In the evening of the same day, the person in charge of the Chamber of Commerce came to Lin Wujun's mansion.

Lin Wujun stood outside the court to greet each other, without too many courtesy requirements, and said straightly: "The people of your caravan, rich in gold, are the kings of 'Su Feng', and we are the kings of real seals, and it is natural to be courteous." ”

The etiquette of the two sides is completely different, and the Mo family has been accused of "frugality and abolition of etiquette", and has always demanded equality and rejected any etiquette with different status.

Lin Wujun has a lot of dealings with the people of the Mo family, and he doesn't care about it, he is not a Confucian gentleman, just a feudal monarch.

After entering the inner room and retiring from others, Lin Wujun talked about the rice trade.

The person in charge of the caravan immediately showed an excited expression and said, "If this matter can be accomplished, it will be very advantageous. Tens of thousands of people built Lechang Gorge, and it was difficult to transport grain and grass. If a deal can be reached, it will be beneficial for both parties. ”

"When the Lechang Gorge is completed, Linwu is the place where Lingnan and Lingbei trade are handed over."

Lin Wujun asked tentatively: "Recently, the Yi people have not obeyed the kings of Zhuxia, and there have been many rebellions, or they have fled into the mountains, and plundered the village community from time to time. As a feudal king, I have the responsibility of guarding the land and the people, and I need some weapons. I wonder if this grain will be able to trade for muskets? ”

If the Mo family had the heart to come to Wu, Lin Wujun felt that it would be impossible for the Mo family to agree to this transaction.

The largest controlling person of the Nanhai Chamber of Commerce is the Mo family, and the decision-making power is also in the hands of the Mo family, not those businessmen who seek profit alone.

If it is a single profit-seeking merchant, let alone muskets, when Zhongshan became independent, the merchants of Wei did not always have a steady stream of loans to Zhongshan Jun, and by the way, they also invested in Zhongshan and provided a large number of weapons and food.

Just look at the individual attitude of the businessman, and you can't see anything.

Lin Wujun needed muskets, especially the attitude given by the Mo family that he was willing to continue selling muskets.

With the change of the mode of warfare, as well as the change of planting technology and the aggravation of exploitation, the original military system of selecting archers in the "village shooting" is no longer viable.

The cost of the crossbow is too high, the cycle is too long, and Lin Wujun needs a large number of muskets to maintain long-range projection troops.

In the past few years, he has purchased nearly 2,000 muskets from the Mo family, and in addition to his own use, he has also sold them to other feudal monarchs.

Because the musket cannot pass the Linwu Pass, smuggling is too risky, and Linwu Junzheng can make a profit by buying and reselling it himself.

Whether it was for one's own use or sold to other feudal lords, the musket was the most profitable.

When the people from the chamber of commerce in charge of this negotiation heard this, they agreed with all their mouths.

On the surface, he is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, but in fact he is a spy and is subordinate to the General Staff of Sishang.

There have been some discussions about the musket trade, but of course the discussion is no longer the idealistic "whether the sale of muskets will cause war to harm the world" twenty years ago; It's the utilitarian nature of "whether selling muskets to a potential enemy is not good for us."

It's a secret discussion, it's not public, and very few people know about it.

The secret inkman in charge of the negotiations didn't know either.

In fact, in that secret discussion, Shi Shi suggested that he sell it at will.

One is that the leaf spring quenching method of the flint gun is confidential, except for the Qin people's side, the rest of the countries do not have the ability to build leaf springs. Without a suitable leaf spring, a flint gun would not be possible, and the firing rate was too low, so it was better to use a fire rope.

Nowadays, Sishang is undergoing a large-scale redress, and those obsolete arquebuses are generally used in remote areas or distributed to the public for play.

But there are still a lot of them, and they can all be sold to other countries, not to mention the Chu State, which has the most tense relationship with the Mo family, as long as you give money, food, and deerskin saltpeter mercury, you can sell them.

The second is to say when it is appropriate that wars are not won by one or two weapons, and that the change of the entire military system required for the replacement of arquebuses requires the cooperation of cavalry, artillery, and armored spearmen, and that the chariot soldiers can only be in a subordinate position in large-scale battles, and it is not easy for the private soldiers of the feudal lords of various countries to use good muskets and formations.

The phalanx without artillery cover is fragile, no matter how good the discipline is, without the cover of artillery, it is in the position of being slaughtered, and the well-known bloody battle of the Hunhe River in later generations was lost by artillery bombardment.

Changes in the entire military system, training, and tactics are not something that can be mastered by those feudal lords for a while, especially under the system of integrating peasants and soldiers, which is not suitable for this mode of warfare.

The third is that all countries are changing the law, the royal power is concentrated, the elite army directly under the royal power has muskets, and those feudal monarchs are a great obstacle to the change of the law in various countries, if they are too weak, it is not conducive to the future plan, so not only to sell, but also to sell specially.

Under this premise, when it comes down to the Chamber of Commerce, it is to sell at will, and if it is sold, it is the people who use the weapons, and if there is no change under the feudal system, the people who use the weapons will also become the help of the righteousness of the world in the future.

Before the Chamber of Commerce negotiators came, they received only two orders: to buy grain and sell guns.

Now seeing that Lin Wujun proposed it himself, this ink man said without hesitation: "That is naturally possible." The price is according to the previous price, no more or less. As for gunpowder, it was still at the previous price, and in addition to gold, silver, copper and various goods, a certain amount of saltpeter was needed. ”

When Lin Wujun heard this, he was also relieved, knowing that if the Mo family continued to sell muskets to himself, it seemed that he had no intention of using force in the direction of Linwu.

If you think about it again, five years ago, in the Central Plains War, although Sishang gained the most and suffered the least damage, I am afraid that it could not support a large-scale war just four years later.

Thinking about it, it should also be to control the war within the territory of the Song State, and I am afraid that the Sishang Mo family also has some thoughts of meeting the alliance to solve the affairs of the Song State.

Since the Chamber of Commerce chose to sell it openly, Lin Wujun said, "This time, I want to buy three thousand." and 20,000 catties of gunpowder. ”

The number of 2,000 is neither too much nor too little, and 15,000 were sold to Song Guo last year; Sold to Zhongshan Guo also sold 10,000 pieces at one time, and the coal, iron and military industrial complex in Sishang has made a lot of money in recent years.

A large number of herbs, copper, gold, silver, mercury, and grain continue to run from the treasury of various countries to Sishang, with the increase of commodities, all countries have copper money panic, and even rumors say that Zhou Tianzi has melted Jiuding and minted money, but I don't know whether it is true or false.

Under the shortage of money, the precious metal smelting industry in various countries has developed by leaps and bounds, and the search for gold and silver has become a dream for many people, and some people even go to Juli to cross the sea to the south to find it.

A large number of precious metals are concentrated in Si, which also makes the paper money in Si strong, in addition to the small currency is still using copper, the large currency is replaced by paper money, and even in the eyes of the nobles of various countries has become a pearl of the currency.

Lin Wujun had some large banknotes in his hand, but the amount could not be too much.

If you want to buy so many muskets, you can't rely on food alone.

The Chamber of Commerce asked, "Muskets and gunpowder are not a problem. Trading words......"

Lin Wujun said with a smile: "The matter of the transaction, naturally you don't need to go through the Linwu Pass, I will send someone to get it, this is not in the way." ”

"Part of it is traded for grain, and part of it, I have conquered the people of those poor and withered places, and captured many people, isn't there a shortage of people in the South China Sea? You can sell these people for a thousand muskets. ”

At the current price, about two strong young people can be exchanged for a musket, there are no slaves on the Mo family's side, only long-term workers with nominal equality, after the localization of the South China Sea, the local people have been issued identity cards, given them national status and completed the land reform, liberated a large number of slaves and village serfs, and enriched the population of yeoman farmers.

However, with the support of the government and the efforts of the new people, there is a shortage of people in many places, and the cost of hiring workers has greatly increased.

In this case, the sinful trade naturally unfolds.

The feudal lords of some remote areas of the Chu State attacked those small settlements and captured the population; In the more remote areas south of the South China Sea, city-states and ethnic groups fought each other, capturing each other's people and selling; There are even people who take boats to some islands further south in the South China Sea to arrest people.

Relying on natural development, the development of the Lingnan region could not be completed until hundreds of years later, when the Chinese moved southward and the Tang and Song dynasties.

As a result of forced development, there is a shortage of people everywhere, and Sishang needs a very large population to enrich these areas with development potential, so that they can be rapidly transformed into Xia and Sishang.

There is a special department in Si that specializes in this trade, and once it arrives, it signs a long contract, and the work is carried out for a period of several years, and at the end of the contract, an identity card is issued and a small plot of land is distributed.

This unscrupulous and criminal development has led to the development of a large number of farms and farms in the South China Sea in just a few years.

A thousand muskets, converted into a young population of about two thousand to three thousand, were captured by Lin Wujun outside his jurisdiction.

Soon after the new conquest of Cangwu by the Chu State, many cities were scattered like stars along the river, and only within a hundred miles of the cities had effective rule.

The rest of the places are the places where the defeated Cangwu and other people hide and migrate, and Linwujun has his own army, which is specifically for this.

And Linwu is in an awkward position, there is not much benefit from opening up more land, and it needs to be guarded by people, and fleeing at every turn, under the feudal system, the little manpower that Linwu Jun can control is simply not enough to exercise effective jurisdiction, and selling is undoubtedly the best way to make profits.

When the people of the Chamber of Commerce heard this, they did not refuse. The most important trade in the South China Sea and its surroundings is raw materials, gold, silver, precious metals, and population.

Every person who has been trafficked can be converted into soldiers and laborers after a few years.

Lin Wujun arrested people locally, and it was easy for people to flee, and his management methods were too low, so it was better to sell them for money.

Sell it to Sishang and you can exchange it for weapons. Although the Chu people once arrogantly called me a barbarian, in fact they were still a part of Zhuxia, and they were crushed by the organization and productivity of the surrounding areas themselves, and the firearms sold in Sishang were even more powerful, and it was very profitable to capture people and slaves.