A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Starting from the Village Chief

Chapter 261 Thirty-six Coin Casting Furnaces

The slanting wind blew drizzle across the eaves of Yishou Palace, and the raindrops were like smoke.

Wei Ting lay in a cage in the corridor under the eaves. The rain and fog soaked his clothes. His left leg, which was hit by an arrow, was red, swollen and festering, and his back, buttocks and legs were torn and exposed after being beaten with forty sticks by the dog slave Li Yi.

He cursed Li Yi over and over again in his heart.

Suddenly, a few sparrows were startled from between the wet corrugated tiles and flew into the rain and fog with flapping wings.

Wei Ting saw the damn Li Yi walking towards him with a green-robed official. He squinted his eyes and recognized the green-robed official, Cui Dunli, the Secretary of the Central Secretariat. Although he was only a sixth-rank official, this young man in his twenties was a descendant of the five surnames of the Cui family of Boling. His grandfather had served as the Minister of Rites of the previous dynasty.

Someone from the court has arrived.

Wei Ting ignored the pain and tried to sit up. However, his hips and legs were bruised and he couldn't touch the ground. The cage was too small for him to stand up straight, so he could only squat and hold the cage bars. "Mr. Cui, I'm here,"

Li Yi brought Cui Dunli to Wei Ting and sneered at his excited look.

"Wei Ting, the Saint has instructed Cui Sheren to pass it on to you."

Wei Ting spat at Li Yi, "You brat, do you think you can cover the sky with one hand?" After cursing, he put on a smile and turned to Cui Dunli: "Mr. Cui, I want to report Li Yi for taking revenge and beating his colleagues..."

Cui Dunli looked at his embarrassed appearance and felt no sympathy. "Wei Ting, accept the order."

"Li Yi, why don't you let me out?"

Li Yi waved his hand, and Liu Heizi stepped forward, opened the cage lock, and pulled Wei Ting out.

Wei Ting pushed Liu Heizi away and glared at him fiercely. He remembered clearly that it was this dog slave who kicked him before and it was also him who carried out the punishment with the stick. Those forty sticks almost took his life.

This grudge will be remembered forever.

Cui Dunli read out the imperial edict and demoted him to Sima of Shezhou.

Wei Ting was shocked by the imperial edict, and his face showed fear. It was not to rescue him, but to kick him into the abyss.

Demoted to Sima of Shizhou,
Immediately rush to Shezhou by express post, do not delay!
"Where is Shizhou?"

"Shizhou is Yueshi County. Sima Wei, you are both civil and military, but your reputation is a bit misplaced," Li Yi said with a smile. "In the past, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent Tang Meng to liaise with Yelang and Sima Xiangru to pacify the Western Barbarians. Later, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent troops to conquer the Southwestern Barbarians and officially established Yueshi County. Shizhou is located in the southwest of Yizhou.

It’s not particularly far from Chang’an, only three thousand miles.”

Wei Ting's face turned pale. "Why?"

"I want to see His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, I want to see the Emperor!"

Cui Dunli shook his head: "Wei Sima, the Saint has ordered you to leave immediately, and the Crown Prince asked me to pass on a message to you, hoping that you can change your temper. His Highness has also asked the Saint for a decree for you.

You can take your six clan members and your followers with you so that you can have someone to look after you on the road."

"There is no time to lose, Sima Wei, let's set off quickly."

Wei Ting pointed at his injury and said, "I'm in this condition now. I can neither ride a horse nor walk. Can you give me a few days to wait until I feel better before setting off again?"

"Sima Wei, it is difficult to disobey the emperor's will. His Majesty's decree clearly states that demoted officials must travel ten post stations a day. Originally, they would have to travel three hundred miles a day, but considering that the crown prince pleaded for you, I will extend the time limit and allow you to reach Shezhou within one month."

The journey is three thousand miles, and the deadline is one month, so one must travel at least a hundred miles a day.

But they were heading to the southwest, and the road to Shu was difficult, harder than climbing to heaven. Moreover, he was injured and couldn't ride a horse. Traveling a hundred miles a day would cost him his life.

Li Yi said, "Sir Wei, you can't ride a horse, but you can take a carriage. Anyway, the Jingzhao Wei family is going to Tianchiwu, and you can bring so many children and followers with you. If you prepare more carriages and horses, why not travel a hundred miles a day?"

"You!" Wei Ting glared at Li Yi, but finally stopped scolding him.

Defeated, completely defeated.

"Me? What's wrong with me? Oh, you may not know this yet, but the Sage also issued an edict to me. Because of my meritorious service in suppressing the bandits, I was awarded the title of Pillar of the State, promoted to Silver and Green Guanglu Dafu, and was also given a thousand pieces of silk."

Wei Ting felt a sweet taste in his throat and spat out a mouthful of blood.

I almost died of anger!

Li Yi sneered twice, "Also, the sage specially granted Zhang Wu, whom you killed, the seventh-rank Xuanhui Wei, and ordered the officials to bury him with a sixth-rank official funeral, and also provide compensation to his wife and children."

After saying that, he turned and left, no longer paying any attention to this downtrodden man.

The distance from Shezhou to Chang'an is said to be three thousand miles, but it is actually just an estimate. The road to Shu is difficult and tortuous. If you really calculate it, the road from Shezhou, which is Xichang in later generations, to Chang'an at that time is at least more than four thousand miles.

If he arrives within a month, Wei Ting will lose half his life at least.

Li Yi had actually expected the emperor to only demote Wei Ting, rather than impose a more severe punishment. After all, the Jingzhao Wei family was a prominent family, while Zhang Wu was just a small-time civilian who had surrendered and colluded with bandits.

Li Yi followed Qin Qiong and Luo Shixin to the back garden of the palace.
Luo Shixin chopped open the wooden door with an axe, and a strong smell of copper hit him in the face.

"This is a coin minting workshop. The bandits set up a furnace here to mint coins privately." Qin Qiong explained from the side.

When Li Yi entered this simple workshop, the furnace had gone out and the craftsmen who had made the private casting had been taken to the prisoner camp, leaving only copper, lead, tin and other materials scattered all over the ground.

Enter the warehouse,

There was also piles of private money everywhere, strung together with hemp ropes.

Li Yi picked up a string and felt that it was quite heavy. Looking at the coin's style and quality, it was an imitation of the Kaihuang Wuzhu, commonly known as the "good meat".

The Kaihuang Wuzhu coin is round on the outside and square on the inside, with a nice shape. The hole in the middle is nice, and the edges are nice. When Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty unified the north and the south, he banned the inferior coins issued during the Northern and Southern Dynasties and recast the Wuzhu coins. The back of this coin has nice shape, and all have a circumference. A thousand coins weigh four pounds and two ounces.

It is recognized by the people as good money.

Cheng Yaojin brought a few people with him, who were the former bandit manager and foreman of the workshop.

"Your imitation casting is made of flesh, right?"

The craftsmen said that they cast it strictly according to the Sui Dynasty's five-zhu coins. The weight of a thousand coins was four pounds and two ounces. The copper used was also no less. The copper was 85% pure, with less tin and lead.
The outer contour is very wide, and there is no hole in the face.

Li Yi looked at the word "Wu Zhu" on the copper coin in his hand. It was the same size as the old version of the one-yuan chrysanthemum coin, but its weight seemed to be only about half of the one-yuan coin.

A very thin copper coin.

But those craftsmen were very proud. It turned out that these guys were craftsmen from the Mint of the previous dynasty. They used to specialize in minting official coins. Some of them even inherited their father's business and have been doing this business for generations. Now they are basically minting coins according to the original set of techniques.

It is even said that after Emperor Daye ascended the throne, the coins became thinner and thinner, and more and more lead and tin were mixed in. The people called them white coins, and they disdained to cast that kind of coins. They cast them completely according to the Kaihuang meat coins.

This statement made Li Yi a little confused.

When casting private coins, shouldn't they use more cheap lead and tin and less expensive copper, or even cast them lightly, so that they can make more profit?
"The world is in chaos, and privately minted, inferior coins are rampant. We can mint good coins, which are more useful." The manager said, "In fact, even if we mint the Kaihuang Wuzhu coins, we can still make a lot of money. Besides, the money can be used to buy food, iron materials, horses, etc., which is very useful for the stronghold."

As he spoke, he took Li Yi to another warehouse, where there were piles of bad money.

"These are all privately minted, bad coins. There are goose-eye, iron tin, ancient characters, and wire rings. Look how bad these coins are."

Li Yi examined the illicit coins one by one. The manager explained that they were all collected from outsiders, destroyed, and recast. The so-called "goose-eye" coins were privately minted, low-quality, and extremely small five-zhu coins, as small as a goose's eye. Iron-tin coins were made solely of iron, tin, and lead, with no or minimal copper.

Ancient Chinese coins are actually the coins from the Han Dynasty to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties before the Tang Dynasty.

As for the wire ring, it refers to the coin with a round hole in the coin body, which looks like a small copper ring and is super light.

There are also some bad coins, such as the five-zhu coins issued by Yang Guang, which are white because of the continuous reduction of copper and the addition of lead and tin. They are called white coins. Some small workshops privately cast coins because of uneven kiln combustion of wind and fire, which causes coins to have different colors, called partial furnace coins.

The protruding ridges on the coin rim or text during coin minting are called ridges.

Nowadays, there is a lot of bad money flooding the market.
They were all privately cast by small workshops in various places.

Good coins like Kaihuang Wuzhu Rouhao are rarely seen on the market. Bad money drives out good money, so if good money flows in, it will be privately hoarded and not circulated.

The circulation of various inferior coins resulted in inconsistent currency values, chaotic prices, and people could only barter.

These people used to be the craftsmen of the imperial mint. In troubled times, the craftsmen who minted coins could not survive.

After entering the mountains, they proposed to mint coins privately, but they did not want to mint thin, white or inferior coins, but to mint good quality coins.

This idea is quite unique, but the fact is that they used the copper materials they exchanged for supplies, or the bronze Buddha statues they robbed, or the inferior coins they traded back, melted them down and recast them into good coins.

It is very useful when you take it out again.

Whether buying grain, iron, silk, or horses, they are all very popular.

Private minting itself is profitable, the meat produced by private minting is good, and it provides great help in purchasing for counterfeiters.

Therefore, this private casting workshop is also thriving.

These old men selected many refugees to mint coins, but their requirements were very strict, and the coins they minted were of excellent quality.

"If we mint bad coins, even if the profit is great, it will be difficult to sell, and we won't be able to exchange them for the food, horses, cloth, iron, and other supplies we desperately need."

Talent,

There are talented people everywhere.

It is said that bad money drives out good money, but these old guys have mastered another important secret of currency.

Good money is more useful than bad money at critical moments.

"How many coin-minting furnaces are there here? How much good meat money has been minted?"

"We currently have 36 coin casting furnaces, each of which can cast 300 coins per month. There is a shortage of copper materials, otherwise we can cast more." An old man said proudly.

Li Yi was greatly shocked that he could cast 10,800 copper coins in one month.
This efficiency is amazing. It is said that during the Kaihuang period of the Sui Dynasty, a coin mint could only mint more than 3,000 coins a year, which is completely equivalent to the efficiency of the official furnace at that time.

"Who did you trade all this good meat you forged?"

The old man in charge shook his head and said, "We are only responsible for minting coins. We don't know anything else. That is the business of the two chiefs, Zhu and Zhang."

Li Yi guessed that the only people who could have large quantities of important materials such as grain, cloth, salt, copper, iron, and horses for exchange were probably the powerful families.

If we continue investigating, it will probably turn out to be another shocking case.

But Li Yi did not ask any further questions, because he knew that there were some things he could not lift.

(End of this chapter)