Handan.

Zhao Dan looked at the information in front of him, and his face was filled with a look of doubt that could not be concealed.

After a long time, Zhao Dan slowly said to Mao Sui in front of him: "Is this all the information you can collect about this guy Guo Kai?"

Mao Sui nodded respectfully and said to Zhao Dan: "Best Lord, this is all the situations about Guo Kai and the Guo family that the inspectors can collect."

After hearing Mao Sui's words, Zhao Dan couldn't help but fall into deep thought.

If we only look at the information presented by Mao Sui, the Guo Kai and the Guo family not only have no bad record, but are a great good citizen, an absolute good businessman, and a model of businessmen in the Warring States Period.

This is not too scientific.

"No, there must be a problem here!" Zhao Dan thought to himself.

A businessman family like white lotus? Zhao Dan felt that this was a big problem in itself.

Zhao Dan glanced at Mao Sui deeply, then threw the information back in front of Mao Sui, and said to Mao Sui: "I think there must be something wrong with this guy Guo Kai. Rujia sent someone to keep an eye on it. If there is anything abnormal, I will report it to me."

However, at this time, Zhao Dan did not have much energy to pay attention to Guo Kai's affairs, because in the past two days, war reports from different places had been sent back to Handan City one after another.

First of all, the war report from the front line of Yan State.

The Yan people were obviously very determined to hold their positions this time. Pang Xuan launched several fierce offensives on Fenmen City these days, but none of them made any progress.

According to what Pang Yan said in the war report, if possible, the best way would be to completely siege the Yan army until the Yan army was forced to surrender in the end.

In other words, Pang Yan would rather use the method of siege, which is less damage but relatively long, to win.

Zhao Dan spoke to several important officials of Zhao who were summoned to the Longtai main hall by him and said, "What do you think Pang Qing's opinion?"

The first person to speak was Lian Po: "The king, the old minister thought that if you only look at the battlefield of Yan State, this was indeed a strategy that could be chosen. But now the two counties in Henan are also threatened by the Huns, and the king should also send troops to deal with the Huns."

This is another problem in the battle report.

The invasion of the Huns was also a very big trouble for the current Zhao State. Even in the warring battles between the seven heroes of the Warring States Period, the 100,000 cavalry was not a random number that could be ignored.

Zhao Dan hesitated for a moment, then asked Lian Po: "Mr. Wu Xin, in your opinion, how should the Huns deal with it?"

Lian Po smiled slightly and said to Zhao Dan with confidence: "King, the Huns seem fierce, but they are just a group of native chickens and tiles. The king only needs to give me a unit of 150,000 people. I will definitely be able to expel the Huns from the country so that they dare not get involved in Zhao's land."

"150,000 people?" Zhao Dan hesitated a little.

To be honest, with the current strength of Zhao, even if the 150,000 troops that were fighting in Yan, there would be no problem with the other 150,000 troops to Lian Po.

But in this case, most of the elite troops of Zhao will be restrained by the two battlefields in the northeast and northwest directions. There will inevitably be empty defense situations in the southeast Central Plains where Handan is located and the southwest border between Zhao and Qin.

In this case, will other countries have the intention to take advantage of the situation?

Zhao Dan glanced at Lian Po, then turned to Zhao Sheng on the side and asked, "Mr. Pingyuan, if you have all your strength to recruit troops, how many troops can I recruit in total? Is there a total of 500,000?"

In Zhao Dan's opinion, Changping himself was able to recruit 400,000 troops, and this time he would be able to get 500,000.

Zhao Sheng thought about it and gave Zhao Dan an answer with certainty: "If the king wants to fight with the whole country, then mobilizing 600,000 troops will not be a problem!"

"Six hundred thousand?" This answer surprised Zhao Dan: "There are so many?"

Zhao Sheng nodded and smiled, "King, there are currently 1.15 million households in Zhao State. As for five people per household, the number of people should be six million. It is actually not difficult for six million people to recruit 600,000 troops."

It was not until this time that Zhao Dan discovered that with the continuous expansion of Zhao's territory, the current population of Zhao had doubled compared with the Battle of Changping, reaching a very gratifying level.

If this is the case, then Zhao Dan had been over-concerned before.

Even if 300,000 elite troops were drawn, if another country attacked, it would be able to withstand some of the 300,000 mixed fish in his hands.

"Very good, very good." Zhao Dan nodded and said in a deep voice: "Mr. Wu Xinjun, I will mobilize 150,000 troops as soon as possible to you. Do you need to drive these Huns out of my territory. Do you understand?"

Lian Po nodded vigorously and said, "Please rest assured, I will definitely not disappoint the king!"

Zhao Dan felt that he was a little confused now.

If we look at it from common sense, it is a normal routine for Li Mu to deal with the Huns who are mainly cavalrymen, and Lian Po to attack Yan State.

But the problem is that before attacking Yan State, Zhao Dan did not know that the Huns would suddenly attack him, so Zhao Dan sent Li Mu to Yan State to gain some achievements.

"Forget it, things have reached this point, and those things are useless. Just think that Lian Po got used to the way of fighting in advance."

Everything seemed to be fine, but the accident still happened.

After this meeting, an important official from Zhao State returned and asked to see Zhao Dan again.

This minister of Zhao State is no other person, and is the only one among the seven ministers of Zhao State today, who is considered relatively neutral.

Zhao Dan looked at Zheng Zhu with some surprise and said, "I wonder what Zheng Qing has to do?"

Zheng Zhu obviously seemed a little hesitant, and after a long time, he said, "I heard that the king is sending someone to investigate Guo Kai recently?"

When Zhao Dan heard Zheng Zhu's words, his heart was slightly jumped.

There is a problem.

The problem is big.

You should know that the order issued by Zhao Dan to investigate Guo Kai was not issued directly to Mao Sui through official channels.

Who is Mao Sui? That is the actual controller of the current supervisory guard.

The Supervisor is an organization that reports directly to Zhao Dan without going through any Zhao agency.

Logically speaking, the orders issued by Zhao Dan to the Supervisor should not be known to any important minister of Zhao State. After all, the original intention of the Supervisor was to monitor the ministers of Zhao State.

So how did Zheng Zhu know that Zhao Dan issued this secret order to the supervisory guard?

Zhao Dan's thoughts were so loud that he said slowly, but his face was silent: "What do Zheng Qing want to say to me?"

Zheng Zhu said seriously: "What I want to tell the king is that the reason why Guo Kai was able to become the largest iron merchant in Zhao State is mainly related to the support of the two people."

Zhao Dan frowned and said, "If Zheng Qing said this, then the identities of these two people must be very impressive."

Zheng Zhu nodded and said, "Master Mingjian, these two people who support Guo Kai are Pingyuan Jun and Pingyang Jun."

"What?" Zhao Dan was really surprised and said, "What happened?"

Zheng Zhu nodded very seriously and said, "King, this matter is absolutely false."

Zhao Dan gently tapped the corner of the table and fell into thinking.

I see.

Power-money transactions are not uncommon in any era.

Guo Kai was able to almost monopolize the iron tools business in Zhao's country for a time, and there must be many people offended.

It is impossible for Guo Kai to offend a lot of people and to survive so much and live safely until now.

However, Zhao Dan did not expect that behind Guo Kai were his two uncles, which was more troublesome.

Zhao Dan pondered for a moment and suddenly asked, "How did you know about this?"

Zheng Zhu said: "Back to the king, actually... I have several retainers who are also in charge of the iron tools business. These days, the Guo family suddenly became nervous, so I think they should be targeted by the supervisory guard."

Zhao Dan nodded and said that he understood: "Very good. I don't know what Zheng Qing thinks about this Guo Kai?"

A hint of anger flashed across Zheng Zhu's face and said, "Guo Kai, relying on the support of two monarchs, acted extremely domineering in his behavior. He has never been willing to give any opponent a way out. Moreover, he is extremely cruel to the workers under his command, and he often beat and scolded and whipped, and craftsmen are often beaten to death."

Zhao Dan thought for a while and said, "Does Zheng Qing have evidence in this regard?"

Zheng Zhu replied: "King, there are several craftsmen who have done things under Guo Kai to testify. They were all driven out of the Guo family's ironware workshop after being beaten by Guo Kai, and then taken in by me."

Zhao Dan said: "Since that's the case, then someone from the supervisory guard will come into contact with you later, so you will hand over these witnesses to the supervisory guard."

Looking at Zheng Zhu who was leaving happily, Zhao Dan felt thoughtful.

Zheng Zhu did not tell the truth completely, but that was not the point. The point was the news that Zheng Zhu brought to Zhao Dan.

Guo Kai and the Guo family are actually the spokespersons of Zhao Sheng and Zhao Bao in the commercial field.

In this era, although the ministers and nobles have noble identities, they are far from enough to see wealth compared to top businessmen.

For example, a person like Zhao Sheng who has three thousand disciples and lives a very luxurious life on weekdays is obviously not enough to rely solely on the little taxes in the fiefdom, and there must be an additional source.

Zhao Dan knew very well that in history, many nobles had their families or slaves to run some industries, but they did not expect that Zhao Sheng and Zhao Bao's spokesperson in the shopping mall were Guo Kai.

In this case, the strange investigation report Mao Sui just sent out seems to have a reasonable explanation.

"Come on, call me!"

A moment later, Mao Sui appeared in front of Zhao Dan.

Zhao Dan looked at Mao Sui with his eyes, and his words were filled with a stern meaning: "You were a servant of Pingyuan Jun back then. Did you already know that Guo Kai had something to do with Pingyuan Jun?"

Mao Sui's body was shocked, and he knelt down with a plop: "I would like to forgive me!"

Looking at Mao Sui, who kowtowed in front of him like pounding garlic, Zhao Dan snorted softly and said, "I will give you another chance. If you can't solve this problem this time, then you, the deputy general manager of the Supervisory Guard, don't do it, and let it be done to those who can do it!"

Looking at Mao Sui who left in a hurry, Zhao Dan felt quite unhappy.

I thought it was just a very simple thing, but I didn't expect it to become complicated now.

Just now, three important officials, Zhao Sheng, Zhao Bao and Zheng Zhu, were involved, and even a guy like Mao Sui who thought he was loyal seemed a little unreliable.

This Mao Sui, at this time, still wanted to give the lord Zhao Sheng a little face to the time? It's so stupid!

Speaking of which, I really looked at the distance but forgot my feet, and it was dark under the light.
Chapter completed!