After another day, the matter of exchanging the sand for salt became more and more noisy, and there was even some talk about the incident to the salt merchants. Rao Wu Minzhi couldn't sit still anymore, and he asked people to buy salt, hoping to buy salt as soon as possible. to transfer this charge to someone else.
Qi Ming has already sent people to urge him two or three times, but the other salt merchants have already heard the news. At this time, Wu Minzhi and others are eager to fall, and naturally they are unwilling to help, even if they are willing to sell salt to them. , and the price is ridiculously high.
Wu Minzhi threw the teacup in his hand angrily: "These wicked villains, when I get through this crisis safely, I will definitely let them try my methods."
The other salt merchants sat on the side in silence: "Even if we have to settle accounts, we have to wait until we get through this crisis..." And this time, most of the time, they couldn't make it through.
Just when everyone was almost in despair, news came from the person who had sent the letter and said that he had salt in his hand.
Looking at the letter sent by the servants, the salt merchants were very excited: "Leader Wu, hurry up and see, is the other party willing to sell salt to us?"
Wu Minzhi hurriedly opened the letter, and the contents of the envelope were also concise: "Five million taels of silver!"
"What? What does that mean?"
"The other party offered 15 million taels of silver? This is not the lion's big opening, it is to clean up our family property!"
Wu Minzhi's face was gloomy, looking at the contents of the letter, the corners of his eyes kept beating: "Don't you think this letter is very strange?"
"strangeness?"
"The other party only offered 15 million taels of silver, but he didn't say how much salt to sell to us, and the timing of the two messages was too coincidental. Don't you think of anything?"
The salt merchants present are not stupid. Hearing Wu Minzhi's words, his face turned ugly after a moment's thought: "Boss Wu, you mean that the person who is sending us a letter now is the one who robbed our salt boat before. people?"
Wu Minzhi nodded: "Extremely good!"
In the hall, as if water droplets were splashed into the hot oil pan, it suddenly exploded into a ball: "It's really like this, the person who robbed our salt boat clearly wanted to sell it at a price 50% higher than the market price. Buy your own stuff!"
"That batch of salt originally belonged to us. Not to mention it was robbed by him, and we were asked to buy the salt at such a high price. Isn't this deliberately squeezing us?"
"It's really abominable!"
"Boss Wu, do you have a way to deal with it?"
Wu Minzhi closed his eyes slightly and sighed: "Even if you and I know that this person deliberately oppresses us, but in front of us, there is really no other way but to admit it." The salt merchants who were blushing with anger gradually gradually He calmed down: Yes, even if you know that the other party is doing this on purpose, is there any way to resist it? If you don't buy this batch of salt, according to the current speed of rumors spreading, it will not take long before the imperial censors will participate in this matter in front of the emperor,
The emperor must be furious after hearing about it, and when the time comes, he will send people down to investigate, I'm afraid they won't be able to save their heads!
"Leader Wu, according to what you mean, we recognize it like this?"
"What else can we do if we don't recognize it?" "But now the problem is that we don't have so much silver in our hands!" Their salt merchants are rich, but there is a limit to this money. The previous hole in the salt tax was too big. Part of it was filled, and the ones that could not be filled later were filled in the name of buying official salt, and then they were opened up and down one after another.
The joints cost a lot, and they gave the same name more than 10 million taels of silver. At present, there is not much left in their hands. How can they still have the ability to collect another 15 million taels? Wu Minzhi was silent for a moment, and then decided: "After we have passed the current crisis, we still have a chance to make a comeback. If we can't make it through, our lives will be involved. Which is more important, you will decide for yourself? Yes, the Wu family, the Wei family, and the Cao family each account for 20%, and the rest
You try to make up for it. I advise you to stop looking at some external things at this time, what should be sold, what should be discounted, and let’s work together to get through the current crisis first. "
The other salt merchants nodded and recognized it. Even if they didn’t recognize it at this time, what else could they do
When the others left, Wei Qi from the Wei family and Cao Bing from the Cao family stayed behind. It was inconvenient to say something before. At this time, only the three of them were left, so they no longer had any scruples.
"Leader Wu, you have already seen the problem, right?"
Wu Minzhi clenched his hands into fists and slammed it on the table: "How can you not see clearly! All of this is clearly the same name, or the first prince is manipulating it!" Cao Cao Cao said: "Alas, so The method is really frightening! First, he dispatched Qi Ming to break into our salt merchants, took the opportunity to spy on the news, and then robbed our salt boat on the Xijiang River according to the news, and then deliberately used this news to intimidate us and make us panic. without thinking
Clearly, I directly agreed with his previous proposal to fill the salt tax, and then made a noise today... These steps are linked together, clearly wanting to squeeze all the oil and water out of us! "
Wei Qi's expression was heavy: "The key is that even though we know that this is a trap set by the first prince, we can only walk in in silence and have no ability to resist!"
Wu Minzhi sighed: "If one step is not careful, and everything is lost, it is also our own fault that we are too careless. If we directly filled the hole in the salt tax with silver taels, maybe there will be no future disasters." Wei Qi shook his head: "Leader Wu don't need to be too upset. Speaking of which, we have a huge influence in Jiangnan, but wanting to fight against someone like the eldest prince is tantamount to shaking a tree! What I'm worried about now is that the eldest prince will squeeze us clean. After that, just shovel us out and re-cultivate the salt
Shang, take control of the Jiangnan salt administration, so, maybe Jiangnan will really become the first prince's bag! "
"We absolutely can't sit still, the first prince wants to eat us all, and we have to be prepared to die!" Wu Minzhi nodded: "The two dear brothers are right, the previous post that Li Yuan sent to us, As well as the letter I promised before, I will keep it well. We, the salt merchants, will work together to write clearly the ins and outs of the matter, put our fingerprints on each, and attach the account books of each family and the invitations with seals and other evidence. Then I put These things were sent to the capital overnight. If the eldest prince is merciful and only wants money, if he is ruthless and wants to kill us and re-establish his power, then we will kill the fish and break the net and put the evidence in front of the emperor in one fell swoop. Never let him feel better!"