Cao Wendao stroked his chin and thought, that monkey with a grimace is too ugly. Ordinary people don't want to take a second look at it. They probably ignore that its body proportions are not very coordinated. Its hind limbs are a little longer than similar ones, but the toes on both feet are not very coordinated.
One less than normal apes.
These are extremely subtle features that only a demon puppet master like Cao Wendao can see at a glance. Ordinary people may not be able to detect them even if they stare at the ghost ape for a quarter of an hour.
Is this a natural disability or an acquired modification?
Because he only had a quick glance from the beetle, it was difficult for Cao Wendao to judge for a while.
Well, it needs further observation, preferably to irritate it.
As for the pointed-mouthed bat, it doesn't look like an ordinary monster. The beetles are very reluctant to get close to it. This is a natural conflict.
He murmured: "Seventy percent."
The disciples didn't hear clearly: "What did you say?"
Cao Wendao said nothing. He was 70% sure that the ape and the bat were demon puppets, and Wei Yishan was the demon puppet master.
"On the other hand, if Wei Yishan is really a demon puppet master -" his eyes flashed, "- besides us, how many demon puppet masters are there on this golden plain?"
The disciples said: "I have never heard of it."
They followed their master to the Shining Gold Plains and had never seen any other demon puppet masters. There should not be any in this land.
However, as the owner of the red cottage, Cao Wendao had always suspected that there was a demon puppet master among Emperor Jiuyou's black armored army. Otherwise, how could he have taken away his hinge-tailed tiger and rat-wife porcupine and kept it secret?
Shipped to the territory of Yao Kingdom!
Demon puppet masters are such a rare profession. They have not been seen in the past ten years. Two of them suddenly appeared in this year, and they are both in the middle of the Golden Gold Plains. Is it possible?
Could it be said?
Cao Wendao couldn't help but stand up and pace back and forth.
If we look at the facts and make sense, there is absolutely no evidence to support this idea.
However, if Wei Yishan is really the demon puppet master in the Black Armor Army, he will be the last person to see Xiao An!
The body of the demon puppet is unstable and its life span is short. In terms of time, even if Xiao An is not dead now, she has entered a state of near death. One of the most important tasks at Cao Wendao's hand is to record her entire process from birth to death.
Can he obtain this precious information from Wei Yishan?
Thinking of this, he felt restless.
￥￥￥￥￥
The undercurrent among the people finally spread to the upper echelons of Yao Kingdom.
After the price of grain rose, officials reported it to the higher authorities, but King Yao was busy with the new expansion of the Tianshui capital and did not take it seriously. He only issued an opinion like "Associate Manager of Officials at All Levels of the Ministry of Household Affairs" and distributed it.
Which year does the price of grain not have several ups and downs? Besides, the large-scale exchange of grain in public warehouses will naturally lead to some fluctuations in grain prices, which was also the case in previous years.
Other countries in the Shining Gold Plains collect grain directly when collecting land taxes. However, the transportation and storage of grain are inconvenient, and some farmers still live in the outer suburbs, so collecting it is particularly troublesome.
The economy of Yao State is developed and it owns several large silver mines, so it has long been implemented to convert land tax into silver, that is, people can convert their land tax into cash and hand it over. When the officials receive the money, they can buy whatever they need.
What, silk, food, weapons...
Although this approach greatly simplifies the intermediate links and brings convenience to both the government and private households, it also raises a problem: what the government directly collects is not grain.
If you want grain, you have to spend money to buy it from specialized grain merchants and landowners. In previous years, this chain was very smooth.
Of course, there are public fields in Yao State, but the quantity is limited, and the food grown will not circulate in the market and will not be served on ordinary people's tables.
The problem caused by this is that there is not enough food in the public warehouse now!
Don't forget, autumn is the time when public warehouses exchange grain. According to regulations, they have to sell old grain and buy new grain at the same time.
But since we talk about "according to the regulations," the result is probably not following the regulations.
Most of the grain in the public warehouse is sold early to avoid being priced down when new grain comes on the market. Of course He Lingchuan knows exactly where the profits go -
He is one of the participants.
But this will not be reflected in the report. According to the report in the hands of King Yao, there is almost no change in the amount of grain in the public warehouse, so King Yao is not panicked.
It wasn't until people from all over the country came to report that the fields could not harvest grain that Wang Ting realized that something was wrong. It was obviously the harvest season, why couldn't the warehouses receive grain?
check!
After checking, hey, some forces buy grain in large quantities, buying so much and fiercely, it's like a bottomless pit. Grain dealers and landowners just collect grain from farmers, then turn around and sell it to these forces at a higher price.
Officials are more than one step behind.
Waiting for official bids from various places, I'm sorry, the landlords don't have any surplus grain, so they won't be able to collect much.
In fact, King Yao himself has to blame for this matter. In the past, when the Yao Kingdom harvested grain, they would negotiate with the grain merchants and grain dealers for a base amount half a year in advance. The price and quantity were fixed, which was called "base grain." When the harvest season arrived, the grain merchants would
The industry must first pay enough grain to the government according to the agreement, and then the excess grain can be sold on the market.
This is to give priority to ensuring that the public warehouse has sufficient food, but it also brings about a problem:
If you order grain half a year in advance, the price will be too far away from the market.
The official purchase volume is large, and once the price is set high, the state treasury will suffer a huge loss.
Yao Kingdom has had a bumper harvest for many years in a row. When the harvest season comes, the price of grain becomes cheaper day by day. However, the public warehouse has to purchase according to the pricing six months ago, which is much higher than the market price. Until He Lingchuan gave advice to King Yao, the treasury was
In a state of loss and having to buy high-priced grain every year, King Yao was not happy.
And if the grain purchase plan is advanced, there will be a lot of room for maneuver, and there will be many people making profits from it.
Once the price was set low, the grain merchants would not be happy if they suffered a loss. Obviously they could make more money by selling so much grain on the market, so naturally some people went to lobby Yao Wang.
Therefore, King Yao personally changed the grain collection system and only set a minimum price. In a good year, if the market price of grain is lower than the floor price, the grain collection will be collected at the market price; if the market grain price is higher than the floor price, the grain collection will be collected at the floor price.
The quantity of grain collected depends on the demand of the public warehouse.
In years of famine, grain was harvested at rationed prices according to the old system.
This sounds unreasonable, but Yao Country has had bumper harvests year after year and has sufficient food. The amount of grain harvested by the public warehouse is almost fixed, and only the normal rotation of fresh and old grains is carried out. Even if the reserve price is a little lower than the market price, grain merchants still have excess grain.
Make a lot of money.
But this method works well because it is based on:
Abundance.
When there is a surplus of food, there is nothing wrong with doing this, and it can also save money for the national treasury.
But if the price of grain suddenly rises, and the price rises sharply, how can grain merchants be willing to sell grain to public warehouses at the lowest price?
This year is another good harvest year, but when the officials went to buy food, they found out that there was no food.
Where's the food?
It has been sold out long ago. Who told you not to order in advance?
But at this time, the entire Wang Ting and the entire Tianshui City were focused on the vigorous expansion of the capital, on the rising housing land in the new city, and on how to get a share of the pie. They missed the best opportunity.
intervention period.
When people reacted, they found that not only food, but also vinegar, wine and spices had increased in price!
Vinegar and wine are both made from grain. If the raw materials increase, can they not follow the increase?
As for the spice market, the supply has always been stable before, but this time, for some reason, the price of commonly used spices is also the same every day.
The country of Yao is a country rich in spices, but the common people do not have such things to eat, and their food is difficult to swallow, and their happiness plummets.
The prices of food and seasonings have increased, can labor prices not follow suit?
If labor costs have increased and ingredients have increased, can the prices of restaurants not also increase?
In just half a month, Tianshui City was in full swing.
Moreover, the price increase trend has also spread rapidly from Tianshui City to other areas of Yao Kingdom.
Yao Wangting made two responses:
First, investigate where the food went.
Secondly, activate the leveling warehouse among the public warehouses to release grain into the market.
The Pingzhun Granary is equivalent to the Changping Granary that He Lingchuan is familiar with. It harvests grain in good years to avoid low prices and hurts farmers, and releases grain in lean years to prevent expensive grains from hurting the people. Logically speaking, it has a regulating effect on market grain prices.
This is another "reasonable", because anyone who cares knows that there is probably no food in the current leveling warehouse!
Although He Lingchuan also contributed to this, in fact, the food purchased by the Yangshan Chamber of Commerce from the Yao Kingdom was limited after all, and was far less than the forces that secretly purchased supplies frantically.
But these forces alone are not enough to buy up all the food on the market. After all, Yao Country has had bumper harvests for several consecutive years.
Only when all the Yao people join the game will this turn into an unprecedentedly intense crisis!
When Fan Shuang arrived, dinner was being held at Yongquan Villa, and He Lingchuan immediately invited him to join him for dinner.
The rice, flour, and oil used in Yongquan Villa are all the best, and the fruits and vegetables are fresh. Fan Shuang took a handful of rice and said, "Oh, the good rice you eat is now fifty cents a pound outside!"
"Does the house have enough?" He Lingchuan was always generous to his friends, "I have plenty here. I'll bring you a hundred pounds back."
The Fan family has a small population, and one hundred kilograms is enough to feed them for a while.
"It's enough. My family just bought some more from the farm a few days ago." Fan Shuang was puzzled. "It's strange. This year's harvest is obviously good, but the price of food has risen from the beginning instead of falling. I don't know why."
"Someone is taking the lead in the hype." He Lingchuan forked a piece of braised mutton and cut it with a knife. "You heard a few days ago that food prices were going to rise, right?"
Such a dish uses eleven kinds of spices. It is tender, juicy and unforgettable, but it does not overwhelm the original flavor of the mutton. The use of spices in the Yao Kingdom is a system of its own, which cannot be eaten outside the Golden Plains.
"Ah, yes, it has been rumored for a while."
"If you say it will go up, it will go up. This trend has already started." He Lingchuan didn't even raise his head. "The most intuitive example is the expansion of Tianshui City. Where officials said it could go up, it really went up. This shows that people's mentality is rising.
"
The atmosphere was ruined by him. Everyone already knows that as long as things are planned properly, some things can rise to the sky.
Whose mind is not active?
"Now there are rumors that grain prices will increase. What do you think grain merchants and grain stores will do?"
"Be careful about selling food?"
"Whether it's true or not, just cover it up for now." He Lingchuan said with a smile, "Everyone is covering it up. What didn't rise before has now risen, and it will rise higher and higher!"