The disgraced official I took care of was actually Zhu Houcong's childhood friend.

Chapter 202

During her time in Annam, Yun Jin wielded immense power, and no one could rival her in status. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call her the de facto ruler of Annam.

If it were anyone else, achieving such a status at this age would probably have made them arrogant and complacent, but Yun Jin is different.

She simply instructed Li Chun to continuously purchase grain from the people of Annam, with the money coming from the proceeds of the smuggling boats that Yun Jin had previously seized.

Yun Jin was very particular about how she robbed these ships. She didn't rob those that were going out to sea because they were full of cargo, which would be difficult to resell and the value of the cargo was far less than that of the ships returning to port. On the other hand, the ships returning to port were mostly loaded with silver.

Japan has an abundance of silver, which is the fundamental reason why almost every wealthy merchant family in Jiangnan has hundreds of thousands of taels of silver.

The people of Annam were overjoyed to learn that someone was willing to pay for their grain, because they had more grain than they could eat. If no one bought it, it would just pile up at home and slowly mold and rot. Therefore, Yun Jin bought the grain at a very low price, less than one-tenth of the price of rice in the Ming Dynasty.

This is a buyer's market. Grain merchants in the Ming Dynasty all know that grain in Annam is cheap, but no one will buy grain from Annam on a large scale. Firstly, it is better to buy other things than grain. Secondly, if a large amount of grain from Annam floods into the Ming Dynasty, the price of rice in the Ming Dynasty will collapse.

The collapse in rice prices not only affected grain merchants, but also the people of the Ming Dynasty. The rice that people worked so hard to grow could not be sold at a good price, and how could they feed their families without money?

Many people at the bottom of society are reluctant to eat the rice they grow; they choose to sell it and use the money to buy coarse grains or cheaper, filling foods.

It's not that they don't eat refined grains at all; they might have one occasionally as a treat. But eating refined grains every meal would be too much for the average family.

Over the years, Yun Jin has been studying diligently because she wants to catch up with Zhou Chu as much as possible.

Many times, Yun Jin felt a pang of regret. If her mother hadn't bought her second brother back then, the fate of the Lu family would probably be very different now, and she didn't even know if she would be alive today.

Even without those events from back then, I would probably have been like other women, learning needlework and poetry, and then finding a suitable family to marry into when I reached a certain age.

If she hadn't met Zhou Chu, Yun Jin probably wouldn't have thought there was anything wrong with this kind of life.

But ever since she started following Zhou Chu, no one knows better than her how outstanding and outrageous her second brother is.

When Zhou Chu rose to prominence overnight, many people were astonished, but Yun Jin was not surprised at all. She understood that it was only a matter of time before Zhou Hengqi's name resounded throughout the Ming Dynasty, and it was not impossible for it to even resound throughout the world.

During that time, many women surrounded Zhou Chu, but Yun Jin never paid them any attention. She knew very well that these women's understanding was not on the same level as her second brother's, and that her second brother could not possibly be captivated by these women.

Of these women, only Chu Li made her feel a slight threat, but that was all.

Yun Jin never even paid attention to Lin Yao, the county princess.

Yun Jin knew very well that the reason she was able to study so focused and make such rapid progress was entirely because she had always been by her second brother's side. With her second brother as a role model to look up to, Yun Jin was never complacent. Even though she had already far surpassed her peers, she had never taken them seriously.

Yun Jin's goal has always been the same: Zhou Chu. Everything she does is to stand with Zhou Chu and help him, instead of letting him bear all the burdens alone.