazhou Zuosi, a small shareholder of many trading houses in Dazhou, and the leader of the Goryeo warriors Cui Zhongxian, who was named Zhongshu Ling Jin Kanggong by the King of Goryeo.

Cui Zhongxian was in charge of the Goryeo court for twenty-five years. During this period, he turned his hands into clouds and rain, established four kings, deposed two lords, and overcame more than ten coups. He was regarded as a hero for a moment. The cooperation between Da Zhou's left and right officials and him cannot be said to be smooth, but it has never been able to deepen to a satisfactory level, and Da Zhou's merchants have never been able to gain dominance in many commodity trades.

Since last year, Cui Zhongxian has been seriously ill and has been unable to govern normally this year. It is said that he will not die soon. Therefore, the Goryeo royal family and Choi's political opponents, who had been suppressed by the Choi family for more than 20 years, were all ready to make moves. The money bag that the Choi family relied on was naturally the first to bear the brunt and suffered successive blows.

In recent months, the situation inside and outside Yeseong Port outside the King of Goryeo has been strange. Many fleets have been stranded on the sea. On land, cases of warehouses being burned, merchants being killed, and even officials being assassinated have been reported from time to time. .

The Cui family issued orders one after another through the Dufang and Jiaoding Dujian organizations in an attempt to stabilize the situation. However, many people who were originally close to the Cui family saw that Cui Zhongxian was running out of money, so they gathered their strength and pretended to be deaf to the government orders. Be dumb.

It was true that Dazhou was the suzerain of Goryeo, but Guo Ning was not Cui Zhongxian's biological father. Guo Ning didn't care at all what happened to the Cui family. But where the political situation of Goryeo will go is related to Dazhou's own interests, and Dazhou will inevitably intervene.

Different from the last time he intervened, Dazhou was stronger. Even if it is limited to various factors, Dazhou is not suitable for moving to Gange, and various forces suitable for investment are already being quickly dispatched.

If Cui Zhongxian is really going to die, and the people who succeed him lack enough wisdom, Dazhou will not mind using his power to pry open the layers of defense shell of the Korean people in one breath, and put more things in this country into the palm of his hand.

"Our situation in Goryeo was managed by Li Yun. I guess Lao Yin definitely doesn't want to lose to Li Yun, and will definitely rack his brains and exert all his strength to do things beautifully. But..."

Guo Ning casually patted another stack of files on the table. The entire stack of files is all about Japan, and is more than twice as thick as the one used to record the situation in Korea. This is not only because the domestic situation in Japan is more complicated, but also because Japan’s specialties have special significance and are extremely important to the Great Zhou Dynasty.

"Japan is more important than Goryeo. The situation in their country is gradually coming to a head... Tell Yin Chang that preparations can be slow, but once they are launched, they must act quickly. I hope that before winter begins, A complete and stable Goryeo. If we can control Goryeo, we can then influence the Japanese state."