Chapter 136 Rapeseed
Song Liyun was startled and quickly took back the account book on the table. Yunniang came out from the next room and said, "Zhenping, the young lady is doing the accounts!"
Yunniang felt that she was a servant in the Song family. She originally wanted to call Song Zhenping "Big Young Master" and Xiaoan "Little Young Master". However, after just one sentence, Song Zhenping blushed with embarrassment and only allowed her to call him by his name.
Just now, when she saw Song Liyun counting the silver, she took Xiao An and Hei Jin, who had recovered from his injury, to play in another room.
Now hearing Song Zhenping calling, she hurried out to greet him.
When Song Zhenping heard Yun'er settling accounts, he slowly walked into the room where he lived next door.
At this time, Heijin was wearing a red bellyband with a carp playing in the water and lying on the kang with his legs spread out.
Its wounds healed, but its fur did not grow back. The wound on its chest was covered by its bellyband, and only a circle of white on its arm was visible.
Heijin heard someone entering the room and thought it was Song Liyun, so he quickly sat up.
But when I looked back, I saw that the person who had stood up had fallen back down, wriggling around like a slug.
Soon, Song Liyun came into the room.
"Yun'er, come with me to the backyard quickly!" Song Zhenping had been standing at the door. When he saw her come in, he pulled her to the backyard.
"What's the matter? Why are you so anxious?" Song Zhenping staggered, and Song Liyun was even pulled a little unsteadily by him.
The originally empty backyard is now very crowded, with a vegetable greenhouse in the middle and a horse shed and a rabbit house in the two corners.
Ju Qingma still looked aloof and ate hay carelessly.
The rabbit house is already very lively. The three little rabbits have become ten, and the second litter of baby rabbits is already in the burrow.
Song Zhenping pulled her into the greenhouse and stopped beside a separate ridge of earth. He pointed at a few hair-thin seedlings and said, "Look, these magical seeds have sprouted!"
Divine seeds?
Song Liyun tried hard to recall and then she remembered that she had taken out some of the seeds of the apocalypse from the suitcase and asked Song Zhenping to mix them with other seeds and sow them together.
At the beginning, Song Liyun came to check on it every day, but as time passed, there was no reaction from the soil.
A month later, Song Liyun gave up the idea.
As long as the water and temperature are suitable, local cabbages will sprout in three days. However, these doomsday varieties not only failed to sprout, but even turned black and rotted quickly.
Even seeds that show signs of germination will eventually wither.
no way.
Song Liyun still needs her original body to get here. These foreign objects need to overcome a series of problems such as ten years of storage expiration and traveling through different spaces. It is more difficult for them to survive than for humans.
Song Liyun had given up long ago, and only Song Zhenping still took care of her every day, giving her every bit of water she needed.
Hard work pays off, and it finally sprouted.
Song Liyun lay on top of the filament and observed carefully, and finally saw two leaf embryos on the silk-like stem.
"What kind of seed is this?" Song Liyun asked. She had taken several kinds of seeds for Song Zhenping.
Song Zhenping confirmed: "It's rapeseed!"
He didn't know what rapeseed was, but when Yun'er told him so, he remembered it.
Song Liyun's face twitched. She looked at the little cabbage next to her, wondering if she had made a mistake.
Rapeseed and cabbage are both in the cruciferous family. They are a hybrid of cabbage and cabbage in Europe and are the main source of vegetable oil.
She suspected that all the other seeds had died and only the rapeseed was growing. Could it be that the seeds had accidentally flown over from the cabbage planted nearby?
Song Zhenping shook his head repeatedly: "No, no, I have memorized every one of these immortal seeds, they are rapeseed."
All right! Song Zhenping said yes and that was fine.
However, this reminded Song Liyun that cabbage seeds could also be used to extract oil!
The only oil consumed in the Wu Dynasty, apart from animal fats, was sesame oil. Families that had no money to buy oil would find some grass seeds, fry them, and squeeze out the oil.
There was new hope in the greenhouse, and Song Zhenping devoted himself to it.
He also wanted to know what the rapeseed Yun'er was talking about looked like and whether it could produce oil like sesame and peanuts.
Now that the rapeseed seedlings were growing, Song Liyun was motivated. She first went to the garrison to ask for goods from the Di tribe.
Captain Luo had said before that she could use Di tribe items to pay off her debts.
This time, Wang Junxu took out a carpet, two cowhides, and a set of twelve ox horn cups for her to choose from.
The carpet was worth one hundred taels of silver, and the cowhide and ox-horn cup were worth a total of thirty taels.
Song Liyun was speechless. She only had more than twenty taels of silver in her account, and the garrison would not give it away for free.
She said in distress, "Uncle Wang, I haven't received the money yet. If I choose this, won't I have to owe the guards money?"
Wang Zhong ignored her complaints of poverty and sighed, caressing the hide. "The Wu Dynasty forbids the slaughter of cattle without cause. These two hides alone would be worth ten taels on the market. How about I give you five taels altogether?"
Of course that’s good!
But there are some things Song Liyun really can't understand.
"Since there are markets on both sides of the Wu Dynasty and the Dilu Grassland to trade goods, why don't the Zhenbei Army sell them directly in the markets? These are spoils of war. Why?"
She had thought about this question since she returned from Qili County.
It is indeed easy to resell it for money. Why don’t the Zhenbei Army do such an easy thing?
And the Wanchun Fur Store has been staying in Qili County for all these years and is willing to wait patiently. Why doesn’t it go directly to the grassland and Bu City to purchase goods?
Is it because of the monopoly of imperial merchants?
Wang Zhong smiled bitterly when he heard the question. He could not give any further explanation and could only say calmly, "There are military regulations that prohibit competing with the people for profit."
Why not sell it directly to the city? As a small military supply station, he really didn't know the answer.
He only knew that the port market in Hecheng was mainly operated and managed by three imperial merchants.
These three families are the Hua family, the Liu family and the Yang family. These three families can become imperial merchants because the people behind them are all people in the court.
The Zhenbei Army once exchanged furs for silver, but the imperial merchants reported it to the emperor, saying that the border army was colluding with foreign enemies.
The Marquis of Zhenbei also wrote a letter to defend himself, saying that these Di tribe goods were spoils of war, but he was then asked by the Ministry of Revenue to turn over the spoils of war to the national treasury.
The soldiers of the Zhenbei Army were not happy with this. They had fought for their lives in this bitter cold place, but had not gained anything.
So when there was a war, everyone would hide the spoils and sell them privately.
However, local government officials would stop and check cars at will, so small caravans dared not buy goods from the Zhenbei Army.
Anyone with a discerning eye could see that behind this blatant all-round blockade of the Zhenbei Army from the imperial court to the local authorities, there must be a powerful force exerting pressure.
Moreover, even the Marquis of Zhenbei could not resist.
There is no bulk sales channel, these things cannot be eaten, and even for personal use they cannot be used up, so they can be digested and processed internally, which is what the various garrisons are looking for.
When Song Liyun heard Wang Zhong say that the army should not compete with the people for profit, she was speechless. This reason was too good to be refuted.
This time she didn't choose a carpet, but only asked for cowhide and a horn cup.
You have to pay for the goods as soon as you get them, so it’s better to be cautious.
After all, this was only the first time they had dealt with Wanchun Fur Store. If the other party couldn't keep their promise, he would be at a loss if he took the carpet.
Now, compared to enjoying life and Song Zhenping's legs, money is more important.
(End of this chapter)
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