In the winter of Jiangdong, although there is no Jiangbei's snowy sky and frozen thousands of miles, the cold place is not much inferior, the lead clouds in the sky are low, and the freezing rain that condenses into ice slag is sprinkled down on the head and face, and the chill directly penetrates the clothes and bones.

In this kind of bad weather, people sit around the fireplace at home, and if the fire is not prosperous, it is still inevitable that the cold will invade, and if they have to trek on the road, it is a kind of hard torture.

But ordinary people are forced by their livelihoods, and how can they be qualified to be completely exempt from this kind of hard work. And it is precisely because of the difficult conditions that the harvest in this season is often much higher than in spring and autumn, so it is more regarded by some people as the focus of the year's livelihood.

At this moment, there is such a team in the countryside of Jurong, the size of the team is not too big or small, about hundreds of people, most of these people are in their prime, driving more than a dozen cattle and horses and five trucks full of goods.

The leader of the team is named Meng Zhi, who is between thirty-six and seventeen years old, and has accumulated rich life experience and has not shown obvious physical and energetic exhaustion.

Meng Zhi is a native of Wuxing Great Wall, originally a pottery craftsman from a wealthy family in the county, because of his exquisite skills and gradually won the attention of the main family, and later the main family built a workshop in Jiankang Dunan, and was sent to leave his hometown to serve as a steward in Dunan. The operation of the workshop was on track, and Meng Zhi was also given to the people because of these contributions, and became a free body.

Although he became a registered citizen, Meng Zhi did not leave the master's family, and changed from the original master and servant to a hired person, and accumulated a lot of floating wealth in a few years.

This year, the main family closed their workshop in Tunan and evacuated many of their belongings to the village.

After thinking about it for a long time, Meng Zhi decided not to return to his hometown with the main team, but stayed in Jiankang for a while, contacted some villagers with similar backgrounds to him, and organized such a small caravan.

The small people have their own way of survival, and the wealth owned by Meng Zhi is naturally not as good as some township tycoons who have been passed down for generations, but after several years of accumulation and this year's business income, they have also accumulated seventy or eighty thousand yuan.

In addition to leaving 10,000 yuan for personal collection, he purchased the rest of the money into goods.

Jiankang City is now prosperous in commerce, all kinds of goods from the north and south are flooded here, such as high-quality furs and medicinal materials in the north, including some metal utensils, which are extremely sought-after goods in the native area of Wuzhong, and there is no need to worry about no market.

Especially the cattle and horses in the team, although the price is not low in Jiankang, if it is transported to the township, the profit can be several times higher. Of course, the risk of such long-distance trafficking of live animals is also extremely high. Therefore, Meng Zhi was also cautious, and only bought five cows and two horses, which had already cost him nearly half of his savings. But if the venture is successful, his savings will increase by multipliers!

"In recent years, there have been many exemptions in the township, and the villagers have been naturalized and reclaimed, and the cattle power is scarce, and the best cultivated cattle are even worth as much as 20,000 yuan......

While driving the ox cart forward, Meng Zhi calculated in his heart that the five cows he chose were all thick and long-haired, which could withstand a long journey. The price of such cattle in the vicinity of Jiankang is only between four or five thousand yuan, on the one hand, because the industry and commerce around Gyeonggi are prosperous, and the cultivation and weaving are slightly inferior, and on the other hand, Jiangbei sells a large number of them to the south, which also greatly suppresses the price.

In recent years, Wuzhong has also prospered in business, and compared with it, the number of acres of land has gradually been surpassed, so many township sects are no longer willing to spend a lot of rice and grain to feed a large number of shady households, and it has become a trend to release and exempt.

And if these exempted shade households do not have the skills of the side, there is no doubt that cultivating and weaving is the most reliable and stable means of livelihood, so the demand for agricultural tools and livestock has also increased greatly.

Although the government does not promote the private buying and selling of cattle, it is also prohibitive, and can only be controlled by issuing rewards. If such a ploughing cattle are registered in the county government, they can get a subsidy of about 1,000 yuan, and if they are requisitioned by the government, there are also feed subsidies ranging from several hundred yuan per month. Or if you participate in the reclamation organized by the county government with cultivated cattle and labor, you can get tax exemption for several years for different acres.

Therefore, if Meng Zhi's five cultivated cattle can be successfully transported back to the township, whether they are kept for their own use or sold directly, the income will be extremely rich. Even if you don't support the way back to your hometown, you can barely recover more than half of the cost of cowhide, horns, including beef, etc., but the feed consumed on the way will be compensated.

Compared with these five cows, those two horses were not a good deal in Meng Zhi's opinion. The price of horses in Jiangdong has always been extremely high, even if these two horses are very lacking in both coat color and physique, but together they cost Meng Zhi more than 15,000 yuan.

And once they set foot on the return journey, the two horses were in frequent condition, and if it weren't for the veterinarian in the team to take care of them along the way, I am afraid that they would have died of exhaustion and illness long ago. But even so, just in order to take care of these two horses, Meng Zhi calculated in his heart that the cost of hitchhiking along the way would be more than 5,000 yuan, and the cost of one horse in the township would be as high as 10,000 yuan, which could still be successfully transported back to the township.

"Still too presumptuous......"

Thinking of this, Meng Zhi rubbed his eyebrows wistfully, he was also tempted by the extremely high price of horses in Wuxiang, you must know that in Wuzhong, all horses are between three and fifty thousand yuan. Originally, he felt that it was worth taking a risk, but he still underestimated the delicacy of the horses and the difficulty of transportation, and now it seems that the capital of nearly 20,000 yuan is difficult to recover.

20,000 yuan is already the income of Meng Zhi after working in Dunan and diligently deducting all expenses for a whole year, how can he not feel heartbroken.

However, despite the shadow of these two horses, the overall prospects for this trip home are still good.

Not to mention the cattle that can get high returns, the other goods of more than 40,000 yuan can basically get nearly double the profit after returning to the township. In this way, the floating wealth in his hand far exceeded 100,000 yuan, and part of this money, Meng Zhi planned to buy his wife and children from the master's family, so that he had a foundation for self-reliance.

As the shadow of the family, Meng Zhi has a good relationship with the main family, and the main family Ah Lang told him before leaving the capital that as long as he pays 20,000 yuan, their whole family can be exempted.

This amount of money is not the unscrupulous exploitation of the main family, Meng Zhi himself is a skilled potter, his wife and daughter are weavers in the village, and the eldest son works in the paper mill. Except for a young son who is about to turn ten years old, the rest of the family of five have a skill, which is all due to the cultivation of the main family, not to mention that if there is no main family Zhang Luo, Meng Zhi is not even capable of marrying a wife and having children by himself.

Therefore, the 20,000 yuan is not so much a ransom money, but a symbol of the main family's care, of course, this is also because Meng Zhi has been the reward for the hard work and responsibility of the main family all these years.

"20,000 yuan to redeem the buyer, and 30,000 yuan to the eldest man to marry. The oxen should be left behind and live on their own, and it is not possible to live without acres of land. Take out another 50,000 yuan to set up a porcelain kiln with the master's family, and you won't have to ......run around in the future."

Thinking of his return to his hometown this time, Meng Zhi couldn't help but show a thick smile on his face, but his face was frozen because of the cold wind, which made this smile a little awkward: "I haven't returned home for a few years, and I don't know if Xiaolang still knows his grandfather?" When I left home, the kid didn't walk very steadily, and without the discipline of his grandfather, he didn't know what he had become of stubbornness...... Remember to ask Lord Lang to come forward and ask, can you send Xiao Lang to study in the Shen family's Longxi Art Hall? If we can do this, the whole family will have no sorrows in the future......"

The team was large and had a lot of goods, so the speed of travel was not fast. In winter, the days are short, every day only travel thirty or fifty miles, and when you enter Maoshan Mountain, the road becomes rugged, and the journey will be more difficult, if you encounter wind and rain again, you will not be able to return to the city of Changcheng for more than 20 days.

Therefore, during the trip, there were many curses, and the people who cursed were high-ranking officials in Taichung who they had never seen at all.

In fact, the trade route of Jurong and Yixing is rarely taken, because Maoshan is riddled in it, the road is rugged, and the wilderness is desolate in winter, not only is it not easy to replenish, but it is even possible to encounter fierce beasts such as tigers and wolves foraging in winter, and even bandits may also encounter.

In the past, the merchants of Wu people, large and small, mainly followed the broken hill to desecrate the capital, and then went south along the canal through Wu County, even if they did not take the waterway, the road was smooth and smooth, and they could suffer less danger and hardship.

This trade route, in previous years, was mostly taken care of by Wu officials, and in fact, it was also opened up by the Wu people, and it will definitely take care of the villagers. However, with the turmoil in Gyeonggi and the expulsion of a large number of Wu officials, the overseas Chinese took over these trade routes, and the convenience of the past was no longer there, and then the proportion of commercial taxes was increased on a large scale.

Meng Zhi and other businessmen are themselves the bottom of society, if they are exploited along the way, most of the gains from doing business will be stripped away, and if they encounter any risks, they may even lose their money. Therefore, even if it is dangerous, for the sake of one's own property, one can only walk the trail of Maoshan Mountain.

Most of their property is concentrated in these goods, and it is naturally impossible to spend a huge amount of money to hire powerful escorts. In the face of unknown risks, the only guarantee is a simple longbow made of bamboo canes and sticks inlaid with iron blocks and a few pieces of wood and bamboo strips.

On this day, the team walked through a low-lying dry reed pond, and the low ridge of Maoshan Mountain in the distance was already vaguely visible. Although it was still early, I didn't know if there was a suitable shelter for the road ahead, so Meng Zhi decided to stay here today after checking the terrain a little.

After a few months of running-in, the team gradually became organized, some of them gathered and piled up goods, and the other part of them dug up the earth, and Meng Zhi distributed the bow and staff, and took a dozen Ding Zhuang who still had the strength to sweep to the left, on the one hand, to make sure that the environment was safe, and on the other hand, to see if they could hunt some game and eat.

However, they had not walked long when they suddenly saw a large number of birds hovering low on the opposite side of the reed pond, either from wild beasts or with a large contingent of people wandering in the left and near. In either case, there is no doubt that it is extremely dangerous.

Therefore, on the one hand, Meng Zhi restrained the team to prepare for contingencies, and on the other hand, he sent people back to report the news, hoping that the team would not make a noise, in order to hide through the messy reeds.

However, soon, a shrill bamboo whistle suddenly sounded not far from the left front, and then a figure flashed in the field of vision of Meng Zhi and the others, quickly retreating and disappearing into the reeds.

It's been discovered!

Seeing this scene, Meng Zhi's heart sank, and he said hurriedly: "Retreat, retreat!" Return to your accommodation! ”