The garrison is ventilated on all sides, and Zhangjiakou in November is already cold and windy. Several people standing on the garrison, all wearing helmets and armor, couldn't help but shiver when they were blown by the cold wind.

Lin Dong of the Jinyi Guards weighed the skin in his hand unhurriedly, and said slowly: "How many times has he come out for the forbidden caravan?" ”

Xiaoqi Wang Hu lowered his head and replied cautiously: "Since the humble position was transferred to Yuanbao, there have been a total of 11 times, of which 7 times were the appearance of Cao Linghu, the deputy next to him, and only 4 times he himself appeared. ”

Lin Dong said with some mockery: "This Yuanbao general relies on his uncle is Dong Jishu, the chief soldier of Xuanhua, and he really regards Yuanbao as his own one-third of an acre.

This small realm gate has become a sieve, what else can't be transported by these profiteers? I really don't know, they don't know whose officials they are.

Which business is this caravan today? ”

Lin Dong was still complaining about something, but he quickly came to his senses and changed the topic stiffly.

Wang Hu immediately replied: "According to the lowly inquiry, it was the Fan family firm that went out of the fortress more than half a year ago and walked the caravan of Kulun. However, he inspected a few truckloads of leather goods, most of which were high-quality leather goods such as mink foxes, and they didn't look like they were from Cullen.

Moreover, the merchants who had returned from outside the Saiwai had said that the Chahar people had moved westward, and the trade route to Kulen had been completely blocked, but the trade route to the east was barely feasible.

Therefore, I thought that the Fan family caravan did not go to Kulun, but seemed to go to the east. They were so nervous that they didn't let me wait for the search, and they even invited General Dong out so quickly, thinking that this caravan was carrying some prohibited goods. It is estimated that there are quite a few of them. ”

After Lin Dong listened, he suddenly threw the leather bag in his hand into his arms, and then said coldly: "Good job, just keep these things in mind now, no one is allowed to act rashly without the order of an adult." As for the goods, divide them according to the old rules. ”

Wang Hu agreed, and then walked backwards out of the room on the upper floor. And after a quarter of an hour, Lin Dong also left the garrison with his entourage. As for the castle in Laiyuan, after the noise of the Fan family's caravan passing by, the former calm was restored again.

When Fan Yongdou nervously watched his caravan out of the south gate of the Far Castle, his heart finally let go.

Fan Yongdou exchanged a few words with the general who came to see him off, hinting that there would be a heavy thank you after going back, and the general returned to the fort with a few personal soldiers with satisfaction.

When Fan Yongdou rushed back to the tail of his caravan, Fan Wencheng, who was deliberately left behind, took Ma Guozhu to find him.

"Fan Changxin, what's going on? Didn't you say that in this Zhangjiakou, your Fan family joined forces with the other seven firms, so there would be no problem that would make it difficult for you to get you? How can even a small gatekeeper stop a caravan under your firm's name?

Could it be that all the words you said in front of the Great Khan were big words? Do you know that you almost ruined the Great Khan's big thing? Ma Guozhu was shocked, and after seeing Fan Yongdou return, he immediately lowered his voice and reprimanded him.

Fan Wencheng was not so eager, but he also said with a straight face: "This is not the place to speak, when we settle down, Fan Dongjia, you really want to give us an explanation." We don't want to lose our heads for some reason because of your problems. ”

Regarding the stern questioning of these two henchmen of the Houjin Great Khan, Fan Wencheng still had a trace of humility and arrogance in front of the general who came to Yuanbao just now, but he was careful to accompany the smiling face, bent on calming the frightened emotions of the two.

Of the 1,500 catties of ginseng he brought for Houjin Dahan, more than 300 catties were special ginseng weighing more than 1 catty each, and the rest were also good ginseng weighing 8 or 9 taels each.

Just the good ginseng weighing 8 or 9 taels is the price of one or two ginseng and one tael of silver in Liaodong. In Zhangjiakou, such a good ginseng is worth about one tael, three or four dollars of silver per tael. Transported to the Shakou field in the capital, that is, one or two five or six dollars of silver for every two people.

As for the extra good ginseng that weighs more than 1 catty, it is priced separately for each one, and the cheapest is one or two ginseng and one or two gold.

Fan Yongdou agreed with Huang Taiji that he would help him sell the 1,500 catties of ginseng at the price in the Beijing market, and then hand over the ginseng money to Fan Wencheng and Ma Guozhu for their expenses in the Guannei.

The 1,500 catties of ginseng are worth nearly 70,000 taels, which is already equivalent to one-third of the value of the goods he brought back this time. If there is a problem with such a large sum of money, Fan Wencheng and Ma Guozhu naturally can't afford it, so it's no wonder they are so nervous.

As for Fan Yongdou, he took such a big risk to help Huang Taiji sell ginseng, obviously he would not simply put these ginseng on the Beijing market and sell it.

On the one hand, Beijing is too close to Liaodong and North Korea, and there are many ways to sell this ginseng, most of which cannot be sold at a price, and it is difficult to sell such a large amount at one time.

However, Hankou and Suzhou, the two major ginseng distribution markets in the south, are different, and even if the quantity is doubled, it can be easily sold. The price of ginseng in the south is 2 times that of Beijing, and the price of good ginseng is 4 times.

As for some of the ones that meet the "four-body shape", the price can be doubled again; If "the adult form is priceless"; If there is a "protrusion like a yang object" between the legs, the price is even more difficult to estimate.

Therefore, he transported this batch of ginseng to Hankou and Suzhou, and at least he could earn nearly 200,000 taels of silver, which was more than Huang Taiji's. That's why he risked killing his head to do this business with Houjin.

When Fan Yongdou lowered his bow and made a small face, accompanied by a smiling face to comfort the two, a rapid sound of horses' hooves suddenly came from the rear of the convoy.

The three of them couldn't help but look back, and found that five knights in armor were rushing towards them in a column.

All three of them were immediately alarmed, but soon they realized that the knights were just on their way.

Under Fan Yongdou's reprimand, the Fan family caravan gave up a small half of the road surface to these knights who were hurrying.

When these knights passed by them, Fan Yongdou and Fan Wencheng both felt that the leading knights looked at them with a nonchalant look.

After these knights disappeared into Zhangjiakou Fort on the far side of the road, Fan Yongdou suddenly felt a little restless. When he came back from Liaodong this time, he always felt that the air in Zhangjiakou seemed to have a different meaning from the past.

He shook his head, banishing the uneasy feeling from his mind, and then yelled at his buddy again, getting the convoy moving again, and it was only then that he felt as if he had come to life.

Fan Wencheng and Ma Guozhu didn't have the idea of continuing to talk to him at the moment, the two retreated to the end of the convoy, and then muttered that they didn't know what they were discussing.

Fan Wencheng glanced back at the two of them, and without hesitation, he rode his horse to the front of the convoy, preparing to command his caravan into Zhangjiakou Fort.

At this time, the caravans exporting foreign trade generally used camel caravans and carts called sweat carts as the main means of transporting goods. Although the former camel has a small number of cargo, it is resistant to rough feeding. The latter, on the other hand, is known for its large volume of cargo.

Although the outside of Zhangjiakou Fort looks dilapidated, but after entering the fort gate, it is an eye-opener, with many shops and crowds inside, which is similar to the prosperous place of the capital.

Zhangjiakou was originally a small fort, but since the opening of the mutual market, it has begun to expand year by year, and now the longest street in the fort is more than 5 miles long.

Although the main street in this fort is paved with bluestone, it has long been potholed after years of horse and treadmill grinding. On the street that was large enough to accommodate five carts in parallel, pedestrians, carriages and horses took up at least half of the street, and most of the Fan family's caravan was arranged in the warehouse outside the fort, while the remaining more than a dozen carts and more than 20 camels entered the fort.

Fan Wencheng looked up at the environment inside the fort, and he found that although the size of Zhangjiakou Fort was not worth mentioning as Shenyang, the shops here really exceeded Shenyang.

After he entered the fort, he saw the flags hanging on both sides of the street, such as: Nanjing grosgrain shop, Suzhou and Hangzhou silk shop, Luzhou weaving shop, Zezhou Papu, Linqing cloth shop, velvet shop, grocery shop, and other trading shops.

Merchants from the north, south, east and west of the Ming Dynasty seem to have gathered in this small Zhangjiabao. When he looked at these shops, he realized why the Great Khan treated a merchant like Fan Yongdou like a guest.

As long as Zhangjiabao is mastered, then the goods from the Ming Dynasty* will contribute to the growing prosperity of the Houjin Dynasty. Later, Jin's inside information about the Ming Kingdom can also be collected from here.

Fan Wencheng was pondering the meaning behind Huang Taiji's methods when a question suddenly came to mind. If Zhangjiakou is a loophole for the Ming Dynasty, then Yingkou, which is now built at the mouth of the Liaohe River, will it become an outlet for the leaked domestic affairs of Jin?

When they first began to negotiate peace with the Ming Dynasty and start trading, most of the Jurchen relatives and nobles chose Jinzhou, which was convenient and had many acquaintances, and only Amin and Daishan chose the edge of the swamp at the mouth of the Liao River.

The Great Khan didn't care about the actions of the two Baylors at first, because everyone thought that it would be too expensive to build a new city in that swamp, and that the bulk goods that Liaodong could export were only ginseng, leather goods, and large livestock, but these goods had always been in the hands of the Later Jin Great Khan, and were used as a supplement to the Houjin treasury revenue and military spending.

The amount of private goods in the hands of the Eight Banners has always been controlled, so there is really no need to build a new trading port city for this little thing.

Even some relatives and nobles thought in their hearts that they should go to the Ming people to grab another sum of money after spending the wealth in their hands, and how long the peace agreement between Jin and the Ming Dynasty can last is still an uncertain question.

Why bother to build a new city for trade, maybe this new city is built, and the peace treaty between the Ming and the Houjin will be broken.

Looking at the bustling bazaar in Zhangjiabao, Fan Wencheng suddenly felt that maybe the two Baylors built Yingkou not just for trade.