Zhao Zhen was about to ask him how the tea law reform was going when he called him in.

Soon Li Zi came in and said to Zhao Zhen, "Your Majesty."

"Prime Minister Li, what's going on?"

Zhao Zhen asked, "Is the new law and system reform going smoothly?"

Li Zi's face paled slightly. He coughed twice and said, "Thanks to Your Majesty's great blessing, we have reached cooperation with many major tea merchants in the past few days. They will more than double the amount of grain and grass they transport to the border each year, which will greatly increase the grain storage at the border."

"oh?"

Zhao Zhen was very happy and said, "That's great."

"but......"

Li Zi looked hesitant.

Zhao Zhen was puzzled and asked, "But what?"

"However, it is still far from what was expected, and there may even be delays in grain delivery."

"Why?"

"Because some merchants not only colluded with officials at the border to embezzle the money and tea permits given by the court, they also planned to unite and resist the implementation of the new law."

Li Zi asked, "Your Majesty, do you still remember the cash payment system implemented during the Tiansheng Year? How did those merchants resist it?"

Zhao Zhen frowned.

At that time, Liu E was still in power. The cash payment system seriously damaged the interests of those merchants and officials who relied on sucking the blood of the court, causing them to boycott and stop transporting grain to the border the following year.

The result was that the border troops were short of food. The court was in panic and quickly demoted Li Zi and abolished the cash payment law, which calmed the resistance of those people.

The other party now seems to be planning to do the same thing again.

"What does Prime Minister Li think we should do?"

Zhao Zhen asked.

Li Zi said: "We should kill one person to warn the rest, and never show mercy."

Hearing this, Zhao Zhen hesitated.

He was indeed a soft-hearted person. During the reign of Emperor Renzong, he never ordered anyone to be killed.

For example, in the eighth year of the Qingli period, he was assassinated in the palace. After the assassin was silenced, no order was issued to track down the murderer, and the case was left unresolved. This is also outrageous.

If Zhu Yuanzhang encountered such a thing, regardless of whether he was involved or not, wouldn't he have exterminated dozens of families and killed tens of thousands of people to add to the fun?

Now he is hesitant to order severe punishment for those illegal traders.

After a moment, Zhao Zhen said, "Of course they must be punished, but we still have to follow the law... This isn't a capital crime. We should sentence them according to the law they broke. We can't punish them too harshly, but at least we can be as lenient as possible."

"yes."

Li Zi responded helplessly, then added, "There's one more thing."

"What is it?"

"The tea merchants we are dealing with now are only those without any background. There are also many merchants who are backed by officials in the court or retired officials. Many of them have also embezzled the court treasury. It is not convenient for me to deal with them one by one."

"I see."

Zhao Zhen thought for a moment and said, "Then let the Imperial City Department draw up a list first, and we'll talk about it later."

"yes."

Li Zi agreed.

Zhao Zhen was actually quite helpless about this matter.

The Song Dynasty only restricted officials themselves from doing business, but did not restrict their relatives from doing business.

Therefore, the trend of officials engaging in business in the Song Dynasty was extremely prevalent, and tax evasion was just a routine operation. There were also people who took advantage of their official status to do evil and bully the market.

For example, Sun Mian, when he was the magistrate of Hangzhou, allowed his subordinates to do business openly and make a fortune.

But Zhao Zhen was not easy to deal with. First, he did follow the ancestral system of treating scholars and officials well. Second, he was soft-hearted and could not bring himself to do it. Third, and most importantly, if he really cracked down on officials doing business, the benefits would be greater than cracking down on redundant officials and soldiers. He did not have the courage to make up his mind to reform.

Therefore, he could only put it aside for the time being and wait until Zhao Jun's eyes recovered to see if he could come up with any solution.

The main reason is that Zhao Zhen is no longer very worried about the border issues.

Now that the national treasury has surplus, Zhao Zhen plans to promote it nationwide next year if the Jiaozi business pilot program goes smoothly, and absorb a large amount of currency.

When the time comes, we will store the grain and transport it to the border while the grain price is low.

Although Zhao Jun only said that Li Yuanhao would provoke a war on the northwest border next year or the year after, he did not mention the subsequent events that would cause the price of grain to soar across the Song Dynasty and the people to suffer because of the war.

But Zhao Zhen's prime ministers were not all good-for-nothings. Lu Yijian, Wang Zeng and others quickly analyzed that if Li Yuanhao really wanted to start a war as Zhao Jun said, the court would inevitably have to mobilize troops to the northwest and withdraw a large amount of food and fodder, causing fluctuations in food prices.

So they planned to make preparations in advance, secretly buy up food while the price is low, and store some old grain first. When Li Yuanhao really wants to go to war next year or the year after, releasing the old grain can at least stabilize the price of food.

It's just that before, the national treasury was short of money, and the fiscal deficit squeezed out more than 30 million strings of cash. There was really no way to store grain, so even if these things were analyzed, there was nothing we could do.

But now that we have the Jiaozi Office, we have money that can be diverted temporarily, and we can get the grain first, so that there will be no shortage of food on the border, and the people will not lack food either.

At that time, even if Li Zi stopped the merchants from sending food to the border for a short period of time, no major mistakes would occur.

After all, the state-owned tea industry has not been abolished at present. It has just become a matter of selling state-owned tea to selected tea merchants. Those who are not selected still have to transport grain to the border in exchange for tea permits. After persisting for a year or two, those tea merchants without tea permits will not comply.

Li Zi quickly reported the matter and left. Zhao Zhen was very happy to learn that the Jiaozi affairs and the Jianqian law were going smoothly. He then handled some other government affairs. In the morning, Yan Shu returned.

Yan Shu requested an audience with His Majesty at the palace gate. After getting Zhao Zhen's permission, he quickly entered the palace. He had not been in the palace in recent days and looked a little haggard.

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