In the next few days, Liu Pei was busy counting his accounts. He wanted to take advantage of the low price of autumn harvest grain to start stockpiling grain. This was not because Liu Pei wanted to hoard, because he had to deal with a major disaster next year. In Liu Pei's case

The computer records that a locust plague will occur in Jinan next year, and it will be a very large locust plague. This locust plague will affect half of Shandong Province. Therefore, Liu Pei must have enough food reserves in hand to deal with it. At the same time, he is prepared to take this opportunity to annex

fields and gather the refugees.

Next year is the year when Liu Pei is ready to give it a try. After several years of dormancy, Liu Pei now has a deep foundation. The most important thing is that by the middle of next year, Liu Pei will have nine 40-ships

Warships with more than one gun and three armed merchant ships with 20 guns. There will also be ten Chinese-style seagoing ships.

Such a large fleet is already a medium force at sea. But in terms of combat effectiveness, this fleet is a behemoth! It can defeat more than five times the fleet face to face! So next year Liu Pei will officially

Enter the sea.

In the meantime, Liu Pei also took the time to go back to Modern Times to check his account. He confirmed that there was enough cash in his account because he was planning to transfer a large amount of industrial silver from Modern Times to the Ming Dynasty to be cast into silver ingots and used as silver coins. But in this case

, Liu Pei’s modern wallet is about to be empty.

Although he now has a lot of things stored in Mingxinzhai, antiques cannot be sold off quickly like other things. He always has to meet a suitable buyer before he can sell them. Therefore, although the value is high, it is difficult to realize it.

It's very difficult. As for Liu Pei's trading company, the cash in it cannot be used easily. If the cash withdrawal is too harsh, it will not be a good idea to bring down the company. So Liu Pei is thinking about how to open up another financial source in modern times.

.

Liu Pei was thinking about it and suddenly remembered something. The last time he was encircling and suppressing the first line of red, he had a trace of inspiration that he failed to grasp. But now he remembered it. Where is Changle, Shandong? The famous sapphire

Hometown! The sapphires produced there are heavy and of high quality. If transported to modern times, it would be a windfall. Moreover, the gemstones can be sold much faster than antique calligraphy and paintings.

Many years ago, in the Fangshan area of ​​Changle, an old man herding sheep picked up a sharp-edged, extremely hard, dark blue and bright stone in the ravine. He used it to rub a fire sickle to make fire and light cigarettes. They called it blue flint;

Children once picked up gems the size of eggs when they were swimming in the river in the summer. They threw the blue stones to the bottom of the water and then tried to touch them. In the end, they couldn't find them and gave up.

Once upon a time, foreign profiteers took advantage of people's ignorance to purchase high-quality sapphires in large quantities, and then shipped them abroad to stockpile them, hoping to make huge profits when international sapphire prices soared. According to reports

The most famous one is a Thai profiteer who stocked two warehouses with dozens of tons of sapphires packed in sacks. Later, the natural sapphires were mined and the market price soared, making this guy rich!

Thinking of this, Liu Pei remembered another thing from gems, that is jade. In the Ming Dynasty, jade was already very popular. But the price here at this time is incomparable with modern times! It can be bought for a few hundred taels of silver.

The jade he brought back would definitely be worth tens of millions in modern times! He had forgotten these great sources of wealth.

So Liu Pei immediately wrote a letter to Huashufeng, asking him to collect a large amount of jade on his behalf. To this end, Liu Pei even sent a small team to Myanmar with a batch of gold to buy jade. But when they came back, I was afraid that

It was more than a year later! At the same time, Liu Pei immediately sent a personal soldier to lead a team to Changle to collect sapphires.

The soldiers rushed to Changle happily after being briefed by Liu Pei. However, Xiang gave him a head-on blow! He rushed to Changle that day and announced in the village that one pound of miscellaneous grains would be exchanged for ten pounds of blue flint. He hoped that the villagers could

When I helped them collect it, it caused a sensation!

Everyone unanimously thought that they were liars! If they hadn't carried weapons with them and the villagers didn't want to cause trouble, they might have captured them and sent them to the official! So the soldiers only got ridicule and indifference. Now near Changle

Ordinary people have no idea what sapphire is. In their impression, it is just a beautiful stone, which can at most be used to make fire! How could any fool exchange food for such a useless blue stone?

This unexpected result left the soldiers at a loss! He wanted to rely on dozens of himself. If he went up the mountain to look for knowledge and stones, it would be an impossible task. But no matter how he persuaded the villagers, these stubborn and conservative

The villagers asked but ignored him. They even dragged the curious children home to keep them away from them. Maybe these people used this excuse to kidnap the children. In short, this small team was

The hostile villagers kept a tight watch on them, and no one wanted to get close to them.

The soldiers leading the team were almost in despair! Everyone knew that the soldiers around Liu Pei were not just soldiers, but reserve officers. Liu Pei often gave lessons to the new recruits, sorting out their thoughts and learning cultural knowledge.

Because these soldiers are the closest people to him in the Ming Dynasty!

And these personal soldiers also understand that since they were elected as personal soldiers, their fate has been tied to Liu Pei. If Liu Pei is defeated, they, as Liu Pei's personal soldiers, will be purged immediately! Can they not?

The nine implicated tribes are merciful. Therefore, their loyalty to Liu Pei is unparalleled.

Liu Pei is also happy to see this

When Liu Pei thinks that a certain soldier can become independent, he will send them out to control the grassroots troops. As long as the people who leave Liu Pei are at least in the position of a small banner. Liu Hui hopes to use the soldiers around him

Indirectly control the troops.

This is the first time that the soldier leading the team has been assigned to do a mission. If he fails, his evaluation in Liu Pei's heart will definitely be lowered. If he is lucky, he can only be a soldier for the rest of his life. If he is not lucky, he will go down below.

Take your time. Fortunately, those who can be Liu Pei's personal soldiers are not very stupid. So he began to think hard about what Liu Pei taught.

I still remember Liu Pei once said that most people are not blindly ignorant and conservative. Instead, they become conservative after being deceived too much. It’s not that they don’t want to change, but the result of every change is to make them

The situation becomes worse, so they become conservative. Only when they see the real benefits, they can burst out with great power!

The soldiers want to give benefits, but no one believes him! But how can we make them see the benefits? You can't dig rocks and get food by yourself, right?

Just when he was worried, he saw a child walking down the mountain carrying a bundle of firewood. This kind of scene is very common in mountainous areas. Children like this half-grown child do not have enough physical strength to do farm work.

But it is out of the scope of a child. So he has to do other chores. For example, hunting pig grass, collecting firewood and other tasks are usually done by the young men in the village.

The reason why this child was noticed by the soldiers was because of his extremely rotten clothes. In the countryside, it is not surprising to have patches on his clothes, but now the villager's clothes have no patches! But the patches on his clothes are only those on beggars.

Only Bai Nie's clothes can be compared! And the cleanliness of the clothes cannot be compared with other children of the same age. They are very dirty. It can be seen that the owner of the clothes wants to make it clean, but the effect is not very good.

Qing Bing squinted his eyes and watched the child walk towards the end of the village, where there was a straw house. The child walked to the side of the straw house, unloaded the firewood and put it in a small shed next to the house. Then the child walked out of the house.

Take out an earthen pot, light the earthen stove and start baking pancakes.

Judging from the way he took out the flour and put it back, you could tell that he was not living a good life. Moreover, the flour he took out was very dark in color. At first glance, it looked like semolina that had only been ground once, and there was still a lot of it.

bran, that’s why the color is so dark.

The soldier immediately understood what was going on. This child must be an orphan. There are many orphans like this in Chinese villages. Because the medical conditions among the people are very low, it is common for people to die from illness. Like this
Chapter completed!