On May 8th, Salt Pan No. 1 can start boiling salt again. This is also the day when Salt Pan No. 4 begins to receive salt water for use.

The No. 5 new salt field is the last new salt field on the southernmost side of the Salt Fort. Because there are many rocks there, it is difficult to dig out an 80-acre salt field. However, the Salt Fort has been basically completed by now. Su Ming has asked carpenters to build the inside of the fort.

He made furniture for the room and sent all the extra workers from building the fort to the No. 5 new salt field construction site.

In the past few days, people have come to Zayan Fort to cause trouble. Su Zhe didn't give them a good look. He chased them with a hammer and beat the troublemaker with bruises and swollen faces before sending them back. Zayan Fort didn't have any overreaction.

On May 9th, the salt from the new salt field was finished cooking, and the salt from the second new salt field continued to be cooked. Just when Su Ming was anxiously waiting for the arrival of the Fujian caravan, his eldest brother got news from Jinshanwei Town.

Wang Zhi's fleet has arrived at Hangzhou Bay. They arrived at Hangzhou Bay on May 7th and stayed for three days. Today they will continue their journey north and are expected to arrive at Bishui Bay on the 12th. They will stay at Bishui Bay for one day.

Wang Zhi is the largest force in Fujian. Since the 15th year of Jiajing, he has relied on small boats to do business along the coast. Now he is the largest maritime merchant (or pirate) in the Ming Dynasty. The entire southern Fujian is basically under the control of Wang Zhi, and many officials of the Ming Dynasty are under his control.

Important ministers and even the generals of the Ming Navy had close contacts with him.

Every year, Wang Zhi's fleet goes north along the coast, which is considered a big event along the entire eastern coast of the Ming Dynasty. The navy of the Ming Dynasty has to give way when it sees it, because every year Wang Zhi's fleet exceeds a thousand ships, and there are many forces in the fleet, many of which are along the coast.

A wealthy family.

The navy of the Ming Dynasty did not dare to offend these aristocratic families, so at this time they basically hid in the harbor and did not come out. Others saw that maritime transportation was profitable, and if they had a little ability, they wanted to follow suit.

There is a saying along the coast that as long as you follow the fleet northward and don't die, your assets will increase tenfold when you return. The profits will be so huge that it makes all the families so crazy.

Even if you have no capital, you can get at least ten cars of money for a trip with the fleet. In this way, many ordinary people along the coasts of Fujian, Guangdong, and Zhejiang are willing to follow these fleets to the north, or work as escort sailors.

Wang Zhi is the founder of the entire fleet. It is said that he has hundreds of ships and nearly 10,000 people under his crew to protect him. Many people in southern Fujian have made a fortune with him, and Fujian, which has many mountains and little food, mostly has food.

It's all provided by Wang Zhi.

In the eyes of Emperor Jiajing, Wang Zhi was probably the biggest bandit in the world, even more despicable than Xu Dong, the pirate king recognized by the Ming Dynasty. Xu Dong occupied many islands in Hangzhou Bay, and even Chaolie Port, the largest port in the Ming Dynasty, was under his control.

In the eyes of officials from various aristocratic families along the coast of the Ming Dynasty, Wang Zhi's importance is self-evident. Although his men often land to kill and plunder coastal guard posts, as long as they don't rob him, it has nothing to do with him.

, Although Wang Zhi is registered with the imperial court, he does not know how to deal with the goods that he embezzles and smuggles every year.

The arrival time of Wang Zhi's merchant ship has been determined. Su Ming and his elder brother began to discuss at home how many people they should bring to trade at that time. The main reason why Wang Zhi was able to become so powerful was because he did not ask for anything when trading with anyone.

The place where he comes from, and the price is reasonable, all the big and small forces are treated the same, which makes everyone willing to trade with him.

The fleet that followed Wang Zhi to the north also followed his rules and traded according to the marked price. If someone did not obey, then Wang Zhi had many ways to make the other party disappear in this vast ocean, and he was in the Liaodong Peninsula, the Japanese Kingdom, and the Hercynian Jurchen tribe.

They all have certain forces, especially in the Japanese country. The forces he formed are very large in the entire Japanese country. Even the Ming Dynasty court unanimously believed that the attacks by Japanese pirates along the coast were caused by Wang Zhi's guidance and instigation.

Su Ming learned about Wang Zhi from his eldest brother and everyone in Erweibao, and knew that he was a more legendary person than Xu Dong. This time he must see Wang Zhi's merchant ship. If he had the opportunity to take 34411 Haihai by himself,

The police boat is activated, and he will probably march towards the sea.

The eldest brother Su Ren prepared all six carriages in the fort. In addition, he collected more than 30 cock carriages and more than 100 poles from inside and outside the fort, all in preparation for this transaction.

At dusk on May 11th, Su Ren, Su Ming, and Su Qingping led more than 80 soldiers and more than 200 young men to set out in the dark, quietly leaving Erwei Fort with a day's worth of dry food and more than 80 stones of snowflakes and salt.

This time they brought out almost all the combat forces in the fort, leaving only Cao Chunrui and ten soldiers from the First Banner to guard the Erwei Fort. They had redeployed more than half of the workers in the salt field.

Bishui Bay is only 40 miles away from Erwei Fort. It only took them more than an hour to reach their destination. Su Ming thought they had arrived very early, but it turned out that there were motorcades waiting behind the bamboo forest, rocks, and woods in Bishui Bay.

, some of their teams are very large, and some are just three or five people carrying poles.

Su Ming found that most of these people covered their faces with cloth, and only a small number of people had their faces uncovered.

"Put this on! If someone tells us about our transactions with maritime merchants, there may be some trouble. Although most of the people who can come here are slaves of officials from aristocratic families, it's better to be careful.

." Su Ren said to Su Ming.

"Brother, do you know what they are trading here? Does this merchant ship accept everything?" Su Ming pointed to a convoy not far away, who was also wearing a face cloth.

"In the Jiangnan coastal area, the fleet mainly purchases salt, cloth, silk, ceramics, tea, sugar and other goods. Wang Zhi basically controls more than 30% of the private salt in Jiangnan. The major forces here are basically focused on salt, cloth

, silk and tea are the four major industries.

In addition, there are some forces who take advantage of the opportunity to buy something, or sell the food, herbs, etc. accumulated at home to merchant ships. Generally, merchant ships can give good prices.

Look at that group of people. If I'm not mistaken, they are the stewards who command Master Lao, who is the fourth grade official. He controls most of the cloth and porcelain business in Jinshanwei Town.

If you meet an acquaintance here, you'd better keep quiet and just pretend you haven't seen him before. When the fleet arrives, we'll trade quickly and exchange things and go home quickly." Su Ren told Su Ming the rules of trading here.

"Brother, can we trade with them now? I saw someone just came here with a big bag of grain. We need to buy grain from the fleet later, so we might as well buy it now and transport it back. I'll definitely be able to get it back when we come back."

I have time to sell salt." Su Ming said.

"This is possible... but the leaders who can come here are more or less well-known, and they don't want others to know their identities. It might not be good for us to go up hastily. It would be best to have an intermediary, but we can't find one.

A weighty middleman." Su Ren thought for a moment and said.

"It's just an ordinary transaction, no matter what the weight is. I rarely show up in Jinshanwei or even in the entire Songjiang Prefecture. Who can know me.

I'll take Tiezhu and Thirteenth Brother over to see if they are willing to trade, let's buy food first," Su Ming said.

Su Ren thought for a while and nodded. Although Erwei Fort seems to be in good supply now, the remaining 300 shi of food is not much. At the end of this month, Fenglingdu said it would deliver food, but who knows how much it can deliver.

Nowadays, Erweibao’s food consumption is quite large.

Su Ming took Su Zhe and Tiezhu to the front of a convoy carrying food not far away. This convoy had a total of 15 carriages and was escorted by more than 20 people. Su Ming saw that these people were all dark-skinned.

Everyone was holding weapons. Seeing Su Ming and others arriving, everyone looked very vigilant. They were probably bandits from some mountain top.

"Brother, which one of you is in charge? Can these grains be sold?" Su Ming stepped forward and said directly.

"Of course. Do you want to buy food? What's the deal?" The leader of the convoy must have good muscles and good martial arts. He came to Su Ming and whispered.

"We have snowflake salt here, can you replace it?" Su Ming asked.

"Snowflake salt? How's the quality?" The team leader seemed very interested.

Tie Zhu took out a paper bag from his pocket and handed it to the other party. The leader opened it and looked at it carefully under the oil lamp for a long time. He also pinched some salt and put it in his mouth to taste it.

"The salt is fine snowflake salt. If your goods are like this, we are willing to trade.

We have 37 shi of fine grains and 152 shi of coarse grains here, how do you plan to trade them?" asked the grain seller.

"We'll give you 90 cents per stone for fine grains, and 70 cents for coarse grains! I'll give you 13 kilograms of snowflake salt in exchange, what do you think?" After saying this, Su Ming felt a little uncomfortable.

The other party secretly transported fifteen cartloads of grain here, but he could exchange it for only a dozen kilograms of salt. This can only mean that the world's productivity is too low and the gap between rich and poor is too large, making the price of salt too high.

, and snowflake salt is only eaten by the royal family and the nobles.

The grain seller thought about it and felt that the price was indeed not low. If he sold the snowflake salt, it would definitely be more than what he sold for the grain. Moreover, the salt was only so small, and he could easily sell it when the fleet arrived.

, the rest of my group has such a big goal here.

"Let's add 8 more taels! It's not easy for us to transport so much grain." The leader of the grain transport thought for a moment and said.

"Okay!" Su Ming didn't say anything about making friends. People who came here didn't want others to recognize him. After this business was done, they would pretend they had never met him before.

Su Ming asked Su Zhe to go back and weigh thirteen and a half kilograms of snowflake salt, and handed it to the grain seller. The other party carefully checked the quality of the salt, then took out a scale and weighed it again. When he saw that there was no problem, he

Have someone put away the salt.

"The salt is okay, do you want to check this grain? We put the grain here?" asked the leader of the grain seller.

"Put the grain beside the southern road! I'll have someone check the grain," Su Ming said.

Su Ming watched a group of men moving the grain to the road. The elder brother sent someone to check the grain. When he saw that there was no problem with the grain, the grain seller took the people away. Su Qingping came over with the convoy. There were more than 200 people in Erweibao or

It was pulled by a horse-drawn carriage, a rooster cart, or a carrying pole.

After loading the food, we headed south towards Erwei Fort.
Chapter completed!