Pan Jixun looked at Zhu Heng after hearing this, wondering what the old man sold in the gourd?

"Don't be too careful. How can you make a guess if you don't see such a major thing without seeing it?" Zhu Heng walked back to the point of breaking.

Pan Jixun followed behind and heard Zhu Butang continue: "When I came, I was catching up with the flood peak and the water was the most abundant. When the flood gushed out of the weir, I witnessed a wonder. I saw the surging and rapid water in the Yellow River, and the flow rate suddenly increased, and the water surged several times. The powerful water power quickly dissolved and took away the mud and sand on both sides of the breach, and soon rushed out of a deep trench and reached the canal in the distance."

While speaking, the two of them came to the breach and went down to the edge of Huangshui.

"The water is slowing down now, and the scene at that time can no longer be seen." Zhu Heng said and waved his hand. The Dushui Qing official officer Wailang, who was standing beside him, quickly commanded the soldiers and inserted a long probe pole into the water.

When the sole of the rod touched the ground, the three-meter-long probe bar almost had no head.

"Look, this place was originally coming from the ground, but it was actually attacked three feet." Zhu Heng sighed and said, "The power of heaven and earth is so terrifying!"

An old man like Zhu Heng who is desperate for face is impossible to apologize. Pan Jixun knew that this was already his sign of admitting his mistake.

Pan Zhongcheng snorted quite calmly and explained: "It was only after I saw this scene before that I realized that there was such a clever restrictive relationship between the water flow and the mud and sand. After repeated experiments, I proposed the idea of ​​"bounding water and attacking sand."

"Yes." Zhu Heng nodded and sighed: "I am old, and Weng Rushen is also embarrassed. The important task of governing the Yellow River in the future will inevitably fall on your shoulders."

"The ministry is only nine years older than the lower officials, and it is far from old." Pan Jixun is like this. I am soft and I am hard. I am hard. I said politely: "Hegong also needs the ministry to be in charge of supervising, otherwise it will not be successful."

"Oh, speaking of it, you are less than fifty years old, but you look like an old man in his sixties." Zhu Heng was very satisfied with Pan Jixun's statement. He looked at him deeply and sighed again: "Isn't that the same? I didn't build river workers in my previous life. We did evil in our lives and only dealt with the Yellow River for the rest of our lives."

"There is no way, someone will always do it." Pan Jixun smiled and said, "We are not at ease if we ask those two knives to manage the river workers."

"Yes." Zhu Heng nodded and lowered his voice: "It was my fault to replace you with Weng Rusan. In fact, he has been working diligently in recent years. It is said that I should have helped him, but this time the matter is too big and he has to be responsible. If I can help him get dismissal from office and return home, the best result is."

"Yes." Pan Jixun nodded. Although he knew that Weng Dali deserved it, he could not help but feel a sense of sadness in his heart.

"But the river worker cannot be stopped." Zhu Heng said, looking at Pan Jixun deeply, "You must be the next Prime Minister of the River. I will take the opportunity to compete for you to see if I can be given the title of Right Censor, so that at least I will be equal to the Cao Governor and will not be subject to any more restraint."

Pan Jixun knew that such a thing was not something that the Minister of Works could decide, so he used it as a cake and responded vaguely.

"Anyway, let's do it according to your ideas, I will support you with all my strength." Zhu Heng patted Pan Jixun's shoulder, which was considered to have completed the change of attitude.

~~

Almost the same day, the news that the Yellow River broke its second dam also spread to Beijing.

Upon hearing the bad news, Emperor Longqing was so angry that he impulsively smashed his beloved Yansheng Ci.

"What a fool who ruined the country! Even if they don't do anything, they can still flood a few prefectures and counties and lose 100,000 stones of grain!"

The emperor made the biggest fire since Yuyu, and saw the broken porcelain pieces on the ground, he became even more furious. "I'm sorry if I don't chop off their dog heads... I'm sorry, my people!"

He immediately ordered the Jinyiwei to immediately lock Weng Dali and Zhao Kongzhao into Beijing. Longqing wanted to pry open their heads and see if it was covered in yellow mud.

In addition, they have to make them pay for their beloved porcelain.

If one is broken, it won’t be a complete set. Do you understand?

Buzzing and feeling distressed.

~~

The news of the Yellow River breaking quickly spread and spread throughout the capital, causing an uproar!

Now even the common people know that the canal has been completed, so they don’t want to count on the Grand Canal within a few years.

As a result, the rice prices in Beijing, which were finally pressed, began to rise again. If the second batch of 100 ships of grain transported northbound from the sea arrived in time, I would have been afraid that the price of grain would hit a new high again.

But the scale of shipping is too small. As Zhenyuan Hou said, 30,000 stones are just a drop in the bucket and cannot solve the urgent needs of the Ming Dynasty.

For a time, the public's calls for expanding the scale of shipping became increasingly high, and public opinion was completely one-sided.

Seeing that the time was ripe and Zhao Hao, who had been holding back his troops, finally began to exert his strength.

In the next few days, officials from the north and south of the capitals wrote letters asking the court to immediately consider the shipping of grain to replace the paralyzed grain.

Among these officials who submitted memorials, Lin Run, the former governor of Yingtian, was the most eye-catching. The news that Lin Zhongcheng had resurrected from the dead was amazing enough. This made his memorials particularly eye-catching.

In the memorial, Lin Run believed that when the canal is not smooth, the method of carrying out the rivers and seas should be adopted... that is, while doing its best to restore the canal, the sea transportation can be temporarily replaced. In this way, the transportation of grain canal canal can be guaranteed; second, it will buy time for the reconstruction of the canal so that it will not make the mistake of making aggressive progress again. Third, the cost of shipping is very low, and it will not disturb the mainland, and it can greatly reduce the pressure on the people in the south of the Yangtze River and along the canal.

He also proposed that according to the experience of the Yuan Dynasty, the shipping of grain did not have to be exclusively owned by the government, but could be transported by private merchants. As long as they were allowed to return to transport private goods, merchants would inevitably flock to it. In this way, the court did not bear risks and transportation costs, and merchants could benefit from freight from north to south, so that officials and the people could help bother with each other and relieve difficulties.

Lin Run's memorial soon aroused strong response in the government and the country. If his plan to "take both rivers and seas" is relatively stable, then the proposal of "sea private business" would be too bold.

Someone immediately came out to object, saying that Lin Run was burned out. The grains were related to the safety of the court, so how could he entrust them to the merchants? Who will be responsible for the problem when there is any problem?

However, Ma Sen, the Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, was very interested in Lin Run's proposal.

If you ask who was the most anxious in the Ming Dynasty after the severance of the canal transportation, maybe except the people from the canal transportation yamen, they were the Mabutang.

Because his family knows his family affairs. Taicang currently has more than 6 million stones of grain, and it has only consumed 700,000 stones in two months, and it seems that it can last for a year and a half.

But in fact, if the grains are cut off and heading north, chaos will occur at the end of the year. The reason is very simple. Although the grains in Taicang can be used for account, if they really need to be used, they will be exposed - because most of the grains in the Thirteen Warehouses of Tongzhou are old grains.

With a little common sense, you will know that old grains can't be eaten for more than three years, but many of the old grains in Taicang have been stored for more than ten years, or even decades, and are simply used by the officials in charge of the warehouse to fill in the warehouse!

After Ma Sen took office, he tried his best to replace the old grain that had been around for many years. But this was an old problem, and generations of ministers of the Ministry of Revenue were unable to do so. How could he solve it in two or three years?

If we dared to send the Chen grain that had been released for more than a dozen times to the soldiers on the Nine-Border side, the army would probably mutiny immediately. At that time, the court would probably learn from Cao Cao and use his Mabutang's head to stabilize the morale of the army.

So Ma Sen was almost desperate. But he had to be distracted from his conscience all day long and say to the people of the capital and the soldiers on the nine sides. The grain storage in Taicang is enough for two years, and everything is under control, without panic or anything else.

If the truth is revealed in the future, it will be damn evidence of the crime!

For Mabutang, who is so panicked, everything is nonsense. It is only a formal task to transport the grain from Jiangnan to the capital. As long as there is enough new grain, the old grain will always be in the warehouse, and naturally it will not be exposed.

So his attitude towards shipping is the most positive.

But Ma Sen has become a high-ranking state cadre, how could he not know how low the efficiency of the Ming Dynasty officialdom was? If the court had to organize the shipping, I was afraid that the research would be done until autumn, and preparations would be made next year. It would be impossible for the army to mutiny.

Ma Butang couldn't wait. If he didn't want to reveal the stuff, he had to make the sea transportation work quickly. So from the beginning, he paid great attention to the sea operations of Jiangnan Group.

Lin Run's memorial happened to give him a licence, and he could "take it for granted" to make an appointment with a merchant who is currently capable of shipping... Well, it is the person in charge of Jiangnan Group.... Well, it is Zhao Hao... to meet at the Ministry of Revenue Department and ask about the feasibility of shipping by Jiangnan Group.

During this interview, Mr. Zhao clearly stated that the Jiangnan Group has always been loyal to the emperor and patriotic, and is willing to do its best to share the worries of the court during this national crisis.

To this end, the Jiangnan Group is willing to complete the maritime transportation task of grain transport in the form of contracted transportation - that is, the imperial court sends as much grain to the group at Liujiagang, Taicang, and the group delivers as much grain to the court at Dagukou, Tianjin, to ensure that a lot of grain is guaranteed. Any drift without loss will be borne by the Jiangnan Group and has nothing to do with the court!

In order to prove that the group is not empty talk, they can even pay one million taels of silver as a deposit to the Ministry of Revenue in advance. If Jiangnan cannot deliver the grain on time and in full, the Ministry of Revenue can directly deduct the deposit.

The imperial court only needs to pay 20% of the total amount of grain transported as freight. It also grants Jiangnan Group the right to trade maritime goods, allowing it to traffic in north and south to make up for the losses caused in sea transportation!

Zhao Hao also promised that the Jiangnan Group would be willing to bear no less than two million stones of grain per year during the period when the water transport was blocked. When the water transport was restored, the transportation volume could be gradually reduced according to the requirements of the court, as long as it was no less than one hundred thousand stone per year.

Ma Sen was extremely satisfied with the plan that Mr. Zhao came up with. Can he be dissatisfied? The conditions offered by Zhao Hao were absolutely generous to unexpectedly, which made him embarrassed!
Chapter completed!