The officials of the Tea Horse Division returned to the official office one after another, and they were relieved.
Because the newly sent surveillance eunuch from the imperial court failed to request an interview with Liu Chengzu on the second day after his arrival, he settled for the next best thing and met with Wang Kun, who was in charge of the Juerwan Market.
After that, Eunuch Zhang transferred many tea bricks from Sichuan and also invested in the vigorous smuggling business.
The middle-ranking officials sent by the imperial court to monitor the Tea Horse Division have all joined in the smuggling. What else is there to fear from other officials? It’s time for everyone to order and drink tea.
Only Cheng Yun's father-in-law, Wang Kun, knew what happened.
Wang Kun was a lawyer by background and had never experienced the war between Liu Chengzong and the Ming Dynasty. Even during the entire rebellion, he relied on the protection of Mr. Liu and Chengyun to live comfortably in Yan'an Fucheng. The things he was most involved in were grain trade and paying tribute to the officials in the Fucheng.
Salary.
He doesn't like war, especially he still has a lot of awe for the Ming Dynasty. In his opinion, the best situation between the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion and the Ming Dynasty is not to go to war.
On this point, eunuch Zhang Yuanheng could reach a consensus with him.
As long as we have this consensus, the rest will be easy to discuss.
But what Zhang Yuanheng wanted was not to smuggle, but to fulfill his mission. The mission given to him by the imperial court was to monitor the Tea Horse Company, and the deeper purpose was to let the Xining Tea Horse Company deliver horses to Guyuan.
Because in the northwest of the Ming Dynasty, there was a shortage of war horses.
This sounds like a joke. Why is there a shortage of horses in the northwest?
Originally there was no shortage, but Liu Chengzong went there and it was missing.
Where Liu Chengzong walked, the horse gardens were cleared, and the horses continued to die in places he had not visited. In the past, they could get thousands of horses from Namafan every year, but now Namafan no longer accepts horses. Guyuan is in short supply of war horses.
If Zhang Yuanheng wants to perform well, he only has this one chance in his life and must seize it.
Anyway, the eunuch guarding Guyuan said that as long as there is no war, let him do whatever he wants... Isn't it easy to get a horse?
In the past, tea was exchanged for horses, but now tea cannot be exchanged for horses, but official tea can be exchanged for sheep by smuggling, and sheep can be used to buy horses among the people in the northwest. Isn't this also a way to solve the problem?
In fact, Wang Kun was quite disgusted with this method. He wanted Zhang Yuanheng to exchange tea bricks from him for mules and hand them over to the court. However, Zhang Yuanheng insisted on sheep and there was nothing he could do.
Because Zhang Yuanheng wanted to exchange sheep for horses from Hezhou and Taozhou in the southeast of Xining, that place was not within the control of the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion.
Wang Kun did not make any decision on his own, and only asked Zhang Yuanheng to make tea first, saying that he would send someone to Kangning Mansion to ask the generalissimo what he meant.
The people sent to inquire had just been on the road for a few days when a military man full of murderous intent came from the south. He looked very arrogant and did not show any good face to the supervisory eunuch: "The generalissimo wants to see you, so he will set off immediately." p>
There was no relief for a moment, and Zhang Yuanheng was filled with suffocation but did not dare to have an attack.
He had contact with soldiers from Xining Guard's Tuncheng Banner Army and Zhenhai Camp. Except for the different accents, the feeling given to him by these soldiers was almost the same as that of his elder brother who was a soldier in Beijing Camp.
During the few days when the Tea Horse Division had no officials, his daily meals were provided by the Tuncheng Banner Army. In five days, he had two fire meals, one of which was stuffed with donkey meat.
Zhang Yuanheng initially thought that this was because Liu Chengzu, the commander of the Xining Guard, was caring and knew that he was from Baoding. After asking, he found out that all the soldiers in the city were eating this. If it weren't for the fact that there were more sheep and fewer donkeys recently, they would eat it every ten days.
The menu has three meat dishes.
People say this is a famous delicacy in northern Shaanxi, and it is a donkey meat roasted in Henan. It is still 98 years away from becoming a century-old restaurant.
The soldiers in Xining City are well-equipped. Many of them wear military uniforms that are different from the Yuanyang War Jackets. The materials are solid and wear-resistant, and the workmanship is also very fine. Some soldiers have the murderous spirit of being stationed at the border fortress all year round, but they respect the eunuchs very much.
Some people thought he had no respect, but with the cunning and rustic manner of a farmer in the field, they whispered from a distance. When he came closer, the nonchalantness disappeared again when he answered.
But this is not the case for the soldiers who came from Kangning Mansion.
Under their armor, they wore khaki uniforms with very rough workmanship. They had the murderous aura of the frontier soldiers but not the respect they had for the eunuchs. They looked at him like they were staring at a piece of meat.
This was the first time he truly realized that although the Xining Guard could no longer be said to be the imperial court's border defense, it was far from being considered an enemy territory.
Being trapped by the guards of the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion to the west of Xining and embarking on the road to Kangning Mansion is the real enemy territory.
There are several huge military camps, a huge market, and the soldiers in bright armor at the entrance of the valley are fierce and commanding slaves captured in the war to carry stones and build small fortresses with wood and stone structures.
The fortress archery tower built against the mountain is heavily guarded, with long cannon tubes extending outward, aiming at the Fanzi Tatars who are driving livestock to the market for trade.
The veteran who took him to Haibei said that those were not slaves, but the nobles, chiefs, stewards and soldiers from the south who were unwilling to surrender. The generalissimo was in charge of this labor reform and let them know how hard it was for slaves.
Zhang Yuanheng doesn't care about nobles or slaves. He is just a mutilated eunuch who is neither male nor female. He has no interest in classes in the world. A slave may not be a human being, but he must not be a human being.
He was more concerned about the huge weapons bureau in the valley at the source of Huangshui River. He couldn't describe whether those long and thin tubes were big guns or small cannons. In short, the muskets protruding from the small fortresses all came from the huge weapons bureau in the river valley.
arms workshop.
People call the place west of Xining the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion. He wanted to know where the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion is.
To the west of Xiningwei, the closest place to Qinghai Marshal's Mansion is in Haibei. There is a large town there, about the size of a rural capital in the mainland, but the city wall has not yet been built. It is surrounded by pastureland in the distance and farmland nearby. The innermost town
The market town is protected by chest-high loess low walls and trenches.
The Qinghai Marshal's Mansion was not here either. He saw the tall wooden archway and huge warehouses stretching all the way to the seaside. When he got closer, he discovered that there were six big characters written on the archway - Qinghai Navy Yamen.
But when he looked at the sea, he could not see the scene of the navy's oars blocking the sky. Instead, there were many simple-structured oars and fishing boats, which were driven by military men and went boating on the sea quite freely.
In the deep water far away, there is a small sailboat anchored, looking extremely lonely.
The guard had never bothered to pay attention to Zhang Yuanheng, not to mention he was also afraid of these Ma Bian who stared at him and wanted to kill someone. However, at the Qinghai Navy Yamen, he met an official.
The nominal second person in the Qinghai Xuanwei Envoy Department, Tongzhi Zhou Qiang.
Sunday Qiang served as the magistrate of Ningzhou and was very happy with Zhang Yuanheng's arrival. He originally wanted to invite him to stay at the Navy Yamen for a few days, but he gave up after hearing that the general had summoned him.
After some inquiring, Zhang Yuanheng found out the confidential information of the naval yamen. The naval yamen under the command of Marshal Qinghai had 19 generals and officers, including Sunday Qiang, commanding a warship with 400 materials.
There are no sailors, and all the eighteen Arhats in the Navy are officers.
It is said that after the commander-in-chief launched the southern expedition, he forcibly summoned the entire remaining army on Sunday to search for people who could sail and steer and were proficient in water skills. They found a total of eighteen people and were immediately promoted to high-ranking officials. Now each of them has the title of instructor. p>
However, the Navy Yamen only has instructors and no soldiers, because recruiting soldiers is very difficult. Within the jurisdiction of the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion, recruiting sailors is much more difficult than recruiting coachmen.
The veterans of the border defense are willing to take a boat but not to sail a boat. They are willing to eat fish but not to fish. What’s more, the commander-in-chief has fought a devastating war in the south. They are all looking forward to the next war to start. They will also serve as sailors in Qinghai Lake and directly become
The Qinghai Overlord may never have a maritime overlord who can compete with them in this life, basically losing all chances of war.
But this is only a secondary reason.
The main reason is that Sunday Qiang's position in the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion is awkward. In name, he is under one person, but in fact he is slightly higher than his toes.
Therefore, Sunday Qiang is the person in the entire Qinghai Marshal's Mansion who most hopes Liu Chengzong will return to the court. Without Liu Shishi's chicken feather command arrow, he can't control anyone except the Eighteen Arhats, and he can't even think of doing anything.
Even if he wanted to come here after looking at the big dried trees in Xifanbu, Shanghai, no one would give him the chance.
Otherwise they should have two wheeled battleships by now.
The scientific name of the wheeled warship is the wheeled warship. It was originally a ship shape in the Tang Dynasty. Paddle wheels were placed on both sides of the ship, and the interior was connected by an axle. One axle and two wheels formed a cart. From the Tang Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, the number increased from two carts to thirty or forty years old.
There are cars and ships.
However, there were not many such ships in the Ming Dynasty. It was a kind of warship. It was expensive to carry more soldiers. The water area it was suitable for was relatively narrow. Because the hull was heavy and the draft was deep, it could not be used in shallow water. If the ship was tall and narrow, it would be difficult to use it.
It prohibits sea breeze, so it is usually used for Great Lakes and River Defense.
In the Unified Dynasty, the demand for internal large lake and river defense was low, so it was used more in the Song Dynasty.
During the Battle of Xiangyang, Zhang Gui and Zhang Shun built hundreds of chariots and boats at the mouth of the Danjiang River in the Han River. They gathered salt, cloth and supplies to rush into the besieged Xiangyang, which greatly encouraged the besieged Song army in the city.
I made some calculations on Sunday. For the Qinghai Navy, the ships do not carry cannons, but are only equipped with muskets. They focus on the speed of sailing from south to north. The demand for freight is not too great, and vehicles and ships are very suitable.
The wheeled warship parked at sea has a configuration of two sails and two vehicles. It carries seventy troops, and twenty boatmen and horsemen. It uses sails and the terrifying Ape erectus as power, and consumes twenty bowls of fried noodles per hundred kilometers. p>
When Zhang Yuanheng was forced to introduce the warship on Sunday, Zhang Yuanheng looked very novel and felt very happy.
Until a shore gun placed on the pier was fired. It was a Buddha-Wolf machine that had been moved from the Xining Acropolis. It was an old thing from the Jiajing period. It had been exposed to the weather and was not well maintained, and the air leakage was very serious. But it was better than
The sound is loud.
Amidst the sound of cannons and horns, the fishing boats were returning one after another, and the Eighteen Arhats were summoned to Zhou Qiang's side. Everyone happily embraced Zhang Yuanheng and boarded the fishing boat, along with twenty Mongolians from surrounding market towns.
Riding Zhengfu, the mighty fishing boat fleet sailed towards the car and boat.
Zhang Yuanheng gradually realized that something was wrong: "No, Mr. Zhou, why are you taking a boat? Riding a horse is good."
Zhou Qiang was so excited. The escort not only came to pick up Zhang Yuanheng, but also asked Zhou Qiang to report the situation of the Navy Yamen to the south. For him, what situation is more convincing than asking the escort to sail from Qinghai Lake?
"There's nothing better than riding a horse. Let me tell you, this boat is very fast."
Involuntarily, the fishing boat was rowed next to the vehicle and boat. Everyone climbed up the rope one by one. Those in front climbed up and those behind pushed. Zhang Yuanheng couldn't help but hesitate, and people were already standing on the vehicle and boat.
This ship has two levels of cabins. The bottom cabin can hold some cargo. The upper cabin is in the middle of the hull, half under the deck and half on the deck. Two axles run through the middle. The sides of the hull protrude one foot, and the wheels are put on it.
Protect half of it.
After a while, the sails were raised, and twenty sailors boarded two vehicles on the deck, ten in a row, facing the stern of the ship and standing in front of the axle with pedals, holding the guardrail in front of them and shouting slogans.
Get on the pedal and sail slowly along with the car and the boat. The four round wheels on the side of the boat slowly rotate, and the resistance becomes smaller and smaller.
These pedal soldiers are all carefully selected fat men. As human power, the pedals cannot be stepped on with strength alone. They follow the drums on the forecastle like climbing stairs, using their weight and strength to accelerate the ship.<
/p>
Zhang Yuanheng didn't have time to appreciate this crystallization of human wisdom, he was panicking.
The inability of a person's feet to stand on the earth always makes people uneasy, especially when he regards the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion as a hostile force, which intensifies his panic.
This made Zhang Yuanheng restless and asked in a low voice to the energetic Sunday: "Mr. Zhou, you asked me to get on the boat, didn't you want to harm me?"
"Oh?"
On Sunday, he forcibly pulled on the sleeves of his official robe. In Qinghai, he was probably the only one still wearing the official uniform of the Ming Dynasty. He smiled and asked Zhang Yuanheng: "How did Zhou harm you?"
Zhang Yuanheng stood on the upper deck and took a step back. He stretched out his palm and slashed at the wave that was separated by the bow of the ship. His eyes widened with fear and anxiety: "Drown me."
"Hahaha!"
Sunday Qiang was so amused that he burst out laughing: "What nonsense did Mr. Zhang say? You and I are officials in the same dynasty, so why did Zhou want to drown you?"
Officials in the same dynasty?
Zhang Yuanheng's pupils shrank suddenly, "Which fucking dynasty are you talking about?"
But he didn't dare ask.
Zhou Qiang wanted to laugh when he saw his nervous look. He was like this when he was first sent to Liu Chengzong by Yang He. He was no better than Zhang Yuanheng.
Don’t you feel normal now? Why don’t you work with a salary?
Apart from being a little homesick, there is nothing different. It’s just that I am a little more worried about something big happening, but this kind of worry has always existed even in Ningzhou.
In Ningzhou, you are not worried about the peasant army falling into the city and killing you, nor are you worried about Hou Jin entering the customs and harming your family?
All the same.
It's just that now he is more worried that Liu Chengzong will enter the customs and let the court harm his family in Baoding.
Thinking of this, Zhou Zhouqiang turned to look at Zhang Yuanheng: "Don't worry, since the commander wants to see you, he won't harm you. Think about it carefully. If he really wants to harm you, does he still need Zhou to invite you to the boat and push you into the sea?
Where can Xining not bury a dozen of you?"
When Zhang Yuanheng thought about it, it seemed like this was the case.
"Well, if you are worried, the Navy Yamen has nothing else to do. I will send you to Kangning to see the commander, but when you come back, you have to do me a favor."
Zhang Yuanheng's strong sense of Sunday was pretty good, at least much better than those cold-faced guards. He asked: "Master Zhou, please tell me."
"I'm sending a few people to Baoding and they'll be back after the Chinese New Year." Zhou Qiang said, looking at Zhang Yuanheng and saying: "In the name of your tea horse, I will say that I am your entourage and will go back to my hometown to do something." p>