Chapter 650: Hope Shattered
As soon as Song Mo returned to the palace, he said to Liang An, "Go, tell Lin Ran to personally lead his men to Qingzhou and search all the coastal cities around Beihai for me again! I want to know whether that bastard Xie Zhan is dead or alive!"
"Yes." Liang An agreed and immediately went out to do his work.
Not long after, Liang An returned. He helped Song Mo take the Hanshi Powder and, noticing his expression had relaxed, he asked, "Your Majesty, after you issue the decree to punish Zhao Minglou, which official do you plan to send to Zhuozhou?"
Song Mo drooped his eyes and said nothing. He was thinking about who to send and who had the ability to stabilize the situation in Zhuozhou. Yes, he no longer thought about who could solve the problem in Zhuozhou. This was his only request.
"Your Majesty, please forgive me for speaking frankly. Zhuozhou is a dangerous place now, and no minister wants to go there." They felt that Zhao Minglou should bear the consequences of his sins.
Hearing this, Song Mo sneered. These ministers kept saying that they were serving the emperor and sharing his worries, but when the time came for them to share his worries, they all hid away faster than anyone else.
"Your Majesty, I think it's better to keep Zhao Minglou and give him a chance to atone for his sins. We can settle the accounts after the matter is settled." Liang An said tentatively.
"Did the Zhao family come to you to plead for mercy?" Song Mo looked at Liang An.
"Nothing can be hidden from the emperor." Liang An said like a lackey.
"What does the Zhao family say?"
"The original words the Zhao family handed to me were that no one was willing to take over the mess in Zhuozhou, so they let him continue to govern Zhuozhou. Afterwards, Zhao Minglou accepted any beatings or punishments he might receive."
Zhao Minglou was not stupid. He naturally knew that submitting his memorial would anger the emperor, so he immediately asked his family and sister to use their connections to plead for him and use the tactic of delaying. Now he could only bet that his brother-in-law Xie Zhan was not dead. As long as he could delay until his brother-in-law showed up, there might be a glimmer of hope.
"Let's leave it at that for now." After the excitement, Song Mo felt very tired and didn't want to think about such unhappy political affairs.
Zhuozhou
During this period, the donkey market in Zhuozhou has been in a stalemate.
The common people were also struggling and waiting for support from the court.
There have been rumors in Zhuozhou recently that the imperial court will not ignore them. As long as they hold on, they will surely see the light of day.
This news was naturally spread by Zhao Minglou in order to appease the people of Zhuozhou.
After Wang Dong learned about it, he added fuel to the fire and let the news spread to the entire Zhuozhou.
The governor said that the despair after hope is shattered is the most insane. Because Lu Songli did not believe that the court could handle the problem of Zhuozhou well.
During this period, the price of donkeys in Zhuozhou remained firmly at around seven or eight taels of silver per head. Any increase in price would be punished.
Although Jiang Shaoyan, Ning Jiran, Liao Ying and others withdrew from Juyang to Changli, Ji Wuyin, Wu Ren, Gu Huaisheng and others came and brought countless silver.
They are stationed in Juyang.
Ji Wuyin had manipulated the grain prices in Nanyang before. This time, he was in charge, assisted by Wu Ren, Gu Huaisheng and others.
Pingzhou had previously purchased a lot of donkeys at high prices, which would be just the right amount to lower the price of donkeys in Zhuozhou.
Anyway, they monitored the donkey market in Zhuozhou. When the price of donkeys dropped a lot, they would buy some, and when the price went up, they would sell some, transferring the donkeys from one hand to the other from time to time.
In short, until the time comes and until big donkey breeders like the Cai family take action, the price will remain stable here.
If ordinary people dare to cut off their tails to survive at this time, they can get away with a small loss, but many people are struggling and waiting for hope.
Some foreign merchants wanted to buy at the bottom and take advantage of the opportunity to make a fortune, but they found that they could not buy all the stocks. Moreover, if they did not buy today or tomorrow, the price would drop by 200 yuan the day after tomorrow.
The balance of all this was broken the moment the court's affordable grain arrived.
The idea of the Dali court to allocate a batch of affordable grain to Zhuozhou was good, but they underestimated the corruption in Dali from top to bottom.
This batch of affordable grain was exploited and priced at many levels, and when it arrived in Zhuozhou, the situation was completely different.
The price of the affordable grain allocated by the imperial court to Zhuozhou was fixed at 120 wen per dou. Compared with the current price of 156 wen per dou, this price was indeed quite affordable.
However, the grain was first replaced with old grain along the way, and then mixed with sand. One dou of grain contained over a pound of sand. Ultimately, this low-priced grain was only slightly cheaper than grain from outside. It couldn't really be called a favor from the court.
This is the cheap food they can't afford.
Bah, with this kind of food, you still want to exchange it for their donkeys?
The people were extremely disappointed, and all their persistence seemed like a joke. Once their anger was released, they could not help but think of throwing in the towel.
Most importantly, many of their debts were due. They had previously borrowed money and had almost always promised to repay it after selling the donkey.
Now that the time has come, in order to repay their debts, many people can no longer bear it and have to sell their donkeys with great reluctance.
Donkey prices have started to fall again.
At the same time, under the manipulation of Ji Wuyin and others, Pingzhou raised the price of grain again, but this time the increase was only a minor adjustment.
But the grain merchants in Dali, as if they had obtained an imperial sword, also raised the grain prices, and the increase was twice that of Pingzhou.
Merchants are profit-driven, and the increase in grain prices by Dali grain merchants was completely within their expectations.
Even if the grain merchants in Dali didn't raise the price, they would still spend money to buy it! They would directly spend money to raise the price of grain.
Buy! Anyway, they are not short of money in Pingzhou! There is plenty of silver!
Ji Wuyin and his men were extremely glad that they had defected to Pingzhou, because the governor's subsequent move was really enough to make the merchants in Dali suffer.
For a time, the price of grain in Dali was skyrocketing.
This instantly caused panic among the people. They were worried that if they kept the donkey, they would be able to buy even less food.
Isn’t this an alternative price reduction for the Zhuozhou donkey market?
So, after a brief period of reluctance to sell, the people of Zhuozhou began to rush to sell their donkeys.
This led to the Zhuozhou donkey market where people trampled on each other and rushed to dump the donkeys.
When Xie Zhan saw this and learned that the emperor had sent people to search for him on the beach, he sent a letter to Fan Yang, who found a way to deliver the letter to the emperor.
Afterwards, Song Mo issued an edict prohibiting Dali grain merchants from raising prices arbitrarily.
Every policy has its own countermeasure.
For the grain merchants in Dali, Dali is suppressing grain prices and not allowing them to rise, right? Okay, I can mix something in, right?
The common people will file a complaint with the government? Fine, then I won't sell it! The common people have so many problems. If they don't sell it to the common people, they can always sell it to someone else, right? They're all making money anyway, so they don't necessarily have to make money from the common people.
In short, under the manipulation of Pingzhou, the donkey market in Zhuozhou continued to fall, and soon fell to five taels per head.
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