The Xia Expeditionary Legion rested for a day in the Yue tribe's residence, and the next morning, the huge Xia country fleet was divided into two parts, one part accounted for about one-third of the total, responsible for transporting the Yue tribesmen back to the Xia country, and the other part accounted for about two-thirds of the total, more than half was used to carry the Xia country expeditionary corps, and the rest of the fleet carried some supplies.

In fact, the huge Xia fleet itself consisted of three fleets, one fleet was dedicated to transporting the Xia Expeditionary Corps, and the remaining two fleets were responsible for transporting prisoners and booty.

The Xia Expeditionary Legion's war against the Moon Tribe is over, and it is about to set off to attack the next tribe, and the war of the Xia Expeditionary Legion against the tribes on the new route has just begun.

Ten days later, a fleet of Xia tribes sent the Yue tribesmen to the easternmost city of Xia homeland, and at the same time, a clipper ship sent the expeditionary legion to Zhongjing City and sent it to the king.

This year, the war on the battlefield on the eastern front has just begun, according to the pre-war plan, it is difficult for the expeditionary corps to advance to the most powerful snake tribe on the new route, and there are more powerful other tribes, but they will not be the opponents of the Xia expeditionary corps, and the only one worthy of Xia Guo's attention is the snake tribe with a population of more than 20,000.

The snake tribe has such a large population, and it can also smelt copper to forge weapons, and it will take some effort to take down the snake tribe with the strength of the expeditionary legion of three towns, and it is best to send five or six towns to attack the snake tribe and stop all the escapees as much as possible.

The matter of attacking the snake tribe will be put to next year, how many tribes the Xia country expeditionary corps will conquer this year has nothing to do with the expeditionary corps itself, the capacity of the fleet is the most critical thing, the last captives and booty must be brought back to the Xia country before the arrival of winter, and before the arrival of winter, the expeditionary corps must also all withdraw to the Xia country itself.

Compared with the war on the Eastern Front, Su Yan paid more attention to the war on the Western Front, and six days later, the battle report of the cavalry unit was also sent to Su Yan.

The plans of Hu Nan, Lu Zhe, Mu Shi and others had been reported to Su Yan at the early spring court meeting, and they were approved by Su Yan, but they didn't expect the Anti-Black Alliance to move ahead of schedule, and their plan failed.

Although the destruction of the Anti-Black Alliance did not cause the country of the grassland to fall apart, the cavalry troops did not return in vain, destroying many tribes within the country of the grassland, and once again severely weakening the country of the grassland.

Su Yan felt that even if the Anti-Black Alliance was not destroyed, if the grassland country was weakened a few more times like this, it might be possible to scare those nomadic tribes, and finally make the grassland country fall apart.

Su Yan's idea was right, but he didn't know that after the cavalry troops attacked the country of the grassland twice last year and this year, the country of the grassland had fallen apart, and the country of the grassland was originally a collection of dozens of alliances and more than a hundred tribes, and it was too difficult and difficult to exist for a long time, just a few defeats in the war made the country of the grassland fall apart.

Even if Su Yan knew that the country of the grassland had fallen apart, in Su Yan's heart, the attention to the battlefield on the western front was already higher than that on the battlefield on the eastern front, which had nothing to do with the amount of loot that the Xia country could get from the two-front battlefield, the most important thing was whether the other party had the ability to counterattack the Xia country.

Obviously, it is almost impossible for the tribes on the battlefield on the Eastern Front to counterattack the Xia Kingdom, they are far away from the Xia Kingdom itself, even the snake tribe with the highest shipbuilding skills cannot build a large ship that can sail on the Yellow River for a long time, and it is more difficult for the tribes on both sides of the river to make contact.

What's more, through years of contact, Xia Guo has a better understanding of the various tribes on the new route, and even learned the language of their tribes, knowing that they are invincible, and the war between the Xia Kingdom and the tribes on the new route will become easier.

On the contrary, the nomadic tribes on the battlefield on the Western Front had a great threat to the Xia Kingdom, with more than 5,000 cavalry from the first Anti-Black Alliance and more than 30,000 cavalry from the Second Grassland Country.

In addition, Xia Guo didn't know much about the nomadic tribes on the grassland, and in the early years he traded with the nomadic tribes, and more or less learned some things, and then the city was established, and there was a war with the nomadic tribes, and through the torture of the captives, those women who had become Xia people had become Xia Guo, Xia Guo knew more about the grassland, but there were more things that he didn't understand.

It is simply impossible to make the Xia Kingdom understand the nomadic tribes as well as the tribes on the new route, and even the high-level officials of the Xia Kingdom have a hard time understanding why there is an alliance on the prairie, and even such a behemoth as the Prairie Country.

The country of the grassland has fallen apart, and there may be a new "country of the grassland" in the future, such a huge human force is a huge threat to the country of Xia anyway, and there are only two things that the country of Xia can do, one is to continue to expand the cavalry force, and the other is to constantly weaken the nomadic tribes on the steppe.

Paying attention to the foreign wars of the Xia Kingdom, it does not mean that Su Yan will put all his energy on this, in fact, Su Yan will devote more energy to the construction of the Xia Kingdom.

The population of Xia is getting bigger and bigger, which means that Xia is getting bigger and bigger, and if you are not careful, it will cause chaos in Xia Guo, but fortunately, Xia Guo is developed step by step in the hands of Su Yan, and the problematic places are improving step by step in the process of development, even if a large number of people are integrated into Xia Guo every year, it will not make Xia Guo have much chaos.

There is only one thing that is not enough, although the departments at all levels of the Xia Kingdom manage all kinds of things, but they also need Su Yan, the king, to control everything, Su Yan really wants a courtier with enough ability to form a cabinet and share most of the things for Su Yan, so that Su Yan has more time to accompany his family to practice martial arts.

At present, the future cabinet chief assistant or prime minister will be produced among Su Yan's two sons, and the two of them do not have this ability and qualification yet, and they still need time to experience.

Yue Qi, the old minister of the Ministry of Works, came to the palace and handed over a beautiful wooden box half a foot long and a palm wide.

"Wang, what you need has been forged by our Ministry of Engineering."

Opening the wooden box, there were six metal discs inside, and seeing them, Su Yan's eyes lit up.

The six metal discs are not others, they are the metal coins minted by Su Yan's Ministry of Industry, which are made of gold, silver and copper, and the obverse of the coin is "Xia", surrounded by patterns, and the reverse side is the totem "Dragon" of the Xia Kingdom, and there is a small "17" at the bottom, which means that this coin is minted in the seventeenth year of the Xia calendar.

In addition to the different materials, the specifications of the three coins are also different, the diameter of gold coins is one inch, the diameter of silver coins is one inch, and the diameter of copper coins is nine points, and the weight is naturally different.

The three kinds of coins can be directly called gold coins, silver coins, copper coins, or gold dragons, silver dragons, copper dragons, one gold coin is equal to ten silver coins, and one silver coin is equal to ten copper coins.

Su Yan didn't get the square hole money with the idea of "the sky is round and the place is round", it was directly "real money".

In the past, Su Yan had neglected coins by ignoring the public ownership system in Xia Guo, and at the end of last autumn he happened to meet two people trading things, Su Yan thought about it carefully, and found that the issuance of coins has little to do with public ownership and private ownership, and the appearance of coins is to bring convenience to people and make people understand the value of an item more clearly.

For example, when the Xia Kingdom traded with tribes other than the Xia Kingdom, the Xia Kingdom often used a piece of animal skins of sufficient size and integrity as a standard unit, first gave a few standard animal skins worth each of their own goods, and then the other party took out the animal skins used for trading, calculated the value of the standard animal skins, and then exchanged the standard animal skins for the goods of the Xia Kingdom, and finally completed the transaction.

It is also because other tribes trade most with Xia Guo in animal skins, so Xia Guo uses standard animal skins as the unit of value to calculate how much standard animal skins are worth of their own goods, and how much standard animal skins are worth of the things taken out by the other party.

Because of the implementation of public ownership within the Xia Kingdom, most of the goods were distributed according to needs, but there were also transactions, mainly between the people.

For example, if this one lacks meat but has an extra piece of cloth, and that one lacks cloth but has more meat, the two can trade and exchange the cloth for meat, but because there is no clear value reference, the two parties can only continue to bargain, hoping that they can exchange for more of what they need, until both parties are satisfied before the transaction can be completed.

Transactions between citizens often fail because one party is not satisfied.

It is precisely because everyone needs a standard value reference that there is "money", and before the advent of real coins, people had many things to use as "money".

Generally speaking, nomadic people use livestock and animal skins to achieve monetary functions, while agricultural peoples use grains, cloth, agricultural tools, pottery, seashells, pearls and jade as the earliest physical currency.

According to archaeological excavations, a large number of clay pots were unearthed as burial objects in late Neolithic sites such as Banpo; The Dawenkou culture buried a large number of pig heads and jaw bones, indicating that pigs and pottery played the function of monetary wealth in the late primitive society.

But as we all know, the ancient physical currency that is widely circulated is "shellfish", because it acts as a physical currency, cattle, sheep, pigs and other livestock can not be divided, the grains will rot, the pearl and jade are too little, and the knives and shovels are bulky, so finally concentrated on the shellfish this physical currency, the sea shell can be used as a neck ornament, has use value, easy to carry and count, so it is selected as the main currency in the long-term commodity exchange.

In the archaeological excavations, the Xia Dynasty and the Shang Dynasty sites have unearthed a large number of natural shellfish, shellfish as a physical currency has been used until the Spring and Autumn Period, so most of the words related to wealth and value in Chinese characters are related to the word "shell", such as: expensive, capital, greed, poverty, wealth, purchase, etc.

It stands to reason that the population base of the Xia State should have appeared as early as possible in physical currency, because of Su Yan's negligence, resulting in the currency not appearing for a long time, fortunately, the public ownership system implemented in the Xia State, the unified distribution of various items by the state, even if there is no currency, it will not have much impact on the Xia State, but now the currency is better to facilitate the exchange of goods between the people.

In order to issue currency in the Xia Kingdom, Su Yan also considered more things.

For the time being, Xia will not set up a department such as the Ministry of Finance to manage the affairs of currency, and the currency, that is, the three metal coins, will be minted by the Ministry of Industry in accordance with Su Yan's royal decree, and then the Ministry of Commerce will manage the coins.

How should coins circulate in the Xia Kingdom? This is a very important issue, the implementation of public ownership of the Xia State can not have the idea of wages, once the Xia State uses money on a large scale, no longer directly distribute goods to each family, but distribute a certain amount of money for the people to use the money to buy goods, it will definitely cause chaos within the Xia State.

Therefore, if you want to substitute coins into the Xia Kingdom, you still need to take your time, and Su Yan thought of a very good angle after careful thinking - using coins to reward the people.

To be precise, when the citizens of the Xia Kingdom have made meritorious contributions or performed well in a certain field, or have been rewarded for their hard work, they can cancel the reward of the goods, but exchange them for the corresponding coins, and then the people themselves use the coins to buy the items they need.

To this end, the Ministry of Commerce also set up a shop in every city in the Xia Kingdom, and put all the things that the citizens of the Xia Kingdom could buy into the shops, and the citizens who had coins in their hands could enter the shops and use the coins to buy the items they needed.

Also, there may be some rewards for meritorious service personnel that they do not lack for the time being, and they can only exchange these things for what they lack from others, and often need to go through many attempts to successfully trade, which is very troublesome, and now they take the coins to the shop to buy what they need, and everything has become convenient.

Of course, the only things that can be purchased are goods, and no one is a person, and people are not goods, and if the citizens who have made meritorious contributions do not want a woman, they can directly refuse, but the people must not buy or sell people among themselves, and at most they are allowed to transfer "qualifications".

At the same time, because the Ministry of Commerce sets an accurate price for all items with coins, the people can refer to this price when trading between people, which can definitely greatly improve the success rate of transactions.

Although there is no role in the development of the Xia Kingdom, the role of coins in the Xia Kingdom will continue to increase in the future, and even the use of coins as the wages of the people is considered to be prepared in advance for the future, step by step, so as not to cause chaos.

After confirming that the coins minted by the Ministry of Industry met his own requirements, Su Yan immediately summoned the ministers to the palace for a meeting, and Su Yan focused on explaining the role of coins to the ministers.

When Su Yan mentioned the role of coins, Li Zhi, Minister of Commerce, was the first to understand what Su Yan meant, and his eyes looked straight at the coins in Su Yan's hands.

The Ministry of Industry mints coins, and the Ministry of Commerce manages coins, these two departments are the most important, and the main thing to convene the ministers of all departments is to inform them of the matter of coins, so that the ministries can prepare in advance, and then they will inform everyone of the role of coins, and at the latest next spring, coins will be officially circulated in Xia in the way of rewarding meritorious personnel.