"Ancestors! Ancestral Shaman, you can get large amounts of Salt? Let me taste it... Huh! This Salt actually isn't bitter. It's good Salt, even better than official Salt?!..."
"Exactly! Ali, this kind of sea Salt—we can get a lot of it from the east, by the hundred-jin lot. What do you think? Would the tribes to the west accept goods like this? What sort of price could they offer?..."
"They'd accept it! Definitely accept it! Among the tribes along the Great River, there isn't a single one that isn't short of Salt! I'd guess a few dozen jin of Salt could be traded with the 'People of the Forest' for a fine big horse! And not just the People of the Forest. All the Jurchen tribes, even Liaodong of the Great Ming in the south, those guard posts and border forts inside and outside the Border Wall, are badly short of Salt too! Mm... or rather, it's not that they're short of Salt, it's that they're very poor and can't afford the government's high-priced official Salt..."
Harman chieftain Ali widened his eyes, staring at the glittering Salt in the sack before him as if he were looking at the true hard currency of these northeastern mountains and forests!
In the Northeast of this era, whether it was the Wild Jurchen coming south from the north, the nomadic people grazing by the rivers, the Haixi Jurchen farming in the south, or even the military households stationed at the Great Ming's border forts... whether Mongol, Han, or Jurchen, there was not a single one that was not short of Salt!
Of course, the reasons for this Salt shortage were actually different among the various peoples. The hunting Jurchen and herding Mongol tribes either could not produce Salt themselves, or the manpower and