On the second day of the welcome banquet, Whitebeard really found Li Jing and personally proposed to retire on Salmon Island, and along with him, there were three hundred old pirates who had retired early, and they also asked to stay. Faced with this request, Li Jing pondered for a while, and finally agreed.

Lin Wei expressed some worries about this, fearing that these old pirates would have trouble staying in Shamen Town. His main concern is the issue of identity, after all, Shamen Town is a border town of the official army, and the pirates are thieves even if they retreat. If Feng Zhang and others know about it and provoke this matter, there may be some accidents after all. However, Li Jing also has his own ideas, and Whitebeard's request, in Li Jing's view, is actually a step to add a relationship between Shamen Town and Zhendonghai. Now the two sides are cooperating well, but after all, one side is a soldier and the other is a thief.

Now that Whitebeard and hundreds of old pirates have left, this is tantamount to taking the initiative to stay in Shamen Town as a hostage, so that Li Jing does not have to worry that Zhendonghai will have different intentions towards him. To be honest, Li Jing now needs the strength of this pirate force in Zhendonghai, as for the troubles discovered by Feng Zhang and Wang Jin, he really doesn't care much about the historical trend of the late Tang Dynasty. Immediately the war will be chaotic, and who will take care of whom, and who can control who is another matter.

After receiving Li Jing's consent and reply, Whitebeard and the others immediately took matters into their own hands, circled a large area in the south of the new city, quickly set up a tent, and prepared to start building a mountain, rock, and seaweed yard. A group of pirates collected seaweed, took rocks, and were very busy.

However, Li Jing didn't have the time to care about this, and he now had a more important thing in front of him.

That's the shipment that came back from Cat Island, and half of the goods worth millions of dollars were from Zhendonghai. One belongs to the town of Salmon. The value of this cargo is very high. But there's a problem. That is, these are goods, not cash. If he wants to cash in and then use it to maintain the expenses of Shamen Town, Li Jing has to find a way to sell this batch of goods.

In the rows of new warehouses on Niulizi Island, there are mountains of goods.

Li Jing was both happy and sad when he looked at these goods, with so many goods, it was not easy to cash out. Millions of goods, not many people can eat at all. Not to mention. Most of these goods were to be sold to other Tibetan countries.

"General, didn't we form a new caravan with King Zhao and them, why don't we sell the goods directly to our caravan." Zhang Hong now has to make two trips to Niuzizi Island every morning and evening to take a look at some of the goods in order to feel at ease. Shamen Town is now spending a lot of money, both to build a city and to train soldiers. The last few extra money has almost been distributed, although the merchants on the island can have a large amount of income every month, but it is basically only once a month, although the income on the dock side seems to be good, but compared to the current steady stream of expenses in Salmen Town, it is still not worth mentioning.

"You can't put all your eggs in one basket." Li Jing shook his head. Ever since he knew that Li Xiao might have the intention of rebelling, he had begun to slowly keep some distance from Li Xiao. Although he also intends to use each other with Li Wei. can understand the history of the late Tang Dynasty, but he has never heard of any king in the late Tang Dynasty making any noise. Since this is the case, there is no need to get too close to Li Xiao.

Joining Li Xiaolong's business group is still of great benefit to Li Jing now, but let him further invest his own goods, Li Jing is unwilling. All the eggs were put into one basket, and besides, the person carrying the basket was still King Zhao, which was not good for Shamen Town.

Li Jing thought in his heart that it would be best to hand over this batch of goods to Zhang Yingying to deal with, after all, Zhang Yingying was the queen of the sea, and her caravan was the most powerful in the three seas. But it's strange to say that since that farewell, he has not heard from Zhang Yingying. Although I also thought about sending someone to contact, but the vast sea and the lack of an exact address, where to find it.

For the rest, Zhendonghai is a group of pirates, and it is easy to let them rob things, but it will be a little difficult for them to let them sell things. Among the rest of the people, Li Jing also knew Wang Yueying, the Xiao family, and the Han family. However, although the scale of Wang Yueying's cloth village is not bad, they can't eat it in the face of goods like millions of guan. The Xiao family and the Han family, Li Jing always maintained a kind of vigilance, not wanting to fall too deep with them.

"It's really not good, let's do it ourselves." Li Jing gritted his teeth and said.

Zhang Hong was puzzled: "General, what is reprocessing?" ”

Li Jing smiled, "Lao Zhang, what do you say about the Wuliangye we made last time?" ”

"Good wine, mellow and fragrant, I can't bear to stop drinking." As soon as Wuliangye was mentioned, Zhang Hong couldn't help but stroke his goatee with his hand, and said with an aftertaste.

Seeing him like this, Li Jing couldn't help but be amused, Datang's wine at this time was basically rice wine, and most of it was green wine. The liquor is full of sake lees and other substances, and the sake brewed is a green so-called cloudy liquor, and it is necessary to sift the sake before drinking it every time. Of course, there are also liquors like Jiannan Yaochun, but the degree cannot be compared with Wuliangye. Wuliangye, a wine made from five kinds of grains, has a transparent and clear liquor, and has a high degree of alcohol, which can be said to have broken through the limits of many fine wines. Even Zhang Hong, who shouted all day long about brewing and wasting food, drank it after drinking it, and now he has to drink three small cups every day before going to bed.

"You say, if we take out this Wuliangye and sell it publicly, do you think anyone will buy it?" Li Jing asked with a smile.

As soon as he mentioned the matter of buying and selling, Zhang Hong was immediately very energetic, and his eyes were bright, "Of course, there is a market for such a good wine, and there will definitely be many people rushing to buy it." When I look at the wine in the world, only Jiannan Burning Spring and Sanle Pulp can be compared, but the first two are still much less colorful than Wuliangye. Saying that, he suddenly said with a regretful face: "It's a pity that the wine consumes too much grain, and the fermentation time of this wine is too long, although the market is very good, but our food consumption is also large." ”

The liquor brewed in Shamen Town now is the distilled liquor after the distillation of pure grain fermented liquor, one catty of glutinous rice, sorghum, wheat and other five kinds of grain fermentation brewing and then distillation, can produce almost half a catty of 50 degrees, 52 degrees of Wuliangye wine, or 75 degrees of doctor alcohol, but the only biggest drawback is that the fermentation and brewing time is too long.

There are many kinds of liquor in the Tang Dynasty, such as Xingyang has Tugu Spring, Fuping has Shijing Spring, Jiannan has Burning Spring, Yingzhou has Fushui Wine, Wucheng has Ruoxia Wine, Lingnan has Lingxi Wine, Yicheng has Jiujiu Wine, Chang'an has Xishi Liquor, as well as Sanle Pulp imported from Persia, and Malang Liquor imported from Dashi. The price of different types of wine is different. Du Fu's poem has the text of 300 green coins for fighting wine, and Li Bai also has the text of 10000 yuan for fighting wine.

Speaking of which, a famous wine like Jiannan Burning Spring is almost Li Bai's ten thousand buckets of wine, and one bucket of wine costs ten times. And the three hundred bronze coins that Du Fu said about fighting wine should refer to relatively ordinary wine. One bucket of ten liters, that is, ten catties, but one liter in the Tang Dynasty was only 0.6 liters in later generations, and all one bucket was about six catties in the Tang Dynasty. Calculated, Jiannan burned a pound of spring actually cost more than 1,600 wen, which is two silks. And ordinary public wine costs 50 yuan a catty.

The five grains brewed in Shamen Island use five kinds of grains, and one catty of five mixed grains is only about 150 yuan, but it can produce half a catty of wine. Wuliangye's distilled liquor is better than that of Jiannan Shaochun, even if it is only 1,600 wen a catty, it is almost 20 times the cost of grain. This is a lucrative industry, and the key is to be able to increase production.

Shamen Town lacks a good financial revenue channel, and although the two largest workshops on the island, the Ordnance Workshop and the Quilt Workshop, are not small, they can only supply the needs of civilian use in a short period of time, and they cannot make money from production and sales to the outside world. Thinking about it, Li Jing thinks that winemaking is a good industry.

"Our Wuliangye is better than Jiannan Burning Spring and Sanle Pulp, and those who have drunk it are full of praise. You say, Jiannan Burning Spring can sell 10,000 bucket wine, if we sell 20,000 bucket wine, do you say someone will buy it? ”

Zhang Hong looked surprised, "Twenty thousand wines? Isn't this the same as robbing money, we brew a bucket of wine, but we need ten to twelve catties of grain, and we also need some technology, but the cost is at most two or three dollars per bucket of wine, but it is sold for twenty pounds, isn't this a profiteer? ”

"No treachery, no business." Li Jing said with a smile: "We need money now, and we don't have normal output income, it's not enough to farm and hoard land, and we don't have the capital to do business. Besides, a person who is willing to spend 10,000 yuan to buy a bucket of Jiannan Burning Spring, do you think he really cares about spending an extra 10,000 to buy our Wuliangye? For many people, they drink only the expensive ones, not the best ones. Our wines are the best and therefore the most expensive. Once we can determine the name of the strongest wine in the world, believe me, we will sell 30,000 wines, and there will be a lot of people who will buy them. ”

"But winemaking consumes too much food, and now there is no green and yellow, the disaster is not abating, and the food is getting more and more tight, and the population of our island has exceeded 20,000, and the monthly consumption of grain is calculated in 10,000 stones." Zhang Hong said embarrassedly, while he was imagining the large amount of money he could make by selling wine, but on the other hand, he was worried that the brewing would consume the food and the food on the island would be insufficient.

"It's not simple, we don't just collect money for selling wine, but we can ask for half of the price of wine in cash and half in food. A bucket of wine sells for 20,000 yuan, and we collect 10 taels of copper coins, or silk, and then 50 buckets of rice, or rice, millet, sorghum, and other grains worth 10 yuan. You calculate, let's spend a little more labor, a bucket of wine only consumes two buckets of grain, and now we can earn back fifty buckets of grain, and we can also collect ten dollars, don't you think this deal is cost-effective? ”

"A good deal, definitely a good deal!" Zhang Hong didn't expect that there would be such a good and profitable business in this world, and now he can't wait to go back and expand the workshop immediately. Even if it is to expand the workshop tenfold, it will definitely be worth it. (To be continued.) )