In the flower hall of the back court.

How to get the money? This question has been on Wu Cheng'en's mind for a long time, and it has affected his conception of new plots.

"It's easy to get into trouble if a private person donates money to the government." Wu Cheng'en sighed and said quietly, "Shen Wansan is from Kunshan, so you must be careful."

Shen Wansan, the richest man in the Ming Dynasty two hundred years ago, ignored this point. He helped Zhu Yuanzhang build the Nanjing city wall and spent millions of gold to reward the emperor's army. As a result, Zhu Yuanzhang became jealous and confiscated his house on an excuse and sent him to Yunnan as a soldier.

"Eh? Mr. Sheyang is so weird. Who said I'm going to donate to the county?" Zhao Hao blinked and said, "Qianli became an official just for money. How can he invest his own money to build the county?"

"What are you going to do, sir?" Wu Cheng'en rolled his eyes at him and continued to act like this.

"I can only help to make some connections and see if there is any company willing to lend money to the county." Zhao Hao replied seriously.

"Isn't there only one company in the world, young master?" Old Wu rolled his eyes.

"Mr. Sheyang, you don't know. There are already more than a dozen companies opened in Beijing. I heard that there is also one opened in Taiyuan, Shanxi." This young master still has a 5% stake.

"Oh, really?" Wu Cheng'en was ashamed of his ignorance. As an excellent writer, he should keep abreast of current affairs and know a little bit about everything.

In fact, it’s not his fault. After all, the speed of dissemination of economic news in the Ming Dynasty was far slower than that of political news.

Besides, apart from Shanxi Coal Industry Co., Ltd. in Taiyuan, the other dozen or so companies are just small-scale and cannot cause any waves.

~~

"If it's not Xishan Company, then which one could it be?" Wu Chengen asked curiously.

"It's a company called Jiangnan. Its full name is Jiangnan Investment Co., Ltd." Mr. Zhao said seriously.

"What does this company do?" Wu Cheng'en asked.

"It's just a bunch of rich people who have money but nowhere to spend it, so they pooled their money to form a company, and then they invested and borrowed money from everywhere, and let the money make more money." Mr. Zhao replied:

"It just so happened that I also had some shares in it, so I helped my father get some help, and they agreed to lend money to Kunshan County."

"That's not a small amount." Wu Cheng'en believed what Mr. Zhao said for the time being.

At this time, whoever provides milk is the mother, no matter if she is your biological mother or godmother.

"Is two hundred thousand taels enough? If not, ask them to add another two hundred thousand." Young Master Zhao said without blinking.

"Enough, definitely enough!" Wu Cheng'en almost slipped off his chair, and said in disbelief: "But that's 400,000 taels, which is equivalent to the county's income for many years! What does the Jiangnan Company want?"

"Of course they are not doing charity." Zhao Hao replied in a deep voice: "The county wants to rent the land to them and use the rent to pay off the debt."

"Is that so?" Wu Cheng'en finally felt that it made some sense. "The county has 100,000 mu of official farmland, and can collect 30,000 to 40,000 shi of rent a year. If the interest rate is not too high, it can be paid back slowly..."

As he spoke of this, Wu Cheng'en's expression gradually turned ugly.

The tax system of the Ming Dynasty was absurd. The tax grains of each county were not uniformly handed over to the county and then distributed by the county magistrate. Instead, they were directly delivered to the designated location by the grain chief...usually Nanjing and nearby garrisons.

Therefore, the only thing the county magistrate could freely allocate was the official land belonging to the county.

The imperial grain for hundreds of officials and servants, including the county magistrate; the daily operating expenses of the entire county; the expenses of building bridges and roads, disaster relief, education and other expenses... all had to be paid from the government-owned fields.

"Kunshan County is already stretched to the limit and is now living beyond its means. Now it has to bear such a heavy debt. How are they going to survive in the future?" Knowing that the master had to do so, the responsible Master Wu still had the obligation to remind Zhao Hao that this was like drinking poison to quench thirst.

"Hahaha, Mr. Sheyang, don't worry. They have no intention of taking our official fields. What they want to rent is the abandoned land north of Yanglintang." Master Zhao said with a saintly face.

"Ah?" Wu Cheng'en was shocked and asked, "What do you need that for? You have to spend 200 days in the water out of 360 days a year. Are you going to use it to raise fish? You might as well just rent Yangcheng Lake."

"Maybe they want to raise loaches." Young Master Zhao laughed and said, "Who knows, maybe they will come up with some brilliant ideas, and we will be surprised then."

"Well, let's wait and see." Seeing that it would neither increase the burden on the county nor cause loss of the county's property, Wu Chengen was naturally happy to see it happen. It didn't matter whether he was raising loaches or toads.

"When can we sign the contract?"

"The contract will be signed in a few days when the chairman comes. But Jiangnan Company has already given us an advance payment, which is enough to solve the immediate problem."

As Mr. Zhao spoke, he took out 20,000 taels of banknotes from his banknote folder and handed them to Wu Chengen, saying, "Tell Zhao Shizhen to cash them later. First, give some money to General Jin. Then give some money to dad so that he can pay the salaries of his subordinates. The emperor doesn't need hungry soldiers, and we can't make the horse run fast and not eat grass at the same time."

"A few thousand taels of silver will be enough. You won't need so much." Wu Cheng'en took the ticket and looked at Zhao Hao's wallet suspiciously.

He couldn't help but doubt deeply whether the so-called Jiangnan Company existed only in Mr. Zhao's wallet.

"The county will have a lot of expenses in the future, and there are many places to spend money." Zhao Hao smiled and waved his hand and said, "I will take care of the big expenses myself, so don't bother me with the daily trivial expenses. Besides, I have to go out for a while in the next two days."

"Well, okay..." Although Wu Cheng'en felt that this was against the rules, he had to follow the rules and everything was for flood control.

~~

After Xu Wei came back in the afternoon, the three of them took the time to hold a meeting. Based on the results of Zhao Hao's investigation today, they drafted the "Several Provisional Regulations for Kunshan County during the Flood Control Period".

Then he revised it, transcribed it, stamped it, and sent it to Nanshan Temple for Mr. Zhao to review and sign it.

In fact, it didn’t have to be so troublesome. It would be useless for Mr. Zhao to read it anyway, so Xu Wei could just sign it on his behalf.

You should know that Master Xu can not only paint with both hands, but also imitate famous calligraphy and paintings, and his forgeries are so real that he can imitate Mr. Zhao's signature with ease.

The reason why this is necessary is that the three big bosses behind the scenes are consciously maintaining the dignity of their tools.

Then, the tool man... Oh no, Mr. Zhao ordered Zheng Yilong and other contacts to send copies of the charter to their respective homes, asking the gentry to mobilize all the people to participate in flood control.

In fact, the people of Kunbei have long been in panic, worried that the earth dam would burst and their homes would be flooded like in Kunnan.

In order to protect the summer harvest, everyone is willing to go to the dike to fight the flood.

But we have to wait until the gentry speaks up before the villagers of the entire county can really take action.

It is no joke that imperial power does not extend to the countryside.

Outside the county town, the county magistrate cannot intervene directly, he must go through the gentry. Otherwise, he can't do anything!

Fortunately, the gentry had just sworn an oath in the morning, and they heard that the master had already lived on the dike. In the afternoon, they saw Zhao Shouzheng come up with a set of rules that were both lenient and strict, and thorough and reasonable.

He couldn't help but look at this new old parent with admiration, thinking that the number one scholar was indeed worthy of his reputation, and was completely different from the mediocre official like County Magistrate Feng.

They finally cheered up, called the heads of each village to a meeting at their home, and ordered them to send one man from each household, bring tools and dry food, and go to the dike with them to fight the flood tomorrow.

ps. The fourth chapter has been delivered, la la la, please give me a monthly ticket~~~~