Daming: My boss Zhu Yuanzhang

Although his status suddenly dropped from a boss to a servant who was worse than a civilian, he was full of energy and high morale at this time!

As the so-called seventh-rank official in front of the prime minister's door, with his unwavering loyalty to Mr. Li, even as a janitor, he is not much worse than before. What's more, everything is temporary. He believes that Mr. Li will promote him in the future.

After Zhao Jun was executed, the edict for Li Wei's promotion to Shangshu was quickly issued. This time no one could stop him, and Li Wei successfully moved into Xue Xiang's original main hall.

The storm subsided, the court situation calmed down again, and Li Wei began to work conscientiously for his father-in-law.

More than a dozen major cities across the country need to be built, and the cost ranges from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of thousands of guan. Adding in the small counties, various roads, bridges, etc., the total cost is as high as more than 6 million guan.

Some of these places had already been started when Xue Xiang and Zhao Jun were here, but the progress of the project was only half-way. When there was no money, the work was stopped, and when there was money, we continued to work.

Li Wei looked at this figure and was silent for a long time. The Minghuang Chamber of Commerce has developed to this day, and its total assets are less than five million yuan. The expense is so large that he can't help but click his tongue.

He sorted these out carefully and prioritized the cities in important places and put them together. However, without money, these places could only wait, which gave him a headache.

After pondering for a moment, Li Wei suddenly relaxed his expression and chuckled: "Hey, why should I worry about this? Let's ask Ru Taisu for money matters!"

Ru Taisu was the Minister of the Ministry of Household Affairs, so of course the court would turn to him for money!

Thinking of this, Li Wei picked up the account book, walked out of the door leisurely, turned a corner and went to the Ministry of Accounts.

"Is Mr. Ru here?" Li Wei asked the officer on the side when he arrived at the Hubu Yamen.

The officer saluted respectfully and said: "You are here, I will go and report it now."

"Hey, no need, I can just go in and find him myself."

Li Wei waved his hand familiarly and stepped in directly. The guard did not dare to stop him and could only bow and follow him in.

"Master Ru, are you busy?"

Li Wei walked into the lobby and smiled when he saw Ru Taisu who was working.

Ru Taisu raised his head and glanced at him. He was accustomed to his intrusive behavior, and waved his hand to let the officer retreat.

"What do you want from me?" Ru Taisu asked.

Li Wei didn't waste any time and threw the account directly at his koan: "Take the money!"

Ru Taisu glanced at him suspiciously, lowered his head and flipped through the accounts. When he saw the figure of more than eight million yuan on it, he was instantly shocked and took a breath of cold air.

"No money!"

Ru Taisu closed the account, pushed it forward, and said very simply.

Li Wei was not surprised by this, but continued: "If you don't have money, just find a way! These are all approved by His Majesty!"

"What can I do? Now that the treasure banknotes are under the control of your office, the Ministry of Household Affairs can barely support the court's daily expenses by taxation alone. How can I come up with such a large amount of money?" Ru Taisu complained for a while.

"Money is not printed. You have to correct your old concept and think of ways to generate income for the court!" Li Wei advised.

"Anyway, I don't have money, so if you can't, just go find His Majesty!" Ru Taisu gave him a blank look and said in a bachelor's manner.

In his opinion, Li Wei just stood and talked without pain in his back. How could it be so easy to generate income?

Li Wei frowned. He could understand Ru Taisu's difficulties. He couldn't even afford the one million dollars spent on the last expedition to Yunnan, let alone the six million dollars now.

But this matter still had to be done, and he had to find another way to deal with the money.

After leaving the Household Department in disappointment, Li Wei went to see Zhu Yuanzhang again just in case. Zhu Yuanzhang returned the problem to him without any surprise and asked him to find a solution on his own.

Li Wei returned to the Ministry of Industry with a frown on his face, holding the accounts and having a headache.

Although the Banking Department is under his control, printing money directly is tantamount to following the old path. If it is absolutely necessary, this method should be used as little as possible.

In fact, there is no rush to repair the city. Xue Xiang and Zhao Jun also repaired slowly and stopped before, but Li Wei didn't want to waste so much time, and it was uncomfortable to watch them dragging their feet.

After much thought, he could only first hang up a bond in the bank like he did before conquering Yunnan, hoping to raise this astronomical sum.

On the other hand, he is also thinking about how to reduce costs.

Since we are going to engage in construction projects, there is one thing that we have to mention, which is cement.

Cement is the main material for construction in later generations. With the addition of steel frames, skyscrapers with a height of five to six hundred meters can be built, and concrete jungles that can easily accommodate tens of millions of people can be built. If cement were available, these would be impossible to see today. Buildings that were previously unimaginable can be realized one by one.

Of course, it is definitely not possible to make such good cement at the current level, but it can still be used to build city walls. The most important thing is that it can be used as an adhesive.

The adhesives used in construction today are clay and yellow mud, while high-end ones use glutinous rice mortar. Glutinous rice mortar is used for city walls in strategic locations and tall buildings such as royal palaces.

This thing is easy to use, but it is too expensive. The cost of building a city with this thing is ridiculously high.

It would be much better if cement could be used instead, the cost could be reduced, and the quality would not be inferior.

After making up his mind, Li Wei went to the bank to arrange for Shen Jing to put up bonds first to raise money and food.

However, this matter probably won’t go too smoothly. The bonds that were used to conquer Yunnan last time were ultimately paid for by the head of the bank, and not many were actually bought by ordinary civilians. In the final analysis, the people did not trust the imperial court enough. I'm afraid they won't pay back the money they borrowed.

This can only be done slowly. Credit cannot be established in a short time.

After leaving the bank, Li Wei went to the lime factory under the Ministry of Industry.

Cement needs to be burned just like lime, so it is appropriate to leave this matter to them.

Fortunately, he was in charge of the Ministry of Industry, a government agency with corresponding professional departments. He had craftsmen and various workshops and kilns under his command, and the main materials for making cement, namely limestone, clay and iron ore powder, were also easily available.

However, he still needs to study the ratio and firing temperature of these things.

In the lime factory, Li Wei once again returned to his identity as a worker. Just like when he led the Ordnance Bureau to make steel, he personally taught the craftsmen, and worked with them to mix limestone and clay into raw meal, and then refine it into clinker. Then mix with iron ore powder.

It is not difficult to make primary cement. The only difficulty is the control of raw material ratio and refining temperature.

After a period of research and experiments, Li Wei finally produced a barely qualified primary cement.

However, this cannot be used directly. You have to make mortar and concrete and record the proportions.

Different ratios will have different strengths and hardnesses, and their uses are also different.

Mortar made of cement mixed with sand and water is mainly used on the wall surface, while concrete with sand and gravel is used to cast and bear the wall.

Li Wei roughly calculated the production cost and found it acceptable. It was certainly more expensive than clay, but much cheaper than glutinous rice mortar!

After getting the cement, Li Wei left the lime factory and paid attention to the bank's bond situation.

In the back hall of the bank, Shen Jing took the bond accounts and presented them to Li Wei.

"You only sold so much?"

Li Wei frowned when he saw the amount sold above.

This has been pending for such a long time, and the six million quota is enough to sell hundreds of thousands. This amount of money is just a drop in the bucket.

Shen Jing smiled awkwardly and said, "Sir, your bond limit is too large, and the Ministry of Industry is building the city, and the money will be gone after it is used. Naturally, the people are worried that the money will be wasted."

Li Wei frowned. Of course he understood this. He originally used the method of borrowing old money to repay new money, but the people were not fools. They still had some spoils from the war. Building a city was like a meat bun beating a dog. It's gone when it's used up.

Huh? wrong!

Building a city does not mean that it will be used up once it is used up. Once the city wall is built, the city will be safer, so why shouldn’t the price of land increase? Don’t houses and shops need to be doubled?

This is just like building roads and building public facilities in later generations. Although the cost invested by the government has sunk, the surrounding land and houses will skyrocket. To put it bluntly, the value invested by the government has not disappeared, but has been transferred to the surrounding areas. On land and houses.

Many people in later generations took advantage of this to become rich overnight, and many companies hoarded land in advance to make profits. In fact, they were dividing the money invested by the government.

The same is true for building cities now!

Once the city wall is built, the city will become safer, and the land, houses and shops inside will naturally increase exponentially.

After thinking about this, Li Wei couldn't help but wonder, if this is the case, can he learn from the real estate industry of later generations and directly sell the land off-plan? Selling land is fine!

With this idea, he suddenly felt hot in his heart. If this was done properly, maybe building a city would not only cost no money, but also make money!

"Okay, let's do this first for the bond. I'll go back first."

Li Wei returned the account to Shen Jing and hurriedly left the bank.

He wants to plan this idea carefully to see if it can really be realized.

In the lobby of the Ministry of Industry, Li Wei summoned the officials responsible for city construction and asked them to help roughly calculate the cost of land acquisition and city construction based on the scale of a small city.

The cost of building a city is relatively easy to calculate. Based on the reference of other cities, building a medium-sized city will cost around 500,000 guan. The land area varies from place to place. Cheap places range from tens of thousands guan to more than ten thousand guan for expensive places. Wan Guan is enough.

For one hundred thousand guan, he bought a piece of land covering an area of ​​10,000 acres and built a city, totaling 600,000 guan.

In other words, the land price must be at least 60 guan per mu to recover the cost.

One acre of land is more than 0.5 square meters. Even if no high-rise buildings are built, based on the floor area ratio of , it is still more than square meters.

Nowadays, the house price in the capital is about five to ten guan per square meter. It should be no problem to sell it for 10 guan per square meter in a small town. If you calculate it this way, this acre of land can be sold for one or two hundred guan, no matter how you calculate it. Even if you count a hundred times, you will definitely make a lot of money! (End of chapter)