Chapter 598: Plenty of Wood
Hubili had no choice but to manufacture catapults in large quantities, because most of the raw materials for catapults were wood, and wood was easy to get as it was everywhere.
When Zhao Yulin finished his work at the Mint, he returned home and saw his father, the old scholar, scolding Zhao Feiyan's son Zhao Guanghui, while his mother was hugging Huo Fenghuang's youngest daughter Zhao Guangfeng to comfort her. When Guangfeng saw Zhao Yulin enter the house, she immediately burst into tears and called him, "Daddy, daddy, brother Guanghui is bullying me." She wiped her tears while speaking, broke free from her grandmother's hand and ran towards him.
Zhao Yulin quickly squatted down and picked him up.
The old scholar saw Xiao Guanghui constantly looking at Zhao Yulin, and angrily said that he couldn't control it, and that he should take care of his own child. Then he turned around and left.
Zhao Yulin looked at her mother helplessly and asked the child to follow her to the study.
He looked at Guangfeng's little mouth carefully. The lips were red and pouty, and it was a little swollen and inflamed. He said there was no wound, so it was no problem.
The little girl refused to accept it, and said in rapid succession that her brother was harming her, knowing that the fruit was spicy but still giving it to her, her lips became thick, and Daddy couldn't see it? The little girl pouted her little mouth while talking and asked him to look again.
Zhao Yulin wanted to laugh when he saw his daughter's expression, but he still asked Guanghui seriously: "Seriously, your sister's lips are so red and thick. Tell me honestly, what's going on?"
This guy told Zhao Yulin hesitantly that he found a kind of red wild fruit in the small vegetable garden in the backyard. It was very spicy when bitten, so he picked it to coax his younger brothers and sisters to eat it. Unexpectedly, Guangfeng was not afraid of spicy food. After eating two fruits in succession, he rolled on the ground in pain and his lips became thicker.
Damn it, it’s just a little kid.
Even though his mother had just said that it was nothing serious, he was still worried and asked Guanghui to lead the way to see what kind of plant the fruit grew on.
He carried Guangfeng and followed Guanghui to the small vegetable garden. The plants and weeds in it had been cleared and piled together. Zhao Guanghui walked over and searched for a while, then pulled out the stem of a plant and said to him: This is it, I've eaten it several times, it's really non-toxic.
When Zhao Yulin took it and looked at it, he saw two chili-shaped fruits, one green and one red, hanging on it. He was stunned with surprise and immediately put his daughter down to look at it carefully. Then he peeled open the bright red fruit and saw that it was full of chili seeds.
It's really amazing. The red fruit is definitely a chili pepper. It's clearly a chili pepper.
Zhao Yulin was overjoyed and calmly asked the housekeeper who was following behind him: Where did this thing come from?
The housekeeper thought that Guangfeng had accidentally eaten a poisonous fruit. He had searched his mind dozens or hundreds of times and confirmed that it had appeared within two years of the strange military advisor Zhu moving into the backyard. They pulled out this plant every year, but it grew back tenaciously every year. It was like a wildfire that could not be burned out, and it would grow again in the spring breeze. Please punish me, young master.
Zhao Yulin laughed when he heard this.
The housekeeper was the maid of his late wife Chen Xiaomin. Zhao Yulin treated her as his own sister and he believed that the housekeeper would not tell lies.
He said with a smile: This is a good thing. I can't thank you enough. Fortunately, you didn't get rid of it all. He told the housekeeper that this is called "chili pepper", a rare condiment.
He asked the housekeeper to find someone to do it, and Guanghui was not allowed to leave. They all had to pick all the peppers together, not leaving a single one behind.
The housekeeper looked at him in surprise, as if he didn't believe what Zhao Yulin said.
He laughed and asked: Girl, why are you standing there? Why don’t you call someone quickly?
The housekeeper trotted away immediately.
Guanghui was like a child who had made a mistake. He began to look for pepper branches obediently, and said to Zhao Yulin with concern: Daddy, take my sister back. I will make sure it is done.
Damn it, you still feel sorry for him.
Zhao Yulin was delighted and happily picked up Guangfeng and walked back. As he walked, he comforted his little daughter, saying: Brother is just teasing sister, it's okay, don't be like a greedy cat in the future and put everything you see into your mouth.
Guangfeng knew that the food he ate was not poisonous, and he felt much better when he saw his father punishing his brother to work. His mouth didn't seem to hurt anymore, and he struggled to get down to the ground and play by himself.
Zhao Yulin put his daughter down and went to the study. He tried his best to search his mind about peppers and wrote down the planting season, plant spacing and row spacing.
After a while, the housekeeper came in with a winnowing basket. Zhao Guanghui followed him in and pointed at the red chili peppers in the basket, saying that he was feeding the ones to his sister.
He was overjoyed to see the only three chili peppers that were shaped like ox horns. He picked them up, examined them carefully, and couldn't let go.
He found a piece of red string and tied the peppers to the study, and handed the pepper sowing and planting manuscripts to the housekeeper and said: "How to do it? It depends on my sister. From now on, our vegetable garden will only grow peppers."
He reminded the housekeeper that the root system of the pepper was very weak and there were few seeds. It would be best to use kraft paper to make a paper cup the size of a wine glass, fill it with fine soil and bury it on the surface of the bed, and sow and grow seedlings at the rate of three seeds per cup. When transplanting in the future, one cup would be one plant, so as not to damage the root system of the pepper.
Seeing that the housekeeper was looking at him with half-belief, Zhao Yulin pulled him to the kitchen and worked with the chef to cut the remaining green peppers into segments, dry them, grind them into fine powder, and mix them with a little Sichuan pepper, star anise and shallots to make cooked chili oil. A spicy aroma immediately filled the entire kitchen.
The housekeeper immediately assured him happily that she would do her best.
In the evening, our Xuzhou prefect Wu Yuqi came back. Zhao Yulin pretended to be mysterious and asked her to taste a new dish, which turned out to be the boiled vegetables that everyone had seen.
Yuqi looked at her in confusion and asked: Are you trying to make people happy?
The old scholar and his mother looked at him with disdain, and a group of cute kids all wondered why their dads were so mentally retarded.
He said slowly, "There's more."
Soon, the maid brought him the cooked chili dipped in water. There was not much, only two small plates on the table. He told them not to rush, and after dipping his chopsticks into the dipped water plate in front of Guangfeng and tasting it, he asked for more soy sauce before he could start eating.
In this way, adults and children followed his example and picked up the dishes and dipped them in chili before eating them. After two bites with chopsticks, they were extremely happy.
His father asked happily: Where did this delicious seasoning come from? It's so wonderful, so wonderful.
Wu Yuqi also kept dipping dishes into the red oil dish, and said happily that she was really blessed.
His mother said with a smile that it was Xiao Guanghui who found it, but it was our Guangfeng who suffered.
After being enlightened by him, Zhao Guangfeng just laughed and focused on eating the vegetables and was no longer afraid of chili peppers.
At night, after Yuqi caught him and felt relieved, she told him that Master Lu had recently uncovered another case of a grassland spy plotting to sabotage the iron blast furnace being built in Jiayang Village. In recent years, the Mongolian army has frequently attacked our iron blast furnace, and mines and blast furnaces across the country have been bombed everywhere, making the anti-espionage task arduous.
Zhao Yulin looked at the carved wooden decorations above his head and said: If we don't give them steel, the grassland empire won't let us own it, and this will result in a lose-lose situation.
Yuqi used her little hands to light him on fire and said, "The devil is one foot high, but the way is ten feet high. We should keep building walls, tighten fences, and catch and skin the hungry wolves one by one."
The couple talked as they did it, and Wu Yuqi quickly took off his clothes and they happily interacted with each other.
The next day, Yuqi accompanied him to visit the duty-free shops and workshop street in Xuzhou. The shops were crowded with people and business was booming. When the shopkeepers saw them coming, they happily greeted the third young master and Mrs. Yuqi with good luck.
Wu Yuqi looked at him happily and said that the people's demands were not high, just wanting to have a stable life, and we have done it.
He nodded, looked to the north and said: It's not over yet, we have to drive out the Mongolian army and conquer them.
Yuqi said with a smile that she had forgotten that her husband wanted to revitalize China.
She pointed to the boats traveling on the river and told Zhao Yulin: There was a civil war in Dali, and Xiao Linzi's father was short of money, so he said that the tax on the goods we sold there would be increased by 10%, while the tax on the goods they shipped out would be reduced by 10% when they passed customs.
What does this mean?
The Dali Kingdom was setting up trade barriers.
It's obvious that they just want to sell more goods to us and earn money.
Zhao Yulin felt that the New Song Dynasty was constantly recovering territory, and the huge population base of the New Song Dynasty was a big market. The unified taxation facilitated trade among merchants and the mass production of goods. The more they produced, the lower the cost; the more they sold, the higher the profit.
The prices of goods in government-run workshops can be appropriately lowered to improve their competitiveness.
Wu Yuqi also holds such an opinion. She said that merchants in Jiuzhouba are reducing their prices to attract more and more people to come and eat and have fun. Judging from the taxes paid by the merchants, they have not decreased but are continuing to grow .
He asked Yuqi to go with him to see Chen Zhongshun and talk to the old man, asking him to take care of the matter.
When the two arrived at Chen Zhongshun's house, the old man was actually watching his youngest son practice calligraphy. He proudly asked his son to call him brother-in-law and call Wu Yuqi sister.
After Zhao Yulin hugged his little brother, his mother quickly took her brother-in-law out.
Wu Yuqi asked him with a smile: Uncle Chen, are you really confident in letting Chen Liu be the young master?
The old man blew the tea bubble happily and said there was nothing to worry about. Our Liu Liu is very capable. Last year, he went to Guanzhong to do business and completed the delivery of the winery shares without losing a penny. The round-trip expenses were also very economical. I have high hopes for our eldest grandson.
Zhao Yulin said that no matter how much he believed in Liu Liu, she was still a child and her father had to make the decisions on important matters.
The old man said happily that he knew that Liu Liu didn't want to eat for free, so he asked his youngest wife to take care of things, and his eldest wife and he would take care of the baby, and his eldest grandson could do whatever he wanted. A few days ago, Liu Liu brought his wife Jin Zhu back and asked for 10,000 strings of cash as capital, so that he could open a winery at his mother Hulan's place in Qiongzhou to make wine. Was it his son-in-law's idea?
Zhao Yulin said that the child was still young and should start from scratch, otherwise he would not know how difficult it is to start a business.
Chen Zhongshun nodded, took a sip of tea and said that he hadn't visited him for a long time. He came not just to care about Liu Liu, but also to find out if there was anything else he needed to do.
Wu Yuqi immediately expressed her thoughts with a smile.
After listening to them, the old man nodded and told them not to worry and he would do it later.
In recent years, businesses across the country have taken Cuiping Mountain as a weather vane, and Cuiping Mountain has Chen Zhongshun's Wugufeng as its leader. As long as he speaks out, Wugufeng will take the lead in lowering prices, so all businesses will follow suit.
Chen Zhongshun also believed that Wu Gufeng had huge profits and could cut prices, but it could not do so all at once. If the price was cut too much, it would not only make it difficult for the distributors to operate, but would also arouse suspicion among drinkers.
