(225 additional votes are delivered, today's sixth update! Thanks to Tong20081001, Chen Bobo, 1945815, Laos, haidizhiyuan, shizhejia, 110505152821, Feng Jiejie for your monthly ticket support!)

After a rain, the temperature gradually rose again, the sun was still shining high, and the heat was unbearable. Li Jing was originally planning to plant soybeans for a season with this rain, but he had to stop helplessly. Fortunately, the five hundred whales sent by the Dragon King just now exchanged for 400,000 stones of grain for whale meat.

Li Jing used other items to exchange for a lot of food, so there was no need to worry about food for the time being. But everything was not going well. The military supervisor Zhang Chengye went to the capital and just rushed back. This time he personally escorted Li Jing a batch of gifts to the emperor. The main gift was a piece of ambergris of 200 kilograms, the skeleton of the largest whale, and the squid weighing 3,000 kilograms and six feet long. In addition, there were some canned foods in various colors, as well as Wuliangye liquor and various fruit wines, plus a trace of silk silk.

Along the way, they also gave Song Wei and Cui Yunqing from Qingzhou each gift, each with a whale skeleton, as well as some ambergris perfume, various canned foods, white wine and fruit wine, and a silk.

Song Wei and Cui Yunqing also heard some rumors about Dengzhou and carefully asked Zhang Chengye to go over and ask about the specific situation. When he came back, Zhang Chengye also asked Li Jing to bring a lot of gifts back. In addition, Li Jing was also told that Wang Jingwu had now retreated to Qizhou and Zizhou had been recovered. Now Song Wen was transferred to the governor of Zizhou, and the troops on the front line of quelling the rebellion were commanded by Kang Chenghui, and Song Wei returned to Qingzhou due to some repeated wounds.

In the letter, Song Wei praised Li Jing's practice of using labor for relief in Dengzhou. He said that Dengzhou is an extremely important prefecture in Ziqing Town and an important port in the northern part of the Tang Dynasty, which can ensure stability. Li Jing made great contributions. As for Li Jing forcing his previous efforts to accept Dengzhou, Song Wei did not mention it. The two have now become adopted father and son, and he will not mention any small friction in the past.

Cui Yunqing said a little more in the letter, but the most common thing was that many chaos broke out in various places due to famine. Among them, the uprising of Wang Xianzhi, a salt peddler in Changyuan County, Huazhou, under Yicheng Jiedushi, the monk Wang Xianzhi, who was in charge of Changheng County. However, when he mentioned this, it was mainly because the Shang Junchang was arrested by Li Jing and sent to Dengzhou. Cui Yunqing did not really take these "little thieves and bandits" seriously.

The most troublesome thing he has now is the matter in Ziqing Town. Although he had just recovered a Zizhou, the truth of the matter was Wang Jingwu's voluntary retreat. When Wang Jingwu retreated, he took away the wealthy families in Zizhou and also took away all the grains in Zizhou. When he left, he had not forgotten to set fire. Now, the Zizhou recovered by Kang Chenghui is just a broken city that has been poisoned by the war.

The people waiting for the new governor of Song Wen are hundreds of thousands of displaced and hungry people. Cui Yunqing is also having trouble living in Qingzhou. The granary in Qingzhou was burned by Wang Jingwu last time. Now the food below cannot be collected, and it is all thanks to borrowing grain from various families to support it. Seeing that the time for summer planting is about to be missed, this autumn will be a year of no harvest. Now Cui Yunqing is anxious to die and doesn't know what to do.

Although he didn't say much between the lines, Li Jing could see that. Cui Yunqing meant that he wanted Li Jing to take out some food to support Qingzhou and Zibo. Li Jing estimated that Song Wei must have such an idea, but although the two were adopted father and son, some words were not as appropriate as the teacher Cui Yunqing said to him.

"Master Song didn't ask me to lead troops to attack Wang Jingwu?" Li Jing was a little surprised. Song Wei did not mention this matter, and Cui Yunqing did not mention this matter.

Zhang Chengye's face was still a little tired, "Maybe they think that Wang Jingwu retreated to Qizhou now, and it's probably because they're afraid that you will be robbing merit. Wang Jingwu was defeated one after another under our hands, but the Pinglu Army won several consecutive victories. I think the General's Mansion must feel very shameless. Now Song Wen's Dengzhou soldiers have passed by. Wang Jingwu happened to abandon Zibo again, so they must think that they are enough. If we ask us to go again, wouldn't that mean they are useless?"

"Take face and suffer!" Li Jing snorted. These people only care about face, but don't want to delay it longer. The slower the matter calms down, not only will they lose face, but they actually consume their strength. Not to mention anything else, when fighting outside, the consumption of food and grass is a huge number. However, if Song Wei does not propose to ask him to send troops in such a situation, Li Jing will have no reason to take the initiative to send troops.

The mess in Qingzhou is better, but what makes Li Jing angry the most is the news that Zhang Chengye brought back from Chang'an.

"Your Majesty was very happy and satisfied when he saw the things the general sent, especially the whale skeleton and the frozen 3,000 kilograms of squid. The emperor put the whale skeleton on the Zhuque Street for people to participate. There were countless people watching every day. Everyone knew that the whale was sent by our Dengzhou. According to the words of Staff Li, when I was in Beijing, I arranged some clever people to tell the people around the skeleton that the general borrowed rain from the Dragon King, the Dragon King gave 500 giant fish, and the general pulled people in front of the Ghost Gate. The general didn't know that now, no one in the entire Chang'an City did not know that Li Jing, Dengzhou, said that the general was an important minister of the emperor and a messenger of the dragon. Some people said that the general was descending to the earth in the sky!"

The giant squid and whale skeletons made the emperor happy, and the ambergris, perfume, white wine, fruit wine, canned whales, etc. also made the nobles in the palace pay for it. Other ministers of the court also received gifts from Li Jing. Therefore, the next day, the young emperor issued an order from the palace, and specially promoted Li Jing to the Duke of Zhendong County, and directly passed the Duke of County to become Duke of County. He also rewarded some imperial objects in the palace to Li Jing, which was considered a great favor.

Li Jing was naturally happy to be promoted to the title of Duke of Zhendong County. After all, Duke of County was from the second grade. Li Jing stepped from the third grade to the second grade, which was an extremely high threshold.

What made Li Jing angry was the eunuch Tian Lingzi. Li Jing thought he was very good to this eunuch at the beginning. Every time he gave gifts to the capital, he only gave him the most. But because the emperor once said that he would take him to the East Army into the capital, the eunuch regarded him as his opponent. Last time he dug a hole and got Li Jing the position of a Liaohai salt and iron transfer envoy and a coin minting envoy. For these two officials, Li Jing would have to give Li Jing three million staples of money to the court every year.

Li Jing endured it. This time Zhang Chengye entered Beijing, Li Jing prepared many gifts for Tian Lingzi, hoping to repair the relationship between the two. But who knew that there was no benefit at all. The dead eunuch took the gift here, turned around and ran to the emperor to say bad things about him. Finally, the emperor agreed, saying that it was half over this year, and asked Li Jing to send the three million chunks of money to the capital before the Mid-Autumn Festival.

The official appointment he received in May was just over one year old and asked him to pay three million guan. This insidiousness can no longer be described as shameless.

Li Jing had the money in his hand, but he didn't plan to just let Tian Lingzi pinch flat and round it.

"Your Majesty should not agree to Tian Lingzi's unreasonable request." Zhang Chengye was a little disappointed with the emperor's performance this time. He was truly sincere to the emperor, but the emperor casually listened to Tian Lingzi's words and asked Li Jing to hand over three million guan. This made the minister feel so disappointed.

"Monday, we think it's better not to fight against Tian Lingzi head-on in this matter." Zhang Chengye was also good to Li Jing. In his opinion, although Li Jing was a little autocratic, he was loyal to the court and the emperor, and was a capable minister. He was worried that Li Jing would suffer a loss when he was angry. Although Li Jing was liked by the emperor, he was far away in Dengzhou after all, and Tian Lingzi was the emperor's father and even controlled the court.

On the same day, Li Jing summoned Li Zhen, Li Liang, Lin Wei, King Zhong and Zhang Hong and other confidants to discuss matters.

"How is the salt production in the salt field?"

Du Zhongwu looked through the account book and replied: "Including the original Nantuozi Salt Factory, we now have ten salt factories, with a total of 10,000 mu of salt fields. One phase of salt can be produced every twelve days. One phase can produce 300,000 stones of salt, and nearly one million stones of salt can be produced in a month. There are more than 10,000 workers in the ten salt factories. At present, the nine newly built salt factories have produced four phases of salt. With the original Nantuozi Salt Factory, we still have 1.5 million stones of salt. We only sold a small part of it, but it was not included."

The imperial court's official salt was collected from the salt households with a dou of ten cents, and then sold it to the people at an additional price of one hundred cents, making a profit of one hundred cents. However, although the profit was high, it attracted many people to take risks to sell private salt, which greatly impacted the sale of official salt.

Now that Li Jing has the official position of salt and iron transfer, he is responsible for the acquisition and sale of official salt in the entire Liaodong and Ziqing Town. However, Li Jing has his own salt production channel and does not have to be acquired from the people. But with just such a small territory, it is difficult to make three million yuan in profits a year.

From the beginning, Tian Lingzi deliberately made things difficult for Li Jing.

A dou of salt for ten cents is a small dou, that is, a dou of kilograms, and a stone is twenty-one dou. If one dou makes 100 dou, Li Jing has to sell 1.5 million s of salt to earn this figure. The salt factory can dry ten periods of salt a year and produce 3 million s of salt a year. If Li Jing really sells 150 dou of salt a year, he can still make half of it in a year.

However, Li Jing did not intend to sell it like this. If he really wanted to sell it like this, most of the people in Liaodong and Ziqing Town could not afford salt, and the reputation he had finally accumulated was gone.

"Our salt retail costs fifty cents per bull, wholesale costs one cents per stone, and openly supply the local people of Qingzhou and Liaodong. If we are salt merchants from other places, each bucket of seventy cents per bull, each stone is half a cent." Li Jing thought for a while and decided.

"But in this way, the salt in our salt farm is only about 3 million yuan a year, and we still have more than 10,000 workers. In this way, we will do it in vain?"
Chapter completed!