Sun Ce laughed silently. "Do you think the military expenditure is too high, or do I want too much?"

After all, Huang Yueying has seen the world - the development costs she handles every year are also worth one billion, so she knows the annual investments of Jingxiang merchants. She quickly calmed down, glanced at Sun Ce, and smiled and said, "I think Your Majesty is scaring me."

"It's really not scaring you." Sun Ce said: "I'll just do the calculations. At present, there are five soldiers who are attacking Yizhou or preparing to attack Yizhou, namely the Great Governor Zhou Yu's army, the Great Governor of Annan, the Great Governor of Anxi, the Great Governor of Andong, and the Huang Zhong's army, with a total of more than 170,000 soldiers, spending 600,000 stones per month, equivalent to 120 million yuan and 500 million yuan in salary. These 620 million yuan is the minimum expenditure per month, and it is not a wartime period..."

Sun Ce was not too slow and calculated the military expenditure one by one. The reason why he was in a hurry to end the war was because the military expenditure was too large. When there was no major war, the annual expenditure had exceeded 15 billion, accounting for more than 70% of the fiscal revenue. After the war, various expenditures soared. It was initially estimated that at least 25 billion a year, or even more than 30 billion a year.

After hearing this, Huang Yueying's eyes turned around. "Your Majesty's accounts are settled correctly, but so many large armies cannot be supported by Jingxiang people. Is that your majesty's army or the Jingxiang people's army? I originally wanted to donate money to help the army, but it is suspicious for nothing. This is not appropriate."

"If they only support the Jingxiang army, wouldn't it be easier to attract suspicion?" Sun Ce smiled slightly.

Huang Yueying's face changed slightly, and she didn't dare to say anything further. Even if she was not as proficient in politics as the Yuan sisters, she knew that this kind of thing was very sensitive. She thought for a long time and turned her back. "I am stupid, so I would like to ask Your Majesty to give me some advice. How can this Jingxiang people do that so as to help Your Majesty and their soldiers without making gossip?"

"It is a good thing for the people to support the army, but forget to fight will be dangerous. At any time, soldiers who sacrifice their lives for the country and shed their blood should be respected and cared for, otherwise the world will be in chaos. There are many ways to support the army, which may not be just to provide military expenditure. You can also give priority to the families of the soldiers so that they can fight with peace of mind without any worries."

Sun Ce paused, his face a little serious. "But I heard that many soldiers' wives work in the workshop. They work as hard as others, but they get two or three percent less wages, just because they need more money."

Huang Yueying was stunned. "Is there such a thing?"

"There are even worse." Sun Ce let out a sigh of relief. "Nanyang, Nanjun has developed well over the years, and it has been one step a year, but the gap between the rich and the poor is also widening. Many people have made a fortune and never forget the countryside, but many people are unkind. In order to make more money, various tricks have emerged one after another. In order to reduce costs, some people recruit refugees from Guanzhong, Bingzhou and others, which not only affects the livelihoods of local people, but also affects the implementation of the Bingzhou New Policy, and even the reconstruction project of Luoyang has been affected. They didn't tell you all these, right?"

Huang Yueying shook her head, looked embarrassed, her face turned red and white, and she murmured: "Is there such a thing? It's so shameless. They... they have the nerve to come and ask me, and they say shamelessly to help the army?"

"The reason they are willing to help the army is because they have children in the army, and most of them are generals. If they win a battle and the generals have made merits, they can be promoted and promoted to their titles and speak out for them in the future. However, for most ordinary soldiers, even if they make merits and receive rewards, the impact of the money is limited, and most people will eventually return to their hometowns to farm. Using the lives of these ordinary soldiers to exchange for the contributions of their children is, for many people, a huge profit."

Huang Yueying is a smart person and can understand the key points when she hears it. If she were in normal times, she might not have considered those ordinary people. After all, there is no such person around her, and she can't hear such voices. Now she is facing face to face with Sun Ce. She looks at the problem from Sun Ce's perspective, and naturally knows the hidden dangers behind these problems, and her ideas are naturally different.

She is the nobleman favored by His Majesty. The Huang family and the Cai family have been closely linked to the court. The affairs of the court are hers, the affairs of the Huang family and the Cai family. In contrast, the other people in Nanyang and Jingxiang are more alienated.

"Your Majesty, why have you never heard you talk about these things?" Huang Yueying looked at Sun Ce with some resentment.

"You are so busy, it's useless to tell you, so why bother you?" Sun Ce smiled and reached out to hold Huang Yueying in his arms, patting her shoulders, which was both relieved and helpless. "You don't have to think too much. Governing the country is first of all, governing people, and people are the most complicated, with both good and evil. There are gentlemen and villains, but more are ordinary people who coexist with good and evil, so there is a debate on virtue and punishment."

"Oh..." Huang Yueying sighed and leaned against Sun Ce's chest. "It's better to learn wood more easily, but people's hearts are too complicated."

——

Although Huang Yueying, a lobbyist, was very incompetent and gave up halfway, Sun Ce did not intend to let this matter go easily. He quickly summoned Zhang Hong, Yu Fan, Zhong Yao and others to discuss an inspection and cleaning up the workshops of various prefectures and counties, and punished a group of unkind and unkind businessmen.

The reasons are also ready-made. The virtuous literature from all over the country has great opinions on the rapid improvement of the status of merchants. Many people have submitted memorials and oppose the court and demand that the court suppress the merchants. Some are more conservative, using the old theory of respecting the root and suppressing the end, and talking about etiquette and law. Some are able to keep pace with the times and make suggestions on specific issues. The most important point is that merchants value profit and do everything for profit. In the end, they not only harm politics, but also hurt the industry and commerce itself, and reach the opposite of the new policy.

Some of the examples Sun Ce said to Huang Yueying came from the memorials of these virtuous literature. Sun Ce may not fully agree with their views, but attaches great importance to the specific issues they raised. After experiencing the baptism of globalized market economy, he knows better than anyone in this era that if the distribution of wealth cannot be effectively controlled and the gap between the rich and the poor is intensified, the development of science and technology will not only fail to bring peace, but may instead cause new contradictions and even tear apart the entire society.

He has been thinking about how to deal with this issue. Since the Nanyang merchants came to Jingxiang and Nanyang, he started from Jingxiang and Nanyang. Of course, he would not specifically target Jingxiang and Nanyang people. After all, Huang Zhong still had front-line combat and could not affect the morale of the army. He just had a bias in the center of gravity and asked more questions.

Punishing some unscrupulous merchants is not to attack the people of Jingxiang and Nanyang, but to rectify the social atmosphere and seek benefits for ordinary people. Most of the money and grain confiscated from the unscrupulous merchants is used to support the front line and appease the military. From another perspective, it is also to promote justice for ordinary soldiers. They cannot let them bleed and sacrifice on the front line, and their families suffer in the rear.

Sun Ce did not want to make a movement, so he did not make a big push. He just asked relevant departments to make arrangements in the name of responding to virtuous literature. The voice came from public opinion, and the court only responded, and the possibility of conflicts intensification was much smaller.

The news soon spread, and the merchants were unwilling to give up, so they moved around and asked someone to write articles to fight back. For a time, the already fierce debate entered a fierce moment, and the official documents that Sun Ce had to read every day also doubled. The Shangshu Desk had to add some personnel and set up a special group to be responsible for the relevant content.

Sun Quan was commissioned by Sun Ce to be responsible for this group. Every day, in addition to handling a large amount of official documents, he also had to meet different people, listen to their serious differences and even attack each other, and also maintained the attitude of a wise king and listened to advice with ease. It was really miserable.

Although he was getting older and no longer like the willfulness he was when he was a teenager, he couldn't bear it and was about to go crazy when he was torture every day.

One day in mid-March, Sun Ce went to pay tribute to the Empress Dowager as usual. The Empress Dowager accidentally said that Sun Quan was very haggard recently and had almost lost weight. Is he too tired from work?

Sun Ce explained the general situation. There are indeed many things recently, and it is very complicated. This is especially true for Sun Quan. The official documents he had to read every day were piled up. Sun Ce then praised Sun Quan again. Among his younger siblings, Sun Quan was the best at these matters and helped him a lot. He originally planned to let Sun Quan return to his country and become a vassal after the end of this matter. Now he is a little reluctant to leave and wants to keep him in the court and serve as the representative of the royal family of the State Council.

The Empress Dowager was both relieved and distressed. She told Sun Ce that it was his blessing to trust him, but he was young after all, and he had entered the country so early, and was probably not suitable to be with a group of old ministers. Moreover, although Sun Quan was good at economics, he was an active person after all, and he had been engaged in documentary affairs, so he was afraid that he would get sick.

When Sun Ce heard this, he understood in his heart and smiled with a smile on his palm.

"Mother, Zhong Moujing is so moved?"

Empress Wu shook her head and smiled, "The child is very thoughtful and doesn't say anything. I can't figure out what he is thinking. I just think he likes hunting the most before, and he feels refreshed every time he returns from hunting. If he encounters beasts like tigers and leopards, he will be especially happy. In Ruyang for more than a year, he hasn't hunted once. I wonder if it's because of this reason that he is depressed and has no energy, so I tell you if he is going to take him off for a few days and let him go out for a walk."

Sun Ce agreed immediately. "That's because I was negligent. I'll let him rest when I go back, give him half a month off, and go hunting nearby."

"Half a month? Is it too long? Will it affect business?"

"The business can never be handled, and there will be no trouble for half a month. Just arrange for others to deal with it. By the way, what is Bo Xia (Hongzi) busy with recently? Let him take care of it during this holiday period. The two boys in his family should also enter school. There are the best men in the palace, so they can go to school with Dahu and Xiaohu, so that they can take care of each other in the future."
Chapter completed!