Yuan Min shook his head and said, "This is only a portion of the information. The figures for Qinghe County officials are not here. If a caravan wants to sell goods to the Qinghe government, they can go directly to the Qinghe Commerce Department. The information here is all transactions between caravans."
Yan Zipei was stunned and asked, "How many caravans are there here?"
Yuan Min said, "Our people pretended to be here to buy goods and went in to ask around. When this place first opened, sometimes there wasn't a single caravan a day. Now, on weekdays, there are over fifty caravans a day. Today, there are especially many caravans, with over a hundred caravans entering the market already."
Yan Zipei looked up at the sky. Although it was already afternoon and the sun was setting, it would take at least another hour and a half before it got dark, which was three hours in Qinghe.
Seeing this, he couldn't help but sigh and said, "That is to say, if business is good today, there will be 150 caravans."
Yuan Min felt a little reluctant, but she added, "Actually, it's far more than that. Qinghe is very strict in evaluating caravans. Not only do they look at the size of the caravan and the deposit, but they even check the caravan's records from previous years. If they have committed any crime, they will definitely not be allowed to enter the market. That's why many caravans here buy on behalf of others. Those caravans that can't enter Qinghe wait outside, buying after the ones that can enter have finished, and then resell to them. If you calculate it that way, it's impossible to calculate the exact number."
"Chief," Yuan Min watched the caravans coming and going, feeling that this couldn't go on, so he whispered in Yan Zipei's ear, "If it really doesn't work, I'll go back and gather some men to rob and kill a few caravans. As long as there's blood, these merchants won't dare come here anymore."
Yan Zipei shook his head helplessly and said, "It's useless. Do you think I didn't order people to do it? Not only did we do it, but the Jinyiwei also sent people to do it. Even the Cambodian colleague whose head was hidden by Lin Hai did it. But no one who went there came back. In the end, we felt that the gain was not worth the loss, so we gave up."
Yuan Min was surprised: "The Qinghe Intelligence Department is so powerful? How do they have so many people?"
Yan Zipei smiled bitterly and said, "It wasn't that kid named Wang Zuo who led the men. When Qinghe was still a farming settlement, they fought against mountain bandits, and later swallowed up the giant bandit Qitian Village. When it comes to robbery, they are more professional than us. Although Xichuan has been plagued by banditry for hundreds of years, it has indeed been almost completely wiped out by Qinghe in recent years. This is why our family looks up to Lin Hai.
Moreover, Lin Hai was implementing the Baojia system in Qinghe. If you didn't have a pass, anyone on the street could take you to the authorities. It would be useless to rob and kill with fewer people, but if you had more people, you would be discovered and then chased all over the mountains by the local Baozhang and the militia."
Yuan Min's position was low, and he didn't know a lot of information. He still wanted to argue: "I know that Qinghe has militias, but calling them militias is just a nice way of saying it, but they are just civilians. Moreover, their manpower is limited, and at most they are stationed on major traffic routes. As long as we are cautious and have more people, we won't be discovered. Even if we are discovered, we are still capable of fighting."
Yan Zipei shook his head and said, "Almost everyone in Qinghe is a soldier. Lin Hai, with his wicked ambitions, has set up a militia system. Whether it's an illiterate farmer in the countryside or a peddler cheating on weights in the market, or even students at Qinghe College, they all have to participate in militia training regularly. If we make a little more noise, these people will grab their weapons and form a formation to attack us.
Speaking of which, the empire's elite soldiers only train once every three days, and these militiamen also train once every three days. In addition, they fight in their hometowns and can respond to calls from hundreds of people. They are also equipped with Qinghe's iron armor and powerful crossbows. Tell me, how many people do we need to send to cut off Qinghe's trade?
What you see is that Qinghe is peaceful and prosperous, Qinghe is safe and secure, and the people of Qinghe are rich and healthy, but you don’t know the reason. The reason is that Lin Hai is sucking the blood of the whole world!
Outside Qinghe, years of war had left the people living in dire straits. The taxes borne by an acre of land were even more than the output of the land. The people could not eat enough, and they either died, ran away, or rebelled.
If the taxes were so heavy in the past, there would have been civil unrest. Now, although there are civil unrests in various parts of the empire and even in the Chen Dynasty, they are not serious. This is simply because many people know that as long as they run to Qinghe, they can have food to eat and do not have to risk their lives in rebellion. Otherwise, how do you think the population of Qinghe came from?
You have to know that in Xichuan and even Xiangyun, 80% of the population were either slaughtered or ran away during the last war. Now look at Qinghe, the population is so large, shoulder to shoulder. Could it be that all of them were born by Lin Hai alone in the past few years?
They used the prosperous Qinghe County to absorb the outside population, and used the output of these populations to earn money from the outside through caravans. Finally, by conscripting all the people into soldiers, they turned these populations and money into well-equipped soldiers who were good at fighting. Come, Yuan Min, tell me, what kind of place is Qinghe like?
Unfortunately, many in the court still believe that Qinghe is merely wealthy, and that the Empire is simply sucking its blood. When the Empire has a chance to free up its hands, a gentle push will cause Qinghe to collapse. Ha, how ridiculous! They don't even know who's sucking whose blood. By that time, who knows who will fall!
Yuan Min felt a chill run down his spine upon hearing this. He tried hard to imagine what Qinghe would look like in the future, and couldn't help but ask anxiously, "If that's the case, Chief, why has Xichuan Governor Gao Bin never mentioned this?"
"Gao Bin? Haha." Yan Zipei sneered, "When we first arrived in Jinguan City, we sent a letter requesting a meeting with Gao Bin, but Gao Bin kept feigning illness and refused to meet us. It wasn't until we broke in that he finally saw us. But he refused to say anything, even looking repeatedly at the young butler next to him when he spoke. What do you think he could do?"
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