Wu Zheng's face was strange, "How did I think this is what I said, Lao Ma, are you boasting?"

Ma Shiying defended awkwardly: "The prince is clear-minded, Ma is indeed not the same as them."

Wu Zheng nodded slowly. He knew that Ma Shiying was telling the truth. Whether it was the Ming Dynasty or the Qing Dynasty, whether it was the Qingliu or the eunuch party, few people regarded Ma Shiying as their own people.

Just as Ma Shiying himself said, he was not a member of the same place.

Cooperation but distrust makes it impossible for Ma Shiying to truly integrate into the circle of Shuntian Mansion. Naturally, no one will be "bewitched" by Ma Shiying.

In other words, Ma Shiying's willingness to be a "traitor" has actually failed.

However, the failure is the failure, the sales of firearms in the north are very terrifying. In a year, the number of muskets from the two major ports reached 50,000. The new army formed by the Qing court was only 30,000 under Chen Zhiyuan, and they have been prepared. So the destination of these muskets is actually self-evident.

The performance of new firearms on the battlefield was greatly reflected in the two battles in Jiangbei. As the trend of the Han Banner Army privately purchased firearms from the south for equipment prevailing, the Manchu generals in power hoarsely prevented the formation of a new army for their own interests, called "protecting the family law of the ancestors and glory", but in private, they were unwilling to rather spend a higher price to secretly buy muskets and strengthen themselves. In a sentence from later generations, that is, "I say no to you, but my body is very honest", and more appropriately, that is, "It smells so good!"

Wu Zheng originally agreed with Ma Shiying's suggestion to use Ma Shiying's "traitorous behavior" to promote the leak of firearms in the military workshop to fight a "army preparation" with the Qing court. Unfortunately, Ma Shiying is really not "sociable" and turns the good "leakage" into a "army purchase". Although Ma Shiying has repeatedly lowered the "leakage price" of various types of firearm manufacturing drawings, why don't they want it? They would rather buy spot stocks at high prices than spend huge amounts of money to produce them themselves. What?

However, what was unintentionally made the army of willows become cute was that this year's military purchase made the second replacement of the Northern Expedition Army very smooth, and there was almost no additional expense, because the price of the replaced old musket was sold higher than the cost of the new musket. In other words, the Northern Expedition Army's uniform replacement this year not only did not spend money, but also made a lot of money.

From this aspect, Ma Shiying has made contributions, which is also the saying that Ma Shiying can "proudly" say in front of Wu Zheng, "Ma is indeed not the same as them."

Similarly, Li Yong was not wrong. It is indeed a big problem to be controlled by others in the source of raw materials. Who can guarantee that there will be no second time if there is this time.

Moreover, reality does not allow Wu Zheng to make concessions. The alliance with Li Dingguo is related to the Northern Expedition strategy, and the promotion of the "peace talks" between the Jianxin (Yixing) Dynasty and the Qing court was just a tactic, and there was no reason to change the strategy because of tactics.

But reality also made Wu Zheng embarrassed. Until today, the General's Mansion has only thirteen prefectures under its jurisdiction, and the fifteen prefectures of the Xin Dynasty, cannot meet the huge demand for raw materials for firearms. Compared with the north, Jiangnan is indeed subject to control in terms of industrial raw materials.

As Chen Mingxia said, the Qing court had issued an "ultimatum", that is, if Wu Zheng did not agree to help the Qing army in Fujian and Guangdong fight against the Daxi Army, the Qing court would block the raw material trade channel to the south, which would lead to the military workshops reducing output due to the lack of raw materials in the next two or three years, which would lead to the delay of the Northern Expedition and cause tens of thousands of employees to be unemployed, which would cause huge harm to the emerging industrial revolution in Jiangnan at this time.

The most important thing is that according to Chen Mingxia, this policy was not meant by Xiao Fulin, but was pushed hard by the Han officials of the Qing Dynasty headed by Hong and Fan in the north, which made Wu Zheng even more trouble.

If the law does not punish the masses, even if one thing knows that it is wrong, it will become right if more people are wrong.

Just like a "traitor", if more than 60% of the north are determined to be "traitors", then the traitors will no longer be traitors.

By then, the Northern Expedition Army had no other way to choose from besides killing all these people, but this was definitely not what Wu Zheng wanted, because in this way, not only would the difficulty of the Northern Expedition be greatly increased, but also, because of the "high unity" of the northern forces, the Northern Expedition Army would suffer unimaginable casualties, which was not what Wu Zheng wanted to see.

Wu Zheng delayed the Northern Expedition not only because the strength of the General's Mansion was still insufficient.

In the past three years, Wu Zheng established a strategy to "fight" the economy and "tempt" most people with unstable positions, use arms to "drag" the enemy's finances, use controllable wars to delay the enemy's economic recovery, and use friendly forces to attack the northwest and southwest to prevent the Qing court from breathing.

The last three methods have been achieved, but the first one is to "strive" and "tempt" most people with unstable positions have made a mistake.

Looking at Wu Zheng's long silence, Li Yong shouted: "The prince raised an army from Shaoxing Mansion, recovered his land and built an immortal achievement. I think there were only three or five thousand people at the beginning, but now there are 200,000 tigers. As long as the prince gives his order, he can attack north..."

"Why don't you attack?" Wu Zheng said coldly.

Li Yong was stunned, and then his blood surged, and he said angrily: "As long as the prince gives an order, he is willing to be a front pawn!"

"Can you attack when you are hungry?" Wu Zheng said lightly, then raised his hand to stop Li Yong from retorting, "Even if the soldiers can go hungry to fight north, the bullets in the musket and the shells in the cannon chamber can fall from the sky... Zhongfu, Gu just asked you to learn a little steadily from Lao Ma, just now, just pretend you are in front of your ears?"

Li Yong's blood was extinguished by Wu Zheng's words.

Ma Shiying said at the right time: "I have an idea, but... it may not be very appropriate."

Wu Zheng frowned and said, "It's not okay to be too steady...it's become a long-winded person."

"Yes, yes." Ma Shiying wiped the sweat that did not exist on her forehead and said respectfully, "Chen Mingxia...is not credible."

"What do you mean?"

"If the north side is really as he said, and the Han ministers unanimously promoted the Qing court to force the prince to send troops, then Chen Mingxia would naturally be one of them."

Wu Zheng's brows gradually became tight.

"Chen Mingxia has already been above the Qing Dynasty. Even if he has the will to abandon darkness and turn to light, how can he let go of the power and status of his gain? "Ma Shiying said carefully.

"Gu had already promised him that he could reuse him." Wu Zheng argued.

"Can the prince give him a position of Shangshu?" Ma Shiying said to Wu Zheng with "no idea of ​​life and death", "Even if the prince gives him a position of Shangshu, it has reached its peak, right? But if Chen Mingxia can do this, the Qing court may have a heavy reward... How to choose this comparison is probably self-evident?"

Wu Zheng said in anger: "In my opinion, it is better to be a county magistrate with his head held high and be a prime minister than to be a thief."

Ma Shiying smiled bitterly and said, "That is why the prince has the power that he has today!"
Chapter completed!