The next day, early morning.

Not long ago, the gate of Chang'an City was about to open, there were no people on the street outside the area where officials lived. Several figures finally slipped out from the side door of Wang Bi's house and left quickly.

In a house opposite the Wang Bi family, the people staring behind the courtyard wall immediately felt busy. A strong man ordered his subordinates to prepare to follow, and woke up a scholar in the room:

"Zhengzhuan Deng, should I take action? I saw that the guards around this man were not very good. If I was not in a hurry, I wouldn't have to come in person next time. I would just pick a few subordinates and I could do it silently, and I would like to be a thief in Baibo."

The speaker was naturally Dian Wei sent by Li Su, and the scholar was naturally the chief clerk Deng Zhi.

Deng Zhi quickly woke up and waved his hand: "No hurry, General Right said, just follow Yicheng and find out the other party's identity to facilitate the purpose of the visit. There is no need to alarm the person this time. Those people have been roughly drawn, right? It doesn't matter if they don't look like each other, as long as they can recognize them next time they see it.

The people sent by Cao Cao, fast horses and light cavalry, can go to Hongnong, Luoyang in three or five days, and to Chenliu and Puyang in ten days. If Cao Cao is really so concerned about the situation in Guanzhong, these people will come again in less than a month. We still have time to close the Internet.

This time, they cannot be allowed to die on the road. Otherwise, who will let those words that make Cao Cao suspect Wang Bi go back? If you want to arrest them, these people will have to be arrested when they see Wang Bi again next time.

In this way, even if Cao Cao suspected that Wang Bi was framed and counter-espionage, he actually saw the intermediary sent to contact Wang Bi and was killed, and he would not believe that Wang Bi had betrayed the messenger."

All this was not what Deng Zhi thought. He did not have this layout wisdom and had a global perspective, so he just recounted the implementation of Li Su's arrangements.

The reason why Li Su did not teach Deng Zhi's acting skills was that he could communicate with Wang Bi in rigid and easy-to-understand words was, on the one hand, and he had laid some groundwork before, and he did not reveal the tendency to punish Wang Bi, so Wang Bi was not able to deny it directly. On the other hand, he was sure that even though Xue Ti's retelling was suspected by Cao Cao, Cao Cao would not have the chance to verify it twice.

When Cao Cao wanted to prove it twice, he would just use Xue Ti's life to prove it.

In this matter, Cao Cao actually had loopholes left by not being cautious enough, or the conditions did not allow him to be more cautious. If Li Su wanted to send such a detailed work, he would definitely send someone who could not see the experience. Cao Cao just let him go underground because Wang Bi was detained by Li Jue. In this way, if Wang Bi had a strange intention, Li Su would not have to guess who his former master was.

If Cao Cao changed to someone of unknown origin, just looking for Wang Bi's former master would have delayed Li Su for several months of investigation. It can only be said that people in the late Han Dynasty were too casual in playing intelligence. Many of them were adapted to local conditions and timeliness, and took one step at a time. They were not carefully designed from the source.

When Dian Wei heard this, he just sneered disdainfully: "We are still betraying this Wang Bi? Besides, if Cao Cao suspected Wang Bi, we would actually promote Wang Bi, then wouldn't this guy who was traitors get stuck in the officialdom of Chang'an? I wouldn't he be so unwilling to deal with a traitor like this. I want me to say that this man is not a talent at all and is not worthy of trying to set up a situation like this."

Deng Zhi smiled slightly: "Did General Right say you want to win over? Catching contact persons without arresting Wang Bi does not mean letting Wang Bi go, nor does it mean that you cannot use other methods. At that time, you can use secret punishment or use other methods to pry out Cao Cao's plan.

If Cao Cao wanted to destroy our relationship with anyone, we would send the secret letter between Xue Ti and Cao Cao to each other, so that they could see that 'the previous conflict between the two sides was just a misunderstanding, and it was the result of Cao Cao's disagreement', and maybe it had a greater purpose."

Of course, Li Su didn't directly guess that Cao Cao wanted to destroy the relationship between Liu Bei's camp and Yuan Shao's camp, but he could at least analyze that Cao Cao and Liu Bei were too far apart and that both sides had no direct interests.

If Cao Cao wanted to make trouble for Liu Bei, it would only destroy Liu Bei's relationship with a third party, that is, strategies such as "driven the tiger and swallowing the wolf" and "two tigers compete for food".

Anyone who has played the Three Kingdoms game can think clearly about this - the glorious Three Kingdoms. If you secretly use spy tricks on a prince who is not connected, there are only a few options.

Of course, this third-party force has many specific subdivision options, and it may not be external princes, but also aristocratic families within Liu Bei. It is not impossible to even use Cao Cao's IQ to beat up rabbits and destroy the relationship between several families at the same time at the same time.

...

Deng Zhi quickly reported the result of his surveillance to Li Su.

It was already halfway through June. Li Su was discussing matters with Liu Ba, so he asked Liu Ba to sit for a while. He went to the study and listened to Deng Zhi's statement alone.

Li Su saw that the evidence and speculation were still very large, so he asked Deng Zhi to send someone to continue to follow. As for Wang Bi's mansion and the people he had contacted and dated, he had to keep an eye on the whole process.

I probably won’t be able to follow my eyes within two or three days, so I’ll listen to the report in five days.

Deng Zhi was about to leave, but Li Su called him: "No hurry, I was discussing with Zichu about calming the price of grain during the autumn harvest. It may also be related to the resistance of Wang Bi and those aristocratic families. Come and listen."

Deng Zhi respectfully agreed and followed Li Su back to the main hall to greet Liu Ba. As for those dark side work, of course, there is no need to mention it to a gentleman financial official like Liu Ba. Deng Zhi knew exactly what things needed to be kept secret.

Li Su's side needs people to deal with shameful and meticulous work, as well as people to deal with dignified work. People can have intersections, but things cannot.

Li Su waited for them to sit down and continued straight to the point: "We have also decided before that after mid-June, all drought-resistant construction will be stopped, resting the people's efforts, and only the locusts will be eliminated.

However, it is not enough to do these two points alone. We have to starve people to death this year. We have done everything we can to rely on trade to gain foreign aid.

Since recently, I have divided some of the shipping forces in the Hanzhong area and flowed down the Han River toward the borders of Shangyong and Yuan Shu and Liu Biao to mobilize Shu brocade, porcelain, tea, steel, well salt and other items.

Then, I designed a kind of "money quotation", which was covered with the seal of our Jingzhao Yin. There were some other anti-counterfeiting, and raised the grain prices in Chang'an, luring the assistants of businessmen from Jingbei to take advantage of the fall in the autumn harvest of Jingbei to buy a large amount of autumn grain, and sell it to Chang'an by land on Wuguan Road.

After arriving in Chang'an, we did not directly give enough money, but instead used this kind of banknote to provide Shujin porcelain tea, salt and iron in our warehouses on the border between Shangyong and Nanyang and Xiangyang, so that these Jingbei merchants could pick up the above-mentioned goods at the same price in Nanyang after returning home.

In this way, the official organization's transportation expenses and corruption can be made up for a large part of it with the spontaneous and efficient organization of private merchants.

For example, in previous years, the price of grain in Hanzhong was 300 coins per stone, but this year it has risen to 600 coins due to the Northern Expedition. After the autumn harvest, due to the severe shortage of grain in Guanzhong, I estimate that the price of grain in Hanzhong will also rise to at least 800 coins. According to the loss ratio of four times the grain transport on Baoxie Road, and the loss ratio of two and a half times the loss ratio of two and a half times the loss ratio of Chencang Road.

The grain price in Chang'an must rise to at least 3,000 coins per stone to attract private merchants to spontaneously transport grain from Chencangdao to Chang'an. However, if transported in this way, the grain in Hanzhong is not enough, so we might as well control the flow of Chencangdao and further increase the price, such as setting 4,000 coins per stone for a period of time, or even temporarily and in a short period of 5,000 coins.

First, attract the merchants in Yuan Shu and Liu Biao to pursue profits, sell the grain, exchange them for four or five thousand yuan of Shujin tea, porcelain, salt and iron, and deliver them on-site. As long as the credit is established and the other party is profitable, not only Yuan Shu will sell grain along Wuguan Road, but Yuan Shao's stored grain in Hanoi may also be sold through Hedong.

However, it would cost more money to trade with Yuan Shao, and it would not be placed in the first batch, because the Shujin salt and iron we had to deliver to Yuan Shao locally in Chang'an, and we could not let Yuan Shao's merchants pick up their own way when they returned. Therefore, trading with Yuan Shao would squeeze out the transportation capacity of our army to Guanzhong, and we would score a portion of the grain ships that traveled through the Chencang River to transport Shujin salt and iron. We would have to see rabbits and not show eagles, so that Yuan Shao's merchants would take the initiative to ask for this business, so that we could start."

In fact, Li Su's method was coordinated after thinking about it for many days. Even Liu Ba did not have such profound thoughts. When he first heard it, he was so surprised that he felt it was unimaginable and did not dare to evaluate it. Later, when he became familiar with it, he could only provide some suggestions for repair and repair, which roughly formed what he is now.

As for the source of this idea, how Li Su "treats history" was at least traced back to the Song Dynasty with developed commercial conditions. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the transportation of border military food was always a difficult problem, and even had to cause the military governors to separatist the vassal states and settle the farm on the border. The Song Dynasty relied on business thinking and market economy to solve it. Isn't it just to distribute the merchants' monopoly on salt and tea money to attract merchants to transport grain to the border military garrison?

Of course, Li Su must not learn from it directly, because the Song Dynasty did this with the credit guarantee of the central government, but Li Su did not. Now the warlords are making equal transactions with one hand and one hand. No one dares to give the other party credit, and no one is so handsome.

Therefore, based on the method of introductory banknotes, Li Su also learned from Fan Zhongyan's disaster resistance method of the Northern Song Dynasty. After the failure of the Qingli New Deal, Fan Zhongyan encountered a famine during the second year of Huangyou (1050) when he was demoted to Hangzhou. He used to increase the price of grain and lure merchants from surrounding prefectures to transport large quantities of grain to Hangzhou for profit. As a result, because the merchants' information was asymmetric and the timeliness was not strong, the grain was transported in large quantities, and after the food was transported in large quantities, there was enough that the situation of hoarding was no longer possible, so he had to lower the price and sell it again.

Therefore, considering the time difference, Li Suxian took the initiative to raise the grain prices in Chang'an and lure merchants, which was indeed a very exquisite trick. However, when traveling to the Yellow River and Hedong to transport grain, it had to be sent troops to protect it. The cost of transporting grain by car on the 600-mile mountain road of Wuguan Road is also very high, so the cost of merchants themselves is too high. Even if the follow-up is almost enough, it is impossible to think that the food is as high as in previous years.

After all, the objective situation is too big. Fan Zhongyan is the hometown of fish and rice. Sometimes, there is a small disaster next door. The big granary of "Su Lake is well-versed in the world", and the water network of the Grand Canal is convenient to transport across the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal.

Li Su is here with so many hard costs. He raised Chang'an with Hanoi and Nanyang and Xiangyang. At the beginning, it was priced at 5,000 yuan. As many people came, it would drop to 3,000 yuan at most, which was still ten times more expensive than the local harvest year of Chang'an.

Of course, Li Su must have a clear conscience, because in 194, no one has managed the three major disasters in history, and even caught up with the internal melee between Li Jue and Guo Si. The food in Chang'an City has increased to "50,000 yuan in white rice and stones, 30,000 yuan in wheat, and 20,000 yuan in beans and millet."

Three thousand coins are more than ten times more than fifty thousand coins.

Deng Zhi and Liu Ba listened to his general idea and were not intelligent enough, they could not put forward any more suggestions from the economic regulatory level.

Deng Zhi only raised his concerns about people's hearts based on his recent experience in presiding over public security and eliminating traitors: "Premier, the king must have persuaded us to stop drought resistance construction before, and a small group of people have already been hiding among the crowd and attacking you. This time your solution, although ultimately to save the people, will definitely raise the price of Chang'an grain to 5,000 yuan at the beginning, and there will be complaints.

I am afraid that the people who do not know the truth and do not see the long-term will not know the painstaking efforts of the prefect and will be motivated by the aristocratic families that have been instigated."

After all, the people do not know that "if Li Su's macro-control intervention would not have been available, they would have to endure the rice price of up to 50,000 yuan per stone by this winter." They only saw that Li Su had raised the rice price to several thousand yuan now.

Before Li Su used the administrative order, although the grain prices in Chang'an also rose, it only increased by more than 1,000 yuan to nearly 2,000 yuan. It was precisely because the increase was not fierce enough that it had not reached the level of "after luring Yuan Shu to calculate the transportation costs, he thought it would be cost-effective to sell grain on the Wuguan Road by land", so no other princes sold it wildly due to transportation losses.

Li Su heard this and hit Deng Zhi and said, "So I'm not asking you to do it faster - you can ignore anything else. Your line will be completely closed down the Internet when Cao Cao sent him to see Wang Bi's secret envoy next time, and he will be arrested and tortured.

I have two other lines here, and I am about to close the net. In short, when the method of money-induced quotations appears and causes the first wave of attacks on these people, I will catch them all in one go!”

Zhou Ying’s line has actually invited a lot of guests recently and has gained some insights, so Li Su dares to be so sure.

Not to mention, when he first asked Zhou Ying to implement this, there was quite a lot of resistance. After all, he was just a concubine. Even if there was a reason, Li Su's wife was unable to stay in Chengdu because of pregnancy, so Zhou Ying was allowed to entertain guests. There were still many wealthy families who were unwilling to let her wife come to the banquet, or sent a concubine to give gifts.

However, after all, Zhou Ying is Zhou Wei's daughter. Zhou Wei and Xu Jing are at least considered to be the hero who advised Dong Zhuo to abolish the Party and the corruption. They have friendship with Qingliu. Even Yuan Shao's prefect of Bohai and several other Guandong princes were all Zhou, and Xu agreed to let Dong Zhuo confer it. With this kind of affection, after Li Su secretly promoted Zhou Ying's life experience, those masters of the aristocratic families forced their wives to come and explore the way.

The first person to surrender was Yang Xiu. After all, Yang Xiu's mother, Yang Biao's wife, was Yuan Feng, Yuan Wei's sister, Yuan Shao, and Yuan Shu's aunt. Zhou Wei recommended Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu's official position, so Mrs. Yuan must certainly give face.

However, Yang Biao was in charge of the country for decades. When Zhou Liyan was alive, Yang Biao also called Zhou Liyan "Brother". Mrs. Yuan also had many relationships with Zhou Liyan's wife.

Now Zhou Ying is just Zhou Wei's daughter, and she is naturally of different generations from Yang Biao and Mrs. Yuan. There is no reason why the aunt visits her niece, so she is just the same generation when she asks Yang Xiu's wife to visit her.

Yang Xiu is only twenty years old now, and his wife is two years younger than him, almost the same as Zhou Ying.
Chapter completed!