The Jinzhen Escort Agency office in Wexing Province.

Zhao Jinge took the pencil made by Jiang Zhen and quickly recorded something on a piece of paper, while beside him, several gers looked at the various documents sent over. 

“What is this word? What does that mean?” Occasionally, they would whisper a few words. They couldn’t help it, some of the writing in the report made it almost unreadable! 

Because of this, they had to copy a lot of things for Zhao Jinge. Zhao Jing didn’t have the free time to figure out the nearly illegible words one by one. 

Zhao Jinge quickly finished what he wanted to write, folded the piece of paper and put it in an envelope before asking someone to send it to Jiang Zhen in Yabian Village. Then he looked at the paperwork sorted out by his people. 

A third of these documents were about the escort agency, while the other two thirds contained intelligence from various places.

This was something requested by Jiang Zhen. At first, Zhao Jinge was very confused, not understanding why Jiang Zhen wanted this, but now he was aware of the benefits.

This information allowed him to know matters pertaining to all parts of Wexing Province like the back of his hand, making it much easier to make all kinds of decisions.

This information also allowed him to make some money occasionally.

For example, if the price of grain went up in certain places, he would transport grain there. If someone in a certain place wanted to build a garden, he would be able to deliver the best wood. Buying low, selling high, wasn’t that the basics of business?

With the passage of time, Zhao Jinge became more and more attentive to the intelligence reports.

Zhao Jinge first checked the information from Yabian Village.

 After hearing that Yabian Village had been attacked by pirates, he hurriedly went to the seaside. The result, when he arrived there, was to learn Jiang Zhen had already gone to sea. 

Zhao Jinge was very busy, so he couldn’t stay there for long. 

The new intelligence sent by Yabian Village mentioned that Jiang Zhen had returned from Qinghua Island. Seeing this, Zhao Jin immediately said, “Go and prepare a ship, I am going to Yabian Village.” 

“Yes.” The people around Zhao Jinge answered and immediately went out.

Zhao Jinge was a bit restless. He was done with the escort agency affairs, so he simply put on a coat and went outside.

It didn’t take long for Zhao Jinge to step onto the ship traveling to Yabian Village.

The ship he was on was not big, but it was very fast. Of course, even so, it would still take half a day to get to Yabian Village.

After Zhao Jinge got on the ship, he went into the cabin, and then asked the two ger children serving him to fetch water for himself.

Ruo’er had already gotten married to one of Jiang Zhen men so now Zhao Jinge had two ger children serving by his side bought by Jiang Zhen. They were good, hard-working people, but they were very young and a little ugly.

Zhao Jing was not in his thirties so if he had married earlier, his children would already be as big as these two boys. Making him occasionally a little embarrassed to summon them.

Of course, even if he didn’t call them, these two have served him very comfortably.

After the water came, Zhao Jinge took out the facial cleanser given to him by Wen Yingniang, and then began to wash his face carefully. 

This facial cleanser was made from several medicinal herbs and soap horn powder, making the face grease-free and clean. 

After washing, Zhao Jinge took out another box containing the cream and carefully smeared it on his face and hands.

As he grew older he started paying more and more attention to his appearance. As for Jiang Zhen, Zhao Jinge secretly hoped that he would tan even darker, and completely ignore his appearance to make himself look particularly ugly.

In this way, he wouldn’t have to worry that someone would try to snatch Jiang Zhen from him!

After washing his hands and face, it was still early.  After thinking about it, Zhao Jinge simply cleaned his body. After finishing, he washed his teeth while also secretly rubbing a little fragrant powder on his body.

The fragrant powder he asked people to bring from the capital was very fragrant and after rubbing it into his body, it made his skin look more delicate.

He hadn’t used this before, but now, he took it out.

A few days ago, he suddenly found that he had wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

When Zhao Jinge arrived at the Yaban village it was already dark. After learning where Jiang Zhen was staying, he directly went there.

Seeing that it was him, the person guarding the door did not stop him, so Zhao Jinge directly went into Jiang Zhen house. Before he could get close to Jiang Zhen, he was suddenly grabbed by the wrist: “Who?”

Jiang Zhen was already half asleep when he suddenly felt someone come in, waking him up.

The footsteps sounded familiar, so Jiang Zhen thought it was Zhao Jinge at first, but soon felt that something was wrong. This person’s body emitted the scent of osmanthus flowers. Although it was not strong, this smell was absolutely different from Zhao Jinge’s smell.

Jiang Zhen became  completely awake at once, then went up and grabbed the person. Only after grabbing him, did Jiang Zhen realize that he seemed to misunderstand.  

 “Jiang Zhen, it’s me.”

“Jinge?”

The two of them spoke at the same time. Jiang Zhen smiled and directly pressed Zhao Jinge to bed. “Why did you come over?”

“I was worried about you.” Zhao Jinge hugged Jiang Zhen.

“You miss me, right?” Jiang Zhen smiled and directly nibbled on him. After he nibbled two times he was stopped by Zhao Jinge. “Don’t, I rubbed something on my body.”

He didn’t use too much powder, but they should still be careful right? What if Jiang Zhen had diarrhea after eating it?

“Don’t use it in the future,” Jiang Zhen directly said. Although it had to be said that he quite liked such a fragrant Zhao Jinge. 

The scent was very light, but it was still uncomfortable after smelling it for a long time. 

The two played for half the night and the next day Zhao Jinge deservedly got up late. When he got up he saw Jiang Zhen reading the letter he wrote.

The letter he wrote to Jiang Zhen before he left yesterday, Jiang Zhen only got it now.

Seeing the letter in Jiang Zhen’s hand, Zhao Jinge was a little embarrassed. However, Jiang Zhen just smiled and put the letter in his clothes after he finished reading it.

When he was solving the Hongjiang Salt Field matter, he wrote the same kind of letters to Zhao Jinge, but at that time didn’t think too much of it. However, one day he found that all his letters had been collected by Zhao Jinge in a delicate box, hidden in the wardrobe. Looking at the appearance of those letters, they still seemed to be read from time to time. 

In this way he  fell in love with writing to Zhao Jinge, so every time he had something to write about he would send a letter to Zhao Jinge. 

Zhao Jinge was a person who would always repay what others gave him, so every time he received a letter, he would write back to him. All these letters were also put away by Jiang Zhen. 

“How’s it going on Qinghua Island?” Zhao Jinge asked.

“It’s pretty good there, I’ll take you there to play when I have time.”

“Now it’s getting busier and busier, and I do not know when I will be free.” Zhao Jinge sighed.

“There will be time,” Jiang Zhen laughed and took a big bite of the rice in front of him.

The Zhao Family breakfast nowadays was very generous, but away from home they could not have the same quality of food, so Jiang Zhen let people get him two simple dishes every morning with some rice. 

Yesterday, Zhao Jinge was very anxious to see Jiang Zhen, so he didn’t eat anything last night. Now he ate together with Jiang Zhen.

Zhao Jinge left after staying in Yabian Village for one day. Jiang Zhen left after arranging various matters and staying for one more day.

In Yabian Village there was nothing to worry about too much. 

After those pirates came, the area around Yabian Village returned to a peaceful state. Only occasionally, there would be a few pirates who would want to rob things. However, most often before they even could do anything they were already caught. 

Jiang Zhen did not like killing so he sent all these pirates to the mountains. He had people keep an eye on them and put them to work without having even the slightest free time.

Thanks to these captured pirates, Jiang Zhen had no shortage of wood and stone.

However, Yabian Village was peaceful because there were Jiang Zhen’s men patrolling and defending it. It was different for other villiages.

There were several villages nearby that were slaughtered and wiped out by pirates. 

“Those pirates are really abominable!”

“Some villages saw those Japanese pirates and just thought they were Cheng Yongzhen’s men coming. They happily let them into the village and welcomed them into their houses, only to…”

“Those people are simply beasts, no, they are worse than beasts!”

Winter came, and Jiang Zhen was about to transport the grain and grass to the Liaodong Iron Riders, when he heard his men speak about it. 

Hearing this, Jiang Zhen’s mood inevitably worsened some.

Recently there were more and more pirates in the coastal areas!

Initially, all the pirates were basically Cheng Yongzhen’s old army, but now there were even more people appearing. 

Not only that, the number of Eastern ronins among them was also getting higher and higher.

At the beginning, the Eastern ronins were basically hired by the people of Daqi to work, but now, they had their own gang.

In this regard, Jiang Zhen was more or less aware of the current situation. 

 The Eastern people’s homeland was across the sea from Daqi. They were considered a vassal country of Daqi and in the former dynasty they even had to pay tribute. 

 Because of this, when Daqi was founded, the Emperor of Toyo was very dissatisfied with Daqi, and even cut off contact. 

 The Emperor Taizu of Daqi was also bloodthirsty. Believing that Toyo didn’t like him, he did not need to take them seriously, so when the Toyo emissary came again, he simply avoided them.

The emissaries of the Toyo come a few times but then stopped coming. Without Daqi, there was civil strife in Toyo. 

Someone tried to take away the power of Toyo’s imperial family, which was not an easy thing to do. Finally the attempted coup ended at a standstill, with both sides fighting endlessly, while the people of Toyo suffered. 

Recently, the two fighting powers, in order to divert their own domestic conflicts and coupled with the lack of food, both decided to encourage the people of Toyo to come to Daqi and make a living as pirates.

When Cheng Yongzhen was still free and in control of the pirating there, they had to bend to Cheng Yongzhen’s demands. Even the Toyo imperial family gave Cheng Yongzhen a large piece of land so that he could build houses in Toyo to do business. 

However, now that Cheng Yongzhen was gone, they were no longer afraid of Daqi!

 

Edited by: Antiope1

 

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