Chapter 733: Borrowing a Knife to Kill
Zhou Dalang and his friends also lived in the small courtyard that Zhou Silang had just rented. At night, the brothers gathered in a room to count silver. Manbao and Zhou Lijun sat aside to check the accounts and calculate everyone's wages so that they could go home and pay them.
The brothers put all the silver ingots in a sack, and Zhou Dalang put the sack in the middle of the bed, deciding to sleep with the silver in his arms at night.
Zhou Erlang and Zhou Silang discussed, "My eldest brother and the third brother have visited several nearby villages. Most of the good wheat has been reserved for seed by our family. If we go again, it will probably be gone. If we want to buy more, we can only ask Master Bai for help."
Zhou Silang pondered and said, "One more trip, and we'll have almost finished delivering the goods to the county government. We brothers can slowly carry the rest. Then we can slowly explore and continue to do business with some villages outside Yizhou City."
"That's what I meant," Zhou Dalang said, turning back after putting the money away. "But don't try to expand your business too much. Our prices are low, but we don't know for sure whether Mr. Bai would be willing to sell us wheat seeds at that low a price."
Zhou Sanlang sighed, "It used to be Master Bai who bought wheat seeds from us, but now the situation has changed and it's time for us to ask for help."
Manbao finished calculating the accounts and asked Zhou Lijun to copy them. Hearing this, he said, "That means our business has grown."
"There's no good in going big; it's too troublesome," Zhou Silang said. "I still prefer small business. It's free and easy. When no one's paying attention, no one bullies you. But I'm afraid that's not the case now."
Manbao looked at Datou and Ertou and said regretfully, "It's a pity that you two brothers are not good at studying, otherwise you could be the backbone of our family in the future."
"Forget it," Zhou Erlang said disdainfully, "Rather than relying on the two of them, it's better to rely on the fifth and sixth ones."
Those two have only been talking for a short time, how smart can you see from them?
Manbao was speechless for a moment, then asked, "How are Santou and Sitou's studies going?"
Zhou Dalang and Zhou Sanlang sighed together.
When Manbao heard this, he thought, "Okay, there's no need to listen anymore."
She could only reach out and pat Zhou Silang and Wu Wulang on the shoulders, "Fourth Brother, Fifth Brother, it's up to you from now on. Well, Wu Tou should also try harder."
Wu Tou's father Zhou Sanlang: ...
Zhou Dalang looked at Manbao's head and said, "All the cleverness of our Zhou family is in your head."
Zhou Silang couldn't help but mutter in his heart: That's because their parents gave them good births, and their mother is also smart, so the problem still lies with the father.
Obviously, there were many brothers who had the same idea as Zhou Silang. They all looked at Manbao's little head and sighed softly.
Ultimately, it's because my grandparents are biased and gave all the good brains to my uncle.
Manbao: ...
After receiving the first sum of money, the Zhou brothers felt confident and bold to do it, especially after seeing the profits calculated by Manbao and Zhou Lijun.
They are even more attentive. For the sake of long-term cooperation in the future, the brothers want to check every grain of wheat.
After losing his hair for three days, Old Zhou saw the silver they brought back and heard about the generosity of County Magistrate Tang. He immediately became energetic, slept soundly at night, and his hair stopped falling out.
He woke up laughing several times in his dreams. He whispered to Qian, "County magistrates like Yang and Tang are the real good people. Think about the county magistrates of the past. How could ordinary people like us dare to do business with them? If we did that, wouldn't it be like throwing meat buns at a dog, with no return?"
"Speak softly."
Old Zhou: "I'll tell you."
The Zhou brothers made a big move this time, which even alarmed County Magistrate Yang, but he just watched silently for a while.
Recently, a lot of refugees suddenly came to their county. He went down to visit them and vaguely realized that he had been cheated.
But the person is right in front of you, there is no reason to push him away, right?
So they arranged for laborers to serve, built water conservancy projects, reclaimed wasteland and distributed land to the refugees, built houses to keep them warm, distributed relief food, and registered people into the Luojiang County household register.
Sure enough, not long after, County Magistrate Yang was impeached again.
Someone reported that he was stealing people and credit, and this time it was not the county magistrates of the nearby counties who impeached him, but the censor in the capital.
There were two more memorials on County Magistrate Yang's desk, and he had to write a defense memorial.
County Magistrate Yang sighed. Although he was not afraid of being criticized, being criticized all the time would have a bad impact on him. For example, it would leave a bad impression of being ambitious and vainglory to his seniors in the court.
But who knew about his injustice? This time he was not the one who robbed the person, but someone sent the person to him. If he did not find a place to stay, he would feel very sorry for himself.
To settle the refugees, they needed grain seeds, so County Magistrate Yang reduced the wheat seeds donated to the capital by one third. Humph, don’t you like to report him?
Then let’s participate and see who suffers the loss.
Now, the fact that Luojiang County has good seeds has been made public, and the court has commended County Magistrate Yang, but has not yet had time to reward him according to his merits.
Now that they have crossed the Ming Road, it is natural that some good wheat seeds need to be provided to the royal estates and the court's Sinong Temple.
So this year, before the autumn harvest was over, the official documents from the court arrived, and the palace even sent a eunuch to communicate.
Of course, he didn't just come for the royal estate. This princess, that imperial concubine, and that prince were also here. Their estates were all in urgent need of such fine breeds...
County Magistrate Yang naturally didn't give it away for free, but there were always people who wanted to take it for free, so he was in a bad mood recently.
Whenever he was in a bad mood, he wanted to make others feel bad too.
So as soon as the Zhou brothers shipped out their second batch of grain seeds, he whispered to the eunuch who was still living in the county town, saying that at least half of the high-quality seeds in the county had been taken away by Yizhou City.
Now even if he wanted to give them good seeds, he couldn't, and could only supply them to the emperor and the Ministry of Agriculture first.
The eunuch was shocked, but looking at Yang Heshu's respectful attitude and calm expression, he didn't dare to say anything rude.
This man is not an ordinary county magistrate, so he is not someone he can get angry with.
He could only hold his breath and set off for Beijing. Of course, before returning to Beijing, he had a letter flown back to the capital first.
The Zhou brothers happily handed over the second batch of wheat seeds to County Magistrate Tang, received two sacks of silver from him, paid their wages, returned the carriages and horses, and everyone went home happily together.
After two trips, the Zhou family's savings doubled, and Old Zhou was so happy that he almost rolled on the pile of silver.
The reason why it was almost done was that they had just counted the money and Qian was about to distribute it to her sons.
Of course not all of it will be distributed, but half of it will have to be distributed. Datou, Ertou and Erya who participated in this event will all get a share of the money, so there is still a lot to be divided.
As usual, Old Zhou felt distressed for a moment, then he gave Manbao two more silver ingots out of favoritism, and then announced: "Manbao is not at home, I will keep her share for her first."
The next update will be around 9pm
(End of this chapter)
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