"Have you spent enough time in Jiangnan these past few years to know anything about the sea merchants there?" Yang Zhengshan suddenly asked.
Luo Shang raised his head in surprise and said, "My lord is interested in sea merchants?"
"I have some ideas, but I don't know much about sea merchants. I want to understand them first before anything else!" Yang Zhengshan said.
Luo Shang thought about it and said, "It's very hard to become a sea merchant!"
"Very hard? In what ways?"
"First, if you want to go to sea, the investment is enormous. A sea ship, even a smaller one, costs over a thousand taels of silver, and a larger one might cost tens of thousands!"
"Second, the sea is full of danger. Natural disasters and man-made calamities can happen at any moment. Natural disasters are one thing, never mind that; the most troublesome are man-made calamities!"
"My lord may not know this, but many of those sea merchants in the south are both merchants and bandits. Once they go out to sea, they can turn into pirates at any time and rob and murder any merchant ships they encounter!"
How could Yang Zhengshan not know this? People like Li Dan and Zheng Zhilong—he had understood them in great detail in his previous life.
Precisely because he had understood them, he was interested in sea merchants.
Maritime trade could bring enormous profits, and Tenglong Guard had no other advantages. Its only advantage was that it lay by the sea.
Although it was located in Liaodong and its maritime trade business was relatively backward, at least it had a place from which ships could put out to sea.
Yang Zhengshan had the idea of building a dock by the sea, constructing a few sea ships, and engaging in maritime