After the banquet, Zhu Cihong came to the apse and summoned a mysterious merchant.

"Wu Cheng, a lowly brocade guard, meet His Royal Highness the Prince!"

Zhu Cihong looked at Wu Cheng, who was dressed as a businessman, and said with a smile: "What's the matter, you still have a beard?" ”

Wu Cheng is the younger brother of Zhu Cihong's personal eunuch Wu Zhong, who is the owner of the first hot pot restaurant in the Ming Dynasty.

Although Wu Cheng is young today, he is already the boss of several brand chain industries, and dozens of Dezhuang hot pot buildings in Daming across the country, as well as Northeast barbecue buildings, are all industries under his name.

Wu Cheng also plans to follow the brand provided by the prince, and then open Haidilao and Home Inn again, a national chain, bigger and stronger, and create brilliance!

Not only the Dezhuang chain hot pot building, Wu Cheng is also in charge of the Royal Group secretly built by Zhu Cihong, including catering, inns, pawnshops, mining and other industries, but the Royal Group is not profit-oriented, but focuses more on intelligence gathering, and the shops under its industry serve as the contact base of the Intelligence Department.

With Zhu Cihong's financial support and Jinyiwei's help, the Royal Group has developed extremely rapidly in recent years, and Wu Cheng has also become a predator in the business world.

The Royal Group is just a name among the internal high-level officials, and Wu Cheng's identity has always been a mystery to the outside world, except for Li Tingbiao and several other high-level officials of the intelligence department, no one knows his true identity.

All of Wu Cheng's files have been eliminated, even if someone secretly investigates, they can only investigate that he is in Jinyiwei and has a thousand households.

Over the years, Wu Cheng has traveled to many places, north to Liaodong, Jilin, Mongolia, south to Guangdong, east to Taiwan, and has also dealt with the Japanese and the Dutch.

Wu Cheng used to like cooking the most, but since he went out, he has found that there are many more interesting things in the world than cooking, such as making money.

Seeing Zhu Cihong's questioning, Wu Cheng bowed down and said respectfully: "When I returned to His Royal Highness, I heard a sentence when I was a lowly businessman, and I didn't have hair on my mouth and I couldn't do things well, so I grew a beard." ”

I haven't seen it for a while, Wu Cheng's speech is not as unfavorable as before, and his eloquence has obviously improved a lot, it seems that there are more people who go out to experience a lot of changes.

Zhu Cihong said: "Wu Cheng, this palace gives you a hundred shop properties, can you take it?" ”

Wu Cheng knew that His Royal Highness the Crown Prince wanted to hand over the noble property of the capital to himself and expand the royal group, so he smiled and said: "Your Highness, don't say that it is a hundred, and five hundred lowly positions can be taken over!" ”

Zhu Cihong raised his eyebrows and said, "What if it's a thousand?" For example, those industries of Jin Shang, can you take them all? ”

Wu Cheng's eyelids jumped suddenly, and he hurriedly said: "The industry of Jin Shang is too big, and the humble position can't bear it at present......"

Zhu Cihong rubbed his hands and pondered for a while, and then said: "In this way, you will take over all the industries of the nobles who have been raided in the Beijing Division, and you will take over half of the industries of the eight Jin merchants, and you will pick the rest, and you don't have to worry about the rest." ”

Wu Cheng was shocked, this is going to make a fortune, swallowing up the industries of the eight major Jin merchants, the Royal Group will be the new consortium of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Cihong saw that he was unpleasant, and said, "How to transfer their property to the Royal Group, you should be fine, right?" ”

Wu Cheng immediately said: "Your Highness Mo underestimated the humble position, the humble position has been in the shopping mall all the year round, and he has learned a lot of things, and there are a large number of professional staff members to take care of the royal group for the humble position, this little thing is difficult to humble." ”

Zhu Cihong nodded, as long as the royal group can swallow half of the industry of the eight major Jin merchants, it will make a lot of money, and the rest will be handed over to Zhang Dabiao's Hui Gang, and then give some soup to Wang Wannian, the chief soldier of Shanxi, and others, so that they can't get benefits just by working.

Zhu Cihong said: "This palace has given you a task, after you take over the Jin merchant industry, open a ticket number." ”

Wu Cheng was puzzled: "Your Highness, what is the ticket number?" ”

"The business of the Royal Group has become bigger, is it necessary for capital turnover, is it inconvenient to go from south to north to do a big business for thousands of miles and bring so much gold and silver? You can exchange silver tickets for silver coins when you open a ticket number......"

Then Zhu Cihong gave Wu Cheng a general explanation of the role and benefits of ticket numbers and silver tickets, and told him that he must adhere to the credibility first when making ticket numbers.

The ticket number in history appeared in the Jin merchants, when the Jin merchants were all over the country, forming a certain scale of business network, and the profits of the merchants around the country must be solved back to the Shanxi general number, and then unified settlement dividends, the transfer of funds between the general number and the semicolon is very troublesome and unsafe, in order to solve the problem of cash silver, so the Shanxi ticket number in the form of exchange was produced, but that was already a matter of the late Qing Dynasty.

The current Ming Dynasty also has silver money tickets similar to silver tickets, such as meeting tickets, but the meeting tickets are circulated among a very small number of wealthy merchants in Beijing, and they cannot become a trend.

There are many advantages of ticket numbers, which can advantageously promote the financial circulation of the whole country, accelerate capital turnover, and have a great impact on the development of industry and commerce.

Zhu Cixi's main purpose was to use the ticket number to dominate the future Daming financial market and prepare for the issuance of banknotes, similar to the role of the People's Bank of China in later generations.

Wu Cheng's eyes straightened after hearing this, and he said: "Your Highness is really a genius, you can think of such a wonderful method, and you will work hard to do it!" ”

With the mold of the ticket, Wu Cheng was easy to understand, just as he was still thinking about how to open the ticket number, he heard the crown prince suddenly ask: "Wu Cheng, what happened to those orphans who were handed over to Wu Daban by the palace a few years ago?" ”

In the ninth year of Chongzhen, more than 100,000 displaced people poured into Beijing, Zhu Cihong was ordered to soothe the people, including more than 5,000 orphans who lost their parents, at that time they did not even have a bowl of porridge, they could only look at the surrounding homeless people to drink porridge, Zhu Cihong ordered them to be concentrated in a porridge factory, and later placed in the new city for unified management.

Of the more than 5,000 orphans, the oldest was fifteen years old, the youngest was only six or seven years old, and most of them were boys.

These orphans were educated in the new city to read and write collectively, and the young congregation instilled the idea of allegiance to the crown prince Zhu Cihong.

When Zhu Cihong went south to the south of the Yangtze River, they were secretly taken away in batches and placed in Fengyang Mansion, where they engaged in the cultivation and training of various professions, some joined the army, some studied intelligence to become secret spies, and some learned to do business and engage in business......

Now, a few years later, most of the more than 5,000 orphans are engaged in various industries, and only a few of the younger ones are still receiving education and secret training.

Wu Cheng saw the prince asking, and said seriously: "Back to Your Highness, my eldest brother ...... Gonggong Wu did not allow the lowly to inquire about this matter, but sent one hundred and ten young men who were engaged in business to the lowly post every year, and the situation of the rest of the people was not very clear. ”

Zhu Cihong secretly praised that Wu Zhong is still measured in his work, and he will never reveal what he should not let others know, very good!

Let Wu Zhong manage these orphans, on the one hand, Zhu Cihong trusts Wu Zhong the most, and secondly, he intends to let Wu Zhong take over the East Factory in the future, and some of these orphans will be the main force of the East Factory Intelligence Department in the future......

Zhu Cihong attaches great importance to the intelligence department's big murder weapon, and plans to make another major adjustment in the future.