(Thanks to fumin1980, Mengmeng, and Four Feet for their tips and monthly passes, ask for a monthly pass!) ）

Hangzhou Bay, Qiantang River.

At the port, a maritime merchant fleet of ten Mingzhou ships is preparing to set sail.

"The mainmast, foremast, and aftermast, and the sails, all double-checked. Changsheng, you go and see the fresh water. Big head, you get out of the way for Lao Tzu, don't touch the compass, is that what your kid can move?"

Xie Cheng, the owner of the fleet, took a deep breath of the air with the smell of the sea, and looked at Hangzhou from afar, which was still shrouded in the morning white fog, and his mood was full of complicated feelings.

It's finally time to leave the hometown where he was born and raised, and where his ancestors have lived for generations.

He couldn't help but glance back at the hatch of the ship, where a dozen children were scrubbing the deck.

Xie Cheng is just thirty this year, and he has entered the year of establishment. He was originally a disciple of the Xiling Xie family in Yuezhou, which was close to the Qiantang River. The Xie family is a big family in Yuezhou, although it can't be compared with the top wealthy families in the south like the Lanling Xiao family, but the Xie family is in the top ten families in the Qiantang River area, and even in Yuezhou.

However, although Xie Cheng's father is the contemporary head of the Xie family, his mother is just a humble maid, and the head of the family has him after October. As a maidservant whose mother is not even a concubine, Xie Cheng's status in the Xie family is very low, not to mention that he can't be treated the same as those concubines and brothers, and even the status of those concubines is much stronger than him.

He is in the Xie family, in fact, he is equivalent to a servant. At least, he can't call the head of the family his father from the novel, nor can he call the brothers brothers.

However, as the son of the head of the family, his fate is still stronger than that of ordinary servants. Since childhood, I have also had the opportunity to study along. Slightly longer. He also began to learn to do business with the steward of the clan. His fate has long been predestined, if there is no accident, when he grows up, all the property and status of the family have nothing to do with him, and he has no inheritance rights. However, with the Xie family's bloodline on his body, he can also be a good steward, helping to take care of the shops that the Xie family's children are not willing to spend energy on.

However, Xie Cheng, who has read books since he was a child, is very smart, and he is not satisfied with such a status quo.

Serendipitous chance. Xie Cheng had business contacts with Li Jing, the king of Andong County, who was just a town general at the beginning, and slowly the business became bigger and bigger. Li Jing has risen to prominence over the years, and Xie Cheng's business has also grown by leaps and bounds.

Up to now, Xie Cheng has slowly accumulated a huge fortune for himself while running for Xie's family.

And now, he finally decided to abandon everything in the Xie family, take his wife, children and mother, and move his family to Liaodong. The head of the Xie family also knew the relationship between Lu Dao's maidservant son and Li Jing, and the money Xie had earned over the years was the wealth earned by the entire family in the past hundred years.

Xie Cheng initially persuaded the head of the Xie family to move to Liaodong. believes that it can bring greater development to the Xie family, and this development is not only economic. It may also be powerful. However, Xie Chong hesitated, reluctant to allow the Xie family to inherit and operate in Yuezhou for hundreds of years. In other words, Xie Chong was obviously still a little worried about going to the land of Liaodong, after all, it was the territory of the barbarians.

After the end, Xie Cheng decided to break away from the Xie family, and Xie Chong agreed. He rejected his son and the brothers in the clan who proposed to let Xie Cheng go out of the house, and he knew that this son, in just a few years, could bring this huge wealth to the Xie family, Xie Cheng and Li Jing have been in business. Although Xie Cheng may not be anything in Li Jing's eyes, Xie Chong doesn't want to be too desperate. Be a man and leave a line, and see each other in the future.

Standing on the deck, Xie Cheng was also in a fluctuating mood. Although he failed to persuade Xie Chong to move the entire Xie clan to Liaodong, he also knew that the concept of the hometown of the Chinese people was deep-rooted, and it was not easy for the Xie clan to leave their hometown and move to the wild land of Liaodong. With his hard work and his best efforts, he will inevitably fail in the end.

Xie Cheng was not disappointed because of this, and he didn't think he would succeed at the beginning.

Except for the sons of concubines like him, or the powerful landlords of declining families, if they had not undergone major changes, they would indeed not be easily tempted by a few words. In the eyes of most people, Liaodong, that is almost equivalent to barbarism and bitter cold.

Compared with these people, it is Xie Xuan, who has been running on the southeast coast of Liaodong and Dengzhou all the year round, and clearly sees the vigorous business opportunities shown on it after the recovery of this piece of territory in Liaodong. As long as it is profitable, the merchants are completely fearless. Not to mention that Liaodong has now become the territory of the king of Anton, who has 200,000 soldiers and horses and swept through Liaodong. Even the Northeast is still the territory of those barbarian Hu people, but as long as there are enough interests, they dare to go deep into the tiger's den.

Xie Cheng resold all the shops and granges he had purchased in Yuezhou over the years to Xie's. In the end, Xie Cheng exchanged all his property for these ten Mingzhou big ships, each of which was a five-masted three-thousand-stone ship.

This time, in addition to Xie Cheng's family going north, he also persuaded some of the concubines of the wealthy and weak families who were similar to him who had no inheritance rights, as well as some poor literati, and even some bold businessmen who pursued profits, but now, the ship was about to set sail, but in the end, nearly half of them retreated.

But he was not depressed, where they were going, what they were going to do, was beyond the comprehension of the weak and timid.

Xie Cheng only returned from Liaodong when the king of Andong conquered Goguryeo. He clearly knew what kind of situation Liaodong was in front of him, where there were now opportunities everywhere and gold everywhere.

Countless mines have been surveyed and mapped, just waiting for the merchants to take the money to auction the mining rights, they can be mined, those coal, aluminum, black oil, iron, and other minerals, that are all profiteering industries. There are also countless fields on both sides of the Liao River, in the Central Plains, one acre of land costs ten yuan, and now in Liaodong, one acre of land only costs two yuan. For example, some hillside land was the cheapest, only 500 yuan per acre.

In addition, in addition to mining and farming in Liaodong, greater business opportunities are waiting for them. Countless workshops, every once in a while there are new commodity inventions and production, just grab the distribution right of the same commodity or the right to produce OEM, you can make a lot of money.

Among the people who were willing to go to Liaodong with him this time, there were about thirty merchants. They had already followed him to Dengzhou and Liaodong to investigate. Xie Cheng has already signed a contract with them. A group of businessmen eventually formed a new trading house. According to shares, Xie Cheng owned 60 percent of the shares and became the chairman and general manager of the firm. There were about 200 literati left, all of whom were poor literati, who had failed the imperial examinations and could not enter the official shogunate, and their families had no money to afford to continue their studies for a long time. The most rear. After listening to the description of Xie Cheng and others, and finally got a loan of 20 yuan per person from Xie Xuan, he finally decided to break out.

Dozens of businessmen and partners, plus more than 200 literati and their families, there are already more than 1,000 people. However, he had ten ships of 3,000 stones, each of which could carry more than 1,000 people. Xie Cheng didn't have much capital in his hands at this time, and their ship had a large number of empty cabins except for some local products from Hangyue and other places, but they couldn't fill it.

However, the shrewd Xie Cheng refused to go north empty-handed. Today's Andong Junwang is under the command of nothing. It's just a lack of people. According to the rules issued by the county king, all merchants who can find a way to introduce new immigrants, as long as they are not kidnapped and robbed, can get a referral fee. Among them, the introduction fee of all kinds of literati is the highest, then all kinds of technical craftsmen, then farmers, then young men and women, and even children and teenagers, as long as they are brought to the territory of the Zhenguo Army, they can get a lot of introduction fees.

In addition to the fact that the people of the Tang Dynasty were not allowed to kidnap and sell, if the caravans trafficked slaves from other Tibetan countries to the territory of the king of Andong County, they could enter the Tibetan slave monopoly controlled by the government.

After all, the slave trade is the most popular and lucrative business at the moment, but due to the many restrictions on the slave trade, Xie Cheng is unable to do this business. However, in addition to buying and selling silk, tea, and porcelain, their first main business was to transport people to Liaodong.

An adult craftsman, depending on his skills, can get an introduction fee ranging from 5 to 20 yuan from the king of the county. Even if you are an ordinary young man, you can get an introduction fee of two to five times. Even the lowest child will receive a referral fee of 500 yuan.

If a boat is loaded with 2,000 people, the introduction fee alone can collect four or five thousand introduction fees, not to mention, this way to Liaodong, the ticket money and the food money on the road still have to be collected. In addition, they also provide loans to these people who have crossed the border, although it is not usury, but the interest is not small, which is also an income.

If ten boats are full, the profit is actually higher than that of grain trafficking.

Thinking of this, Xie Cheng is full of confidence in his new firm.

"Official, the ship is about to sail." A child servant walked up behind him and reminded.

Xie Cheng came back to his senses and hummed softly. The child was dark and thin, not tall, but not small. Xie Cheng asked him how old he was, he was almost twelve years old, but he looked like he was only seven or eight years old. Xie Cheng had more than 3,000 such children on ten boats this trip.

These children, from four or five years old to thirteen or fourteen years old, are all beggar orphans in the Chang Prefectures of Hangyue Minghu. He had worked so hard to find these orphans, spent more than half a year finding them, and adopted them in his various estates for a short time.

Some of these orphans, a clever and good-looking child, were singled out to be domestic maids, and when they grew up, they were sent to his own trading house to be placed as apprentices. The remaining thousands of orphans, he plans to give to the county king. Liaodong is the most lacking population, although these children can't do anything, but Liaodong is not refused.

These children are orphans in various states and counties that no one wants and no one cares about, but Xie Cheng wanted to take them away, but he still paid the government a lot of money and food. This is still in the name of adopting orphans, although the state and county usually ignore these orphans, but the increase in the number of local people is actually one of the government's assessment achievements. Therefore, the government did not want the local population to lose, even the family members and even the tenants that Xie Cheng and those partners took away, still invited the head of the Xie clan to come forward, and then spent a lot of money to get the official certificate issued by the government.

Without this certificate, boarding is not allowed in the port, otherwise it will be a felony to be caught.

Xie Cheng went to sea this time, and the tea, silk and other things he brought were light things, and they didn't take up much space. The rest, all loaded with people. The capacity of 30,000 stones for ten boats was originally the standard of carrying 15,000 people, but Xie Cheng and his partners finally got 30,000 people.

Of the 30,000 people, Xie Cheng only got less than one percent of the certificates, and the rest were all undocumented people.

"Anchor Luo! Raise the mast! ”

The voices of more than ten big men shouted loudly and loudly, and immediately recalled Xie Cheng, who was in a trance, he couldn't help but turn his head, only to hear the huge sound of "rattling" from the rotating shaft under the mast, but this sound was instantly drowned in the excited shouts of many sailors. The mast of the sailing ship was driven by the rotating shaft, and the rear mast several feet high, the foremast as high as seven or eight feet high, and the thick mainmast of more than ten zhang were slowly erected.

"Ahh With great amazement, a sharp child's voice shouted, which immediately startled Xie Cheng, he looked at the "little boy servant" beside him, but this "little boy servant" completely forgot about him, and looked at the main mast of the giant in front of him with excitement and shock, and listened to a monotonous cry in his mouth.

This little beggar from the market obviously saw such a scene for the first time, and in his excitement, he had already forgotten the rules he had just learned in the Yuezhou Manor these days, and he was screaming and jumping without rules at all.

A smile appeared on Xie Cheng's face, and he understood a little.

I think that when he saw the ironclad Falcon warship of the county king in Shamen Town, he was not as shocked.

The sailors on the ship began to get busy, and these sailors were all old guys who had followed Xie Cheng to run the ship all these years. The winch under the mast kept creaking, the white sail was held on the mast by more than a dozen sailors, between the huge mainsail and the foresail, Xie Cheng almost felt that he was shrouded in white clouds, he held the side of the ship tightly with both hands, trying his best to suppress his excitement.

From today on, he is the owner of this caravan.

Five years ago, he couldn't have believed such a result. A servant gives birth to a son, and one day can become the owner of a big caravan respected by everyone. Maybe one day he will become a Legion. Today's Liaodong, there are more than 100 knights and more than 300 knights, these newly baked nobles, who were originally just low-level officers, have now become nobles.

Liaodong not only respected the soldiers, but also the literati, and in Liaodong, whether it was an official, a teacher or a student, they were all extremely respected. And these merchants, although they are not more respected than warriors and scholars, are far more respected than in the Central Plains. According to some rumors, King Anton was going to give some outstanding merchantmen to be honored. This news made Xie Cheng yearn for it, and he was very excited when he thought about it.

A dinghy was speeding to the front of the flotilla, and the men on it were waving flags at them. It was the command ship in the harbor, guiding them out of the harbor.

The sailboat seemed to be moving very slowly, but the other sights around it were fading away, falling behind, farther and farther away.

Xie Cheng stood at the bow of the boat and watched the scenery ahead.

The sunrise in the east, the red glow, is so beautiful, just like the hope in his heart at this time, like a beautiful future, people can't wait to get closer.

The fleet slowly sailed out of Hangzhou Port, and the decks of each ship poured out a lot of people who broke through the gates, looking back at their hometowns one by one, maybe this time, I don't know when Lu Dao will come back! (To be continued......)