Li Xiao's role is relatively important today, and guests from far away are arriving one after another.

The guy from North Korea was Hong Yihan, the Korean scribe who hesitated and worried about gains and losses, equivalent to the Donglin Party in North Korea. The guys from Japan were Tokugawa Katsuyori and Mouri Hidemoto, both heavyweights from Japan. One by one from the south.

This guy surprised Li Xiao. King Ruan of Jiaozhi. As the king of Jiaozhi, he actually dared to come to the capital of the Ming Dynasty in person. He had to admire this guy's courage.

According to the arrangement, the person I met after breakfast was Hong Yihan. Among the group of foreigners, he was the easiest to deal with.

"See you, Commander-in-Chief!" Hong Yihan knelt down and kowtowed to Li Xiao. What he did was actually bow three times and kowtow nine times. This was like respecting Li Xiao as if he were an emperor!

Li Xiao accepted it with peace of mind, and the Korean people could only have this little thought. Thinking about what he wanted to do in a while, Li Xiao immediately forgave this corrupt Korean scholar.

"Is the King of Joseon okay?" Routine diplomatic rhetoric.

"Thanks to Marshal Hongfu, my king is in good health. I miss him often. If it were not for the etiquette, my king would like to come to see him in person."

"I understand! Just get these things done." Li Xiao gave a look, and Shunzi immediately took out a document.

Hong Yihan was stunned. He didn't even bother to say basic polite words and just served the food!

Five hundred thousand kilograms of iron ore, two hundred thousand kilograms of pyrite, copper ore...! The more Hong Yihan pulled, the longer the list became. There was a menu half a meter long, and Hong Yihan looked at it carefully.

At the end of the day, luckily... I didn't ask for a single grain.

However, if this happens, it is estimated that the entire North Korea will no longer have labor to farm.

"Commander...this...!"

"I don't want you for nothing, but the imperial court is not financially wealthy and can only give you one hundred thousand silver dollars. But we can give you potato powder and sweet potato powder. This amount...!" Li Xiao raised a finger.

"One million catties?" Hong Yihan tried his best to guess.

"Ten million kilograms! As long as all the ores are delivered, the Daimyo can provide North Korea with ten million kilograms of potato powder and sweet potato powder. This stuff is similar to flour, and it is very filling. This is a good business." Li Xiao smiled.

Then he looked at Hong Yihan.

"Ten million kilograms!" Hong Yihan was completely shocked. Ten million kilograms of grain is very important to North Korea. Last year, the Datong River flooded, and the North Korean grain harvest was severely damaged. This time when he came to the Ming Dynasty, what the North Korean king Li Zhu was most afraid of was

The Ming Dynasty asked for food. Instead of asking for food, they gave back ten million catties. Hong Yihan calmed down, fearing that he had heard wrongly.

"Don't want to?" Li Xiao said with some dissatisfaction in his tone.

"Yes! Yes! Thank you, Heaven, for being considerate of our Korean people. We, Korea, will definitely try our best to provide whatever our Lord needs." Hong Yihan kowtowed hurriedly, fearing that this good business would be cut off in his own hands.

"As much as possible?"

"Definitely! Definitely!" Hong Yihan hurriedly finalized the decision. Now he was too afraid that Li Xiao would regret it.

"Okay! Go down and have a good rest. The navy ship will take you back to North Korea as soon as possible. Also, you need to build a port in Incheon so that Ming Dynasty can transport these supplies. Go and discuss with Zheng Sen, and he will give you some

help."

"No!" After Hong Yihan finished speaking, a guard took him down.

A smile appeared at the corner of Li Xiao's mouth. For things like potatoes and sweet potatoes, ten million kilograms is only the annual output of a county. This is a county with poor soil moisture. It is a county with fertile land and a large output. The output will shock Hong Yihan.

Chin, potato powder and sweet potato powder are made into feed for pigs in many places. But Li Xiao knew that if the North Koreans took these things back, they would definitely not use them to feed pigs.

On that list, there is almost one-third of the demand for Daming's ore. Using ten million kilograms of pig food plus one hundred thousand silver dollars to exchange for one-third of the demand for Daming's ore is a good deal no matter which direction you look at it.

Buy and sell.

The Ming Dynasty was simply asking for whatever it asked of North Korea. The North Korean nobles cared very much about the 100,000 silver coins. With the silver coins, they could buy all kinds of luxury goods they liked in the Ming Dynasty. The 10 million kilograms of pig food were for the North Korean people.

.People are needed to work in the mines, and Li Xiao doesn’t want them to starve to death.

Who the fuck is going to do the work if we're starving!

In the Ming Dynasty, which was initially industrialized, the consumption of ores was staggering. Some of these ores were not easy to find in the Ming Dynasty. At this time, Li Xiao had no choice but to look abroad.

The main industrial areas of the Ming Dynasty are in Liaodong, Jingcheng, Shandong and Tianjin. North Korea is very close to these places. As long as a port is built in Incheon, shipping by ship will be very convenient.

Yesterday at Geritu's place, not only did he persuade him to send troops, but he also promised him the development rights of many coal mines in Mongolia. Of course, as the Great Khan, he has 20% of the shares. Geritu has nothing to complain about, because Daminghu

It is only 30% of the shares. The remaining shares will be sold to the highest bidder.

In this way, the Ministry of Household Affairs can get two amounts of money, one amount from selling the development rights of the coal mine, and another amount from the equity income. It must be said that Ai Husheng is a good material for doing business, and he can think of the idea of ​​eating both sides.

The key is that he considered the interests of everyone. From Geritu to the Ministry of Household Affairs of the Ming Dynasty, and to those businessmen, everyone can make a lot of money. Who allowed the use of steam engines to make the demand for coal in the Ming Dynasty reach an extraordinary level?

Horrible numbers.

Mongolian coal is very similar to North Korean ore, that is, Mongolian coal is relatively close to the main industrial areas of Ming Dynasty. Even for Liaodong, Mongolian coal is closer than Shanxi coal.

As for those businessmen, their profits are actually the lowest. Not only do they have to pay the Ministry of Household Shares, but they also need to pay taxes to the court. For this kind of energy project, the court imposed taxes quite harshly, hitting a terrifying ten taxes.

3. In other words, those merchants who finally succeeded in the competition had to pay 30% of the tax to the court. What was left for them was actually relatively small.

But the remaining profits are enough to make businessmen jealous. I believe the bidding scene will be very sensational.

Li Xiao was thinking wildly when Tokugawa Katsuyori and Mouri Hidemoto walked in.

After seeing the ceremony, Li Xiao went straight to the point and made the request. Today, he came to take advantage of the situation.

"Next year I am going to attack the Mongols, who are in the northwest desert. The attack will be very hard, and I need a lot of warriors. I wonder how many troops you two can send?"

Tokugawa Katsuyori and Mouri Hidemoto looked at each other. The two families had not fought for many years. This was due to the income from Nanyang, which made the two families live a good life. In the past, they were competing for various etiquettes, but now they live happily.

If they are comfortable, they won't bother to fight all day long.

"The Tokugawa family is what it is today, thanks to the help of the commander-in-chief. Moreover, our two families are still relatives, and the Tokugawa family is willing to send 20,000 troops." Tokugawa Katsuyori saw Li Xiao looking at him, so he had no choice but to speak first.

"Although the Maori family is not as large as the Tokugawa family, our Maori family is willing to send 23,000 troops. No matter what the commander-in-chief does, we will fully support him." Maori Xiuyuan curled his lips and looked away as if he had eaten a fly.

Tokugawa Katsuyori.

Li Xiao wanted to go back and look through the almanac to see how things could go so smoothly today. Just a simple inquiry, and there were 43,000 more elite soldiers. These 40,000 people were armed, and they could equal a division. If we add yesterday

Geritu promised 30,000 cavalry, but he already had 70,000 more troops before he went out on the expedition. This did not include the small tribes in the Western Regions who wanted to defect to him.

"Okay! Go back and help me thank the two family heads for their trust. Please let your family heads gather the troops as soon as possible. The Ming Dynasty Navy will send a ship to take you to Liaodong. You will be trained there and do not need to carry weapons. Because the weapons are distributed by me, the Ming Dynasty.

, these weapons are considered as the reward for sending troops this time.”

After listening to Li Xiao's words, Tokugawa Katsuyori wanted to swallow what he just said.

Everyone knows that the weapons of the Ming Dynasty have always been the top of the world. Now that the Ming Dynasty is armed, even the Maori family of guns will take advantage of the three thousand guns.

But having said it all, raising more troops now would make Li Xiao and Mouri Hidemoto look down on them. Tokugawa Katsuyori decided to go back and look for opportunities to ask Tokugawa Chiki to help, so that the Tokugawa family could send more troops.

Five thousand people.

Seeing their expressions, Li Xiao smiled and nodded.

The weapons issued to them were all reissued by the Liao army. The most common of them was the revolver, which was an excessive product with insufficient processing technology. It could fire six bullets continuously without worrying about jamming.

Compared with the advantages, the disadvantages are more obvious. That is because of the hammer, the eyes cannot be close to aim, resulting in poor shooting accuracy. On the battlefield, this is very fatal.

At the beginning, it was because the weapons gap between the two sides was so big that it was not obvious yet. Now that the weapons of both sides have made a qualitative leap, things like revolvers are somewhat out of reach.

There are hundreds of thousands of revolvers that the Liao army replaced. They were manufactured at full capacity at first, but now they have become troublesome. Moreover, the structure is special, and the barrel cannot be removed and used on other firearms. It is difficult to resmelt it.

It was a pity, so Li Xiao thought of using weapons in exchange for Japanese and Mongolian troops.

No matter how backward the revolver is, it is still much better than the muzzle-loading flintlock rifle they have now.

Besides, the Ming army's combat artillery was the main force. The Japanese soldiers armed with revolvers actually only acted as security guards most of the time. What they were really asked to do was to use these weapons to eliminate every Jungar person they could see.

The blood feud in Lanzhou is destined that the name Zhungeer will only be a name in the future. The Zhungeer Mongols will disappear from this earth. The specific operations are these Japanese people holding revolvers, or the Zhungeer Mongols.

Brothers from the same clan, Khalkha Mongols.

"Hai! We will definitely send troops to Liaodong as soon as possible, don't worry, Commander." Maori Xiuyuan was very proud. We can get equipment for three thousand more people!

"Hai! Our Tokugawa family will also send troops to Liaodong as soon as possible. Commander, I haven't seen Chiki for many years. I wonder if I can visit Chiki in the back house." Tokugawa Katsuyori started to fight Tokugawa.

Chiki's idea.

"Qianji also misses her family. Since Mr. Tokugawa is going to the back house, Qianji will host the luncheon later, so that your relatives can talk about their daily life. Mr. Hideyuan, I will introduce you to Qianji for the luncheon later.

Ritu Khan. He is a direct descendant of the Golden Family and a direct descendant of Genghis Khan."

"Hai!" Mouri Hidemoto happily agreed. On the side, Tokugawa Katsuyori seemed to have eaten a fly. How could a luncheon in the back house be as important as a luncheon hosted by Li Xiao.

But the words have been spoken, and there is no way to swallow them. Even a fly can only eat them in the mouth.

"It's still early for lunch, please go and have a rest, Mr. Mori. Junzi, send Mr. Tokugawa to the back house."

"No!" Shunzi agreed, and Hidemoto Mouri was taken away by the guards to rest. Tokugawa Katsuyori was taken to the back house by Shunzi, and was entertained by his niece Chiki Tokugawa.

Next is King Ruan of Jiaozhi!

It is difficult to fight monkeys! Li Xiao understood this. Emperor Yongle sent hundreds of thousands of troops to expedition to Jiaozhi, but in the end he suffered a loss of troops. In the end, he had to withdraw due to huge financial pressure. Looking at the last war against Jiaozhi, the Ming Dynasty did not

Taking advantage of it at all. Only in name, Jiaozhi is willing to become a vassal state of the Ming Dynasty.

But the little they pay as tribute every year is nothing but haha!

Things have changed now that King Nguyen is here! When Li Xiao originally ordered King Nguyen to send troops to Java, he didn't expect King Nguyen to agree to it very happily. And he really followed through on his word. Not only did he send troops to Java, but he also did his best.

It’s not just about doing errands and cheating money out of work.

At that time, the Ming Dynasty had limited ability to cross the sea, and many ships were Jiaozhi warships. Although the weapons in their hands were relatively crude, Hong Chengchou's memorial said that the Jiaozhi people were extremely brave and brave, far superior to the Javanese. If it were in China, it could be regarded as comparable to Nanjing.

A powerful force equivalent to the Custodes.
To be continued...