"This Li Xiao is so hateful, he has already been in league with the governor, and asked the official to pay 40,000 silver to ransom people, how can it be true!" After returning to his mansion, Liu Zeqing, who had an iron face, slammed his fist on the table, which shook the teacups on the table and turned over, and the tea flowed everywhere. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

"My lord, according to my opinion, the situation is unfavorable now, so my lord should bear with it and agree." During this time, Li Huajing, the military advisor who looked a lot haggard, said to him in a low voice.

"Humph! Endure and endure, is it tolerable or unbearable! If it weren't for your bad idea that day, Lao Tzu would have chopped that Li Xiao into meat sauce. Now you come to tell the official to be patient, just this breath, how can Lao Tzu swallow it! Liu Zeqing bounced up irritably from his seat and paced back and forth in the room.

"My lord, the matter has come to this, and we can only adapt to the situation. The governor Li Maofang had already been moved by Li Xiao's words, and he wanted to persuade him to issue a military order to gather the troops of the various guards, but he couldn't. Now that the elite of our army has been lost, and the morale is greatly depressed, how can we attack Li Xiao's solid and complete Chifeng Fort! My lord, the coming day is long, and there will definitely be a chance to eliminate Li Xiao in the future, but the current plan is to be patient for the time being. Li Huajing looked embarrassed, but he still had to persuade him.

Liu Zeqing paced in the room for a long time, finally stopped, and then looked up to the sky and sighed.

"Stop! Let you Li Huajing arrange people and bring the silver to ransom people. Liu Zeqing gritted his teeth, and said with a grim gaze: "This time, a certain family has admitted it, hmph, next time there is a chance, the official will cut off Li Xiao's dog head with his own hands!" ”

Three days later, Li Qianjing sent people to Chifeng Fortress and brought Li Xiao 40,000 taels of ransom silver. Li Xiao, who had received the money, smiled on his face, and then gave a quick order to release the captives, and asked the envoy to immediately bring back those dove-shaped captives, who were skeletal and depressed.

During this time, these captives could only eat one meal a day, which was also an expedient move taken by Li Xiao in order to prevent them from eating enough to make trouble, after all, there were too many prisoners, far exceeding the number of Li Xiao's soldiers, and it was not fun to make trouble.

The fine Cui Yu was also put back by Li Xiao. Li Xiao was not worried that he would be able to make waves again after he went back, after all, it was this person's realistic acting skills to save his life that made Zheng Longfang finally fooled, so that the whole army was destroyed. Li Xiao believes that after this person goes back, Liu Zeqing can spare this person's life, which is already a great grace.

Li Xiao was very happy in his heart, he secretly thought, with Liu Zeqing's 40,000 taels of ransom silver, he had completely built this Chifeng Fort, and not only did he not spend a penny, but he also earned nearly 20,000 taels. It seems that Liu Zeqing, the captain of the transport team, is really good to himself.

In the past few days, Li Xiao has been busy with two things.

The first thing was to train Tian Wei and Wang Yishou's newly recruited homeless soldiers.

This time, it took nearly a week, Tian Wei and Wang Yishou recruited a total of 1,020 qualified homeless soldiers from the entire Denglai area, but more than 200 more than Li Xiao's plan, and 2,350 family members.

With these recruits, Li Xiao eventually expanded his army to 80 Xuanhu heavy cavalry and 100 Flying Harrier light cavalry. There are 732 men in 6 shields, 1,220 in 10 spearmen, and the remaining 90 people are all used as reserve auxiliaries, which will be replenished as soon as the troops have casualties.

Originally, Li Xiao captured hundreds of war horses this time, and he wanted to vigorously expand the cavalry troops, but he did not expect that most of the displaced people recruited this time were from Henan and Shandong, and some were from Datong and Beizhili, most of them were local farmers and laborers, but there were very few homeless people who could ride horses. Because of the objective conditions, Li Xiao had to cancel the plan to expand the cavalry in large quantities, and finally only added more than 50 people to join the cavalry team.

Li Xiao secretly thought that maybe he would have to recruit cavalry in the future, or he would have to go to Liaodong to recruit displaced people.

With the expansion of the size of the troops, Li Xiaojun's establishment also began to be adjusted.

Li Xiaojun now has two new general divisions, each of which has a total of 3 teams of sentry shield soldiers, a total of 5 teams of sentry spearmen, 40 Xuanhu heavy cavalry, and 50 flying harriers.

Firearms units and sailors, due to their small numbers, are kept as separate units for ease of use and to form a joint force.

Tian Wei, the original captain of the Xuanhu Cavalry, was promoted to the chief of the first general, and the deputy chief of the first general was Mo Changrong, the former shield sentry commander.

Wang Yishou, the captain of the Flying Harrier, was promoted to the chief of General B, and the deputy chief of General B was Duan Shidi, the former spearman sentinel.

Li Xiao set a salary standard of 15 taels per month for the chief and 12 taels per month for the deputy chief. The monthly salary of the auxiliary soldiers and the security brigade is slightly lower than that of the soldiers, and the monthly salary is 1 tael.

After each person is promoted, the vacant positions will be replaced by suitable candidates arranged by Li Xiao.

Now the total number of Li Xiaojun is: 80 Xuanhu heavy cavalry, 100 Flying Harrier light cavalry. There were 732 shields, 1,220 spearmen, 150 firearms troops, 30 sailors, 95 auxiliaries, and 20 security brigades, for a total of 2,427 people.

It can be calculated that now in Li Xiaojun's army, in addition to the soldiers, plus the salaries of civilian personnel and craftsmen, the monthly salary is about 5,300 taels.

Let's calculate the food cost again, Daming one stone of rice and wheat is 188 catties, and the bran impurities are taken off, which is much less, and what can be eaten in the mouth is about 150 catties. According to the consumption of 2 catties of rice and 3 taels of meat per person a day, 1213 stones of rice grain without bran will be consumed every month. In addition, more than 500 craftsmen and more than 300 bandit laborers should be provided with food, and more than 100 civilian personnel in various departments should be provided, and nearly 475 stone of grain should be supplied every month. In this case, 1,688 stone of grain will be consumed every month.

Now that we are in the spring famine, the price of grain has risen sharply, and it has now risen to 3 taels and one stone, that is, the cost of food is 5,064 taels per month.

Now the price of pork in Shandong has also risen slightly, about 2.5 cents of silver per catty, and it can be calculated that the total amount of pork consumed per month is nearly 34,000 catties, and another 850 taels of silver are needed.

In addition, there are a total of nearly 560 war horses, according to a horse per day four catties of feed, eight catties of grass, each horse needs to consume about eight cents of silver bean fodder money per day, horse feed costs about 1,350 taels per month.

There are more than 4,950 family members in the fort, about 1,500 households, with a food subsidy of 0.5 taels of silver per household, plus the monthly preferential treatment and bereavement expenses of the wounded and battle-dead soldiers, the monthly food allowance is nearly 900 taels.

It can be calculated that now Li Xiao's entire army, the monthly supply of silver has reached nearly 13,500 taels of silver.

Now in the whole army, all the cotton armor captured this time has been used up, so Li Xiao only needs to provide the newly formed 3 teams of shield soldiers, 4 teams of spearmen, and the newly replenished cavalry armor and weapon costs. After calculation, it will cost nearly 20,000 taels to complete.

In this way, because of Liu Zeqing's 40,000 silver as a supplement, Li Xiaojun's remaining gold and silver money totaled as much as 450,000, but it could provide Li Xiao's entire army with more than two and a half years of expenses.

It's just that this seemingly sufficient amount of silver can't satisfy Li Xiao's ambitions.

He made up his mind that in the days to come, the Red Phoenix Fort would be expanded, the army would be expanded, and all kinds of factories would be built, so that the silver would be spent at an astonishing rate.

It can be seen that in this situation where money is like flowing water, Li Xiao must be prepared for danger in times of peace, and make plans and ways out in advance for his future.

Now Li Xiaojun's only income is commercial tax, and there are more than 30 shops outside the fort, with an average of 20 taels of commercial tax paid per month, a total of more than 600 taels.

This is tantamount to a drop in the bucket for Li Xiaojun's huge expenses.

So the second thing Li Xiao is doing now is to expand his financial resources again.

Li Xiao plans to use the existing horses to set up a carriage and horse dealership.

This can be regarded as the most realistic choice made by Li Xiao based on the current situation.

In Li Xiao's army, in addition to the existing cavalry war horses, there are more than 300 horses in an idle state, if you just eat forage in vain every day without any value, it is really a huge waste.

Li Xiao planned to prepare two horses for each cavalry to ensure that the cavalry could use them. In this way, more than 100 horses with poor qualifications or injured hooves can be selected as pullbacks for use in the carriage and horse dealership.

In the Ming Dynasty, the transportation industry has been very developed, there are ships in the south and horses in the north, and everywhere in the north is dominated by mules and horses, and there are foot lines in various cities and counties, with a large number of porters, the short-distance pure use of manpower to push, the foot force to contribute, the long-distance use mules and horses, the porter also acts as a coachman, helping to drive mules and horses and load and unload goods. It is said to be a mule and horse shop, but it does not rent mules and horses, but has porters to help carry goods and collect fees.

In this year, the legal standard was 100 streets worse than that of later generations, the local officials were insufficient, the three classes of the yamen and the idle were not enough, the main work was only used to collect taxes and maintain law and order, and the countryside was mostly clan autonomy, if it was during the Wanli period, the world was still peaceful, and the merchants were still safe, but now the world was in chaos, in order to ensure the smooth delivery of goods, this foot line came into being.

Most of the men who walked on the foot were mainly homeless people composed of bankrupt peasants, and there were also a small number of urban poor, most of whom were scum with poor conduct, and some of them were Lahu who had left the business, and these people were only trivial things when helping people to transport goods, blackmail and robbery also occurred from time to time, and it was not uncommon to even kill the owner of the goods when they were far away.

Because the quality of the porter is too poor, later merchants rarely hire the porter directly, but find a reliable footman, contact with the foothead, check the goods and give the foothead a large sum, the porter only develops a small pen, so that the transportation down, the loss is still inevitable, but it is much stronger than the loss of people and money.

At that time, as the saying goes, the car and boat shop should be killed if you are not guilty, but it actually makes sense.

The carriage and horse shop that Li Xiao wanted to establish was actually an improved version of the mule and horse shops that existed all over the Ming Dynasty.

Li Xiao's porters are all sturdy old men in his own family, which is completely different from those mules and horses who ask ruffians to be porters, and arrange their own soldiers to escort darts to make it a professional escort team that integrates car owners, foot walkers, and dart walkers, in addition to selling the items produced in Chifeng Castle to the outside world, and then specializing in some rich merchants to provide long-distance material delivery.

Due to the current rampant banditry in the Denglai area, the businessmen who went to Dengzhou to do business with Laizhou are all suffering from safety and security, and if someone can provide a reputable and reliable escort service, it will undoubtedly make the businessmen flock to it. And with its own formal, reputable car and horse dealership, after the gradual expansion of business in Shandong, the profits will be considerable, and can be sustained for a long time.

In addition to the establishment of a carriage and horse dealership, Li Xiao is now focusing on improving a supporting thing with the existing horses.

If he succeeds, it will be a major invention in this late Ming world.

This thing is the four **** carriages.

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