Chapter 1817 Rong Li's Postscript 5

Millet, sorghum, rice, and wheat are all grains.

Since the development of Qingyun Country, millet, sorghum, and rice are planted almost everywhere.

Millet is millet, yellow rice, and has average yield.

Millet is millet, and has low yield.

Only rice, that is, rice, has extremely high yield!

In the fifth year of Zhengqing, with the help of Liu Wei, the agricultural output of Qingyun Country has been significantly improved again. This improvement is mainly in the hybrid rice interaction.

Rice is originally a crop with extremely high yield. After the transformation of the formula gene, the harvest can actually increase by 30% to 50%. Therefore, in the past ten years, Qingyun Country has almost fallen into the point of being obsessed with rice planting.

Even the north, which is not suitable for rice reproduction, has fallen into a rice planting craze because of the birth of hybrid rice and the promotion of scientific farming. It is no exaggeration to say that the staple food of the people of Qingyun Country is basically rice.

Because rice occupies 90% of the fields, the planting of millet and sorghum is becoming increasingly scarce. Of course, this is not a problem. They are all food. There is no difference between eating rice and eating yellow rice and millet.

But now, Qingyun Kingdom is short of food.

When he could not seek food internally and had to look for it externally, Rong Jindong set his sights on the two affiliated small countries outside the western border of Qingyun.

Qingyun Kingdom is addicted to growing rice, but the surrounding small countries do not have new rice formulas, so they still grow the original millet, sorghum and rice, and the western land has not experienced drought.

At first, Rong Jindong wanted to use the name of the court to borrow grain from Ningguo and Pingguo in the west, but before the edict was issued, it was jointly opposed by the court and the outside world.

In this opposition, even the fifth prince Rong Fei was involved. In the court and the country, only the seventh prince Rong Su was neutral, but the seventh prince's neutrality was almost the same as opposition.

This situation surprised Rong Jindong, but the reasons given by the court officials were also reasonable.

Qingyun is a great country, but it cannot feed a few states, and even has to condescend to ask for food from vassal states. This has never happened before. If the court really asks for food from vassal states, can Qingyun maintain its great power style in the future? Is Qingyun going to become a laughing stock for vassal states?

The court officials will never allow such a thing to happen. Even Rong Fei, who has always been very supportive of Rong Jindong, refused to give in this time.

The opposition from the court and the public forced Rong Jindong to stop the idea of ​​borrowing food, because if he didn't stop, the censor would hang himself in his Shangqing Palace.

But the court officials also gave a corresponding solution. In addition to the West Sea, there are foreign merchants. Foreign merchants travel around the countries and have a lot of food. Millet, sorghum, and rice are highly praised by the Central Plains, so foreign merchants don't have much, but wheat, foreign merchants have a lot, and some small foreign countries specialize in growing wheat.

Wheat flour is also a food for the hungry. If we can buy wheat flour from foreign merchants, Dingzhou can also be saved.

But the foreign merchants knew that the court was short of food. After the Ministry of Revenue contacted them, they actually opened their mouths and offered a price ten times higher than the market price.

Knowing that it was a loss, saving the people was like putting out a fire, so we had to buy it.

At first, the court officials were not convinced and decided to teach the foreign merchants a lesson.

But they were not Qingyun people. Qingyun allowed foreign merchants to trade through customs on the basis of a win-win trade. If they rashly suppressed foreign merchants, it would only make Qingyun lose its credibility first and would also be criticized by vassal states.

The court officials who felt that "face was more important than heaven" had no choice but to persuade the emperor that it was okay. We are not without money. Several princes have sponsored and donated a large amount of silver money, so we can still afford it.

Rong Jindong came back from the court and locked himself in the Shangqing Palace for five hours. After coming out, he ordered the fifth prince Rong Fei to personally take charge of the purchase of grain.

The matter was originally settled, but at the same time, Rong Jindong ordered Jingzhao Yin to bring Zhong Ziyu, a serious criminal in the death row, to the forbidden palace.

Rong Jindong only asked Zhong Ziyu one question: "Do you know how to disguise yourself?"

After getting a positive answer, Rong Jindong did not rush to use Zhong Ziyu, but just arranged him first.

After all, Zhong Ziyu was a serious criminal, and Rong Jindong did not want to use a prisoner unless he was in a life-or-death situation.

The first signs of the severe drought in Dingzhou were last year. Around the Chinese New Year this year, the drought was already very serious. At the beginning of this year, the court allocated disaster relief funds to buy rice in Jiangnan. Around March, Jiangnan ran out of rice, and they bought grain from foreign merchants. Now, Dingzhou is full of starving people, and every household is dying every day.

The reason is that they initially thought that the drought in Dingzhou would be alleviated by April and May this year, but in fact, the drought continued this year and did not ease at all.

Dingzhou had no harvest for a year and still needed the court to continue to help.

At the same time, the foreign merchants who also discovered this situation suddenly proposed that the price of wheat should be increased five times again.

In fact, the wheat flour provided by the foreign merchants was not much. Perhaps they did search all the grains that could be bought in the surrounding areas, including Pingguo and Ningguo, but these could not solve the drought crisis in Dingzhou at all. Even if they spent five times the price, the grain they bought was only enough for the victims to eat one more coarse steamed bun the size of a baby's fist every day.

Now the only place with grain is the surrounding vassal states.

But the court officials objected too much. If they wanted to buy grain in the name of the court, the censor would hang himself again.

Unable to bear it any longer, Rong Jindong decided to kill first and report later. He did not intend to treat the purchase of grain as the court's business. He arranged his own people to contact the vassal states.

At the same time, he also used Zhong Ziyu, but because he did not trust him enough, he only let Zhong Ziyu help make human skin masks for his confidants.

But the vassal states are not stupid. Everyone knows that Qingyun is in great need of food. Foreign merchants are willing to buy food from vassal states at high prices and then resell it to Qingyun to make a profit. You look like people from our country, but you can tell you are spies from Qingyun by your accent and clothes. You come to me to buy food. Can I let you buy it cheaply?

So, the vassal states began to sell at a high price. Foreign merchants want ten taels of silver to buy one stone of grain from them. You Qingyun spies, sorry, you have to pay thirty taels of silver. Just buy it if you have money.

In fact, if you use the authority of the master country to force the vassal states to borrow grain, the cost price is only less than one tael per stone, but now it is thirty times more expensive.

Afterwards, Rong Jindong had no choice but to transfer Zhong Ziyu to Pingguo.

Zhong Ziyu is very competitive. With his superb disguise skills, eloquence and smooth dealings, he has now deceived the high officials of Pingguo and Ningguo Crown Prince. They are willing to supply them with food for a long time at the price of three taels per stone.

Compared with the past, this is much cheaper and is a normal price.

Now Zhong Ziyu has returned to Qingyun Kingdom with the envoys, but the drought in Kyoto has spread like wildfire, making the envoys of the vassal state suddenly realize that they have been deceived. Could it be that the big brother who came to them to buy grain is not a Qingyun grain merchant, not relying on natural disasters to make money by lending to disaster victims, but someone in the Qingyun court?

Now, Zhong Ziyu has been suspected by the envoys, so Rong Jindong decided to cut off the firewood from the bottom and set up a plan to consolidate the envoys' trust in Zhong Ziyu and complete the grain transaction as soon as possible, but this plan may be life-threatening, so Rong Jindong asked Rong Li for help. In fact, if Liu Wei was in Beijing, Rong Jindong would ask his master. The fifth uncle did not agree to buy grain from the vassal state, and the third uncle should be neutral like the seventh uncle, but the master is a man of temperament and will definitely understand his decision!

Unfortunately, the master was not in Beijing, Rong Jindong had no choice but to ask for help from Xiao Li who happened to return to Beijing.

Xiao Li was willing to help, which was actually within Rong Jindong's expectations, because Xiao Li's temperament and ideas were all inherited from his master. However, if the plan was to be implemented without any mistakes, Xiao Li proposed to meet Zhong Ziyu. However, if Zhong Ziyu was to leave the envoy's sight rashly at this time, it was very likely that the plan that had been carried out for two months would fail.

Rong Jindong was very embarrassed.

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