Tibet

Of course Cui Yuan knew that his son was involved in selling illegal salt. He even knew that his son was the mastermind behind the illegal salt group.

The reason why he allowed his son to break the law and commit crimes was certainly related to the huge profits. In just half a year, he made a profit of 300,000 yuan. The profits were so huge that it was hard to refuse.

On the other hand, it is also related to Cui Yuan's resistance to tax reform. The imperial court abolished household tax, business tax and all miscellaneous taxes, and only retained the field tax. The field tax was also reduced from 1 in 15 taxes to 1 in 25 taxes.

Then the salt and iron monopoly was used to supplement the tax revenue. Although in terms of total amount, the tax revenue did not decrease but increased, this was a benefit for the court, but it seriously damaged the interests of the local area, such as commercial tax and other miscellaneous taxes, which the local government could have retained. half.

Once the tax was changed, a piece of local revenue would be lost, but the court would not give any explanation, which made Cui Yuan very dissatisfied.

There is also a hidden reason that Cui Yuan was dissatisfied with Li Ye. Li Ye merged the two dynasties, reset the political affairs hall, and appointed nine prime ministers. He actually forgot about Cui Yuan. Isn't Cui Yuan qualified to join? Political Hall?

The thing is like this, there are too many monks and too little rice. If some people are satisfied, there must be others who are dissatisfied. Cui Yuan is the one who is dissatisfied.

So he allowed his son to sell private salt, and he also had the mood to take revenge on Li Ye.

Cui Yuan's carriage left Chengdu under the protection of more than twenty mounted guards and headed towards Jianmenguan.

Just as Cui Yuangang left, his son Cui Wei hurried to Shudu Restaurant. This was Cui Wei's property.

After waiting in a private room for a while, a middle-aged man with a dark and fat appearance hurried over.

The middle-aged man's surname is Tu. Not many people know his real name, but his nickname is famous in the world. The famous Salt Owl Tu Luohan is him.

Tu Luohan had a single line of contact with Cui Wei. Except for Tu Luohan, no one knew that the manipulator behind the scenes turned out to be Cui Wei, the son of Cui Yuan, the governor of Chengdu.

Originally, two officials of the Zhuan Prefecture who were involved in smuggling salt knew Cui Wei's involvement. In order to protect his son, Cui Yuan ordered Tu Luohan to kill the two officials.

But it was these two officials who left information for their families, allowing the internal guards to find out Cui Wei from their families.

However, the investigation by the inner guards was very secretive. Neither Cui Wei nor Tu Luohan knew that the inner guards were about to close the net.

Cui Wei said that of course he started selling sugar to coax his father. There is no way to make money selling sugar, as it is selling salt. You can eat sugar or not, but every household cannot live without salt.

It's just that Cui Wei used selling sugar to cover his selling of salt.

Cui Wei had a batch of salt seized by the government in Meizhou, but in the cargo list, their thirty ships were carrying sugar.

"How is it? Has the Meizhou government inspected the goods?" Cui Wei asked when they met.

Tu Luohan nodded, "We have already tried it. We bribed the sampler, and he took a sample from a bag of sugar we designated. The government concluded that what we were trafficking was sugar!"

"Since the conclusion is sugar, why haven't they released the ship yet?" Cui Wei said angrily.

"I've also asked about it, and I heard that there is news from the imperial court that sugar, like salt, must be sold exclusively by the government, and private individuals are not allowed to sell it without permission."

"damn it!"

Cui Wei cursed hard and asked: "Then what do they want?"

"Now this is what the governor Zhou Xiangyang said. He has been unwilling to express his position. In fact, he is waiting for us to pay him a tribute."

"How much does he want?" Trevi asked.

Tu Luohan sighed and said: "I asked someone to find out, it will cost at least 30,000 yuan!"

"Thirty thousand strings?"

Cui Wei sneered, "Thank you for daring to say this, isn't he afraid of being strangled to death?"

"I guess we can get it done by bargaining for 20,000 guan. The key is whether we can pay it or not?"

"No!"

Cui Wei insisted: "When my father comes back from Lizhou, he promises to stand up for me. If I don't pay a penny, he has to hand over the ship obediently."

Tu Luohan sighed, "I hope Fu Yin will come back soon! I'm afraid of long nights and many dreams."

Since Cui Wei refused to pay, Tu Luohan said goodbye and left.

Tu Luohan came out of the restaurant, got on a carriage and headed south. An old man riding a donkey followed his carriage from a distance and watched it enter a village outside the south city.

The leader of the internal guard who is currently in charge of Chengdu is Deputy Capital Commander Xie Sen. He has been in Chengdu for two or three months, but the manipulator behind the scenes has never been found. There are more than a dozen salt lords in the Bashu region. Xie Sen also estimates that among them A certain salt owl contacted the mastermind behind the scenes, but it was difficult for them to find out who this salt owl was, and they did not dare to take action. Once they did, they would alert the snake.

Until a month ago, two officials in charge of the ships in the transfer embassy died mysteriously one after another. A fisherman discovered their bodies. Xie Sen unexpectedly discovered that the two officials died in the same way as the salt owl's murder method. They were strangled. Afterwards, he tied himself with big rocks and sank into the Minjiang River.

The internal guards found out the identity of one of them, Wang Chang, the director of the Shipping Department of Jiannandu Transit Mansion.

After Xie Sen visited Wang Chang's home, his wife gave Xie Sen a letter, which was Wang Chang's suicide note. He knew that he would be killed.

Through this suicide note, Xie Sen found out that the real person behind the scenes was Cui Wei, the son of Cui Yuan, the governor of Chengdu and the transfer envoy of Jiannandu. Cui Yuan arranged for the killing of two of his subordinates in order to silence him, which shows that Cui Yuan was He knew that his son was selling illegal salt.

Now Xie Sen is waiting for news from Lizhou. Once Lizhou captures Cui Yuan, he can take action and catch all the salt owl and Cui Wei in one go.

The ship seizure incident in Meizhou was actually arranged by Xie Sen. Zhou Xiangyang, the governor of Meizhou, was Li Linfu's protégé and had an old grudge with Cui Yuan. He was also a spy planted by Li Ye on Jiannan Road to monitor Cui Yuan for him.

Zhou Xiangyang seized Cui Wei's thirty salt ships just to keep them as evidence.

After hearing the report from his men, Xie Sen nodded and said, "Continue to monitor Tu Luohan and wait for my order to arrest him!"

Now that we know that Tu Luohan is Cui Wei's contact person, as long as Tu Luohan is arrested, we can obtain the human and material evidence for Cui Wei's arrest.

Cui Yuan arrived in Miangu County and stayed at the VIP Inn. He had a special status, so of course he had to live in the best inn, unlike other governors.

He is the only one who lives in the VIP Inn, and the transfer envoy from Shannan West Road is still on the way.

After tidying up for a while, Cui Yuan got up and went to the camp to visit Li Xian, Minister of the Ministry of Industry.

The Tang army set up a dredging camp in Miangu County. All kinds of money, food and supplies were piled in the camp, and soldiers from the firearms battalion also lived here.

Li Xian was in the camp, and Cui Yuan was led into the military camp by Jiang Xi, a doctor in the Ministry of Industry. Horse racing and carriages were not allowed in the military camp. Dozens of Cui Yuan's men were waiting outside the camp.

Arriving in front of a large tent, Jiang Xi bowed and said, "This is Li Shangshu's guest tent. Please wait a moment, Lord Cui. The minister will be here soon!"

"Mr. Jiang, go and get busy! I'll just wait a moment."

Cui Yuan opened the curtain and walked into the guest tent, but was stunned. There were more than 20 internal guard soldiers in the tent, surrounding him.

The leading internal guard general raised a gold medal and said: "By order of the regent of the prison country, I would like to ask Cui Shijun to return to Beijing to assist in the investigation of the major salt smuggling case in Jiannan Road."

Cui Yuan felt dizzy for a while and was unable to sit down. He was deceived into coming to Lizhou and was deceived.