54 Lack of salt

"One-two-one, one-two-one, ready, stab!"

"Kill, kill, kill!"

"What's the matter with you? Raise the gun high, stab it hard, haven't you eaten in the morning? I don't have any strength at all, and I don't want to eat at noon, so I stab hard. ”

"Wrong, it's not like this, the action is very simple, the shot should be fast, like this......"

"You stupid pigs, you're so stupid, all do a hundred push-ups, and you can't finish it without lunch."

"You bunch of waste, isn't dinner like adding meat to dinner, our team must compete for the first place, add meat to dinner, and give it all to Lao Tzu to get up and continue to practice!"

On the cottage playground of Li Zixiao in Mangdang Mountain, the sound of everyone shouting in unison, coupled with the roar of anger, is particularly lively.

……………

At this time, on the playground of the cottage, a team of neatly arranged cottage recruits, under the leadership of Li Zixiao, Zhou Dazhu, Wei Hong, and Liu Chong, carried out hard and tiring training.

In the cold winter, none of the men in the playground wore cotton jackets, they all wore a pair of thin clothes and pants, and trained in the severe cold of minus a few degrees, but they didn't see any of them shouting cold, and they were all sweating profusely.

At this time, if someone is asked to wear a padded jacket for training, it will make his whole body sweat and hot to death, so it is still comfortable to take off the padded jacket for training.

Li Zixiao divided this batch of recruits to himself, Zhou Dazhu, Wei Hong, and Liu Chong, each with a team, and then each team was numbered for a training competition, which team could perform best in a day's training, and meat could be added to dinner.

It is precisely because of this simple incentive that these cottage recruits have been completely mobilized to win, as well as the expectation of adding meat to dinner, so that they can train very hard one by one during the day.

Since Zhang Ergouzi recruited this group of recruits and brought back more than a dozen middle-aged women by the way, many chores and trivial tasks in the cottage have been handed over to these women to do, such as cooking, sewing cotton clothes, and so on.

It is precisely because of the hard work of these women that the food eaten in the cottage every day has become much richer, not only porridge to drink, mixed flour cakes to eat, but also to eat a little meat from time to time, and even a bowl of bone broth at night.

Moreover, the vegetables made by these women from the wild vegetables dug up from the mountains are much better than those of Old Master Wei, and the taste is also much better than before, which is undoubtedly a very rich feast for these poor people.

So these days, everyone in the cottage has become much better, and they get along well, and the life of food and clothing in the cottage makes these people very nostalgic.

The recruits also trained very hard, especially Li Zixiao expelled a recruit who was not trained well because he was slippery and lazy yesterday, and even made these recruits scream when they trained, and everyone dared to be lazy.

When it was time to eat, everyone lined up to receive their own meals, and then gathered together to eat and chat, and even the new recruits gradually came out of the grief of losing their loved ones at the beginning.

But today, when Li Zixiao trained all morning as a recruit, did not make any special arrangements and queued up to receive his own meal like everyone else, and took a chopstick and wild vegetables into his mouth, he immediately frowned.

Not only Li Zixiao, he turned his head to look at Zhou Dazhu and the others, and also found that their faces were wrong, but no one stood up to speak, so he immediately beckoned Old Master Wei and said, "Old Master Wei, come here." ”

Old Master Wei came to Li Zixiao at a trot, and replied with a smile: "Big boss, what do you command?" ”

"Old Master, why is this wild vegetable so light today? It's not tasteless, how can you eat it? Didn't I tell me to come here?

Now every day we practice very hard, everyone sweats a lot, should we put a little more salt in this meal? What's going on with this meal today? Li Zixiao put the chopsticks down and said to Old Master Wei a little unhappily.

Old Master Wei looked embarrassed, nodded yes, and replied hesitantly: "If you go back to the big house, the little one also knows to put more salty salt!"

It's just that the number of our cottages has increased too much during this time, and the daily consumption of salty salt is too great, and now our salty salt is almost finished!

The small one can only save a little, otherwise, the remaining salty salt will not last for two days! ”

After listening to Old Master Wei's words, Li Zixiao's brows furrowed even more, if it wasn't for Old Master Wei's words today, he would have really ignored this matter.

Previously, Li Zixiao originally sent Dong Zhuang to the county seat to purchase materials, and the most important materials included salt, but because of the Cai family, Dong Zhuang was arrested, and all the materials he purchased were confiscated by the Cai family.

Waiting for Li Zixiao to make trouble in the county at night, rescue Dong Zhuang, and ransack the Cai family's shop, but he also forgot to get salt, and after returning to the cottage, he was so busy with a series of things that he forgot about it, if it wasn't for Old Master Wei reminding him today, he really couldn't think of it.

At present, the world is not as stable as before, as long as you have money, it is actually easy to buy salt, and now in this year, the war is in chaos, and the sale of private salt is a huge profit, of course, it has long been monopolized by those unscrupulous traders.

The price of salt alone is difficult for ordinary people to afford, but now Li Zixiao is not short of money, but if you want to buy salt, I am afraid that you can only buy this thing in the county.

Not having salt to eat is a big problem for them, Li Zixiao is training his subordinates, and everyone exercises a lot every day.

Even though it's winter, everyone sweats a lot during the exercises, and the demand for salt is relatively large.

However, if there is no salt to eat, the direct result is that people will be tired, dizzy, severe muscle cramps, and even kill people.

Therefore, this problem is by no means a trivial problem, and it must be solved as soon as possible.

When Li Zixiao was eating, he summoned all his henchmen to his side, told everyone about their current lack of salt, and asked everyone to think of a way to see how to get enough salt.

A group of subordinates expressed their opinions, but most of these people used to be poor peasants at the lowest level, and they mainly went to the township or county town to exchange things for some salt to eat.

So much so that they couldn't think of any other way to get salt, but some people suggested that they should simply grab the big ones, and the big families would definitely have a lot of salt.

However, Li Zixiao's current batch of recruits has not yet been trained to the point that he is satisfied, so he still trains these subordinates for a period of time before going out to act, so as to minimize losses in battle.

In the end, it was Old Master Wei who reluctantly expressed an opinion, that is, to send people to buy some salt in several villages under Mangdang Mountain, so as to temporarily alleviate the crisis of salt shortage in the cottages.

But if you want to buy more salt, you still have to find a way in the county, but Zhang Ergouzi told Li Zixiao that the private salt trade in Yongcheng County is almost monopolized by the Cai family, Liu, and Wang.

Before, they made trouble in the county at night, attacked the Cai family, and taught the young master of the Liu family a lesson, which attracted the arrest of the Liu family, which can be regarded as offending the three most powerful families in the county, and it is estimated that it is not easy to go to the county seat to buy salt.

"Well, let's do as the old master said, send two people down the mountain with silver, and go to a few villages to buy a batch of salt from those villagers.

Remember to trade fairly, we have a lot of silver now, and we don't need to rob it from those poor people, and their lives are not easy in these days. ”

After discussing with everyone, Li Zixiao finally agreed to Master Wei's proposal, and first went to the nearest village at the foot of the mountain to buy some salt and come back, so as to solve the urgent need first.

Li Zixiao sent Wei Laofuzi and Liu Chong to do this matter, and the reason why they were selected was the two of them.

First, because Old Master Wei was originally a showman before, and he also worked as a bookkeeper, he had some experience in dealing with merchants, he was sleek in dealing with the world, and he knew how to buy salt, so it was most suitable for him to come forward to negotiate with those villagers about buying salt.

And Liu Chong, after Li Zixiao's observation during this time, is relatively calm, old and serious, and his martial arts are also good, so it is most suitable for him to cooperate with the old master to do this.

After deciding on this matter, Li Zixiao asked Old Master Wei and Liu Chong to bring fifty taels of silver, and a horse-drawn cart to go out of the mountain to do this matter, and Li Zixiao also took his subordinates to continue to practice hard in the mountain.

However, after the old master left, Li Zixiao inadvertently walked towards the fence of a crypt in the cottage, and saw Cai Xuantong, the fifth young master of the Cai family, who was holding a bowl at this time and pulling food into his mouth with his hand, and his eyes couldn't help but light up.

During this time, Cai Xuantong has been imprisoned in the cottage, and he has to do a lot of heavy and dirty work every day, such as since Cai Xuantong arrived in the cottage, the work of cleaning the latrine belongs to him, which has attracted the cheers of many people in the cottage.

At this time, Cai Xuantong was wearing a tattered cotton jacket, gray-haired, dirty, and dirty, exuding this unpleasant smell, not caring whether his hands were dirty or not, and directly pulling food into the bowl with his hands.

He didn't have such a good treatment as the cottage recruits three times a day, he only had two meals a day, enough for him not to starve to death, but he couldn't eat enough, but Li Zixiao didn't deliberately abuse others, he still ate the same as the cottage people, that is, there was less meat.

If these foods were placed in the past, even if he was the less popular young master of the Cai family, the food he ate every day was much better than in the cottage.

But people can eat anything when they are hungry, during this time, Cai Xuantong was trained in the cottage to follow the rules, these used to be pig-like foods in his eyes, but now he also eats them like a wolf, clean and clean.

Then Zhang Ergouzi called over and asked in a deep voice: "Zhang Ergouzi, how is the matter of asking you to contact the people of the Cai family and ask them to pay to ransom Cai Xuantong?" ”

Zhang Ergouzi wiped his mouth, ate to his heart's content, walked up to Li Zixiao with a look of enjoyment, and then immediately became decent, and replied honestly: "Qi Yu is in charge, I have already sent news to the Cai family before."

The Cai family also responded, they were willing to pay to redeem Cai Xuantong, the young master of the Cai family was arrested by us, and they didn't dare to speak out, it was really embarrassing.

However, he will definitely not agree to the big boss's proposal to take out a thousand taels of silver to ransom Cai Xuantong, after all, Cai Xuantong is not valued in the Cai family, so he has been delayed.

Big boss, are you asking about this now? ”

Zhang Ergouzi keenly felt that it was definitely not so simple for Li Zixiao to mention Cai Xuantong at this time, a pair of eyes rolled slightly, and asked curiously.

"Haha, if you contact the Cai family again, you will say that we should make up our minds now, we don't want a thousand taels of silver, we want salt, and their Cai family only needs to hand over the salt at a market price of five hundred taels of silver, and we will let this fifth young master of the Cai family go."

"Yes, the little one will find a way to pass on this news to the Cai family."