Mu Yan was reading Huo Xi's letter, and the corners of his mouth curled up.
Jun Mingzhang wanted to fight with his Xi'er and squeeze her out, but in the end he didn't know who would fall first. He felt very happy.
Mu Sheng opened the curtain and came in. Seeing his cheerful smile, he was stunned.
In my memory, his son had never smiled so much. Mu Sheng was stunned and stopped in his tracks, causing Mu Ang, who had taken a step behind him, to bump into his back.
"Second brother, why did you stop?" He touched his nose. The armor on the second brother hit his nose so hard that it almost broke.
"It's because you don't look at the road." Mu Sheng calmed down and told him.
"Yes, it's my little brother who doesn't look at the road."
When Mu Yan saw them coming in, he quickly folded the letter in his hand and stuffed it into his arms.
"A letter from my niece-in-law?" Mu Ang asked while rubbing his nose.
Mu Yan hummed slightly, stood up and offered his seat to Mu Sheng. Mu Sheng sat over, glanced at him, and suddenly asked him, "What was written in the letter?"
Mu Sheng never asked him about these personal matters.
But thinking of his son's smile just now, he suddenly wanted to know what was written in the letter to make his son so happy. Mu Ang looked at this second brother strangely, and then looked at Mu Yan.
She thought Mu Yan wouldn't answer, but she didn't expect Mu Yan to say calmly: "She said she liked the garden you gave her very much. She changed its name to Deyuan, saying it was to commemorate the garden you gave it to her. She also wrote the words "Mr.
Someone carved it and hung it up."
Mu Yan had never had such a long conversation with Mu Sheng.
The two brothers looked at him blankly.
Mu Sheng smiled: "As long as she likes it. Deyuan? Well, that's a good name."
"It's not bad." Mu Ang also praised it. The vulgarity is the elegance.
The two brothers are both good at reading, and people outside call them Confucian generals. If the eldest brother had not died, they might have taken the civil service path.
"What's good?" Mu Zhan, Mu Jun, and Mu Xi successively opened the curtain and came in.
The small camp was a little crowded for a while.
Mu Ang sighed inwardly when he saw that Mu Yan had returned to his iceberg-like appearance. He explained with a smile: "It means that the battle yesterday was good. If we go deeper, we will be able to return home in a few days."
"real?"
Mu Xi was so happy that he gave Mu Zhan a slap: "This is great, we can go back to the house! I don't want to stay in this damn place anymore. When I get back to the house, I have to sleep with him comfortably for three days."
Three days and three nights. Damn it, if you stay here any longer, the mosquitoes will be so fat that they can no longer fly."
Mu Xi and Mu Zhan talked happily about what they wanted to do when they returned home. Mu Jun remained silent and looked at Mu Yan, his cousin whom he had not seen for many years, and smiled.
Huo Xi watched the servants planting the wheat in Deyuan.
Seeing the farm servants busy picking autumn tea, the girls found it interesting and all eager to get started, so they took the girls to the tea garden to help pick tea.
"Is there any tea at the prince's place?"
Xunwu, who came to report on various affairs, nodded and replied: "Yes, the prince's industry has always been engaged in tea business. In the early years, the share of commercial tea was smaller, and it was exclusively sold by the government. The imperial court also had a tea horse department here.
He specializes in exchanging tea for horses and strictly controls private tea. But..."
Xunwu glanced at Huo Xi.
"But it doesn't matter." Huo Xi said without stopping.
"Yes. Because of the exclusive business, the government bullied customers in some shops and took advantage of both sides. Not only did the prices for tea farmers be severely suppressed, but the trade of good horses was also severely suppressed. In the past, it would take 200 kilograms of good tea to exchange for one good horse.
, now one hundred and fifty kilograms, one hundred and twenty kilograms have to be exchanged for one horse. This has caused dissatisfaction among tea farmers and horse owners, and has even led to the rise of private tea among the people, and smuggling has been banned repeatedly. "
"Smuggling has been banned repeatedly?"
Huo Xi paused for a moment, then gently put the picked tea buds into the tea basket and straightened up.
Huan Xiang hurriedly stepped forward to help her unload the tea basket. Huo Xi washed his hands with the water poured over by the girl, wiped them with a handkerchief, and walked out of the tea garden with Xun Wu.
"There should be checkpoints at each pass. How did this private tea get out?"
In the border area, every state capital has a guard station, and there are many small tribal countries in the southwest. The exchange of tea for horses is an important trade between the imperial court and the Fan tribes and other countries in the Western Regions. How could it be forbidden repeatedly?
"It's true that there are many passes, but here we have high mountains and deep forests, and there are many trails in the mountains. The various barbarian tribes cover each other, plus the merchants, and... some officials and businessmen will collude with each other, and it is forbidden.
So over the years, the quality of the tea collected by the Tea Horse Division has become worse and worse. If we cannot receive good tea, we cannot replace it with good horses."
"So your eldest son has started a tea business?"
"Yes, if it were the Taizu Dynasty, I'm afraid the prince would not be able to do this business. During the Taizu Dynasty, he attached great importance to horse administration and took extremely strict precautions against tea smuggling. Not only would he regularly send officials to inspect the passes to capture illicit tea, but also strictly control the export of illicit tea from the country and the pass.
Those who fail to observe the rules will be severely punished. Princess Anqing is the direct princess of Taizu, and Ouyang Fuma sold smuggled tea and was sentenced to death by Taizu. Once Taizu sold smuggled tea in the dynasty, it would be a common crime and he would either be sentenced to death or exiled to the army. The Crown Prince
There’s no point in taking the risk.”
"Is it different now?" The policy is different?
"Yes. It's loosened up now. If the Tea Horse Company can't receive good tea, it won't be able to exchange for good horses, so it has liberalized the share of tea merchants. Anyone who wants to sell tea can go to the tea mountain to buy it by himself as long as he buys a tea guide.
Tea."
"Then all the good tea has been given to the tea merchants, and the tea merchants are allowed to trade freely with the Ban people and Yima. Then won't the Tea Horse still not be able to buy good tea?"
"That's not the case. If tea merchants want to do tea business, they must first buy tea, and secondly, they must follow the requirements of the chief ministers of various places to summon merchants to purchase tea, buy good tea and transport it to the tea horse department. The tea horse department may levy four or four taxes.
Five, the rest will be sold by the tea merchants themselves. In this way, the tea horse's inventory of good tea will increase day by day."
Huo Xi nodded to express understanding. No wonder he hadn't heard from Mu Yan two years ago that he had a tea business. It seems that firstly, the national treasury is out of money, and secondly, the demand for war horses has increased.
"The eldest son of your family also needs a good horse?"
"The good horses did not fall into our hands, and they were confiscated by the government when they were brought back. The prince ordered people to replace the good horses with the bad ones, and transported them to various parts of the Central Plains for sale. As long as they are not war horses, no matter what they do, they can sell them at a good price.
I will also leave part of it for my own use in the southwest.”
Huo Xi felt that Mu Yan might have been born into the wrong family, as he was well-connected to making money. "Your family has a lot of interests."
Xunwu scratched his head and laughed: "The prince said that he has to support so many people, and he is always reaching out to him, but he still doesn't do anything when he wakes up all day long, and the money in his account just flows out, which makes people feel sick. This is a business.
If he doesn't do what others do, he has to do it. If someone in his hands has connections, of course he wants a share of the pie."
"Yes, although your family's eldest son said that the family has a big business, but when I look at the accounts these days, the daily expenditures are very large. It's scary to see. As long as any place fails to make money, your family's eldest son will have no money.
Those people are afraid they won’t even be able to eat.”
"Yes. The Crown Prince said that he would rest assured when he entrusted all his properties to Madam. He also said that Madam is better at making money than he is. He told us to just listen to Madam."
Huo Xi gave Xunwu a funny look and said, "You should listen to the words of your eldest son."
"The prince listens to his wife, so naturally we should listen too."
While the master and servant were talking, someone suddenly came to report: "Yibang Tea Horse Company sent someone to inform them that they were going to deal with a batch of low-priced tea. Are we interested?"
Huo Xi and Xun Wu looked at each other and asked the visitor: "Did you only send someone to notify our family?"
"No. I heard that the major tea merchants in Yunnan were notified."