Ming Dynasty: I am truly not the Emperor of Longevity

The current situation is like a castle built on the beach; who knows when it will suddenly collapse?

It was good that the mansion that Commander Gao gave himself was located outside the west gate of Linqing, rather than inside Linqing city.

Lu Chen had originally planned to live outside the city.

If one day Lu Chen's identity is revealed, without a large army surrounding him or city walls blocking his way, it wouldn't be difficult for him to escape unscathed.

But when that day truly comes, everything he has in Linqing Prefecture will vanish into thin air and cease to exist.

During his journey to take office, he forcibly set aside half a month to secretly acquire properties in Biyang County under the identity of "Lin Chaoxi," which was a preparation for this situation.

Even if a cunning rabbit has three burrows, having two is still necessary.

The assets in Biyang County will not disappear because of problems with "Lu Chen's" identity; they should have a higher priority than the assets in Linqing.

However, now that we have this mansion, we need to support so many servants and maintain a respectable, high-quality lifestyle, which will cost several thousand taels of silver every year.

As a captain of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, I'm afraid at least half of the regular allowance I received will have to be used to pay it off.

Of course, if he asked, he believed that Gao Qianhu would be willing to pay the money, but Lu Chen was unwilling to do so.

Lu Chen understood the principle that whoever paid him was his servant.

Even if these servants were originally given to me by Commander Gao, I can't let them continue to receive salaries from him.

Otherwise, what would he, as the head of the family, be in the eyes of these people?

If no other sources of income are developed, the annual surplus may only be a few thousand taels.

Lu Chen felt that this amount of money was too little to purchase property in Biyang County, and he needed to explore new ways to make money.

In a metropolis like Linqing Prefecture, the number and scale of gambling dens far surpass those of small towns like Gucheng County and Wadian Town.

However, repeating the same old tricks and treating gambling dens as ATMs is no longer acceptable.

The reason I withdrew money from Ma San Kui's gambling den in Gucheng County was because I was just a passerby. Even if I had a conflict with the gambling den, it wouldn't be a big deal, since I could just leave anyway.

However, as a dignified seventh-rank military officer with status and position in Linqing Prefecture, it was no longer possible for him to simply leave.

I might occasionally visit a gambling den and win a few dozen taels of pocket money, but anything more would be inappropriate.

Therefore, taking advantage of this idle time, Lu Chen used the pretense of observing the people's sentiments in Linqing City to secretly conduct market research.

Lu Chen picked up the glass the butler had mentioned and examined it carefully.

This is not an ordinary glass cup like those found in later generations; it was handcrafted by skilled artisans.

The surface is covered with colorful patterns composed of red, blue, yellow and white, resembling the cross-section of a flower, exhibiting a distinct European style.

Before his transmigration, Lu Chen had seen similar glass crafts in some boutiques, with prices often reaching hundreds or even thousands of yuan.

In this era, there was only one place in the world that could produce this kind of thing: the island of Murano in Venice.

Even in Europe, a glass of this quality would be a luxury item, costing at least ten gold ducats, or one tael of gold.

To transport them to the Ming Dynasty, they would need to cross the ocean, taking nearly a year. Along the way, they might encounter pirates and storms, and since glassware is fragile, the damage rate would be extremely high.

For a place like Linqing Prefecture in the heart of the Ming Dynasty to be priced at only twenty times higher than in Europe, it's really not expensive.

Merchants are profit-driven. European merchants spent so much time and took such great risks to transport glassware to the Ming Dynasty and sell it to domestic smugglers. They must have made at least three times the profit, right?

Domestic smugglers then sell the goods to Linqing, involving middlemen in the process.

Such rare imported goods are normally sold for two or three times the price of the final buyer.

In other words, European merchants today can control the damage rate of glass cups transported from Europe to the Ming Dynasty to below 50%.

This would have been absolutely impossible in the past!

This means that there is now a relatively safe and stable shipping route from Europe to the Ming Dynasty!

The large-scale maritime trade between the East, the Ming Dynasty, and the West that once occurred in another dimension's history will soon appear along the coast of the Ming Dynasty!

Should I get a slice of this huge cake?