It was a windy and rainy journey. In late February, Xu Yue's family finally crossed Bohai County and arrived at its easternmost port, Yijing, after taking the wrong route three times.
People here speak dialects very quickly, and sometimes even Xu Yue can't understand what the other person said.
Fortunately, the family has good learning ability and basic communication is no problem.
With the fake household registration book made by Xu Erniang, the family successfully passed several checkpoints one after another. When people asked what they were going to do, they always replied: We are going to a funeral.
Traveling thousands of miles to attend a funeral these days is a good deed worthy of praise, and the guards will basically not continue to question you.
Yijing is a prosperous seaside city. There is a port here, but there are very few ships docked there.
What you can see at a glance are not official ships, but private ships. Most of them are cargo ships used by powerful local families to transport goods.
The largest ship has a hull length of 60 steps (one step with two legs, one meter and three steps, about 78 meters), ten steps (13 meters) wide, with a total of three floors. There is a bright red flag on it with the word "Gongsun" written on it.
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Xu Yue remembered that during the Three Kingdoms period, the warships of the Kingdom of Wu were the largest, with thousands of small boats alone. The largest warship had five floors, was 120 steps long, had four doors, could carry horse-drawn carriages on board, and could carry more than 2,000 people.
This scale is comparable to the carrying capacity of modern small warships, which shows the wisdom of the ancients.
The group found an official inn in Yijing to stay, and then divided into three groups to take action.
Xu Da took Xu Erniang out to inquire about the big ship, while Wang stayed at the inn to tidy up. While looking at the Wang siblings, he and the merchants in the post house inquired about the situation at sea.
The two brothers, Xu Dalang and Xu Yue, followed Wang Dayou, leading the ox cart that was not yet warm, to the East Market to prepare for selling.
Yijing is close to the sea, so animal husbandry is a weak point. Cattle and horses are very popular in the market. Wang previously spent nearly 9,000 yuan to buy an oxcart. In the Yijing market, anyone offered a price starting at 10,000 yuan.
Especially the Xu family's big green ox, which is kept clean, looks strong and has a good appearance, stands out in front of all the crooked melons and cracked jujubes.
A butler from a wealthy family came to purchase and offered eight pieces of silk cloth in exchange for oxen and carts.
Silk is a fabric that is more dense and colorful than silk, and is better than silk. One piece of silk cloth costs about 1,500 yuan, and eight pieces of silk are equivalent to 12,000 yuan, so Xu Yue sold it.
Along the way, Xu Erniang fed the big green cattle some fodder, which was not worth much money. After all, sitting in the oxcart for so long was not worth mentioning, and she could still earn another three thousand yuan. It was not very worthwhile.
Wang Dayou's intestines turned pale. He only regretted that he had not followed the Wang family before, so he gritted his teeth and bought one.
It's a pity that money can't buy it. I knew it earlier, but now it's too late to say anything.
Holding eight pieces of fresh and warm silk cloth, Xu Yue finally understood why ancient merchants would take risks to do business in various places.
Because this is simply a huge profit!
However, the prerequisite for huge profits is to avoid layers of exploitation by the government, defeat robbers, and avoid unlucky events such as heavy rains and landslides before you can get the huge profits.
Speaking of which, no line of work is easy.
"Shall we go shopping again?" Xu Yue asked Wang Dayou for his opinion.
She didn't want to just go back. She finally came to Yijing, where merchants gathered, and she wanted to see more.
Wang Dayou knew that everyone in the Xu family was a little different, so he nodded and told her to wander around casually, and it would be fine for a whole day.
Xu Yue handed the silk cloth in her hand to her brother and walked along the busiest places, looking around and seeing many things that she had never seen in the interior before.
From this, we got a glimpse of the current business situation.
The more popular goods in the market are divided into two categories. One is the daily necessities of the general public, such as rice, flour, oil and grain, cloth, needlework, pigs, cattle and sheep, etc.
There are also high-end luxury items with extremely low cost performance, such as spices, fine porcelain, jewelry, jade, sugar, paper and other items that have high industrial demand.
Especially for sugar and paper, many people need them but few can afford them.
Because the price is high, those who come to purchase are basically local powerful families or wealthy households.
Real businessmen have always known that only making money from rich people is real money, and the small profits squeezed out by ordinary people are nothing compared to it.
Xu Yue secretly wrote down sugar, paper, porcelain, glass and other items in her mind, thinking that if she wanted to make a fortune in the future, she would start from these aspects first.
As long as she settles down and is given a private space, she will be able to make sugar, paper, and glazed porcelain at a lower cost and higher quality than what she currently has.
However, without any background, these things that would touch the interests of high-level officials can only be carried out secretly.
So, it’s time to push Dad to the next level!
Let alone the big one, it is better to be a small official first than to be a commoner.
Looking at the bustling streets in front of her, Xu Yue had already made up her mind to work hard to make money and buy an official position for her father.
After all, selling one's official position and selling one's title is also the main theme of this era!
Seeing that she was done shopping and nothing new appeared, Xu Yue was ready to go home.
But at this moment, there was a sudden commotion in the crowd.
Xu Dalang was afraid that Xu Yue would be squeezed by pedestrians, so he gave Wang Dayou the piece of cloth in his hand, and immediately put Xu Yue on his neck and stepped aside.
Sitting high up, Xu Yue could see at a glance the bullock carts entering the center of the commotion.
The bullock cart was different from the ordinary ones. There was a cage made of wood on top. In the cage, people in ragged clothes were sitting, including adults and children.
More than a dozen of them were crowded into a bullock cart. There was no room for them to sit on the cart, so they were tied and stood outside the cage. Their eyes were numb, as if they had succumbed to their fate.
This is a large slave trading convoy filled with slaves!
They collect these desperate refugees from all over the country at low prices, or even without spending a penny, and sell them into slavery, and then send them to the hands of powerful families across the country to make huge profits.
This is the first time Xu Yue has seen so many slaves since traveling through time, with dozens of oxcarts connected. In addition to the slaves on the carts, there are countless slaves following the convoy.
The dealer tied their hands with hemp rope and strung them into a long string, and posted guards to watch at all times. Those who were slow would be whipped by shaking their hands.
The brutal scene made pedestrians on both sides of the street frown.
Xu Yue heard the middle-aged man next to her say in a Yijing accent: "I don't know how many hands these slaves went through before they got into the hands of these traders."
"Did you see that those who can ride in cars will be sold to wealthy families as slaves, while those who can walk will be sent to the salt mines to work as hard labor digging salt."
"In this world, people live worse than animals..."
While listening to others muttering, Xu Yue suddenly saw a familiar face.
"Oh my God! Isn't that Wang Dayou's family's food?!" Wang Dayou took a step ahead of Xu Yue and exclaimed.
After all, he and Wang Dahai and his son escaped from the same village. They grew up together and were very familiar with each other. Naturally, their reaction was faster than that of Xu Yue.
