"How dare you, thief!" Wang Qinruo was furious, stretched out his hand and slapped the table. In an instant, all the teacups, teapots, porcelain plates and other objects on the table fell to the ground with a loud crash!
Turning a blind eye to the servants who rushed in to collect the broken porcelain pieces, he gritted his teeth and paced around the room, like a tiger trapped in a cage, "You can just open a position and stabilize the price of rice and salt. Leave other matters to me.
.I am giving an order now. Anyone who dares to buy grain from the official warehouse to hoard it will be punished as a bandit!"
"I obey your order!" Ding said after hearing this, he immediately bowed and agreed, "I will open a position immediately after my official returns. It's just..."
Halfway through his words, he remained silent again. His feet remained where they were, not moving at all.
"Are you worried that I don't dare to kill people?" Seeing this, Wang Qinruo's anger grew stronger. He gritted his teeth and kept asking, "I'm still worried that I'm unreliable and I don't dare to assume the responsibility of ordering you to open a warehouse to produce grain and salt.
?Don’t worry, I..."
"Why did Enxiang say this?" Ding Wei was startled and quickly interrupted, "I am not worried that Enxiang will not dare to kill anyone, nor am I doubting Enxiang's responsibility. Rather, I just felt in my heart
Accounting, what needs to be done so that Enxiang’s hard work is not taken advantage of by others!”
"Huh?" Wang Qinruo didn't understand what Ding Wei meant and frowned in thought.
"En Xiang, the heavy code can indeed scare some Xiaoxiao. However, it treats the symptoms but not the root cause!" Ding Wei knew that Wang Qinruo lacked experience as a local official, so he bit the bullet and continued to add.
Among the prime ministers and deputy prime ministers of the Song Dynasty, Wang Qinruo was a well-known honest man. Honest people would use the knife when forced, and Ding Wei firmly believed in this.
However, he did not believe that just a criminal conviction could scare away hoarders.
If you can double, or even triple or quadruple your profits with just some crooked ideas, there are many people in Qingzhou City who are not afraid of death. What's more, those guys who quietly push up the price of rice and salt have many ways to bypass "
The crime of "hoarding".
"How can you treat the symptoms but not the root cause? Is there anyone who can do it, hoard the food released by the official warehouse, and still make it impossible for me to catch it?" Wang Qinruo still didn't understand what Ding Wei meant, and frowned even more.
.
'Of course! Don't you look at the price of rice and salt, how did it go up?' Ding Wei responded quietly in his heart. However, on the surface, he did not dare to speak so directly. He organized his words a little,
He explained in a low voice, "Eun Xiang, it's what Xiaguan said just now. The key lies in people's hearts. When the price of rice and salt rises, every household becomes panicked. Even those who are not short of food will take advantage of the increase in rice and salt prices.
Doubling the amount, hurry up and stock up on hundreds or ten kilograms of rice for emergency use. Even if a family only stores one stone or one million stone of rice, it will all be sold out in the blink of an eye!"
"Hiss——" Wang Qinruo heard this and suddenly took in a breath of air.
He has been in the central government for a long time and lacks experience in handling local government affairs. However, he is not unfamiliar with the behavior of people spending more money to collect food when food prices soar.
Even when he was a boy, the elders in the Wang family had done similar things during the flood years.
As a result, the food he had hoarded was not eaten, and all of it was infested with small, hard-shelled insects. For a long time, every time he ate rice, he had to carefully pick out the insect corpses one by one with chopsticks.
It is understandable that the people on Jingdong East Road are rushing to buy food for their homes. It is impossible for him to order the police to arrest all the people who bought tens of kilograms more rice out of panic and send them to prison as bandits.
.In fact, we can’t catch him either!
"Eun Xiang, if those gangsters first instigate the people to buy food for them, and then raise the price to buy and hoard it from the people, things will become more complicated." I'm afraid Wang Qinruo didn't realize that his idea just now was not feasible at all.
Ding Wei thought for a while and continued to add. "As for me, I have just been in the Transportation Department for half a year. I can't guarantee that the Transportation Department will be under full control and that the subordinates will give orders and prohibitions. I can't guarantee that no official in the Transportation Department will take advantage of it."
Forgotten!"
"This..." After Wang Qinruo heard this, the anger in his heart quickly extinguished and was replaced by a piece of ice.
Both he and Ding Wei were ordered to come to Qingzhou in May last year. Although they served as the number one and number two figures on Jingdong East Road respectively, the officials under them were all left behind by their predecessors.
In just half a year, let alone control, they were unable to even match most of their faces with their names. But with the current level of connivance of the court towards officials, the two officials under their command can serve their duties with integrity.
Strange!
In this way, his previous plan to store goods in Changping warehouses and salt warehouses to stabilize prices and crack down on hoarders became even more unfeasible.
I'm afraid the order may have gone wrong before it even left Qingzhou City.
As for the officials at the state and county levels, they discovered that the price difference between official food and private food was several times higher, so it would be strange not to take advantage of this opportunity to make a fortune!
"If Enxiang insists on opening a warehouse to level the price of grain and salt, Xianguan will definitely implement it with all his strength after he returns. However, how can we ensure that the result is not contrary to Enxiang's original intention? Please forgive me for being stupid. So far,
, I still can’t come up with any clues!” Seeing that the truth had been crushed to pieces, Ding Wei deliberately sighed and bowed to leave.
"Wait a minute!" Wang Qinruo heard this and quickly stretched out his hand to stop him in front of him, "Wait a minute, one person is short-term and everyone is long-term. I still need to discuss with you how to open a position."
"Your Majesty, please obey!" Ding said that what he wanted was an effect, and he immediately stopped. However, he did not speak, but quietly waited for Wang Qinruo's instructions.
"Let each county take out the household registration booklet and distribute the grain according to the number on the booklet... No, I will send out ten kilograms of rice here. If three kilograms fall into the hands of the people, I will be lucky!"
"Mobilize soldiers to verify identities at the entrance of the granary, and let the people buy grain with official receipts. Each person is not allowed to exceed two kilograms per day. No, the official receipt can be issued by just a random inspection. It is too easy to forge and distribute indiscriminately, and
It is difficult to verify whether the person who comes to sell the grain with the official certificate is the person?"
"Now we are sending people to transfer rice from Huainan. It won't work. The canal is frozen, and boats can't move. It will take at least two months to go back and forth..."
…
Wang Qinruo paced around the room with his hands behind his back. In the blink of an eye, he came up with seven or eight ideas, but he rejected them all one by one.
After much deliberation, he couldn't come up with any results. He was agitated. Suddenly, he found Ding Wei standing in the room like a wooden stake, and his brows quickly tightened again, "You said, don't look at my jokes.
I remember that you used to be a transfer envoy to a state!"
"Forgive me, it's not because the official refuses to make suggestions for me, but because I really can't come up with any good ideas. My experience as a transporter in the past may not work here!" I've known it for a long time!
Wang Qinruo would "rely" on him sooner or later, so Ding Wei gave him up with a grimace.
"Why?" Wang Qinruo heard a glimmer of hope in solving the problem from his words, and immediately frowned to find out, "Why doesn't it work? If you have any ideas, just tell me! I'll find a way to make it work.
that is!"
"You know, why did the rice and salt shortages arise?" Ding Wei knew that he could not stay out of the matter no matter what, so he sighed again and reminded in a low voice.
"Isn't it because the green and yellow are not picked up?" Wang Qinruo was slightly stunned when asked, and then two rays of cold light gathered in his eyes, "Yes, the harvest on Jingdong East Road last year was acceptable, and there were several heavy snowfalls in winter. It stands to reason that
He said that this year’s business should be good. No matter how bad the recession is, the price of rice will not rise endlessly..."
As he spoke, he walked towards the table that had just been cleaned up by the servants, and tapped his fingers lightly on the table, "No wonder, I was caught off guard. It turns out that someone deliberately drove up the price of rice and salt! Who is it,
Do you mean we found some clues?"
"Xia Guan hasn't started the investigation yet, but as far as Xi Guan knows, Qingzhou City, and even the entire Jingdong East Road, Mi Pu and You Yan Pu are in the hands of the five surnames Yan, Yang, Zhu, and Zheng.
There are some scattered vendors in the rest, but they are all useless!" Ding Wei grinned again and told all the answers he knew. "These five major surnames all have sons and nephews who are officials. They are always married to each other, and they always behave in the same way when things happen.
Qi connects branches, advancing and retreating together..."
"How dare you, thief~" Wang Qinruo slammed the table again and roared straight to the rafters, "I, sir, since I took office, I have given more preferential treatment to the gentry under the rule, and they actually repaid me in this way! I, I, I..."
He slapped his hand several times in succession until it hurt, but the harsh words in his mouth were unsustainable.
It was not a year of great disaster, and there was no war. He could not punish vendors just because they raised prices and made huge profits. What's more, although these five surnames jointly controlled the grain and coarse salt trading on Jingdong East Road, their direct descendants
Although he is a nephew, he does not go out to do business. Usually, the shopkeeper standing in the front is served by a descendant of the branch or even a servant born in the family.
If he punishes the criminals here, he will immediately make a deal with the grain shop owner. Then, once the grain shop and the oil and salt shop are closed, another wave of soaring prices will be set off in an instant.
"This is the reason why Xiaguan's previous experience won't work here. Xiaguan used to be the transfer envoy to Kuizhou, and he dealt with the Dongxi barbarian chieftain. Whether it was suppression or mercy, he could do it without any scruples. But now, Qing Qing is involved.
But there are too many elbows." Knowing what Wang Qinruo's difficulties were, Ding Wei sympathetically added in a low voice. (Note: The level of the state transfer envoy is much lower than that of the road transfer envoy.)
"Yeah!" Wang Qinruo suppressed his anger and muttered in a low voice.
Unable to suppress it forcefully, he had no choice but to be gentle and compromise. The five major surnames, Yan, Yang, Zhu, Zheng, and Yu, suddenly joined forces to drive up the price of rice and salt. It was definitely not for the sake of simply making huge profits.
Thinking of this, he grinned bitterly and asked in a low voice, knowingly, "So, do you know why these five hometown sages caused such a big disturbance?
With his intelligence, ability and experience, now that he knew that the five major surnames were working together to drive up the price of rice, how could he not be able to figure out the reason? However, he had to use other people's words to tell the reason before he could make the final decision.
ruling.
As expected, it lived up to his expectations. After hearing this, Ding Wei immediately clasped his fists seriously and said, "Your Majesty, please forgive me for daring to speculate. The Yan family offended Han Tixing, and they were frightened. As for Han Tixing, they kept saying
They were unyielding to the Yan family. The misunderstanding between the two parties became deeper and deeper, so the Yan family united with other virtuous people from the four surnames to protest against Han Tixing!"
