Spring comes to the desperate place

Chapter 492 Only Goes Up, Never Down

The instigator stuffed the last bite of the bun into his mouth, finished the bun, and then had a cup of hot corn juice to cleanse himself. Song Chunlin ate with great satisfaction. By the time he slowly wiped his mouth and hands clean, the people below still hadn't found the source of the bun's aroma. However, the aroma reminded them that it was time to eat; they couldn't let people starve to death.

While they were eating, Song Chunlin went to the carts loaded with grain. Seeing so much grain, Song Chunlin was itching to get his hands on it. To avoid alerting them, Song Chunlin sneakily emptied all the grain from his spatial storage, then found a wasteland and filled it with an equal weight of sand. To get the sand, he even spurred many mutated plants to work together. He worked all night and finally replaced the remaining grain with sand before dawn.

For three or four days, no one could find any trace of Cai Sheng and his apprentice. Even the most skilled trackers couldn't find a single clue. They searched for thirty miles around, checked all the major roads, and asked many people, but no one said they had seen Cai Sheng and his apprentice or the young man who saved the man.

This was very strange. Everyone felt that unless those people could fly or disappear into the ground, there was no way to explain why they couldn't find each other.

Moreover, it was already very late to bring the grain back, so the old man had no choice but to put the matter aside for now and urge everyone to hurry up and transport the grain back to avoid any further complications.

The wagons carrying the grain quickly drove away from the village, and the deaf-mute couple who guarded the village cleaned up every trace of the village, as if those people had never been there.

Song Chunlin followed behind these people at a leisurely pace. He had already asked General Cheng to send a letter to Gu Fengyue, which Gu Fengyue must have received by now. Gu Fengyue was not too worried about Song Chunlin's safety; he was more concerned about the hearts of those people and whether they could withstand the situation of transporting a whole route of grain only to have it disappear without a trace.

Song Chunlin thought these people would travel by water, but they insisted on taking the land route, leaving Song Chunlin completely puzzled and unable to understand their thought process.

However, after he saw the entire cave full of grain a second time, he understood why the other party was unwilling to take the waterway; it turned out they wanted to collect the grain along the way.

Song Chunlin stroked his chin, pondering whether to take them all in. The old man over there had already reported the unexplained disappearance of the grain in the manor. Although it was somewhat unbelievable, when everyone said that the grain had disappeared, even the most unbelievable things had to be taken seriously.

From their conversation, Song Chunlin learned that they had several other places where they hid grain, all of which were carefully selected and stockpiled with a large amount of grain, enough for their master to fight his way from the south to the north.

"It seems this person has been planning this for a long time. Should I just take them all in one go?" Song Chunlin muttered to himself. Unfortunately, he still didn't know the locations of the remaining grain storage areas, and the old man didn't seem to be planning to collect grain from other places either. Perhaps he had realized something. Song Chunlin was already regretting his actions. Why did he act so quickly? He should have waited until these people had collected all the grain along the way before collecting it into his space. Now, he could only collect this one at most.

However, it's better than nothing. Song Chunlin estimated that there was more grain here than he had collected over there, about 500,000 to 600,000 catties. If he collected it all, it would be a heavy blow to the Prince of Pingnan.

Meanwhile, Gu Fengyue's letter was successfully delivered to Gu Fengyun. Without a moment's delay, Gu Fengyun immediately went to the palace and presented the letter to the emperor.

After reading the letter, the emperor was filled with shock and disbelief.

"These past few years, those vassal kings have remained completely silent. I thought they had learned to behave themselves."

Gu Fengyun ignored the emperor's sarcasm and instead reminded him: "Chu Yue has been plagued by Japanese pirates for many years. At the beginning of the year, the academy sent a lot of gunpowder to help them repel the pirates. If the King of Chu Yue had any brains, he would not have rebelled with his cavalry at this critical juncture. I believe that the person who sent people to kidnap Cai Sheng this time must be the Prince of Pingnan."

The emperor's face immediately darkened: "Lord Gu, you must provide evidence before you speak."

Gu Fengyun was not intimidated by the emperor at all. Instead, he took out another piece of paper from his sleeve, which showed the prices and quantities of grain purchased by grain merchants in the south over the past few years.

"The numbers recorded on this paper are somewhat incomplete, but they are generally correct, especially the prices. Grain prices in the south have been rising for the past few years, but the reports from there have always said that it has been a bumper year. The Ministry of Revenue has also collected all the grain taxes in recent years. If it has been a bumper year, then why have grain prices only risen and not fallen? This means that someone there has been secretly hoarding grain."

The data on that piece of paper was obtained by Gu Fengyun from the Wang and Song families. Both families were in the water transport business. The Song family, in particular, had always traveled the southern waterways and was very familiar with the grain prices in the south. In recent years, they had also been thinking about getting into the grain transport business, but the price and quantity of grain had kept their business in the south stagnant. That's why they thought of taking the route to the north.

It is said that an army marches on its stomach. The grain in the south has been stockpiled. Now that the imperial court has just conquered the Jin Kingdom in the north, most of the manpower and resources have been invested there. Gu Fengyue has also led the Gu family army to the border. If the Prince of Pingnan were to start a rebellion at this time, he might actually succeed.