Chapter 33: Someone Requests an Audience with Yang Yinghua

  （0033）

  "Passersby, leave a recommendation or else the city management will come to our door! Lend me 3,000 city management (funds), and I'll immediately overthrow America!!!"

  Haozi is now absolutely the most carefree person in Yangjiatun.

  There was no other reason, Zhang Zhun generously gave him over a hundred taels of loose silver to expand his intelligence network and cover the entire Fushan City. Haozi originally had a talent for doing intelligence work, and after receiving a large sum of financial support, he naturally became even more powerful. Under Haozi's command, more than a dozen intelligence personnel gathered, and each stronghold in Fushan had Haozi's people, transmitting intelligence back and forth very quickly.

  Of course, Zhang Zhun also gave Haozi some guidance, systematically starting the intelligence work. Generally speaking, the movements inside Fushan City were not entirely clear to Haozi. However, as long as someone came out of Fushan City, Haozi would immediately know. Monkey knew that it was basically equivalent to Zhang Zhun knowing. Therefore, Wang Shixin and his henchmen, who wanted to leave the city to find trouble for Yangjia Village, had to first pass through Haozi's barrier.

  Another task of Haozi is to gather information about the salt bandits. Intelligence shows that on the road from Fushan to Jimo County, the salt bandits are still very active. The refined salt in Yangjiatun has not been disturbed for the time being, but it does not mean that it will not be disturbed in the future. Zhang Zhun's intention is to take the initiative to attack these salt bandits at the right time and drive them all out of the territory.

  Every catty of private salt costs two taels of silver, and the various battalions in Fushan also yearn for Yangjiatun. Especially young people from each battalion are eager to know what happened on the side of Yangjiatun. Some people secretly came to Yangjiatun to gather information, but they were all met with polite refusals, refusing them entry into Yangjiatun. Even some people who had dealings with Yangjiatun before were now blocked outside Yangjiatun.

  "This is our captain's order."

  "Who is our captain?"

  "Our team captain is called Zhang Yulin."

  "You don't even know our captain's name? That's too ignorant."

  ……

  The guards standing at their posts, saying similar words over and over again.

  Zhang Yulin's name spread throughout Fushan, even children knew that Yangjiatun had produced an extraordinary Zhang Yulin.

  The huge profit of refined salt is used for two purposes: to improve the life of Yang's family and to improve the lives of fellow villagers.

  Originally, pork was something that could not be eaten for several months, but now it can be eaten occasionally. In fact, eating it every day is also possible, it's just a bit wasteful. Because fish meat doesn't require any cost and its nutrition is even richer than pork. Two meals of rice per day are a must, one needs to eat their fill to have the energy to work. With white rice, there will certainly be no shortage of noodles either.

  Every day, there is a wage of thirty cents, and white rice to eat, fish and meat are never lacking, every three to five days, they can even eat pork. The villagers who came to help with the work were in high spirits. Their good treatment greatly encouraged the soldiers of the guard team, their training became more active.

  Again, it was thrown onto the body of the guard.

  The most basic loyalty of the army is to see who eats whose food and takes whose silver. After having enough funds, Zhang Zhun specially invited a few women to cook for the guards alone. He built more than a dozen large thatched cottages near Hongshitan as the "barracks" of the guard team, and also built a special dining hall next to the barracks, where they had collective meals every day.

  The warriors no longer need to go home for meals, which also saves their families a mouthful of food. The guards' diet is slightly better than that of the workers. Every day, it's still white rice to fill their stomachs, fish and meat to fill their stomachs, vegetables to fill their stomachs, and pork is fixed to be eaten once every three days. When training is particularly hard, they can even eat beef.

  The guards have been training hard every day, consuming a lot of physical energy. Every time they return home, they have to rush to eat with their families. Although their family members are very considerate and try to save food for them, the food is limited after all, and no matter what, it's impossible to eat too much. Now, they can finally eat to their heart's content.

  "Rice is enough!"

  "We have enough vegetables!"

  "We have enough fish meat!"

  "Pork will be plentiful too!"

  Zhang Zhun made a loud and bold statement.

  The warriors of the Guards, from now on, can truly devote themselves to training wholeheartedly. In a sense, this is a milestone. For the mode of operation where the soldiers of the Wei Army had to both fight and farm, Zhang Jun was disdainful of it. Since it's an army, its only task is to fight, nothing else needs to be taken care of.

  After feeding the warriors, Zhang Jun appropriately increased the intensity of training, focusing on cruel confrontation. At the same time, two-person combat teams, three-person combat teams, and five-person combat teams also began to implement coordinated combat methods. For warriors who were not serious enough in their training, Zhang Jun severely criticized them without mercy.

  After all, once the refined salt sales are on track, it's inevitable that there will be salt bandits who will be jealous. At that time, the guard team will have to take action to counter the salt bandits. The warriors of the guard team still lack actual combat experience. Different types of combat teams can help them defeat the enemy and gain combat experience. The warriors who participated in the battle against Lei Lao San last time and those who joined later are completely different in terms of psychological quality.

  The escort team will have to ensure the safe sale of refined salt, and the task of escorting refined salt to Jimo will become more frequent. Due to the confidentiality of the information, there won't be any salt thieves coming after them for now. However, as time goes by, outsiders will eventually find out about the existence of refined salt. At that time, whether a 30-man escort team can guarantee the safety of the refined salt is still uncertain.

  Wang Shixin will definitely not sit idly by and let Yangjiatun's refined salt be sold smoothly, causing trouble is inevitable, and it is even possible to join forces with the Salt Inspector and the Military Preparation Circuit to cause trouble. The huge profits of refined salt, who wouldn't covet them? The greatest skill of officials in the Ming dynasty is to make money and grab money, if Yangjiatun's refined salt is let off easily, that would be strange.

  It can be imagined that as the sales revenue of refined salt continues to increase, the tasks that the guards have to bear will become heavier. The pressure from Fushan Department, Moke County, Laizhou Prefecture, Shandong Province, and even from the high levels of the imperial court may all become more complicated due to refined salt. These pressures will ultimately fall on the heads of the guards.

  However, Yangjatun wanting to retreat was absolutely impossible.

  People die for wealth, birds perish for food. To hand over the lucrative salt business to others is something that not even Yangjia Village's most honest and obedient military households would agree with, let alone the soldiers of the guard unit. A life of white rice, big fish and meat - they wouldn't want to give it up even if you killed them.

  Zhang Zhun was also unwilling to return to his previous life.

  After two days of consideration, Zhang Zhun put forward more suggestions on refining salt and guarding troops.

  Yang Yinghua, with the assistance of Huang's family, was in charge of managing the finances. Only two people were allowed to spend money: Zhang Zhun and Yang Ruijing. However, the final accounts still had to be settled by Zhang Zhun. After Yang Ruijing spent money, Yang Yinghua had to report it to Zhang Zhun as soon as possible. Every evening, Zhang Zhun and Yang Yinghua went over the accounts together. If there were no issues, Zhang Zhun would sign off on them. Only then was the day's accounting considered truly settled.

  Yang Rui Feng is in charge of refining and selling salt, the money needed to be used boldly, everything is for the sake of making more profits. The more refined salt sold, the more income, the more profit, the more money earned before causing a strong reaction from all sides.

  At the same time, Yang Rui was also entrusted with a very important task, which was to keep the purification process confidential. To this end, Zhang Quan set up an assembly line for purification, where those responsible for filtration and evaporation were separated from each other. However, at the root of it all, they still had to find the most core villagers. Especially if there were people in their families who were in the guard squad, and if their children were also key members of the guard squad, that would be even better.

  Yang Kaidi was in charge of talking with the military dependents and absorbing them into the refined salt production work.

  The refining process of coarse salt requires a lot of manual labor and a large workforce. Moreover, the peripheral tasks of purchasing private salt and firewood also require a significant amount of labor. The villagers of Yangjia Village still try to use their own people as much as possible, after all, they are their own kind, with interests tied together, advancing and retreating together, and jointly resisting external pressure.

  At first, outsiders thought that Yangjia Village was just exporting ordinary private salt and didn't pay much attention to it. Only the salt merchants in Jimo County knew that during this period, the source of refined salt seemed to have some guarantee, but the quantity was still far from enough. Therefore, the price of refined salt remained at 155 wen per catty, unchanged.

  As time went on, by the end of March, some astute people began to notice the existence of Yangjia Village. The feedback from Haozi was that some unknown figures had appeared in Zhaojia Village to the north, asking about the source of refined salt everywhere. Local people had already told them that refined salt came from Yangjia Village in the far south. At the same time, the salt bandits within Mò County also made a move. However, strangely, these salt bandits' movements seemed to be connected by some mysterious big hand, and after being active for two days, they collectively disappeared without a trace.

  "Pay close attention."

  Zhang Zhun warned Yan Yi about being vigilant and not becoming complacent, repeatedly reminding Hao Zi to be careful.

  Now Yangjiatun sends out hundreds of kilograms of refined salt every day, if it is robbed, the loss will be huge, and if there are casualties, it will be even more serious.

  "I know."

  Hao Zi felt a great sense of responsibility and personally went to Zhao Jia Tun in the far north to arrange manpower.

  Zhang Zhun also strengthened the defensive work. The guards outside Yangjiatun had set up checkpoints, intercepting strangers coming and going. For the past two days, Yang Zixuan led the team and reported that in just two days, four strangers came to inquire about refined salt. The guards responded uniformly according to Zhang Zhun's instructions, saying they didn't know anything. However, those strangers didn't leave far away and stayed nearby at Renjiatun. It seemed that these people should be advance scouts, and there would be more important figures coming later.

  Time flew to the 29th of March in the seventh year of Chongzhen. On that day, at noon, Zhang Zhun was directing the guards to conduct ambush training, when Yang Yingsu sent Yang Gan to report hastily, saying that someone had asked to see her by name, seemingly very formal and professional. She was uncertain in her heart, so she invited Zhang Zhun back to take charge.

  "Has someone come looking for her by name?"

  Zhang Zhun felt strange in his heart and hurried back immediately.

  "Passersby, leave a recommendation or else the city management will come to our door! Lend me 3,000 city management (funds) and I'll immediately overthrow America~~~~"