Although it is no coincidence that the book is not written, but the bad luck of the maritime merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is so dense and interlocking, it is obvious that it will not be simply unlucky, but Jinghua is deliberately targeting them.

These sea merchants themselves are not good men and women, so they naturally noticed that something was wrong, so they connected them privately, and finally decided to go to Taicang for a meeting.

The reason why I went to Taicang for a meeting was mainly because of Wang Xijue's relationship. Wang Xijue is the richest man in Suzhou, as long as the Wei Mansion in Nanjing does not come out to compete for fame, then he is likely to be the richest man in the southeast, a proper Jiangnan business road leader-level figure.

However, this is not the main reason why Jiangsu, Zhejiang and maritime merchants went to Taicang Prefecture for a meeting, the bigger reason is that Wang Xijue himself is still in a state of worry, and he really can't leave his hometown at this time - this kind of behavior is disastrous for his reputation as filial piety in the world, so he has to let others accommodate him.

However, as soon as the maritime merchants arrived in Taicang, a big news came: although Shen Shixing's messenger arrived late, he finally arrived, and brought Jinghua's "declaration of war".

After an uproar, the maritime merchants split into two factions.

Most of the maritime merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang were indignant at Jinghua's arrogance, and they shouted to make Jinghua look good. The mainstream saying is: Gao Qiuzhen dares to risk the world's disapproval with his blinker's body, this is the way to death, and we will correct the justice of the world this time, and punish this fang!

To put it mildly, Gao Longwen's move is really unwise, but I am afraid that there are villains lobbying for it. However, how can we, such humble gentlemen, follow the actions of that horseman, shouting and shouting and killing at every turn? It is better to jointly write to Bai Yulou first, so that Gao Longwen knows the stakes, so that he can change his mind and get the best of both worlds.

It's just that behind these two factions, there are still some people who either support the punishment faction or support the negotiation faction, but in their hearts they have already retreated, feeling that they can't fight Jinghua at all, so it is better to surrender earlier, and simply fulfill their pragmatic calculations.

This last type of person is actually not stupid, nor is he born soft, but their business is really inseparable from Jinghua.

Not all maritime merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang made a living by selling silk, and many people engaged in business that needed to take goods from other regions. For example, a large part of porcelain needs to be transported from Jingdezhen, and the overlord of the Yangtze River shipping is undoubtedly Jinghua.

Using Jinghua's inland river ships to transport materials, not only the ships are excellent, the transportation price fluctuations are small, but also Jinghua's face is big enough, and no one will dare to set up customs cards for it along the line, which is far from being matched by other ships.

Even more than Jingdezhen's porcelain, Jinghua's own Yu porcelain (Jun porcelain, avoiding Zhu Yijun) is also a popular good product that is sought after in the sky, which makes porcelain merchants dare to easily tear their faces with Jinghua?

What about righteous indignation, is there really such a great determination, because he is angry for a while, he dares to say that Lao Tzu will not eat this mouthful?

Not to mention that after the imperial court carried out the parallel transportation of water and sea, once something happened to the Yellow River, there were still many people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang who engaged in the sale of grain, and the agriculture in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is now actually dominated by the cultivation of cash crops, and most of the grain has to be transported from the Huguang area.

This brings us back to the question of the Yangtze River waterway, once Jinghua does not supply, what will they ship? Transporting sand to Yanjing, inserting the label to sell the first to give the head?

So in this way, in fact, only the silk merchants are "not afraid of big things", because Jinghua has not been involved in the silk industry at least now - in fact, there are also yes, but Jinghua is made of Liaodong Tussah silk, the product grades of the two sides are different, the buyers are different, and there is no direct competition with them.

In this way, the people present said that the public was reasonable, and the mother-in-law said that the mother-in-law was reasonable, which made Wang Xijue, the landlord, like a fight.

Of course, Wang Xijue himself is a hardliner, he is the richest man in Suzhou, and he is the overlord of the Ming Su Silk and Suzhou embroidery industries, and he doesn't need to look at Gao Pragmatic to eat.

It's just that his identity severely limits him, making it impossible for him to express his will clearly.

First, as the convener of this meeting, he must take care of all aspects, and he cannot just express his mood based on his own momentary mood.

Second, he is different from Gao Pragmatism, as a representative of the school of Jingshi Shixue, Gao Shishi usually dares to show the fact that he is rich, and even regards making money as a means to practice his theory of Jingshi Shixue.

But he Wang Xijue is a big man in psychology, and he has said before that psychology belongs to "moral practice", and the focus is on morality, so he has always shown an image of treating money as dung. If he immediately became angry because of Jinghua's current approach, and wanted to fight with him violently, the image that he had worked hard to build up for many years would be completely ruined.

It can be seen that reputation is sometimes a double-edged sword, and Gao Pragmatic is occasionally forced by it, not to mention Wang Xijue's identity?

In addition, Wang Xijue now knows that his way back to the dynasty has been almost blocked by Gao Pragmatic, and he secretly hates Gao Pragmatic.

Therefore, Wang Xijue in this meeting was so aggrieved that he wanted to beat people, and he obviously wanted to have a general decisive battle with Jinghua, but he still had to say extremely tactful, extremely mellow, and extremely "take into account the overall situation".

However, Wang Xijue is Wang Xijue in the end, he knows that at this time, the internal contradictions must not be intensified, and he can only unite people as much as possible to form an atmosphere of common hatred and hatred, so that he can have capital and high pragmatism to compete. Otherwise, the silk maritime merchants and other maritime merchants will not be able to negotiate and scatter directly, and when the time comes, the silk alone will definitely not be able to fight Jinghua.

So he first advised everyone to calm down, and rest at his place for a day, think about the stakes, and wait for everyone to discuss it tomorrow.

Generally speaking, it's not a good idea for him as a hardliner. If Wang Xijue wants more people to agree to "declare war" on Jinghua, then he should take advantage of the fact that many people are carried away by anger today, and it is even better to make a vote, make a joint letter and something like that, and there is no way to deny it in black and white, so he can only follow suit.

But Wang Xijue clearly has his considerations.

He is not simply the richest man in Suzhou, he is a scholar and a prominent minister of the imperial court, and he is a very promising person to enter the cabinet in terms of fame, qualifications, and connections.

For such a person, although money cannot be said to be dispensable, at least its importance is certainly not as important as the prospect of entering the cabinet.

Wang Xijue was born in the Taiyuan Wang family, one of the top wealthy families in Chinese history that has been inherited for thousands of years, and his ancestors abandoned the official and fled to Jiangnan in the "Red Turban Uprising" at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.

Wang Xijue's grandfather Wang Yong was good at management and became a generation of super-wealthy, and in his later years, he became the richest man in Suzhou. His father, Wang Mengxiang, was a talented man in his early years, and he was a prisoner in the South Prison (the South Prison is the Nanjing Guozi Prison). However, because of a lawsuit dispute, he was forced to abandon Confucianism to run a business and run a family business, but it also made Wang Mengxiang realize that it was not enough to be rich in the Ming Dynasty, and the importance of officialdom was even more important than being rich, so he was determined to train his two sons to become talents.

This kind of thinking seriously affected Wang Xijue in his childhood and youth, so much so that he behaved like "money like dung" since he was a child. At that time, there were two brothers in the Wang clan who were fighting for family property, and one of them quietly wrapped a red envelope to Wang Xijue in order to obtain the support of Wang Mengxiang, the head of the family, and asked Wang Xijue to intercede on his behalf.

As a result, Wang Xijue was furious, threw the bag of silver into the river in public, and scolded the cousin: "You dare to look down on me? "—It means that how can I, Wang Xijue, take money seriously.

Not only is his character excellent, Wang Xijue's ability to read is even better, he lived up to the hopes of his father, and ranked first in the 41st year of Jiajing for Huiyuan, and ranked second in the court examination, second only to Shen Shixing - and Wang Xijue himself was not very satisfied with this, because he felt that he was lagging behind Shen Shixing because his appearance was not as good as the latter - He Qiaoyuan, a historian of the late Ming Dynasty, a Nanjing household of the Chongzhen Dynasty Administration, and a scholar of the Ministry of Industry, described Wang Xijue as "red-eyed and yellow-bearded, sick crane and thin turtle" in "Praise of Wang Wensu Gongxiang".

Crane and turtle were originally compliments, but illness and sickness are obviously not counted, this is still a compliment, it can be seen that Wang Xijue's appearance is probably too "clear", and the red eyes and yellow beard are ...... This is even more unusual.

Therefore, Wang Xijue was not even too convinced by Shen Shixing's knowledge, and thought that he was the real pillar of the dynasty.

Such a person, what he really wants is obviously to be an official residence and dominate the world, so as to revive the reputation of the Taiyuan Wang family, and everything else is a trivial matter.

Therefore, he advised the maritime merchants to rest for one night, so that they would not be provoked by others in the future. But at the same time, Wang Xijue didn't really plan to let them admit honestly, and go back to their respective homes and find their mothers early tomorrow morning, and they were made into this by Jinghua without saying a word.

He first quietly invited the silk merchants to his backyard for discussion, and after sending them away, he invited several large merchants involved in shipbuilding, and finally invited porcelain merchants and grain merchants related to the Yangtze River waterway.

A total of several groups of people were invited, and the discussion was not concluded until the time had passed.

In the early morning of the next day, Wang Xijue, dressed in filial piety clothes, attended and presided over the maritime conference again.

Due to yesterday's night talk, most people are relatively silent today, only a group of businessmen who really can't decouple from Jinghua are still arguing that Jinghua is invincible, it is better to simply "surrender and lose half", so as not to really provoke Jinghua, and everyone will have no good fruit to eat at that time. If nothing else, without Jinghua's two-ocean fleet taking turns to escort it, how would this business go to sea would be done?

Go to Japan, Japan has a bunch of pirates, and even some daimyo are princes during the day, and they become pirates at night. These people are not Wang Zhi, the king of the Pure Sea back then, but they don't have the ability to deter those big names. On the contrary, the only one who can deter them now is the pragmatic Jinghua.

If you can't go to Japan, let alone Nanyang. After the Minhai pirate group was defeated by Jinghua two years ago, although most of them were dismissed by Jinghua, a small number of them were absorbed, but there are still many people scattered around, and now they are all sporadic pirates.

Jinghua can ignore these pirates, because Jinghua is accustomed to forming large formations to dispatch to facilitate escorts, and the formation of dozens of sea-going ships at every turn is not at all coveted by those scattered pirates.

But now that Jinghua doesn't take them to play, what should they do?

What's more, it is not only the pirates of the Fujian Sea that you have to face in the South Sea, but also the coastal areas of Guangdong, Luzon, and even more in the entire Nanyang region. In addition to pirates, the Fanmen (Europeans) also often robbed passing merchant ships - who doesn't know the style of these colonists? It's all easy to rob, and it's hard to grab to do business honestly.

Wang Xijue listened to them calmly, then looked around and asked, "If you still have any doubts, you might as well tell me them one by one." ”

The courage of the court officials is different, and they have the posture of receiving the petitioners.

But this is Daming, everyone really eats this set. So a few more maritime merchants raised some small questions with more details, Wang Xijue bowed his head lightly, listened with a smile, and then slowly stood up.

Wang Xijue is not tall, and even looks a little thin, but his aura is very sufficient, his hands are slightly raised, and then he gently presses down, and everyone quiets down, listening to him with bated breath.

"What you are worried about, Xijue has considered last night." He stretched out his hand and gestured to a few people in the audience, and said: "Wang, Xu, Chen, Zhang and other seven family heads have reached an agreement last night that they will jointly establish a shipyard to build a batch of inland river ships as soon as possible to transport goods from all over the river for you and get rid of your dependence on Jinghua." ”

This news is quite shocking, but the strength of the seven is indeed not small, even if it cannot be compared with the Jinghua Shipyard, which has already won the king of shipbuilding, but only for Jiangsu and Zhejiang maritime merchants, it seems that it can still be expected.

It's just that this is not enough, and someone asked: "The inland river boat, the seven families built it themselves, but the big sea ship is not so easy, right?" It's not that the Seven Masters can't build a sea ship, after all, this craft is not something that is only said to be learned today, but what about the muskets and artillery on the sea ship? Jing Shigong (Wang Xijue, Jing Shi) should not say that the seven families still plan to create their own musket factory and an artillery factory, right? It's not like shipbuilding, none of us have ever done it. ”

Wang Xijue had already expected it, and said with a smile: "Brother Peng is very worried, none of the seven companies including me can immediately build a musket factory and an artillery factory, but this musket and artillery may not be available only to Jinghua - Wang has his own means to discipline your future sea ships from being out of artillery." I don't know what Wang said, Brother Peng is credible? ”

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PS:Although I ended the chapter of the mall in two chapters.,But from the plot point of view, it's obviously not finished yet.,It's a blank space here.,I'll pick it up and interject it when things get important after a while.,Uh...... The main thing is to avoid getting too much ink here.