- 100: Strategy (Thanks to Mighty A for the donation and monthly pass)


    : : Strategy (Thanks to Mighty A for the donation and monthly pass)


    Trantor: 549690339


    Three dayster


    An exhaustive joint report was ced on Tang Luos desk, the result of a coboration between the West City Public Security Bureau and the Tang ns


    Wind Media.


    With the help of these two reports, Tang Luo was able to understand the ins and outs of the case involving poisoning and nder.


    Lou Hongzhi, a native of Xiling. He studied medicine from a young age but was not interested in healing, rather he took pleasure in mastering poisons and harmful nts. At the age of fifteen, he started the Foundation Building, and at twenty-eight, he broke through to an advanced level. His martial arts style was strange; specializing in defensive techniques but without any proficiency in hand-to-handbat. He was adept in using poison, so his opponents often died from severe poisoning rather than throughbat. He was brilliant and proud.


    He once said, The world belongs to the virtuous, not the tyrannical. Then only the son of Pride of Xiling, Shen, can ascend to the throne.


    In other words, he is an irrational fan of Prince Shen, deeply desiring to enter his mansion and show his capabilities.


    However, because of his average ability, Prince Shens mansion which already has five hundred advanced martial artists, would not value a poison user highly. Therefore, Lou Hongzhi, unwilling to be beneath her, did not rmend himself to join Prince Shens mansion.


    After the duel with Jiang Lin, Prince Shens reputation was greatly damaged. His retainers left one by one, including several advanced martial artists.


    Prince Shen became theughing stock of Xiling overnight. While the Tang ns operation yed a role in this, the main reason was that there were too many people watching the duel. They felt that Prince Shen was too cowardly. Martial artists respect bravery and see risking their lives in battle as the highest honour. Prince Shens retreating means that hecks bravery. This disappointed those martial artists who had rallied behind him because of his reputation, leading them to leave.


    But this gave Lou Hongzhi a chance to be taken seriously. With Zhang Xinghe dead, there was a vacancy at Prince Shens house, and his reputation had taken a significant hit.


    As long as he could greatly embarrass Tang Luo and demonstrate his skills, Prince Shen would definitely look at him differently.


    This conspiracy was instigated by this simple wish.bender


    If this riot couldnt be quelled, hundreds, if not thousands of lives could be lost. The reason for these potential deaths is nothing more than to pave the path for Lou Hongzhi to enter Prince Shens mansion.


    Why are there such twisted bastards everywhere, Tang Luo put down the dossier and rubbed his head.


    He had initially assumed that this was Prince Shens doing, a move to retaliate against him. So, for the past three days, he had prepared several ns to counteract them, but after reading the dossier, he felt sick.


    After a few deep breaths, he felt a sense of dullness. He tossed another case file along with the current one into the brazier.


    May Fifteenth


    For a whole month, the Tang n had been implementing a grain collection n. During this month, the patriarchs of the Tang n branches, under Tang Mings organization, began a crazy grain purchasing n.


    The so-called collection of grain is the collection of rice.


    Rice is generally categorized as new grain, stored grain, and aged-stored grain.


    The rice harvested in that same year is called new grain, while rice stored for more than a year is referred to as stored grain. Moreover, when the stored grain seriously ages, its color, taste, and smell deteriorate, making it aged-stored grain.


    The Tang n only consumes new grain, while themon civilians predominantly eat stored grain. As for ces like charity halls, poorhouses, and beggars quarters, they can only afford to eat aged-stored grain mixed with stored grain.


    Ever since Tang Zhi made a big promise to the branches, Tang Ming had been nning and implementing the collection ofrge amounts of new grain.


    However, inparison to what Tang Zhi had requested, it was like trying to put out a burning cart with a cup of water.


    The rice in Xiling is harvested three times a year, in March for the spring crop, in June for the summer crop, and in September for the autumn crop. The new rice harvested in March, as long as it could be bought on the market, had beenpletely bought over by the Tang n.


    Even though Tang Ming had acted covertly, the destination of this new grain was inevitably leaked. When the major ns of Xiling discovered the Tang ns n, they quickly withdrew their new grain from their rice shops and reced it with stored grain, which irritated and angered Tang Ming.


    Xiling has more than two million acres of farnd, but much of it is controlled by ns. For example, the eight hundred thousand acres of farnd to the north of Xiling, all belong to the Tang n. As for the seventy-five thousand acres of goodnd to the south of Xiling, these are all private property of the Mi n.


    Excluding these one million five hundred fifty thousand acres of goodnd, the people of Xiling only control about four hundred fifty thousand acres.


    So how could those four hundred fifty thousand acres of farnd support three million people?


    A normal person consumes half a kilogram of grain a day, not to mention therge food intake of martial artists.


    Three million ordinary people consume at least 54.75 million kilograms of grain a year, equivalent to around 270,000 tons. The food consumption of martial artists is at least five times that of ordinary people.


    With hundreds of years of peace in Xiling, it has be the best soil for cultivating martial artists. Even if amoner family has a child, they would send one or two to learn martial arts.


    If one can distinguish himself in the martial arts, he can assist his family in Foundation Building. Therefore, few people in Xiling of the current poption of three million peopleck skills, most of them being children ofmoner families or orphaned street children.


    That means the people of Xiling need more than a million tons of grain a year.


    To collect sufficient new grain for an entire year for the people of Xiling in two months, Tang Ming felt that Tang Zhi was imposing an impossible task.


    Because Tang Mi ns kept the price of grain extremely low, six or seven gold coins could buy a thousand kilograms of stored grain. Even the new rice sold in the market would cost only two or three more gold coins.


    Under the dominance of the two ns low prices, most of the farnd controlled by other ns is not used to grow grain but instead to grow fruits and vegetables. Some even choose not to grow grain at all but buy directly from Tang Mi ns.


    Therefore, all the new grain avable in Xilinges from the Tang n and Mi n. Tang Mings n to collect grain has three aspects.


    One is to organize merchant groups to carry outrge-scale grain collection in other big cities.


    Second is to buy all the new grain released by the Mi n.


    Third is to send out a fleet on the Lingjiang River to spread the news about the grain collection, in hopes thatrge boats would bring grain down the river.


    Of these three strategies, the most important is undoubtedly the collection of new grain from the Mi n. However, this most critical n fell into a significant bottleneck after a whole month of buying.


    The price of all the new grain in Mi ns granaries had soared to thirty gold coins per thousand kilograms in a single day, a clear move against the Tang ns grain collection.


    Mr. representative, should we still buy this grain? Tang Qi, the leader in charge of organizing branch families to purchase new grain from the Mi n, ran to Tang Ming to ask this question reluctantly after seeing the situation.


    If they continued to buy new grain at a price of thirty gold coins per thousand kilograms, it would cost sixty gold coins per ton. And they were targeting to purchase over seven hundred thousand tons of new grain from Mi nthat would require more than forty million in gold coins.


    Some branch families, though they im to have tens of millions in wealth, hold most of their wealth in shops and spiritual beasts. The actual cash holdings amounting to a few million considered quite impressive. Such a tremendous amount of expenditure of over forty million gold coins is indeed intimidating; they did not dare to take the initiative.


    But recalling Tang Zhis promise and estimating the value of thend in North City, Tang Ming gritted his teeth and said, Buy! Tell those branch leaders, if anyone is unwilling to spend money, they should not expect an inch of thend in North City in the future..


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