The rise of the prince

Chapter 692 money money money

The basis of the Taoist alchemy furnace is mercury, so the ancients used mercury in many terrible ways, such as embalming corpses in tombs.

But the most terrible thing among them is that it is used as medicine, and it is very popular.

Mercury is added to most of the Taoist elixirs. No matter what the disease is, as long as it cannot be cured, they will try to use mercury.

The ancients even took mercury orally for contraception. Even after the disease of willows and willows was introduced to China, people also treated it with mercury for a long time. I don’t know the reason, but it may be a superstition about this magical metal.

It is not difficult to imagine why it is so profitable to run a cinnabar mine and do cinnabar business. The cinnabar can be used for dyes, cosmetics, mercury, metallurgy, medicine and so on.

It was only then that Li Xingzhou suddenly realized that it was no wonder that Fatty Tang had a big village outside the capital, so it turned out that his family was rich.

"Why are you asking this? Didn't you forbid us to use cinnabar? Do you want to change it?" Shiyu asked him.

"Don't, don't use it, I didn't mean that." He said with a smirk: "You are so beautiful, why use cinnabar."

"Hum..." Shiyu pushed his big face away, the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

"That stuff is poisonous, so don't use it." Li Xingzhou said, this is not a joke, most of the cinnabar used by girls in this era is directly ground natural mercury sulfide, and it is still applied on the lips.

Mercury is a heavy metal, and even small intakes can cause damage to the body if used over time.

Shiyu nodded: "Don't worry, you can decide what you say."

Mercury has another use for him, that is, mercury fulminate. Mercury fulminate can also be called primer, which is the primer of bullets and shells.

To make this kind of thing, based on the conditions in front of him, he has been thinking for a long time about what can be purchased or mined by the palace. His mind is full of chemical equations, and all kinds of messy element symbols are written in the attic. After a few days of tossing and reasoning, he was writing what he needed in the end.

Li Xingzhou carefully took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Shiyu. Shiyu opened it and said glass, cinnabar, green vitriol, saltpetre, and alcohol.

Shiyu looked at him puzzled after reading it: "What are these?"

"Can you get these things?" Li Xingzhou asked first.

Shiyu read it carefully again, nodded and answered him: "Of course, there is nothing difficult. There are saltpeter, alcohol, and glass in Wangfu, and cinnabar can be bought from Tang's. Green vitriol is a medicine stone that can be found in ordinary medicine shops." Then he looked up. to him.

Li Xingzhou laughed happily, and kissed her: "That's great!"

Shiyu blushed, jumped up, looked quietly at Gillian Yue'er in the distance, and complained: "What are you doing?" He stood up and was about to go out, but then he seemed to remember something, came back and sat down, but warned him: "In broad daylight, don't mess around"

Li Xingzhou grasped the key points in broad daylight, and smiled ambiguously at her, Shiyu blushed even more, and hurriedly talked to him about the business.

The serious matter that the poem talks about is the expansion of the new army. The expansion of the new army requires money from the palace. An army of 5000 people is not a small sum for the palace.

Recruitment will start in early October, and the emperor has also set up a new camp for the new army outside the city. At the beginning of the month, the defense will be moved to the north bank of the Great River.

"How much do you estimate it will cost?" Li Xingzhou asked.

"In the beginning, I didn't spend much. There was a surplus in the treasury for armaments and military uniforms. Although not all of them were enough, there were half of them. I'm afraid they will maintain them later." Shiyu said.

"Think about it, the new army has 5 people, and each person pays 40 taels a year. The 200 army will cost 300 million taels a year. Including board and lodging, it will cost about [-] million taels. The palace will definitely earn back this money in a year. , but money is used everywhere in the mansion, and it may be difficult to turn around, and if there is any accident, such as transferring the big ship to fight like before, it may be in shortfall." Shiyu said.

Li Xingzhou nodded. The salary of the new army was slightly better than that of the rest of the army. The county magistrate's annual salary was only about 80 taels, and 40 taels was also very high, but when there were too many people, money was troublesome.

The annual expenditure of 300 million taels may not be a problem for the imperial court. The imperial court has national taxation, and the imperial court can deduct military pay, but it cannot and will not.

"How is business going?"

"The wine business has started to decline, but the glass business is hugely profitable, and it is growing faster and faster. The restaurants everywhere are stabilizing, but the fastest growing business is the shipping business, which is getting better and better." Shiyu said and stopped. After a while: "Especially after the war, I heard that these big ships destroyed the Liao Kingdom, and many people rushed to do business with the palace."

Li Xingzhou nodded. He expected this trend. Apart from the attraction of these big ships that defeated the Liao Kingdom, what is more important is that the cheap and fast shipping in the palace will inevitably attract more people to join in the business, and there will be a wave of businessmen. Explosive growth brings small peaks of business prosperity.

The fact is also the same. Two years after the royal ship joined, the trade of grain, leather, mountain delicacies, etc. in the north and spices, cloth, handicrafts, fruits, etc. in the south increased significantly. Can buy cheaper fruit, cloth and so on.

Among them, the fruit trade is the most obvious. Not only has it become common, but its price has dropped several times. Taking sugar cane as an example, it has changed from something that nobles can afford, to something that ordinary people can afford within a year.

But will southern fruit farmers be unhappy with the price cut of sugar cane?

Of course not. In the past, sugarcane was expensive in the north, but ordinary people couldn’t transport it and sell it. The sugarcane to the north was transported by official ships or private ships of wealthy households, and the quantity was limited.

But nowadays, the big ships of the royal family are constantly going back and forth between the north and the south. Farmers only need to pay a small sum of money to bring sugar cane to the north to sell in the peak season. Sugar cane farmers do not lose money.

Therefore, in the past two years, more and more people grow sugar cane in the south, the amount of sugar consumed in the whole country has also risen rapidly, and the happiness of the people along the coast where the big ship goes has also skyrocketed.

Even people in villages and towns near the north-south waterway of the ship put the image of the ship in the temple to worship and worship, saying that the ship gave them livelihood and prosperity.

In the future, more ships will be needed.

After thinking about it, Li Xingzhou suddenly thought of one thing, the matter of huge profits.
Isn't there one more thing, that is arms!
Arms dealers, no matter what era they are in, are profitable, even in ancient times.

The hoarding of a large amount of steel in the palace treasury is not a good time to make money.

Thinking of this, he quickly sat up, the era of cold weapons is about to pass, if he doesn't take advantage of this residual heat to make some money, and wait for the surrounding countries to react, where else will he make money.

The more he thought about it, the more Li Xingzhou felt it was necessary, and the more warring countries were, the more eager they were for armaments. Aren't the Xia Kingdom in the Northwest civil strife and the Mongolian tribes in the civil war on the Mobei grassland all the biggest potential customers!How about cheating them hard while they are at war?
(End of this chapter)