The winter outside the gate was particularly cold, and all the young and old, the nobles and the low, put on their fur clothes early, with heavy leather boots on their feet, and a fur hat on their heads that could cover their ears, and only one face was exposed on their whole body, which was frozen red in the cold wind.

The farther north you go, the colder the weather becomes, and the so-called "snowflakes are as big as a fist" is not an exaggeration. According to reason, this kind of weather should be a time when few people go out, but in Dry Sheep Town, it is a lively scene of people coming and going.

This town is not on the map of the Great Wei Dynasty, nor on the map of the Golden Horde, because it is a wasteland, because it is on the only way from Liaodong to the Golden Horde, there are often large groups of merchants camping here, and attracting many small merchants and hawkers to come here to sell some food products, and over time, this place has become a town.

Now Liaozhou is at war, but the trade between Liaodong and the Golden Horde has not stopped, even if the swords are everywhere, even if the horse thieves are rampant, even if the snow closes the road. There is a good saying: someone does the business of killing heads, and no one does the business of losing money. As long as it is profitable, there must be people who are willing to take risks, as long as they make enough profits, life and death can also be downplayed. There are cattle, sheep, horses, and a lack of iron, tea, and salt on the grasslands, and although the imperial court strictly forbade the private ownership of salt, iron, and tea, since the closure of the mutual markets between the two countries, there have been countless smuggling merchants who have traveled to and from the border.

Zhao Zheng knows about this, but he can only turn a blind eye, not to mention that a considerable part of these smuggling merchants are under the name of the major Liaodong tycoons, even if he really bans smuggling, he will not be able to see results in a short period of time, but will make the Golden Horde more and more intensified attack on Liaodong, and now the relationship between Liaodong and the imperial court is tense, in fact, it is the power of one place to fight against the power of the Golden Horde, if it falls into the situation of all-out war, it is very disadvantageous.

In short, under all kinds of "dilemmas", this withered sheep town survived and became a very special existence. However, although Zhao Zheng did not eradicate Dry Sheep Town, he did not let Dry Sheep Town go, and sent people to station heavy troops here, not only to maintain order, but also to strictly check the coming and going merchants, if you want to do business, you can, but you have to find out the origin of your identity, which is equivalent to Zhao Zheng completely taking this place into his own hands. The reason is also very simple, instead of scattering these merchants everywhere, it is better to concentrate them and make them easy to manage, and it will be much easier to collect taxes or ban them in the future. As far as the merchants were concerned, since Zhao Zheng did not do things in a desperate way, they were also willing to take a step back and acquiesce in Zhao Zheng's jurisdiction over this place.

Li Xuandu, dressed in mink fur, stood outside the town and pulled out a road guide from his sleeve. This is the identity that Mr. Yan forged for him, all kinds of information are readily available, except for Li Xuan, who is fake, everything else is true, even Qingluanwei can't find the slightest flaw, and the number of people who know this identity is no more than two hands, including Zhao Zheng, Mr. Yan, Jing Xiu, Qin Daoyuan, Qin Su and others. Of course, Qin Su didn't agree with Li Xuandu's risk, but

Since Li Xuandu has agreed, she will not mess around, so she can only ask Li Xuandu to be careful in everything, and carefully prepare clothes for him to go out.

The identity on this road is surnamed Qin, named Qin Xuance, born in the Qin family's partial house, his parents died early, he was raised by his uncle, and his uncle also died of illness recently, so he went out alone.

This identity is not high, although he is a partial brother of the Qin family, but there are no elders to rely on, compared to Miss Qin, he is not much worse. It can be said that it is not low, after all, it is from the Qin family, and in the absence of a direct conflict of interest, others are still willing to sell the Qin family a face and pay a few respects.

At the same time, Li Xuandu also carried 10,000 taels of gold, after all, when it came to the Golden Tent, the Taiping money was too conspicuous, and the silver ticket was not universal, and the transactions there were mostly bartered, for example, a sheep could be exchanged for half a bag of tea, so the necessary gold, silver and copper coins were very necessary, sixteen taels and one catty, and ten thousand taels was six hundred and twenty-five catties, even if Li Xuan had the "eighteenth floor", it was also filled with most of it.

The gold has no color, and the white wall has slight flaws. There is no red gold in the world, but it can be made by manpower. The Taiping Sect specializes in this business, refining red gold from ordinary gold, and its fineness does not dare to say that it is ten out of ten, and nine out of nine is still there, so the price of red gold is almost three times that of ordinary gold, and now one or two red gold on the market can be exchanged for about thirty taels of silver, and one or two of ordinary gold can be exchanged for nine taels of silver. Ten thousand taels of gold is one hundred thousand taels of silver.

This gold was not paid by Li Xuandu out of his own pocket, it was raised from the Qin family's treasury, and it was not for Li Xuandu to do business, but when necessary, he could use this money to buy some of the powerful people of the Golden Horde Royal Court, after all, the Golden Horde was bitterly cold, and it was not as rich as the Central Plains, and the elders of the Imperial Court Xiaojing Pavilion asked for 200,000 taels of silver, and in the Golden Horde Royal Court, halving should be enough, or even less.

Other than that, it's a portable blade. The more money the merchant makes, the more he can attract outlaws, so on the way from Liaodong to the Golden Horde, horse thieves are rampant, there are Central Plains people, there are also grassland people, but many caravans are not cattle and sheep to be slaughtered, they are all self-organized guards, the so-called sword merchants, about that. Sometimes, the force of the caravan is too strong, and they will do some black and black deeds, which is similar to the maritime merchants of the Qing Wei Sect. In this case, everyone naturally carries a sword with them, and even has bows, crossbows, armor and other things that are strictly forbidden by the government, and those who are empty-handed are the outliers.

Li Xuandu would never hang the "human world" on his waist, which was even more unusual than not carrying a blade, so he decorated Hu Liang's "Great Grandmaster" a little and hung it on his waist, like a swordsman who walked the rivers and lakes alone.

The town is enclosed by a wooden fence, with two entrances and exits, one south and one north, and at both entrances and exits there are stubborn soldiers stationed to check the dirt outside the town for all caravans that want to enter the town

There was a long queue on the road, waiting quietly.

The long queue moved slowly, but in an orderly manner, there was no scramble, and no one cut the line, because these soldiers from the Liaodong Iron Cavalry were crossbow arrows, and if anyone dared to make trouble here, they would become a hedgehog in an instant, not to mention that not far away, there was also a cavalry unit patrolling and patrolling, as long as a charge, they could be killed immediately.

Soon arrived at Li Xuandu, when the general manager saw the road guide shown by Li Xuandu, there was a lot of smile on his face, after all, in Liaodong, everyone knows that the Zhao family and the Qin family are both prosperous and lossy, they are the soldiers of the Zhao family, and they eat the grain of the Qin family.

Since it is a family, it is inevitable to chat a few more words, Li Xuandu asked some about the customs and customs of the Golden Horde, which may be because he finally met a person who can chat, so he took Li Xuandu to the tent next to him to rest, poured him a cup of hot tea, and began to chat slowly.

Holding the teacup in his hand, he said with a smile: "Qin Gongzi has seen this tea, it is not a top-notch good tea, it also costs two coins and a tael, it is the filial piety of the merchants in the past to the brothers, and the brothers below are all rough people, and they can't drink good or bad, so they handed it over to me." ”

Li Xuandu took a sip: "The tea is good, and my brother's errand is also good." ”

Mr. Tong smiled and said: "It's good, it's much better than those brothers who followed Qin Dashuai to kill the enemy." But then again, if I hadn't been hit by an arrow in my knee and lame in the leg back then, I wouldn't have dealt with these merchants here, and I would have followed Qin Dashuai to kill the enemy. By the way, I forgot to ask just now, which Qin Gongzi is it?"

Li Xuandu smiled and said: "It's the Qin family of Chaoyang Mansion." ”

"The Qin family's caravan is the most generous, but it only comes once a month. ”

Li Xuandu said: "After all, the Qin family's bulk of the business is still on the sea. ”

The general manager said with envy: "That's right, I heard that the eldest lady of the old Qin family is finally a family, and her husband was born in the Li family, which controls the East China Sea, and the family is also a mountain of gold and silver, not inferior to the old Qin family." Now that the old Qin family has the North Sea, the old Li family has the East China Sea, and the two families are married, and the deal is really bigger than the sky. In addition, our Lord Qin is going to marry Madame Bai of the South China Sea, and he is really rich all over the world. ”

Li Xuandu coughed lightly: "Yes, a few families are married, and they are naturally rich and rival countries." ”

The two chatted for a long time, and explained to Li Xuan a lot of precautions on the grassland, such as how to avoid horse thieves, how to pay attention to the black and black of the caravan, Li Xuan was not afraid of these, but there was an important news that still aroused his interest, according to the businessmen, the demand for silk and porcelain in the royal court has increased greatly recently. This made Li Xuandu immediately think that according to the news from the Governor's Palace, the birthday of the princess of the old Khan King was approaching.