Urban Sims

September late autumn.

In the golden maple forest in front of the castle, amid the blessings of all the guests and friends, and after solemn oaths in front of Brother Robert, the newlyweds officially became husband and wife.

The newlyweds are naturally Zhou Ming and Fanny.

As a newlywed, perhaps out of the guilt left over from his previous life, Zhou Ming temporarily put aside the worries in his heart, rode a horse, and took his wife Fanny out for a honeymoon of more than a month.

For more than a month, the two of them went to see the snow-capped mountains in the east, the grasslands in the north, hunted in the forest together, and went to the lake to play together. Whenever the stars hung high in the night sky, the two of them covered the sky and the ground, forgetting themselves. Lingering erases the worries in the heart and forgets the glory of the world.

This period was the happiest time in the life of his wife Fanny.

…

Not long after our honeymoon.

With some clear ideas in his mind, Zhou Ming walked to his father, Baron Connor's study, holding a roll of parchment filled with text.

"This...is this really possible?"

After spending more than an hour reading hundreds of densely packed lines of text on the parchment, Baron Connor patted his somewhat swollen brain, not yet fully digesting the huge amount of information on the parchment.

"It can definitely be done, Dad! As long as three baronies are willing to join this plan, within five years, our Glen Territory will become the richest territory in the entire Voorhees Kingdom!"

Zhou Ming is full of confidence!

The "Free Business Alliance" plan, which he had thought over and over for more than a month and worked out, once it is launched to the outside world and gets responses from three to five surrounding territories to join, it will probably not take long after it tastes a certain amount of benefits. Even the most greedy and stingy lord would be tempted to join this plan involuntarily under the inducement of huge benefits.

In the "Free Business Alliance" drafted by Zhou Ming, the main plan is to take the lead in Glenland to establish a business alliance, and then bring together the surrounding Birdland, Yokenland, Nathanland, and Pattonland (affiliated to the North). The Earldom of Merlin) and other territories were all drawn into this business alliance!

For this business alliance, Zhou Ming also formulated several core rules that all members of the business alliance must strictly abide by. If these rules are violated, they will be restrained and severely punished by the business alliance!

The core rules of the "Free Business Alliance" mainly include five-

1. All commercial activities involving lords among various territories must follow the tax-free principle.

(That is, Lord A sells all his goods to Lord B who lacks the goods. After Lord B purchases these goods, he will not pay additional taxes to Lord A, and vice versa)

2. All commercial activities involving lords in each territory must follow the general tax-free principle.

(That is, when lord A sells all his goods to lord B who lacks the goods, if there is a lord C between the two territories of AB, then this lord C, as long as he joins the Free Merchant Alliance, will not be able to sell the goods. To tax these goods, these goods should be allowed to pass through his territory free of charge. On the contrary, when Lord C's goods pass through the territory of Lord AB, Lord AB is not allowed to tax them.)

3. Each lord's territory should allow other lords to establish a fully functional sales and warehousing center in their territory, and conduct regular information updates and exchanges with the commodity supply and demand information exchange center. If goods transactions occur here, the local lord will Only a maximum of 20% commercial tax can be levied. If local lords conduct transactions here, they should abide by the first tax-free principle.

4. Each lord's territory should set a unified tax rate for traveling merchants from all over the country. For example, when traveling merchants from all over the country transport foreign goods into the merchant alliance area for sale, each lord can levy a business tax of no more than 50%. Goods within the alliance that are shipped to non-commercial alliance areas for sale will enjoy the second territorial pass tax exemption policy. If the goods of the business alliance are sold within the business alliance, the traveling merchants will enjoy the third policy preference, that is, only a maximum of 20% of the commercial tax will be levied.

5. Each territorial lord shall abide by the various agreements of the merchant alliance and shall not buy or sell by force, levy taxes arbitrarily, or violate regulations. If there is any violation, he will be subject to collective sanctions by all members of the merchant alliance until he changes his mind, admits his mistake, and is punished. Lift sanctions.

Focusing on these five core clauses, Zhou Ming also formulated some supplementary clauses to ensure that under various circumstances, all members of the Free Business Alliance can strictly abide by these five core clauses and not dare to exceed even half a step.

"Dear Edward, how can you guarantee that these terms you have formulated will be strictly abided by other lords? Moreover, lords everywhere seem to have no goods worth trading with other lords. These terms you wrote, In most cases, it will be useless, and these terms are so cumbersome and troublesome... I don’t think that baron will join your Free Merchant Alliance."

Baron Kang'an is not optimistic about Zhou Ming's plan. Each territory in this world is basically a self-sufficient closed state. Only gold, silver, copper, salt and iron cloth, which have properties such as currency circulation, human necessities, and common use in war, can It has certain flow characteristics.

Food, cattle, sheep, wood, stone, and other territories are all in short supply. Only under certain special circumstances will they become in short supply, such as war, famine, etc.

Therefore, if Zhou Ming wants to make plans for these goods, he will only be in trouble.

Zhou Ming smiled mysteriously and said confidently: "Dad, no one can say whether it is useful to establish the Free Trade Alliance. You have to try it before you know. Let's do this, Dad, you can use the 200,000 talents backlogged in the castle granary." Leave all the food to me and let Mr. Morris and the others be my helpers. I am confident that within six months, I can use the power of the Free Trade Alliance to sell all this food!"

200,000 talents of grain sold out in half a year?

Baron Connor shook his head in disbelief and seriously questioned.

Although he admitted that sometimes this son was indeed a little smarter than him, he couldn't believe it after selling out the castle granary in half a year and accumulating more than 10 years of food. Even if he was beaten to death, he couldn't believe it.

Because even Baron Connor himself can only sell a maximum of 20,000 talents of grain a year through countless traveling merchants.

But no matter what, since my son is so confident and has never let him down since he was a child, let him give it a try. If he sells out a large amount of the food that rots every year, it can be regarded as his death. A piece of heartache.

…

Therefore, in the next nearly month, Zhou Ming carried out a series of "diplomatic" activities, trying his best to win over the surrounding lords and inviting them to join the "Free Business Alliance" of Glenland.

"What? Free Business Alliance, what the hell? Not interested, see you off." Baron Garcia of Boduo was not interested in Zhou Ming and drove him away with a bad temper.

"Boy, if you join this Free Business Alliance, can you really earn more than 10,000 gold coins within half a year? Do you dare to guarantee that if you don't have this amount, you will replenish it for me? Okay, I will join, as long as I can get this much money!"

Baron Howard of Yokenland has always been very concerned about managing his territory. His Yokenland is very large, but it has a lot of barren land. It suffers from financial crises every year. Now that an opportunity to make money comes to his door, he naturally Won't let it go.

"Good son-in-law, just do what you say. You don't have to give me a guarantee. You can earn as much as you want! Also, your idea of ​​a self-employed business alliance is very good. I support you to try it!"

Baron Sean has nothing to say. His son-in-law wants to do something big. As the father-in-law, he must support him. Moreover, since a few years ago, some advanced agricultural technologies such as centralized excrement processing and improved farm tools were introduced from Glenland. Later, Nathan also had a problem of unsalable food. Now that Zhou Ming said he could help him solve it, it would be even better.

With the two members joining, Zhou Ming's final target was the Patton Territory in the Earldom of Merlin.

The Patton Territory is a northern neighbor adjacent to the border with the Glen Territory. However, due to the "North-South Conflict" among the upper echelons of the kingdom, the relationship between the two territories is not very good. They do not fight every year, but there is little contact between them.

"Knight Edward, are you really willing to accept my son and make him your knight squire when he is 12 years old?"

The lord of Patton Territory, Baron Romond, hated all "Southerners" and felt that they were even more annoying than the savages in the north. After hearing the purpose of Zhou Ming's visit, he originally wanted to drive him away. But before he opened his mouth, he heard that Zhou Ming wanted to accept his 8-year-old son Eric as a squire and train him to be an excellent knight. Baron Romon immediately changed his mind and had a detailed interview with him.

Unlike the warm and prosperous South where the "Yanks" live, the North, with its cold and long winters, has always been synonymous with poverty, and often faces attacks from northern savages. Therefore, the Northern Knights are known for their bravery, because they are too poor. Although most of the baronies in the north have very large territories, they support very few knights. Even though nobles like Baron Romond do not need to consider the future of their eldest son, they often don't know how to arrange it for their second son.

Given the economic situation in the North, buying a set of knight equipment requires at least several generations of accumulation. Only the earl can provide more than two knights in one family.

Therefore, once the eldest son inherited the title and territory, the exiled second sons often had a very tragic fate. They either became mercenaries, or became logging farmers or horse grooms.

Baron Romond liked his 8-year-old son Eric very much, and was also worried about his future. He didn't know how to arrange him in the future.

But he didn't expect that an opportunity would come to his door today. He was a knight's squire and would help with the cost of purchasing equipment. He was a little excited.

Not only that, after hearing what this "Southern guy" said about the purpose of coming to Patton Territory, Baron Romont, who was tall and had many cuts on his face caused by the cold wind, couldn't help changing his face and shouting. :

"Knight Edward, you said you would build a trading post in Patton to sell grain shipped from the south? How could you even think of doing this? When we encounter famine in the north, don't you guys always do nothing to save them? ?You actually thought of selling food to us?"

Surprised, Baron Romond uttered the scornful epithet "Nanke".

Zhou Ming didn't pay attention, but said calmly: "We in Glenland have too much food to eat. Instead of letting it rot in the granary, we might as well take it to the north and sell it for some money... I heard that the weather in the north has been bad in the past two years. There have been several white disasters in the hottest summer. Many tribes in the Northern Savage Kingdom seem to be starting to eat people. Recently, they have increased their troops on the border. If His Majesty the King does not give them some food relief, I am afraid they will really A large-scale invasion, right?"

Zhou Ming remembered very clearly from the memory left in his previous life that because of the White Disaster for two consecutive years, the Savage Kingdom would invade the Voorhees Kingdom in a large scale after the spring of March next year. The scale of its troops was so large that it even penetrated the seven earls in the north. The leader directly entered the seven counties in the south, burned, killed, and looted. Even the Glen Territory had seven villages robbed.

Hearing the words "too much to eat" and "rotten", Baron Romond, who has been having a hard time in the past two years, wants to strangle this disgusting guy in front of him to death, but when he thinks of the current financial situation of the territory , he frowned and said: "Knight Edward, I am very grateful that you can help me and bring some scarce food, but what do you need? You should know that the Northland is very poor and there is no gold coin to buy that food, so …”

"It doesn't matter if you don't have gold coins. As long as you have it in your territory, whether it's fox skin, mink skin, wolf skin, black bear skin, white bear skin, snow sheepskin, or birch wood, iron pine wood, hanshan wood... these things can be exchanged. Food, of course, if you have some natural ores that are better, we will also collect these things..."

The various animal furs produced in the forests and snowfields of the north have excellent cold-proof effects. They have always been fashionable and rare items for the upper class nobles in the wealthy southern countries such as the Iron Castle Kingdom. A rare pure white fox fur is worth thousands of gold coins. One piece is laid out The white bear skin on the king's throne can also be sold for tens of thousands of gold coins.

Not only precious furs, but also various high-quality wood resources are indispensable in the northern forests, seas and snowfields, such as century-old white birch, which is fine-textured, fire-resistant and moisture-proof and suitable for making high-end furniture, and iron pine, which is as hard as steel. The cold fir trees with a faint fragrance... are rare resources that can only grow in the extremely harsh alpine environment in the north.

In addition, Zhou Ming also heard that due to the backward smelting technology of the savages in the savage kingdom further north, many of the weapons they used were made of large, high-grade iron ore, copper ore and other minerals. Made of hard metal ore, it can cut with the knight's sword.

There are even some savages who pursue beauty, and the ore ax they use shines with golden light, and it is a piece of axe-shaped gold nugget.

Zhou Ming knew that the various barbarian tribes in the Savage Kingdom were now extremely short of food. If possible, he would also like to transport a batch of food to the barbarian tribes further north. Food cannot grow in the frozen soil. These barbarian tribes will not care about disasters. Every good year, if you transport some food there, you can exchange it for some of the "weapons" they use every day, including that golden axe.

"The world is full of business opportunities. No matter what kind of product it is, if it reaches people who lack these products, it is a treasure worth spending generously." Zhou Ming once lamented.

Hearing that the abundant furs in the castle and the endless trees in the mountains that were too lazy to cut down could be used to exchange for scarce food from Zhou Ming, Baron Romon readily agreed to his plan and joined He founded the "Free Business Alliance".

At this point, the prototype of a primitive free business alliance, including the four territories of Glenland, Yoken Territory, Nathan Territory and Patton Territory, was officially established through Zhou Ming's persuasion and inducement in the past month. .

It took five hours to write a chapter of more than 4,000 words. Please give me some recommendation votes. Thank you for your support!