"In addition, this 'Qinghe County' is not the Qianqing Palace. We must strengthen the guard to protect the safety of the emperor, the prince and the two ladies." Zhang Xianggong pondered for a moment, and then reminded: "Don't rush to make a decision if there is any disturbance. Keep in touch with Bu Gu at any time."
"Hey." Feng Bao nodded and said, "Although my family no longer manages the Imperial Horse Administration, the management title has not yet been decided. Currently, several eunuchs who are in charge of the Imperial Horse Administration are still my family members."
"Well, remember to keep a low profile and don't show off, especially don't show up directly. Use the two ladies' help more often, but be sincere and consider them. Once you get through this hurdle, this timely help will be enough to ensure that you can make a comeback in the future." Zhang Juzheng nodded and said, "Okay, I have to go back quickly. If I stay out for too long, Gao will get suspicious."
"We will all listen to our husband." Feng Bao nodded heavily and watched Lord Zhang leave.
Zhang Juzheng hurried back to the ear room, slowed down his breathing, quietly opened the door, walked in lightly, and was startled.
In the darkness, Gao Gong was sitting cross-legged on the kang, looking at him with gloomy eyes.
"Oh, I got scared. Why didn't Mr. Yuan ask anyone to light the lamp?" Zhang Juzheng forced himself to calm himself.
"I got up in the middle of the night to drink water and saw that you were not there. I was just about to call someone to look for you." Gao Gong suppressed the gleam in his eyes and asked calmly, "Did you go to the toilet?"
"No, I felt a little indigestion and couldn't sleep, so I went out for a walk." Zhang Juzheng smiled bitterly and said, "It seems that I am really old and can't go to bed after eating."
"Oh, I thought you were having a tryst with someone." Gao Gong grinned, but there was no smile in his expression.
"This is a forbidden area in the palace, don't make such jokes." Zhang Juzheng picked up the flint and steel from the table, but his hands couldn't help shaking, and he failed to light the tinder after rubbing it several times.
He knew that once Gao Gong became suspicious, he would not be able to conceal his whereabouts... Gao Gong would only need to ask Meng Chong tomorrow to find out the Empress's decree to Feng Bao, and would also understand who he had met last night.
Thinking quickly, Zhang Juzheng figured out the pros and cons. He heaved a sigh of relief, calmed down, lit the tinder and the candle, and said casually, "But I did run into Eunuch Feng. He was about to come find me. I was afraid of disturbing Mr. Yuan, so I took him to a distant place to talk."
"Oh, I see." Gao Gong said with a fake smile, "I thought you were hiding from me on purpose."
"How could that be? He came to announce the Empress's decree..." Zhang Juzheng took the teapot from the warming basket, poured a cup of tea for Gao Gong, and told Gao Gong about Empress Chen's order to invite two doctors from Jiangnan Hospital to treat the emperor. At the end, he added: "Because Jiangnan Hospital was founded by that evil doctor, the Empress wanted me to write a letter to the evil doctor so that he would know the pros and cons."
"Well, I think it's okay. If we can cure the emperor, it will definitely be a great achievement for the country." Gao Gong nodded, took the tea handed to him by Zhang Juzheng, and drank it all in one gulp. With a worried look on his face, he lay down again and said, "Let's think of a way. We must make the emperor get better as soon as possible."
"Yes, the morning court was suddenly cancelled today. People in the court and the public must be in panic..." Zhang Juzheng sighed lightly, blew out the dim light, and then quietly went to bed in the dark.
Gao Gong's snoring started again, and Zhang Xianggong continued to stay awake all night...
Damn Gao Huzi, pulling Bu Gu’s quilt!
~~
When Zhao Hao received the letter from the capital via carrier pigeon, it was already the end of leap February.
At that time, he was at Fanshan Town, Pingyang County, the southernmost part of Wenzhou Prefecture and Zhejiang Province, inspecting the alum mine that he had been longing for.
As soon as you hear the name of Fanshan Town, you know that alum has been discovered here for a long time. In fact, since the beginning of the Republic of China, some people in the area have made a living by mining and purifying alum. In addition to selling it directly to medicinal material merchants as a raw medicine, they also make a kind of "clear water beads" and sell them to county towns and coastal villages and towns.
The coastal areas of Jiangnan are deeply affected by the tides. When a typhoon comes, the water from wells and rivers becomes turbid. Throwing a "clear water bead" into a bucket can make the turbid water clear and make it suitable for drinking again. Therefore, the sales have been good.
But even so, the alum market is still too small, and it started later than some old alum producing areas such as Huizhou Lujiang and Fujian Zhouning. In addition, it is located in the mountainous area, with inconvenient transportation. The town has only a few thousand people and no industry has been formed. The locals can only make ends meet.
Outside the town, Zhao Hao visited what the locals called a kiln... a stove built with stones and a pottery jar on top. Workers knocked down high-quality alum stones from nearby mountains, brought them back, crushed them, put them in a jar, and boiled and refined them, and they got alum of acceptable purity.
Yue Peng, the general manager of Jiangnan Mining who was in charge of the preliminary survey, introduced to Mr. Zhao that even such a simple stove was only about ten in the whole town.
"Because there are few people in the town, there are less than 1,000 households in 10 villages, 5,000 to 6,000 people, and most of them are engaged in farming." He added: "The town has an area of 138,000 mu of land, most of which is hilly and mountainous. There are only 6,000 mu of arable land, of which 4,000 mu are paddy fields."
"Those days won't be easy." Zhao Hao said.
"Fortunately, I can process alum stone and sell it to the kiln to supplement the family income. I can always make ends meet." Yue Peng said with a smile.
"How can we just get by while guarding such a treasure mountain?" Young Master Zhao couldn't help but sighed, "What a waste of natural resources."
In addition to being used as a traditional Chinese medicine and water purification material, alum is also widely used in pulping and dyeing, papermaking, silverware, candle making and other industries. The traditional demand alone is enormous.
This is also a common problem in this era, that is, the market is extremely fragmented, and production and demand are seriously out of touch, so we have to beg for food while guarding a treasure mountain.
One of the major tasks of Jiangnan Group is to connect the production and demand links of the entire Jiangnan region, continuously increase the non-agricultural income of the people of Jiangnan, and promote the development of the commodity economy of Jiangnan.
Moreover, for Jiangnan Group, alum has many more uses. For example, it can be used to produce special materials such as refractory mud and refractory bricks for the steel, glass, chemical and other industries. And the most important use, which is also the original intention of Zhao Hao to focus on this place - to cook manure on a large scale and produce fertilizer powder!
Fertilizer powder is rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, especially nitrogen, and will be the main fertilizer source for the group for a long time in the future. In the demonstration farm in Jiangnan, farmers and workers have achieved a terrifying yield of five stones per mu in a single season with this soil fertilizer!
That is to say, if the whole of Jiangnan used fertilizer powder, the yield per mu would be four times that of the first year of Longqing, when only a single crop of rice could be grown! How terrifying!
Of course, that is not an easy task, because fertilizer powder is not as efficient as real fertilizer, and the amount required per acre is amazing. So in addition to having enough human and animal manure, the most important thing is to have enough alum!
In addition to producing alum, alum mines can also produce elemental potash fertilizer and sulfuric acid by pyrolysis. The process difficulty does not exceed the current technical level of Jiangnan Chemical. The only troublesome thing is that nitric acid is used in the reaction process... In the next one or two years, the first industrial production line for nitric acid will be put into production. Therefore, it is still expected that sufficient potash fertilizer will be produced in the near future.
The alum reserves in Fanshan Town account for 60% of the world's total and 80% of China's total, which can be said to be inexhaustible. Therefore, in the eyes of Mr. Zhao, Fanshan Town is not the Alum Capital of China, but the Fat Capital of Ming Dynasty!
So, on behalf of the board of directors, he approved the plan of Jiangnan Mining on the spot. After a year of careful investigation and preliminary work, Jiangnan Mining planned to jointly invest 300,000 taels of silver with the gentry of Pingyang County to purchase all the land in the town, including 12 mines and 6,000 acres of arable land, totaling 138,000 acres!
After obtaining the land ownership of the entire Fanshan Town, Jiangnan Mining will immediately set up an alum factory and start large-scale production of alum to supply farms for manure cooking. When conditions are ripe, a potash fertilizer factory will be established, but of course it may not be located locally...
The reason why the whole town's land was purchased instead of just the mine land was because large-scale alum production would cause serious pollution. Mr. Zhao wanted everyone to be happy instead of sacrificing the local people.
In addition to buying all their land, the 1,000 local households have the right to choose to move to the Jiangnan Group's farm or stay and become employees of the mine. They also have the right to choose to exchange all or part of the land transfer fee for alum factory shares to share the dividends of alum production in the long term.
Such favorable acquisition conditions will be unparalleled for a long period of history in the future. Therefore, the people of the whole town are eagerly waiting, fearing that this "good man Zhao" will change his mind at the last minute and not acquire them...
But Zhao Hao was too embarrassed to face them, because he knew in his heart that he had taken great advantage of them. Therefore, Zhao Hao asked the county to help clear the area and not let the people "disturb" his inspection...
It was not until noon that Pingyang County Magistrate Zhou Yingpei came over in person to ask, "What is the young master's decision?"
When he learned that Zhao Hao had signed the letter of intent, County Magistrate Zhou couldn't help but cheer, because the county would receive a sponsorship fee of 80,000 taels of silver, in addition to dividends every year.
"Pingyang Development Company is just getting started, so please take good care of us, my old parents." Although he was already a princess's groom and a minister's son-in-law, Zhao Hao remained polite to all local officials as always.
"That's for sure!" County Magistrate Zhou almost fainted with happiness upon hearing this, because the Jiangnan Economic Mutual Aid Organization, where Wenzhou Prefecture was originally located, did not need to set up a development company.
Therefore, Mr. Zhao's implication is that he agrees to include Pingyang and even Wenzhou in the integration of Jiangnan!
Not only Wenzhou Prefecture, in fact, Zhao Hao has agreed to absorb the three prefectures of Ningshaotai into the integration of Jiangnan. Because the Jiangnan Group has controlled the entire coastal area of Daming, the transportation of these four coastal prefectures is no longer a problem.
The addition of these four prefectures also has a very important significance, that is, the Jiangnan Group has finally completely connected the coastal areas of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong!
Looking at the map, the entire Jiangnan territory is like a fully drawn bow, shooting the heavy body of this old empire towards the depths of the sea!
p.s. That’s all for this chapter. I’ll make it up tomorrow.