A heavy rain floated across the sky, causing everyone walking on the forest path to panic. They hurriedly took out the rain gear, not to cover themselves, but to protect the goods strictly. Compared to the goods that can obtain a lot of profit on horseback, what is the point of getting a little rain on their own?

A small village appeared in front of me. The one at the entrance of the village was only on the road. It looked like a typical red brick and black tiles on the east coast house. This made the group feel excited. They finally had a place to shelter from the rain.

"Take care of all the goods, I don't want to see any losses." Serginho ordered coldly. Because some mules and horses carrying goods died on the road, and they were reluctant to throw away any package of goods, even Serginho himself had no riding tools. He was such a bunch of greedy people.

"Also, don't do anything rude after the past. Maybe patrols pass by here, and most of the villagers also have guns, so put away your little thoughts. We are just passing guests." Serginho added.

Because there are many former slave hunters in the team, Serginho is very worried that they will mess up the matter and has to remind him. Of course, those slave hunters are not fools. Although they are vicious when facing the Indians, the East Coast people are "famous" in the Tuanjie River Basin and are never good at it. Even those farmers who seem completely harmless have received basic militia training. Maybe they have followed the county and township security teams to search for fugitives in Brazil, which is not a target that can be criticized.

Of course, the main reason is that their rifles were confiscated by the East Coast police when they passed through the border post and could only be retrieved when they left. Although they also hid some knives and pistols in private, they may not be safe. They are likely to be weaker than those villagers in terms of force.

"Jose, I'm thirsty, can I drink some wine?" asked a middle-aged man who looked a little bit of status. He followed behind a horse, looking at the swaying package on the horse's back, and licking his chapped lips, as if it was difficult to resist the temptation.

"You'd better not do that, Michelle, or I'll take away your due share," Serginho said coldly.

"You are a villain who deserves to be cursed." Michel said angrily, but he seemed to feel sorry for the money and did not touch the bottles.

The village arrived soon. Sure enough, there was a pergola at the door, and two young men who were sheltering from the rain were carrying rifles. After seeing someone coming, they immediately stood up, held rifles, and looked at Serginho and his group vigilantly.

"We are the envoys sent by the Governor of Bahia. We come to your country to discuss affairs. Please relax. It is impolite to look at the guests with a gun." At Serginho's gesture, a follower who was proficient in Chinese came forward and said.

"What is your purpose in our village?" asked the militia.

"Hide away from the rain and buy some food, if any," the translator said.

"Stay in the shelter across the road. Let's leave after the rain stops. This thunderstorm will not last too long." The militia said vigilantly: "As for food, of course we have, but the price is not cheap. The food in Tuanjie River is not that surplus. If you need it, we can prepare it. By the way, we only collect gold coupons or gold, and we don't want silver coins."

Given that silver coins have been officially removed from the scope of legal currency, the circulation of silver coins has been legally prohibited throughout the East Coast. The government gave the public two years to exchange new currencies for new currencies to the banks at a ratio of 1:1.1 to pay gold exchange coupons in the future. In the future, the silver stock in the East Coast will be either collected by the citizens as jewelry and utensils, used in industrial channels, or collected by the government to pay for foreign trade and issuance of foreign loans by state-owned enterprises.

By the way, silver currency will not disappear from overseas colonies for the time being. New China, Australia, Rabaul, Diu, Tahiti and the Far East can still use silver coins minted by local mints. But local knowledgeable people should understand that the circulation of silver coins has entered the countdown. If they are smart enough, they can use gold coupons more from now on, which will help protect their economic interests.

The Portuguese group in front of him obviously had never heard of this kind of thing, and they stared at each other for a moment. Most of the food they carried with them had consumed and needed to be replenished in urgent need of supplementation, but they only had some silver coins minted by the Bahia authorities and silver coins originally circulated on the east coast. Serginho was sure that these villagers on the east coast could still accept the silver coins on their bodies, but most of them would be slaughtered, which made him hesitate. Moreover, before he came, he heard that the food prices in the Tuanjie River Basin were significantly higher than those in other parts of the east coast. Wheat, rice, potatoes, and corn were very high, and even the extremely cheap cured meat was very high, which made it hard for the first time to come and shout that they could not afford tea and eggs. Is this still the East Coast known for its wealth? As expected, all gold diggers deserve to die!

Of course it is unfair to throw all the problems on the gold diggers. In fact, in the past two or three years, the large amount of gold exchange vouchers printed by the East Coast government has also been one of the culprits. At the beginning, the government gave the military department a briefing and promised to provide 200 million yuan of war funds. The money has been printed and spent more than 50 million yuan, and it is basically used to purchase weapons, food, drugs, tools, build new ships, recruit new recruits (involving the expansion of the army and navy), intelligence expenses, diplomatic expenses and additional expenses of troops sent overseas in advance, not to mention that the previous Moroccan war also cost countless money (what? The compensation was taken away by the Ministry of Finance? Are the white shirts not afraid of punishment?), and in short, the cost is still very large.

Of the 50 million yuan expenditure, it can be said that more than two-thirds of it is spent in China, which will undoubtedly cause a considerable degree of inflation. As a commodity commodity, grain is naturally also in the list of influences. According to the latest commodity price list released by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, for the food, beef prices rose by 8.5% compared with the same period last year, mutton prices rose by 3%, pork prices rose by 1.4%, seafood prices rose by 4.2%, barley prices rose by 12%, oat prices rose by 15.4%, wheat prices rose by 14.3%, rice prices rose by 7.8%, potato prices rose by 6.3%, and corn prices rose by 4.9%.

Except for the sweet potatoes, cassava, rye and other foods that the East Coast people do not consume much, the price curve of most grains is on the rise. Such rising agricultural product prices is undoubtedly a huge boon for agricultural operators. The East Coast government seems to have also lost money to farmers in order to make up for the long-term sluggish grain prices in the past twenty years. This time, it did not use administrative means to intervene. Even the national reserve warehouse that stocked a large amount of food did not sell large quantities on the market to stabilize grain prices. The agriculture of the entire country is showing a thriving trend, and the number of people willing to go to the border to open up wasteland has skyrocketed, which is an unexpected surprise.

In the first half of this year, the entire Brazilian plateau area was more rainy than in previous years. The negative impact of the rainy season was particularly serious when summer grain harvests, which caused a large-scale reduction in grain production in dozens of counties in Brazil. As the Tuanjie River Basin, which still relies on the grain supply in Brazil, it is not surprising that the soaring price of grain has been made. The poor gold diggers have basically given the little gold they earned to the farmers. This has to be said to be a huge irony, and it seems to be a bit positive educational significance.

After asking about the price of grain that is willing to be sold in the village, Serginho and his group became speechless. If the East Coast government had not taken strict measures to restrict the entry and sale of foreign farmers' products, they might have wanted to sell grain from Brazil, although the food in Bahia, Pernambuco and other places was not very abundant.

Serginho and others did not intend to buy the village's food. He calculated the food storage and decided to go there to collect prey along the way. If it was not enough, it would be bought in other villages. Anyway, the closer it was to the south, the more food was, the cheaper it was.

He also found some other meanings from the high local food prices. The East Coast people discovered many gold mines in the Tuanjie River Basin, so many gold diggers, merchants, technicians, transporters and even prostitutes who were not good at producing came over, pushing food prices to a new level.

"What a pity this rich land." Serginho's glasses were full of greed. On the way they came, they had met an East Coast gem merchant who had sold them the emeralds he had collected. It's a pity that the merchant had many gun guards around him, otherwise Serginho would have ordered people to go up and snatched them. What a pity.

In the past few years, I don’t know how many gems flowed out in the Tuanjie River Basin to the East Coast market. Serginho has not carefully counted it, but as far as the East Coast government set up a state-owned jewelry company to process these gems, the quantity must be quite large, and the total value may even reach millions of dollars. This money is enough in Europe to fight a war between two countries to decide the ownership. As a result, the East Coast people here have no competition and can easily get it.

However, he also heard that people on the East Coast seem to prefer jade produced in the East, and are not very fond of various rubies, emeralds, sapphires, jade, etc., so that the top-quality emeralds, such as emeralds, cannot show their due value. If this were in Europe, he would have been robbed crazy!

Of course, Serginho did not intend to sell gems from the East Coast to return to Europe. First, he did not have the capital and channel, and second, even if people on the East Coast love jade, under the guidance of the long-term government, there must be a lot more people who like gems and jade jewelry. The price is no longer at a low point, and the investment time is wrong.

"Forget it, why do you want so much? Let's hurry to the Military Control Agency of the East Coast people and protest the most serious against their supreme commander, asking them not to cross the border and set up settlements, especially the rich Unity River Basin." Serginho quickly adjusted his mood and thought: "The East Coast people must draw a line in advance. In the future, they will definitely fight with the Spaniards. Once the entire Peru and New Spain governors' area are occupied, what will they think of Brazil, which is wedged into their territory? They will definitely make territorial demands? Instead of having conflicts at that time, it is better to reach an agreement in advance now to dispel the East Coast people's ambitions and guarantee King Pedro's interests in the New World."
Chapter completed!