All Heavens and Worlds Modified History System

Chapter 182: Zihou, you have great talent, and you are more than qualified to be the Minister of Revenue

Chen Ran was gone for more than half a year.

When he returned again, it was already the sixteenth year of Hongwu.

During the time he was away, many things happened in the Ming Dynasty.

The Empty Seal case and the Guo Huan case broke out one after another, and at the same time, the Hu Weiyong case from two years ago was brought up again before it was closed.

Throughout the Ming officialdom, from the imperial court to local prefectures and counties, there were hundreds of officials who lost their lives due to being implicated in these cases.

The fire quickly spread and burned into the court.

Minister of Rites Zhao Mao, Minister of Punishments Wang Huidi, Vice Minister of War Wang Zhi, Vice Minister of Works Mai Zhide and other civil servants who had close relations with Li Shanchang were all imprisoned by the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

If nothing unexpected happens, once Yu Yi is eliminated, it will be Li Shanchang's turn to be in trouble.

During this period, Li Shanchang ran around looking for reinforcements.

But the old brothers from Huaixi avoided him, and Empress Ma and the Crown Prince directly refused to see them. No one was willing to help him.

On the day Chen Ran came ashore, Li Shanchang was formally imprisoned on the charge of participating in Hu Weiyong's rebellion.

More than 70 members of his family were imprisoned with him.

In the original history, Li Shanchang's entire family was beheaded.

However, this time Empress Ma did not die. After some dissuasion, all the male and children in the family were exiled to southern Yunnan to pick mushrooms.

As for the female members of the family, they were spared the fate of being sent to the Jiaofangsi to become mounts, and were sent to Chen Ran's house to be slaves. This was considered as a way to repay Chen Ran for saving Zhu Xiongying and Empress Ma's lives.

The fleet went directly up the river and arrived at Yingtianfu Wharf.

This is the best dock and city in Middle-earth and even in the whole world in this era.

The so-called romantic capital of this era was still littered with feces and urine, and men were even required to wear high heels to avoid stepping on them.

As for a certain city called Dun, it is not even as good as an ordinary city in the Ming Dynasty.

The dock was crowded with people, with flags waving and drums and gongs beating.

Crown Prince Zhu Biao came out to greet them in person, and standing on the shore, he watched several large sea ships being slowly pulled towards the plank road.

Large ships in the sailing age could not dock on their own and had to rely on the pulling of trackers.

After a busy period, several ships finally docked.

Zhu Biao, who had received Chen Ran's letter in advance, stepped forward with a smile on his face to greet him.

But unexpectedly, Chen Ran did not get off the boat, but only sent someone to ask Zhu Biao to get on.

This was extremely rude, and everyone around Zhu Biao showed anger on their faces.

Zhu Biao himself didn't care. He knew that Chen Ran asked him to go and see the gains of this trip to Japan.

Once on the boat, I saw several merchants around Chen Ran, as well as a few Japanese people who had shaved the hair in the middle of their foreheads and saluted respectfully.

"These are the ship owners who are sailing together this time."

Chen Ran first introduced the merchants, and then pointed to the Japanese people with their foreheads on the deck, "These are the envoys of the local Japanese forces that I have selected for investment potential."

"Ah."

Zhu Biao was not very interested. He wanted to see how many good things Chen Ran had brought back.

"Your Highness." Chen Ran understood what he meant and immediately led the way down to the cabin. "Follow me."

There were a lot of goods piled up in the cabin. When I opened one, I found it was a box full of blackened stones.

Zhu Biao looked up in surprise, his face full of a 'are you kidding me' expression.

Chen Ran looked behind him and said, "Qin Shuzi, you worked in the Silver Bureau before, so you should recognize this thing."

The bastard son of Qin Shuzi was an official position, not a bastard born in the family.

He worked in the Silver Official Bureau, which was an institution specializing in the mining and refining of silver for officials.

The Silver Official Bureau belongs to the imperial court and is a different department from the Silver Working Bureau of the Imperial Household, but they do the same work.

Refining and casting silver.

"I didn't expect that after not seeing you for half a year, Chen Zanshan still remembered Qin."

Qin Shuzi returned the greeting with a smile and walked forward to look through it.

Not only do they look at it carefully, they also hold it in their hands and weigh it.

He opened several boxes and looked through more than a dozen stones before turning to report to Zhu Biao.

"Prince, this is silver ore."

"Oh?" Zhu Biao was immediately delighted. "How much silver can be refined?"

"I used some military tactics to make a rough calculation." Qin Shuzi thought carefully and responded, "The ore on this ship alone should be able to be refined into at least 4,000 taels. If it is of good quality, 6,000 or 7,000 taels is possible."

Chen Ran immediately added, "The cargo on each ship is similar."

"Five ships, that would be twenty or thirty thousand taels of silver." Zhu Biao was overjoyed.

Due to the low industrial capacity, Middle-earth has always been in a state of shortage of precious metals.

The great maritime trade had not yet begun, Zheng He had not yet started his voyage to the West, and the Ming Dynasty had an extremely high desire for silver.

"With only five ships, they brought back tens of thousands of taels of silver. If there were fifty ships," Zhu Biao was already lost in his imagination, "if we go twice a year, wouldn't we be able to make a million taels of silver?"

During the Hongwu period, the Ming Dynasty had a very high fiscal revenue, but most of it was in the form of physical goods, especially grain.

Real cash is still in short supply.

Chen Ran smiled but said nothing, without explaining, "This time, they had accumulated a lot of inventory for a long time, and I bought them all back."

"With fifty ships and two trips a year, where can we get so much ore for you to transport? Unless we force the locals to fill the mines regardless of cost and life!" No explanation was given, because it gave Zhu Biao and his son hope, so they would invest heavily and attack Japan.

If we really explain it, wouldn't that be helping Japan?

"Your Highness, there is more."

Chen Ran opened another smaller box.

This time, Zhu Biao didn't need Qin Shuzi's help to inspect the goods. He could see by himself that this golden stone was clearly a gold mine!

"Your Highness, please take a look."

Chen Ran took out a heavy gold nugget shaped like a dog's head and handed it over. "This nugget of gold weighs nearly ten kilograms."

"Hiss~~~" Qin Shuzi gasped in surprise. "Is it really a nugget? Did you pick it up?"

"Yes." Chen Ran knew what he meant and explained immediately, "It is said that it was picked up by the river. Usually, as long as you search along the river, you can find the gold mine."

"They have a gold mine." Chen Ran pointed at a Japanese man with a shaved head, "They produce hundreds of taels of gold every year. The area they rule is not large, even smaller than a county in the Ming Dynasty."

Qin Shuzi's eyes were full of fire, the fire of greed. "Could it be that he lives on a mountain of gold?"

The warrior spoke in a gibberish, and Chen Ran translated casually, "He said that his family has a lot of gold, and you can pick it up by the river every day. There is also gold sand in the river."

Qin Shuzi's hands were shaking with excitement. "Your Highness, in Japan..."

Zhu Biao immediately raised his hand to stop him, and gave him a look to indicate, "There are Japanese here, don't say what's in your mind."

"anything else."

Chen Ran once again showed the cargo he brought back, this time it was ballast stones.

"This is, Red Copper?!"

As expected of someone who had worked in the official silver bureau, Qin Shuzi could tell at a glance that the ballast stones were not made of stone, but strips of red copper.

More than a thousand years ago, this red copper could be used as gold.

But for Chen Ran, it became the ballast.

"Japan is not only rich in gold and silver, but also in copper." Chen Ran said with a smile, "Because there is too much, we had to throw all the ballast stones into the sea and replace them with these copper bars."

"Okay, okay." Zhu Biao couldn't suppress the corners of his mouth. It was harder to suppress than the beating AK.

"Go back to the East Palace, I will reward you meritorious officials!"

The economy of the Ming Dynasty was actually mainly based on barter because there was a lack of sufficient precious metals to make currency.

Forget about the Ming Treasure Notes. Zhu Yuanzhang, who didn't understand economics at all, simply treated the Ming Treasure Notes as an endless ATM and has been abandoned by the people of the Ming Dynasty.

Gold, silver and copper are all hard currencies in the Ming Dynasty, and even the emperor is in urgent need of them.

On the way back to the Eastern Palace, Zhu Biao even took the initiative to invite Chen Ran to ride in the same carriage with him.

From this, we can see how satisfied he was with Chen Ran for bringing back so many urgently needed supplies and discovering so many places with supplies.

"Zihou."

In the carriage, Zhu Biao took the initiative to ask, "You brought back so many things this time. What goods did you use to exchange them?"

In Zhu Biao's opinion, so much gold, silver and copper must be worth a lot of money.

He was also curious about what kind of goods the Ming Dynasty had that could be exchanged for so many good things.

"We originally planned to bring silk, tea and porcelain," Chen Ran explained calmly, "but if we bring too much, the Japanese won't be able to eat it all."

"So what I brought with me were mainly copper coins."

"Copper coins?" Zhu Biao was very surprised. "Copper coins can also be sold as goods?"

"The Japanese have no technology, and the copper coins they make are called bad coins. They don't even want to use them. The copper coins of the Ming Dynasty are their favorite."

Chen Ran finally began to reveal useful information. "Your Highness, do you know how much the Ming Dynasty's copper coins are worth in exchange for gold and silver?"

"Of course I know." As the executive vice emperor, Zhu Biao, who handled government affairs every day, naturally knew the important economic data: "One tael of gold is worth ten taels of silver, and one tael of silver is worth one thousand coins."

Hearing this, Chen Ran shook his head and said, "Your Highness, you are talking about the official price. The actual exchange rate among the people is much higher than this."

"Then, Your Highness, do you know how much the Japanese gold, silver and copper are worth in exchange?"

"I'm not the crown prince of Japan, how would I know?"

Chen Ran said with a smile, "The exchange rate of the Ming Dynasty is already very high, but compared with Japan, it is nothing."

"In Japan, one thousand coins can be exchanged for one tael of gold!"

"Huh?!"

Chen Ran used economic means, taking advantage of the differences in exchange rates in different regions and earning the difference.

In the world hundreds of years later, this method is basically known to everyone.

But in Daming, only Chen Ran understands.

It was not until a hundred years later that the Great Franks (Spain) would use this trick, taking advantage of the difference in the precious metal exchange rate between the Ming Dynasty and Europe, and importing gold, silver and other precious metals on a large scale to earn the difference.

"According to the official price, Chen Ran exchanged one tael of gold for ten thousand coins. After it was shipped to Japan, he exchanged the ten thousand coins for ten taels of gold."

"Bring back these ten taels of gold, and your profits will increase tenfold."

"If you use it to buy cheap copper bars locally, bring it back and cast it into copper coins, the profit will be thirty times!"

Zhu Biao was stunned. His eyes kept jumping as he savored Chen Ran's words, as if he had opened the door to a new world.

He never thought that money could be made this way!
"Zihou."

Zhu Biao, with a sincere look, grasped Chen Ran's hand and said, "I originally planned to let you join the cabinet to assist in government affairs. But now it seems that I was wrong. You have great talent and are more than qualified to be the Minister of Revenue~~~"

(End of this chapter)