Upon hearing her words, Zu An was stunned: "You're going to a brothel too?"
Chu Chuyan rolled her eyes at him, annoyed: "Of course I'm not going, I'm asking you to invite someone."
"Who are you inviting?" Zu'an asked curiously.
"The eldest son of the Wang family, Wang Yuanlong," Chu Chuyan said solemnly.
Zu An looked her over with a strange expression: "You and this young master from the Wang family aren't having an affair, are you? I heard the Chu and Wang families have always been on good terms. Is it some kind of childhood sweetheart story? Oh my god, why is my life so miserable..."
Damn it, if I had known this would happen, I wouldn't have saved that guy surnamed Wang at Shenxianju last time. I should have let Chen Xuan beat him to death.
Chu Chuyan was both embarrassed and angry, and grabbed his ear: "Stop wailing, what could possibly happen between him and me? What nonsense are you thinking all day long?"
Anger level from Chu Chuyan +123!
Zu An's expression brightened: "Then why did you arrange to meet him, especially in a place like Shenxianju?"
"It's not me who's arranging the meeting, it's you who's meeting him," Chu Chuyan corrected.
Zuan blinked, indicating that he didn't understand what was going on at all.
Chu Chuyan then said, "Today, Sang Hong convened a meeting with my father and several well-known families in Mingyue City, including Zheng, Yuan, and Wang. They mentioned that the imperial court is currently waging war against the northern barbarians, and the military funds are tight. Therefore, wealthy merchants from all over the country are needed to donate generously to contribute to the country."
Zu An nodded; Chu Chuyan had mentioned the donation to him before.
“Because we just made a donation last year, even the largest families can’t afford to be forced to contribute so frequently, so the major families are not so willing,” Chu Chuyan continued. “My father used the pretext that the rampant private salt trade had made it impossible to sell the official salt that he couldn’t come up with the money for the time being.”
Zuan couldn't help but laugh and said, "I never expected that my father-in-law, who usually seems so honest, is actually so cunning."
"Is that how you praise someone?" Chu Chuyan rolled her eyes at him. "Unfortunately, that old fox Sang Hong had already anticipated that we would say such things, so he said that he would let Sang Qian follow Father's orders and do his best to crack down on the private salt trade."
Zuan sighed, "This must be the exchange of benefits you mentioned before. The Chu family made donations, and the Sang family reciprocated by helping to solve the problem of smuggled salt."
Chu Chuyan nodded: "My father thought that the rampant smuggling of salt was indeed affecting the Chu family's business. Sang Qian controlled the river defense anti-smuggling operation, and with his cooperation, it would be much easier to crack down on those smuggling gangs than before. If we could take this opportunity to completely eradicate smuggling, then it would be worthwhile to make a donation. So he agreed to donate 100,000 taels first, and then make up the rest after the smuggling gangs were completely wiped out and the revenue from the sale of official salt increased."
"That's good." Zu An nodded secretly. Chu Zhongtian was indeed worthy of being the head of the family. Although he was upright, he also had the cunning to back it up.
“It was all good at first,” Chu Chuyan sighed. “But the Wang family suffered heavy losses because their trading post on the border was plundered by foreign tribes a few days ago. A lot of their working capital had been used to make up for the losses there, so they are short of funds for the time being. They proposed that this donation should not be counted as theirs for the time being.”
Zuan had heard her mention before that in the Great Zhou Dynasty, transporting, selling, and distributing salt all required official salt permits.
However, obtaining an official salt permit is not something you can simply buy by paying money.
Instead, you need to transport a certain amount of grain to border areas where war is urgent in order to qualify for the corresponding share of salt permits.
Many salt merchants found it inconvenient to transport grain to the border themselves every time, so merchants like the Wang family emerged.
Their main responsibility was to deliver grain to the border in exchange for salt permits, and then sell the salt permits to other salt merchants.
However, transporting grain from the inland to the border is too costly due to the long distance and countless losses along the way. Therefore, these merchants choose to organize people to cultivate fertile land at the border, plant and harvest locally, and then deliver the grain to the corresponding border.
This method of land reclamation is known as merchant-run settlement.
"They were captured by alien races?" Zuan sighed. "That's indeed quite tragic."
“Yes, the Wang family has indeed suffered a great loss this time. They can’t even handle such an important matter as donations,” Chu Chuyan sighed. “Sang Hong didn’t say anything on the surface. Instead, he comforted him a few times. But then he turned around and gave the Wang family’s bank in a nearby prefecture to the Chu family, saying it was to reward families that actively contributed to the country.”
“Yin’an?” Zu’an was taken aback.
After Chu Chuyan's explanation, he roughly understood:
According to the laws of the Great Zhou Dynasty, salt permits were required for purchasing and transporting salt, but when selling it, not only salt permits were needed, but also permits officially approved and granted by the government.
A salt-selling permit is equivalent to a sales license for a specific area. Only when a family owns a salt-selling permit for that area can they legally sell salt.
If you sell your goods on a port that does not belong to you, it is illegal. Not only will the goods be seized as smuggled salt, but the family that sells them will also be severely punished.
Just like cigarettes in the previous life, they are generally not allowed to be sold across regions.
After realizing this, Zu'an immediately reacted: "Sang Hong's move is ruthless. The Wang family is an ally of the Chu family. His move not only severely damaged the Wang family, but also successfully sowed discord between the Wang and Chu families."
At this point, he had to admire Sang Hong. From beginning to end, he didn't expend a single soldier or even pay any price, yet he used the Wang family's resources to utterly destroy the Wang and Chu families.
The key point is that all of this is in accordance with the laws of the Great Zhou Dynasty. Indeed, the Wang family could not have donated first, so the court took the opportunity to reclaim part of his bank deposit to reward those who donated generously. Even if the matter was appealed to the capital, no one could find any fault with it.
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