The Rich and the Idlers of the Red Chamber

Everyone is happy to see the little flirtations between Jia Chen and Princess Rongle come to fruition. No matter what, if there are no accidents between the husband and wife, they will live a lifetime in the future. It is better to be in love with each other than to be apart.

The marriage of a princess often has a political meaning, either because the courtier is very loyal, or because they are very capable!To put it bluntly, it was still a marriage between the royal family and courtiers.It's just that in most cases, the status of the courtiers is weak, and they need to rely on the royal family to a large extent.

Especially, since the Song Dynasty, although the status of the princess is still honorable, her political status is not much, the princess can't interfere in the court, and her life is completely related to her, her father, and her brother who became the emperor. Therefore, although it seems to be holding a noble position, in fact, it can play very little role for the husband's family.Therefore, the really outstanding people have no interest in marrying the princess.

When the status of the princess was relatively high, it was naturally during the Han and Tang Dynasties. At that time, the princess had a fief, a food town, and someone under her command. If they had a bit of weight with the emperor, they could recommend someone to be an official. With the right to speak, most of their son-in-laws are also high-ranking figures, or come from such families.

But now, princesses are subject to too many restrictions. It’s okay if she is favored, but if she is not favored, apart from the dowry prepared by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the annual salary reward, she may not be able to afford much financially.After all, there is a quota for salaries and rewards, and the dowry, unless it is the kind of pressed silver, or something that can be continuously produced, such as Huangzhuang shops, etc., most of the other things have built-in marks on them. Even if you want to make a move, it's not easy to make a move.

Because it is difficult for a princess to bring too much benefit to her husband's family, it is often nothing more than a symbolic meaning. Therefore, the life of a princess can be imagined. In a sense, they also lack confidence. For my wife, the life of those princesses and son-in-law can be said to be passable.

As for the marriage between Jia Chen and Princess Rong Le, in a sense, the old sage used his royal status to overwhelm others. With Jia Chen's background and such ability, why would a noble girl not be able to marry him?

In particular, Jia Chen has already shown his ability, so the royal family has no other reason to win over him. Jia Chen has no ambitions, so since he can't win over in other ways, let's move people with love!If Princess Rong Le can be in harmony with Jia Chen as husband and wife in the future, then it will be perfect for the royal family. Jia Chen has become half of his own family, so it is safe to use, and there is no need to worry about Jia Chen. Chen Zang took the initiative.

As for Jia She and his family, they have no requirements for the family background of their future daughter-in-law. As long as the young couple get along well in the future and the husband and wife love each other, that is better than anything else. Hope they are happy.Therefore, Jia Chen seems to be getting along well with Princess Rong Le now, and they come and go with each other. Although they can hardly see each other, they can pass some small things to each other, and they have some fun in love.If they can be in such a thing, they can increase their understanding of each other, deepen their relationship, and they can talk together after they get married in the future.

Therefore, the exchanges between Jia Chen and Princess Rongle became more frequent. They not only gave each other some small things, sometimes, even if it was a piece of letter paper with a few words written on it, the other party would feel sweet in their hearts when they saw it.

The two showed their love openly, and the errand runner Tu Mingyi almost lost his legs, but he also gained some benefits. The old sage praised him for his filial piety and rewarded him with many blessings. Little things, and his biological mother were rewarded.As for the sage, he originally took Tu Mingye as his benchmark for his younger brother, so he was also very generous to Tu Mingye, so Tu Mingye was happy with it.

What's more, under such circumstances, Tu Mingye has really cultivated some feelings with Jia Chen, his brother-in-law. Tu Mingye also knows that even if he becomes a prince in the future, don't expect to do anything in the court. Well, there are only so many officials in the court that are suitable for the emperor's family, and my elder brother has to use them to train his little nephews. No matter how good he is, it will not be his turn.

Tu Mingyan is a realistic person, he will be a prince in the future, he has no serious power, but if he wants to live a good life, he still needs to be rich.Lord Anle is a standard God of Wealth, and Jia Chen also has potential in this area. After he starts his own mansion, if he wants to buy more properties, he needs Jia Chen's help.Therefore, Tu Mingye didn't care the slightest bit about what his other brothers said sourly, that he was willing to be lowly, a prince, actually running errands for a princess and courtiers.He only thinks they are jealous, Princess Rong Le is fine, Lord Anle, even if you want to rush to help him, it depends on whether he is willing to use you or not!

What's more, on the one hand, Jia Chen is his brother-in-law, and he is not an outsider. On the other hand, Jia Chen can barely be regarded as their little gentleman. Respecting the teacher, others can only say that he respects the teacher and respects the truth. .

Jia Chen didn't bother to send letters to Princess Rongle, Yu Yan, or talk about love, and he didn't delay his business.Actually, Jia Chen didn't know that under Jia Amnesty's teaching, he was already far superior to ordinary people in terms of breadth of knowledge and profound insight.

After all, Jia Amnesty came from the era of the knowledge explosion. A middle school student, coming to this era, can be called a generation of masters by taking out the axioms and theorems he knows. This is the limitation of the era. .

Jia She has laid a good foundation for Jia Chen since he was a child. Jia Chen is not a fool himself, he is very interested in this aspect, and almost emptied out all the things Jia She still remembers in mathematics, physics and chemistry. Later, What Jia She can tell him is nothing more than some knowledge.

Compared with Jia Chen, these princes and clans in the palace school have zero foundation. Jia Chen came here before and asked Jia She for advice on what to do. Jia She didn't feel that these natural blood were flowing How many powerful and ambitious princes and clans will settle down to study, so it is enough to ask Jia Chen to take those interesting experiments and show them. If they want to know the truth, It is natural to ask, if it is just for fun, then there is nothing to say.Jia Chen is to be an enlightener of scientific thinking, not to really preach and teach, and teach these people to be scientists and scholars one by one.

Jia Chen ran into the palace school, and soon found that most people in the palace school valued the appearance on the outside and thought it was fun, but they didn't delve into it deeply. They were not very interested in the truths he said. After all, Jia Chen Chen is not old enough to convince people. What's more, people like the royal family really don't have much interest in learning. Those who can become emperor need to learn how to govern the country and employ people. Those who can't become emperor, as long as they don't want to rebel , in the future, they will have a lifetime of wealth and honor. They need those fresh things that can entertain themselves, but they are used to being laborers, but they will not be that laborers.

If you like poetry and songs, you don’t have to think about mediocrity and rhyme all day long. If you just say a word, a lot of unsatisfied literati will come to your door and compose poems for them. If you like opera, you don’t have to write any opera yourself. Benzi, I went to the stage to play a cameo, and it didn't cost me much money to support two theater troupes.If you like something new, there will naturally be people below rushing to honor it. As for which craftsman made it, most of them are not interested in it.

Therefore, to be honest, in the palace school, besides being able to fall in love with Princess Rongle with a disciple Mingyan, Jia Chen is mostly annoyed by the so-called students below. The people above playing tricks like breaking boulders on their chests, those below, even those gentlemen in the palace school, are all watching the fun, and no one even asks, what other uses does this thing have, other, then It was gone, which made Jia Chen feel like everyone was drunk while the only one was sober.

After returning home, Jia Chen complained to Jia She. He felt that he was a monkey, and he only felt that he was playing the piano to the cows, such as Tu Mingye, and he would care about the use of these things. Use it to make money, other people just think it's fun, just to see something new.

Jia Amnesty also laughed, but he still said very irresponsibly: "It's okay, you go on, at least, you still have a chance to meet your future little daughter-in-law in the palace, right?"

Seeing Jia Chen blushing, Jia She said with a smile: "You, tell the saint when you turn around, you are always busy teaching those people in the palace school, and your own affairs are delayed, so ask the saint for something. Find some craftsmen or something, and if you want to think about something in the future, just experiment directly in this place in the palace, and the saint will definitely agree!"

Jia Chen suddenly realized, and when he turned around, the sage allocated a side hall next to the palace school to Jia Chen, and prepared all the things Jia Chen asked for, except for going to class, as long as Jia Chen didn't leave the side hall If the side hall is overturned, then there is no problem.

Things on Jia Chen's side were barely on the right track, and Jia Amnesty was also living a leisurely life at home according to his own pace, while on the other side, Lin Ruhai finally escaped from the quagmire of Jiangnan's salt tax.

Lin Ruhai has aged ten years in recent years, and he is now in his [-]s, but he already has gray hair on his head, there is no way, the things in the south of the Yangtze River are too difficult to handle.

When the Zhen family was in charge of the salt administration, they withheld the salt tax on the one hand. The reason for it was that the family had left a lot of shortfalls when they took over several times.At that time when the old sage was in power, he also felt that he had treated the Zhen family badly. After all, every time he picked up the driver, the money he owed was not fake. After three or four times, there was a deficit of two or three million taels of silver.

The old saint didn't think too much about it at that time. After all, the Zhen family built a garden according to the scale of the palace to receive the saint. It would cost a lot of money here, and it would have to be maintained in the future. Therefore, the Zhen family withheld the salt tax and paid back the money. , the old sage also opened his eyes and closed his eyes to recognize it.

To be honest, the salt tax in Jiangnan is more than 100 million taels a year. This is the figure at the time of the founding of the country. In the future, the population will multiply, and there will only be more people who eat salt. But since the Zhen family controls the salt administration In the beginning, among the salt tax for a year, the salt tax paid was only about 20 taels. If this is the case, the Zhen family should pay off the shortfall in two or three years.

As a result, the Zhen family controlled the Yanzheng for six years, and they only paid back less than [-] yuan, and the surplus money went to nowhere.

The old sage is not a fool, but because of the face of Mrs. Fengsheng and Zhen Guifei, he directly transferred the Zhen family from the position of Yanzheng.

However, in the following time, Yanzheng, who had been scourgeed by the Zhen family, never got better again.The Zhen family has long reached a tacit understanding with those salt merchants, the price of official salt has been raised so high, they took the opportunity to sell private salt, even if the price of private salt is more expensive than the previous official salt, but people can't stop eating salt, come and go , there will naturally be a lot of profit here.

Before Lin Ruhai, the salt tax in the south of the Yangtze River had always been problematic. The few salt censors were either in the same boat as the Zhen family. They had never had a saint's nurse in their family, and there was no saint's favorite concubine.When the sage found out that there was a problem with the salt tax, he immediately dealt with the people, pulled out the radish and brought out the mud, and killed many officials related to it, and several big salt merchants were directly ransacked and executed.

There are also patrolling salt censors who know the attitude of the saint and want to investigate thoroughly, but they die very creatively one by one.For example, Lin Ruhai's inspector, the inspector of salt, originally came to trouble the Zhen family. After discovering the problem, he wanted to lift the cover as if he had found a treasure, but when he turned around, this guy died unexpectedly, and he died very badly. Decent, it's actually getting wind of it on the belly of my concubine.

There are also those who want to get along with each other, but it turns out that both sides are not happy. In the end, it is good to lose the official and resign. The unlucky ones are simply used as scapegoats, and no one speaks for them anyway.

Lin Ruhai was the longest patrolling censor after the Zhen family.After he arrived, he was in a state of desperation. In order to straighten out those bad debts, he almost turned his hair gray. In addition, there were open and dark arrows emerging one after another. Fortunately, those people still had some scruples about Lin Ruhai. Basically, he did well in those same years. Although Lin Ruhai's father passed away early, Lin Ruhai reconnected with the contacts left behind.

In addition, Lin Ruhai is the son-in-law of the Jia family, so the Rongfu is fine, and the Zhen family doesn't care about the Rongfu now, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to Shi's Yuanchun at the beginning, and in the end they didn't give it to the Rongfu. An explanation.However, what the Zhen family was worried about was Jia Jing and Jia She. They checked it out, but Lin Ruhai didn't have a good relationship with his serious uncle Jia Zheng, but he had a good relationship with Jia Jing and Jia She, and they often exchanged letters. It is said that the rituals of the year are never missed.

Therefore, for Lin Ruhai like this, they naturally couldn't deal with him in the same way they used to deal with those people in the past. At the beginning, the Zhen family still had some intentions to win over him. After all, the power behind Lin Ruhai is relatively strong. After getting Lin Ruhai, and then building relationships with other people, why not worry about the great cause?

The problem is, Lin Ruhai is not an idiot, the things that the Zhen family did, it is clear that the birthday star always eats arsenic, it is boring.

Back then, the few princes were still in charge of military power, and they could only end in dismay. Now, the Zhen family, apart from being rich and supporting many officials, what is there? The reason why people join forces with the Zhen family is nothing more than to gain profits. If they don't see it well, they will be the first to sell the Zhen family.

Lin Ruhai is really not optimistic about the Zhen family and Tu Minghao they support. The first thing is to deal with the Zhen family first. After all, with such a mother family, after Tu Minghao becomes emperor, will the imperial court be named Tu or Zhen?

This dynasty has always been strict with foreign relatives, if the Zhen family wants to use their power to overwhelm others, it is completely wrong.

Because of this, Lin Ruhai was nothing more than arguing with the Zhen family, and the Zhen family gradually lost their patience.Now that Zhen Yingjia has entered the cabinet, the Zhen family's momentum is booming. Zhen Yingjia needs to attract people's hearts in the court, and cheer for Tu Minghao.

The money earned by colluding with salt merchants and selling private salt is no longer enough for the Zhen family to spend.After all, in addition to Zhen Yingjia and Tu Minghao who need to spend money, there are hundreds of people in the Zhen family, including masters, big and small, servants who serve them, and managers of various industries. Which doesn't cost money.The slaves of the Zhen family are all outside, like rich men. Naturally, the money here is not earned by them themselves, it is nothing more than using various means to get money from the master.Everyone in the Zhen family is living a very extravagant life. The Zhen family has a concubine Zhen, and now they still want to train a few girls to be Tu Minghao's side concubines. In the future, they will succeed in their careers and become queens directly. !Such a girl, what kind of upbringing, what kind of bearing, to put it bluntly, are all made of gold and jade.

On the one hand, Lin Ruhai controlled the salt tax, and on the other hand, he kept a close eye on the matter of private salt. Several salt merchants involved in the private salt matter made Lin Ruhai seize the handle, and finally had to spend money to eliminate the disaster. , had to stand on Lin Ruhai's side and fight against the salt merchants on the Zhen's side.

This really affected the Zhen family's income too much, so the Zhen family felt that Lin Ruhai could not be allowed to continue like this.Therefore, Lin Ruhai has been in danger for the past one or two years.The Zhen family has always been unruly in doing things, and they will use any means, not to mention the secret deeds, Lin Ruhai was assassinated in the street, only twice.

Jia Min followed Lin Ruhai to take office in Yangzhou, and he was also affected. When Jia Min followed Lin Ruhai to Yangzhou, she was found pregnant on the way, and she gave birth to a daughter during the Flower Festival in February next year. Her baby name was Dai. Jade.

Jia Min has had no health problems these years, so after Lin Daiyu, Jia Min got pregnant again, but because of the Zhen family's intervention, some servants of the Lin family were bribed and coerced by the Zhen family, and poisoned the soup. The husband and wife had the detoxification pills given by Jia Amnesty by their side, and they took them in time, but it was fine. However, the child in Jia Min's stomach was not kept and shed directly. At that time, Jia Min was six months pregnant, and the shed The child can already vaguely see that it is a formed male fetus.

Jia Min's body was damaged because of this, and Lin Ruhai also hated him greatly. The Lin family has been passed down for several generations. Although they already have a son, Lin Jin, the Lin family does not think they have too many sons.

With the revenge of murdering his son, Lin Ruhai can be regarded as immortal with the Zhen family, but after all, Lin Ruhai is alone in Yangzhou, no stronger than the Zhen family, so Lin Ruhai just secretly collects the evidence of the Zhen family's crimes for the future.

Lin Ruhai had written to Jia Amnesty and Jia Jing for help before, and Jia Jing directly advised Lin Ruhai to send Jia Min and his mother and son to the capital first.

After the method of drying salt was delivered, Jia Amnesty also told the saint about some things about the salt administration.The reason why salt administration is difficult today is that there are only a few salt merchants who are eligible to participate in it. After they have a tacit understanding, they can naturally raise the price of salt, oppress the kitchen households, control production, and dominate the market.

Therefore, according to Jia Amnesty, there are many places where salt can be dried and the output has increased greatly, so the threshold should be lowered so that those small businessmen can also participate in the salt business. Moreover, they want to do this salt business When buying goods, merchants must sign a contract to ensure that the retail price will not exceed a certain limit. In the future, if salt that is sold at a high price is found on the market, it will be directly labeled as private salt, and it will be punished according to the theory of selling private salt. .

As for those stove households who have lost their livelihoods because of the method of drying salt, it is also very simple.The salt from the salt field is coarse salt, which contains many impurities. It tastes bad and is slightly toxic. These kitchen households can resume their old business and use distillation and filtration to purify the coarse salt. into refined salt.

Naturally, the price of these refined salts cannot be sold like coarse salt. Anyway, ordinary people can’t afford this stuff for the time being. Then, these refined salts can be directly handed over to the imperial merchants or simply sold by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Various tricks can also be played. When you come out, you can eat refined salt, green salt for brushing your teeth, and you can also specially prepare bath salt for bathing, and you can buy some bamboo salt, all of which are good deals for a long time.

Of course, in this way, the status of the Yanzheng Yamen will naturally be greatly reduced, but the risk is also very small. Jia She said that Fang Zi and his own suggestions are not serious anyway. Instead, it was used as a betrothal gift for his son to marry the princess, and he didn't expect any rewards. Naturally, this trouble was also stuffed with the saint, and the saint naturally responded quickly.

Why are there so many people around them at the Zhen family? Isn't it because they are rich? Why are they rich? Because they collaborate with salt merchants and sell private salt. However, if the price of salt is lowered to be cheaper than private salt in the future Woolen cloth?