After saving the Empress, I became the top scholar in the imperial examination.

The Nancheng Daily is not far from Fulai Tavern.

While the newsboys were selling newspapers, the shop assistants retrieved tomorrow's newspaper from the Nancheng Daily.

Chen Ruhai took it and looked at it.

The son-in-law is printing three main parts today.

The first part continues to praise His Majesty.

With the son-in-law's experience, there shouldn't be any problems with this part.

Just like yesterday, I had the bookstore clerk check whether there were any taboos or omissions before printing.

The second part was the sequel to yesterday's "A Chinese Ghost Story: The White Fox." Hmm... He glanced at it, then his chubby face twitched. After reading all the way to "To find out what happens next, stay tuned for the next installment," he pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes.

After flipping through all the papers the son-in-law had written and confirming that there was really no follow-up, he pulled out the third paper.

The third part is still about cotton.

But today's content... Chen Ruhai frowned, somewhat unsure.

In this part, the son-in-law did not specify the dynasty or the year.

According to a local gazetteer from a certain county in Jiangnan, in the autumn of a certain year, Jiangnan suffered a disaster, and cotton farmers suffered heavy losses.

Cotton prices fluctuated thirteen times a day, increasing twelvefold in just one month.

The imperial court dispatched a high-ranking official to thoroughly investigate the cotton price surge. Within three days, eighteen people were beheaded, but the cotton price did not fall but instead rose, enraging the court.

At that time, there was an upright official who was a descendant of Bao Zheng, named Bao Rui.

Bao Rui, showing compassion for the people, visited various counties and spoke out for cotton farmers and merchants.

Chen Shu said that cotton farmers in Jiangnan were all without food and every household was crying out for food. With the floods, harvesting cotton became extremely difficult.

Furthermore, with roads blocked and donkey carts stuck in the ground, if there were no high profits to be made from transporting cotton, what merchant guild would be willing to clear the roads and go down to the villages to collect cotton?

However, many incompetent officials in the imperial court have been killing off merchants with the policy of hoarding and speculation, resulting in impassable roads, cotton farmers having no money to hire day laborers, and cotton rotting in the fields.

Therefore, the less cotton is available on the market, the higher the price.

If we simply kill people, I ask the officials in the court: can we bring down the price of cotton?

Notice!

When Yu the Great controlled the floods, he believed that dredging was better than blocking!

His words shook the imperial court.

Fortunately, the emperor was alive and wise, and the emperor was powerful and mighty. With a wave of his hand, the emperor appointed Bao Rui as governor, in charge of cotton management.

Bao Rui was appointed amidst the defeat of the army and received orders in a time of crisis. He released innocent cotton merchants, organized the villagers, dredged waterways, cleared roads, and encouraged merchant groups to go to the villages to collect cotton.

In addition, the county government offered a reward of 200 cash per mu to those who were willing to work as cotton farmers to harvest cotton.

With three measures implemented simultaneously, cotton prices fell in March.

People praised him as a benevolent ruler, grateful for his virtue, and presented him with umbrellas to thousands of people, and erected a stone tablet to commemorate his achievements.

Unfortunately, the legacy of a virtuous person will eventually come to an end.

Amidst the chaos of war, the people were powerless to protect themselves, and the county annals and stone tablets were lost. They were only passed down orally among the people, making them impossible to verify, which is regrettable.

"Bao Rui?"

Chen Ruhai frowned. Does such a person really exist?

After thinking for a while and having no answer, the owner of Changqing Trading Company ordered someone to send the book that his son-in-law wanted to print to the bookstore.

It's just a story, and the son-in-law said it's "unverifiable," so there's nothing taboo about it.

August 5th.

It's early morning again.

Li Xing glanced at the newspaper in his hand, which still smelled of ink, and took a deep breath of the morning mist.

Based on the newspapers he and the other four distributed yesterday, they made a map of Nanjing last night, removing some places and adding others.

Some restaurants don't like them going in and will kick them out, so these places are eliminated. During the day, we visit places that are more bustling, and these places are added.

Overall, about 80% of the newspapers will still be distributed in the same locations as yesterday, preferably to the same customers.

After the tasks were assigned at dawn, the five groups set off for their respective locations.

When they arrived at the gate of the Imperial College, a familiar-looking student, who was eating a meat bun, waved to Li Xing and asked for a newspaper. Li Xing smiled and said, "Thank you, sir."

The student chuckled, his mouth bulging. "He's got a sweet tongue," he thought. So the scholar gave the little boy, who was carrying a cloth bag with a stack of newspapers inside, ten coins as a reward for buying the newspapers.

The student with the meat buns displayed the newspaper in his hand.

His main purpose today was to see what happened next in the fox demon story.

As for cotton, he wasn't very interested.

Last night when I got home, I talked about this with my father and uncles.

My father and uncles all said that their family could never make that kind of money.

The cotton harvest hasn't even finished yet, but the price has already nearly doubled. This is an astonishing phenomenon that I've never seen in my decades of business experience.

too fast.

It's rising too fast.

Incredibly fast.

So fast that even cotton and cloth merchants were somewhat bewildered, let alone outsiders like them.

Many cotton merchants have decided to stop negotiating prices and are hoarding their stock.

The cloth merchants also seemed to be forming a united front. Chen Ji, the owner of the First Cloth Shop, declared that if the price of cotton exceeded three times, they would not negotiate further, and from then on, Chen Ji would no longer accept goods from that merchant group.

My father said, "Every profession is like a mountain to climb." Although his family was wealthy, they were not qualified for cotton transactions that involved tens of thousands of taels of silver at a time.

If you only buy a few hundred or a few thousand kilograms, people won't bother selling. Even if you do buy, selling the goods yourself will be a problem. In a couple of months, when cotton merchants arrive with their cotton, you might not be able to find buyers quickly. The risk is too great, and you can't get involved.

That's just common sense; in business, everyone has their own territory. It's just that cotton prices have been unusually high this year, otherwise no one would care... But caring is useless; we can only leave it to fate.

At least 20% of the newspapers distributed today were given to the same customers as yesterday.

Many people received rewards. Some received one coin, some two coins, some ten coins, and one wealthy man even found them after reading the newspaper and rewarded them with ten taels of silver. He said that he was from Jiangnan and was ashamed that a young official had done such a good deed for the people of Jiangnan, so he gave him the silver as a token of his gratitude.

As the major owner of the Nancheng Daily, Boss Ning thought for a moment and then generously ordered an additional 3,000 copies of the August 6th edition to be printed.

Dou Yuan learned of the emergence of "newspapers" in Nanjing on August 9th.

The newspaper has a date on it.

In the autumn of the twelfth year of the Tianqi reign (1623), from August 4th to August 9th.

There were six newspapers on the table.

Inside the Moonlit Pavilion, he stared silently at the six newspapers on the table, his right hand holding a white fan, which he gently tapped against the palm of his left hand.

The knocking continued, and the invited guests gradually arrived. The top ten cloth merchants of Nanjing, led by Chen Ji, cotton merchants from Songjiang Prefecture, Suzhou Prefecture, and Jiaxing Prefecture, managers of several major money shops, and heads of the five major merchant guilds in Nanjing... More and more people filled the private room, and the noise grew louder as twenty or thirty people squeezed together.

"Gentlemen,"

Chen Yangxuan of Chenji looked grim. He stood up and gestured for Chen Ji to stop, saying...

"Cotton prices,"

His face was grim, and he let out a soft breath, his eyes filled with complex emotions as he spoke.

"Cotton prices... have increased fivefold..."

"This morning, at the flower market in the east of the city, Qiyuejin and Jiaxing Prefecture made a deal for 30,000 catties of cotton. The price even reached 103 wen. If I hadn't been there, the deal would have been done."