Cutting over the end of the Ming Dynasty: a dog-leg knife at the beginning

Chapter 753: Disaster Relief from Second-hand Goods

"Hey, have you heard? That Champion Hou has another big incident!"

"Damn, do you think I'm deaf? Turning hail into rain and forcibly defying the sky, such a big thing has already spread throughout Daming, even the deaf should know about it!"

"You said that the evil is not evil. After so much trouble in Nanyang, this hellish hailstorm stopped abruptly!"

"Champion Marquis said that man will conquer nature! Maybe this thief is scared by his madness?"

"How on earth did he do it?"

"It is said that rockets were used to send some chemical substances into the clouds, which melted the hailstones and turned them into melted water. I don't know exactly how it was done. Probably only he knows."

"This is amazing, what's the difference between calling the wind and calling the rain?"

"If you are envious, you can send your child to Nanyang to go to school. The school there teaches chemistry as a course. If you learn chemistry well, your child will be able to call the wind and rain in the future."

"Don't tell me, I sent my child there a few days ago. It's good there, it's strictly controlled, and you can learn a lot, such as music, calligraphy, agriculture, gardening, martial arts, astronomy, geography... Even if you can’t read it, you can learn a lot of useful things.”

"I sent my child there a year ago. The kid was very naughty, but he stayed there for a year. Hey, he became very well-behaved!"

……

It has to be said that artificial rainfall is indeed a major event against the sky these years. It spread all over the country at once, and the whole country was shocked by it!The most miraculous thing is that the hail disaster swept across the whole of the north, and it was fierce and unstoppable, but it stopped abruptly when it reached Nanyang... Well, from Yang Menglong's point of view, it should be that this strong cold air is already at the end of its strength. The watershed had been exhausted before, but the common people didn't see it that way. In their view, it must be the thief who didn't let people live that God defeated the champion and dared not make trouble anymore.For a time, from the capital city to the backcountry, princes, officials, traffickers, and pawns were all vying to discuss this matter, and it became more and more mysterious. Later, it became Yang Menglong's incarnation of a god, who would rain hail disasters and harm the world. Beat them violently, forcing them to turn hail into rain for the benefit of the common people.There is no way, the common people are still quite superstitious these days, and all the things they cannot understand are attributed to the power of ghosts and gods, so it is too difficult for them to understand the principle of artificial rainfall.This cannot be achieved overnight, it will take several generations of hard work.Of course, whether superstitious or not, it does not prevent qualified people from making correct decisions:
Send your own children there and worship Yang Menglong as your teacher!

Who doesn't want to learn the skill of calling the rain?

The registration counters of several schools in Nanyang were overcrowded, and the staff patiently explained to everyone: Now that the enrollment has ended, if you want to register, you have to wait until the next semester... Before the words were finished, they were buried by bank notes.The common people are very impatient, let alone a semester, they don’t want to wait a day, they want it now!
However, although Yang Menglong is very capable, he can only barely keep the hailstorm south of the Yangtze River. As for Shandong, Henan, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi and other provinces, they are still dying from the hailstorm, and the crops in many state capitals have been wiped out. Empty, this season is considered to be fruitless.Yang Menglong wrote a memorial, which was rushed to the capital eight hundred miles away, and proposed his disaster relief strategy:

First, exempt all taxes for one year from hard-hit state capitals;
Second, allocate funds to help disaster-stricken people grow potatoes, sweet potatoes, soybeans and other crops with short growth cycles;

Third, encourage people to work in factories to subsidize their families;
Fourth, state capitals adapt measures to local conditions and launch some water conservancy projects, such as building a reservoir, repairing a few cement ditches, or digging dozens of wells for irrigation.

His memorial was as simple and straightforward as ever, without a word of nonsense.Therefore, Chongzhen didn't talk nonsense, and directly ordered: I completely agree!Please take care of Henan and Shandong. I will let Su Yihou cover Hebei, Shanxi, and Shaanxi. Don't let other people intervene. They will only mess things up!

There's nothing more to say, just roll up your sleeves and do it.Fortunately, after so many years of planting and promotion, potatoes, sweet potatoes and other crops have become more and more famous, and varieties with higher yields have been improved. High yields are already a well-known fact, and it is not troublesome to promote them.Although the taste of these things is so-so, and my stomach can’t bear to eat them for a long time, it’s still better than eating Guanyin soil, right?Therefore, before Yang Menglong could take action, a craze for planting potatoes and sweet potatoes had already started in the north.

Cheng Ji said with bright eyes: I seem to smell a business opportunity!This guy immediately took action, enclosing land everywhere, not just in a township or village, but in an entire prefecture and county: the family has no food left, so it’s very worrying, right?It doesn't matter, let's sign a contract. The potatoes and sweet potatoes you plant this season, keep some of them for yourself, and sell the rest to me, okay?Fair price guaranteed!Come, come, come, sign this contract, these hundreds of catties of flour are the deposit, after signing it, you will have noodles and pancakes, sign it now!
————He has a batch of potato noodles in his hand that has not yet found a buyer. Now it comes in handy. Take out these items that are about to expire and save a damn deposit.The vast majority of ordinary people are quite suspicious of the integrity of businessmen, but when they see these bags of flour, without saying a word, they immediately press their fingerprints and eat these hundreds of kilograms of flour into their mouths first. Food is their lifeblood these days. Ah, it’s been delivered to your home, how can you still let it run away!

Cheng Jun cursed secretly: Another step behind!But this does not prevent him from jumping out and lending money.Don't you have money to buy seeds and fertilizers?It's okay, come, come, let's sign a contract, don't go to the underground bank to borrow money, come to me for a loan, the interest is very low, you can just take something as collateral, if you still can't get it by then , we will take away the collateral at most, and we will definitely not force you to death like an underground bank!
Many businessmen attached to Yang Menglong sensed the huge opportunity hidden behind the crisis, and dispatched one after another, buying a large amount of land at a relatively low price to build factories, and then recruiting workers. In this kind of catastrophe, the cost of labor is too low. If you give any amount of money, there will be a lot of people rushing to do it.The business of the Cheng brothers is booming. There is an endless stream of ordinary people and even township chiefs and mayors looking for Cheng Ji to sign contracts to become his planters. There is a long queue at the service windows of Limin Bank branches 24 hours a day. All are loans.Of course, there are not a few people who have deposits. If there is no deposit, how can you get a loan? In order to get more funds, Limin Bank raised the deposit rate. The stock price of Limin Bank has been bullish all the way.

In fact, in the final analysis, these businessmen are still taking advantage of the fire, absorbing labor at ridiculously low prices, buying real estate, land and other real estate, what is this not taking advantage of the fire?But the people who were robbed were very grateful, because there was such a group of guys who took advantage of the fire to rob, at least they had hope of continuing to live.It's just that in the eyes of many people, these guys are not taking advantage of the fire to rob, they are clearly disrupting the situation!

It is not only the Cheng brothers who see business opportunities in the crisis, everyone can see them.In the year of the catastrophe, the price of food soared. If a stone of brown rice soaked with [-]% of sand was not sold for eight or nine taels of silver, you would be embarrassed to go out and say hello to others. In order to buy food to fill their stomachs, ordinary people with a little real estate can only choose Underground money houses borrow usury, and even sell children and daughters; if the disaster is more severe, and a large number of people starve to death, the fields of these poor ghosts will become landless, just give the yamen some money, and these things will be obtained ... What a huge profit!To put it bluntly, for some people, this tragic natural disaster is a feast. For hundreds of years, a huge chain of interests has already been formed.But now there are a lot of spoilers in this feast. They provide food for the common people at low prices, provide employment opportunities for the common people, provide low-interest (relatively speaking) loans for the common people, and kick their ducks away. up!Many grain merchants, underground money shop owners, human traffickers, and local gentry expressed that they were very angry, and the consequences were very serious!
Yang Menglong also said that he was very angry and the consequences were very serious.Several orders in a row, driving up prices to death!Death to usury!Human trafficking is dead!Take the opportunity to annex the land of death!Meow meow, I have worked so hard to help the disaster, you have tried every means to make trouble behind, it's against the sky, really think I'm a toothless tiger, can't bite people?
Yang Menglong shouted: "You bastards who are making money for the country, stop now!"

Grain merchants, human traffickers, underground banks, and local gentry: "If you don't stop, don't stop!"

"If you don't stop, I will ask Shang Fang's sword to kill someone!"

"You kill it, we have a lot of people, let's see how many you can kill!"

Then there is nothing to say, the killing spree took place, and the heads of those who made the country rich were killed one by one.Gentlemen don't care, there are so many of us, can you kill us?Besides, we have backers, dare to touch us?Be careful we let those scholars bite you to death!According to their optimistic judgment, Yang Menglong is just putting on a show at most, killing a few insignificant characters and then dying. As long as he wants to continue to mess around, he has to follow this set of rules that have been passed down for hundreds of years!

However, Yang Menglong didn't intend to follow the rules at all.With the help of Jin Yiwei, those who made money in the country were caught out one by one. First, their scandals were published in the newspapers to ruin their reputations, and then they were reported to the court, and then they were taken to the execution ground to be shot. People want bullet money at home.Guide Mansion, Zhangde Mansion, Kaifeng Mansion, Luoyang Mansion all the way to Shandong, they were all killed by him, no matter whether you are a wealthy businessman or a tycoon with many children in the court, in short, if you dare to make a fortune for the country, All to me to die!Those guys who made money in the country were stunned to find that this guy is purely a malevolent star, and his way of dealing with problems is to kill, kill, kill, and don't think about any consequences at all. It seems that he can do nothing but kill people !
Are you afraid of encountering such a lunatic?
Anyway, they were scared.

I'm afraid it's useless, Yang Menglong has already uttered harsh words, took mine and returned it to me, ate mine and vomited it out, if you don't come back, you will die!Just when the guys who made money from the country began to give in, he issued a new rule: the current catastrophe in Henan and Shandong, and the financial deficit, the gentry from all over the country must pay the taxes and traffic owed in previous years. People come to your house to collect...to collect heads!Now all those gentry and businessmen are blown up. Apart from ordinary people, who doesn't evade taxes these days?Not only is it not an honorable thing to pay taxes according to the law, but it will also make people laugh out loud!Anyway, even if they don't pay taxes, the imperial court can't do anything to them. If the imperial court wants to move them, there will be a large group of scholars who will speak for them, accusing the emperor of competing for profit with the people. "People" are limited to scholars like them, as well as wealthy gentry and wealthy businessmen. As for the hundreds of millions of poor people, ignore them.That being the case, why not tax evasion?It’s all right now, how much I owed before, and now I’m going to spit it all out. Although it shows that the tax of the court is actually very low, it’s quite scary to accrue it year after year. Let them take out this money, it’s not for them life!
Yang Menglong: Then do you want money or life?

All the gentry: ...Your Majesty, Grandpa Emperor!We called you grandpa, get this bastard away quickly, there is no way he can survive!

(End of this chapter)