In the Yingdu of Chu State, Qu Kai was not a well-known figure, and there were very few people who knew his name. Even if he knew, he only knew that he was a side branch of the Qu family, and he had traveled the world when he was a teenager. It is never famous, and its appearance has never been good, and when he does not wear court clothes and only wears kudzu deep clothes, his appearance is no different from that of ordinary people.

However, it is such a person who protects the secrets of the Chu State from being spied on by the spies of other countries, and sticks to the invisible line of defense. His death was no less than Xiang Yan's, and perhaps even more difficult to make up for than Xiang Yan's death - it would be difficult to find a suitable and trusted person to take his place.

Xiong Jing ordered Zeng Yin to investigate thoroughly, but Qu Kai was already dead, and Chu Qin was fighting fiercely, and the next confidant Si Si Yin must be appointed immediately. At the same time, the first tranche of treasury bonds issued by various countries will mature in a few months, and the gold banks of the four countries must have enough gold and silver to prepare for acceptance. The state of Zhao has died, and the state of Qi is in danger, but the more this is the case, the more it is necessary to maintain the credibility of the gold bank of the four countries, and with credibility, there will be a steady stream of gold, silver and resources invested in the war.

Because of the limitations of traditional knowledge, Xiong Jing is not very aware of the binary transformation of debt-war. But after all, he remembers that bonds played an extremely important role in World War I and World War II. The British and French kidnapped the United States with bonds, won over the Balfour Declaration of the Jews, and sold war bonds back to war heroes, which were an important way for non-government countries to mobilize.

The advantage of this method is that there is no need for machine-gun levies, but a large amount of real money. In fact, if there is money, there is no need for a grain collection team, and the peasants are very willing to send grain to the market, but they don't. Chu Qi, the most powerful of the four kingdoms, were both non-bureaucratic states, and could not rely on officials to mobilize the resources of the entire society like the Qin state, and bonds were no way. If even this approach is bankrupt, then the war will be close to bankruptcy.

After Zeng Yin left, at the continuing financial meeting, Shi Yan quickly spit out a series of figures: Wang Ting's gold and silver could not last for three months, and even if he could hold on, he would not be able to pay the first installment of 87,000 gold of national bonds that were about to be accepted.

There are two ways to solve this problem, one is to immediately summon the Qian family of various countries to discuss with the Yingdu City, and they will be responsible for accepting the first phase of the treasury bonds and underwriting the second phase of the treasury bonds. There will be gains and losses, and the control of the Four Nations Financial Bank will be lost or a large part of it will be lost, which is something that makes Xiong Jing very hesitant.

As long as I can control the currency issuance of a country, I don't care who makes the laws. Rothschild said. Because of this, although he vaguely felt that it would be beneficial for Chu to give up control of the Four Kingdoms Gold Bank, Xiong Jing still had difficulty making up his final decision.

Second, relying on the Red Ocean fleet to ruthlessly plunder the spice-producing areas. The state of Chu had not yet established a new spice trading network, but after conquering the spice producing areas, plundering the wealth accumulated by the locals through the spice trade over a long period of time might fill the gap in gold and silver currency.

It's just that doing so will come at a huge cost. Blocking the spice trade, capturing spice producing areas, killing all those who resisted, these are not big deals, and people forget about them after years, or even months. Plundering wealth is different, the enemies of Chu are other traders, and it is the spice trade that wants to monopolize, not to kill the spice producers and monopolize the spice production.

Spices are still spices, trade is still trade, all Chu has to do is to transport the spices that originally entered the Mediterranean Sea from the Red Sea, from the Arabian Desert, and from West Asia to the Mediterranean Sea by sea bypassing the Cape of Good Hope. If the spice producers are plundered, it will be detrimental to the future.

The most serious consequence of this is time, plunder is accompanied by killing, and killing is bound to be chaotic, and chaos will delay the construction of a new trading system. According to the pigeon news from the red mo, the amount of frankincense and myrrh 500 tons that flow into the Mediterranean and Western Asia every year is as high as 2,500 tons,[note 20] and the amount of pepper is comparable to that of myrrh, and probably more; Closed sheath ginger is only half the size of pepper.

As for the price of spices, the fine frankincense sells for six dramaks per catty (327 grams), the medium frankincense is five dramak per catty, and the inferior frankincense is three dramak per catty [Note 21]; The price of myrrh is chaotic, and the price of myrrh is about eight dramak per catty; pepper fifteen dramack[note 22]; The price of closed sheath ginger is six drachmas [note 23].

The trade of only two thousand five hundred tons of frankincense, at the price of four dramaks per catty, is thirty million drachmas; The trade in myrrh amounted to twelve million dramak; The pepper trade was twenty-three million dramak; The trade in sheath ginger amounted to four and a half million dramak, for a total of six seven and a half million dramak.

The volume of trade is so great that even half of the profit will exceed 30 million draac a year. The actual profit is far more than 30 million dramak, frankincense is transported from the production area to the east coast of the Mediterranean, and each camel needs to pay 688 dramak in taxes, food and water, etc., and the cost of each catty of frankincense is more than one dramark. Transporting from ports on the eastern Mediterranean to retailers across the Mediterranean costs an additional delamarck.

In the production area, the price of medium frankincense per catty rarely exceeds one dramack, and the price of inferior frankincense is even less, and many times only two opos (1/3 dramak) per catty are required. In other words, the tax cards, merchant stations, and merchants of all sizes along the route took two-thirds of the sales, and the producers only got one-ninth, and the retailers got the remaining two-ninths.

According to this ratio, the spice trade will generate forty-five million dramacks of profit per year, equivalent to 1,890,000,000 yuan, or 196,800,000 gold. The weight of the cargo was only 3,750 tons, and ten gluttonous cargo ships or thirty Suzaku-class flying shears could be transported.

Leaving aside the fact that the profits of the trade of forty-five million dramaks came only from frankincense, myrrh, pepper, and closed ginger, and did not count the profits of sweet rosin, three-tendon leaves, cinnamon, and silk, Chu paper, precious stones, pearls, ivory, cotton, cane sugar, and fragrant wood. The profits of the former are already staggering, and if the plunder causes chaos in the production area, it will lose 45 million dramak profits per year, and then millions or even tens of millions of dramak profits will be lost every year because of the hatred caused by the plunder.

For these reasons, the Red Warriors strongly urged in the news that conquest should be turned into cooperation, and the purpose of the war was to win over the spice states of South Arabia and the Somali peninsula, and at the same time replace the traders. In doing so, the first shipment of frankincense and myrrh to the Green Ocean as soon as October this year, when the monsoon turns, will be sold in the Eastern Mediterranean by the middle of next year, and the following summer, perhaps the summer of the third year, with the proceeds of the trade returning to the port of Monrakha, as there is no return to the shipping lane.

In doing so, the Red Ocean Fleet would not only not be able to import gold and silver into the country, but would have to transport the gold and silver from the country to the Red Marine, so as to purchase spices from those city-states, and the two sides would establish a preliminary cooperative relationship. This money is not much, the total does not exceed 20,000 gold, which is shared by the 12 clans and the royal court, and the royal court does not pay more than 10,000 gold.

Two solutions. Choosing the former will inevitably make the Ziqian family bigger and control the world's finances, but the national debt problem can be easily solved, and the spice trade can be quickly put on the right track. Once the passage back to Singara from the Mediterranean Sea was discovered, a new spice trade system could be established in five years.

In the latter case, the national debt problem may be solved, depending on whether the spice producers, who receive only one-ninth of the spice trade, have accumulated hundreds of years of wealth, and if not, or if this wealth is transferred and buried by them before plundering, the national debt problem will eventually be solved by local moneymakers.

The spice trade would be hampered, and if the local resistance was as resolute as the Sogdians' resistance to Alexander, the consequence would not only delay the establishment of the spice trade system, but also require the dispatch of tens of thousands of soldiers to the spice-producing areas to maintain law and order.

Xiong Jing repeatedly considered the pros and cons of these two methods and the consequences they would cause, the advantages of both were what he wanted to achieve, and the disadvantages of both were what he wanted to avoid, but he couldn't have both. He used to believe in the method of "...... and ...... at the same time", but now he does not believe it at all. Nine times out of ten, this method is a panacea, and in the end nothing will be solved. Going deeper, it's the helplessness of the poor because they really don't have the resources.

"Guanqing, divination." Three days later, Xiong Jing summoned Taibu Guanzhu. Unable to make a decision after repeated considerations, he intends to leave the matter to the gods.

"What does the king want to do?" Guan Yu was a little confused by Xiong Jing's summoning of him, he knew that Xiong Jing had always been decisive.

"What?" Xiong Jing's thinking was too complicated, and it took him a while for Guan Yu to simplify this question, and finally condensed it into eight words: "If the debt is due, is it to borrow or to grab?" ”

Guan Yu didn't know what was behind the eight words, he didn't divination, but said in surprise: "If you have a debt, why do you take it?" If you take it, why pay the debt? ”

"Huh?" Xiong Jing was stunned when he heard this. He never oversimplified the problem.

"If it is not nine days, it will be a great one, and the mother will dare to slash (yi) the heavenly spirit." Watch and talk again. This is a phrase from the creation myth of the Spirit Sect, which says that mortals should worship the nine heavens for peace, and must not despise and blaspheme the gods. "There is borrowing and repaying, there is gain and loss, this heaven and earth. Why did the king do half the way and end up in the end? ”

"But ......" erases the subject, only concrete actions remain, and things immediately become completely different. This raises the question of whether different people are treated differently.

Xiong Jing spent about a quarter of an hour fully explaining this problem to Guanyao, who shook his head and laughed after hearing this, and asked, "The minister dares to ask the king, can there be Qin people who buy coupons?" ”

"Yes, there are Qin people." The bonds of the four countries were bought not only by the people of the Kanto region, but also by the people of Qin. Why? 10,000 gold weighs 2.5 tons, while a 10,000 gold bond weighs only 10 grams. The Qin people, who were 'impermanent and noble, and the people were endless', needed to preserve their property more than the Kwantung people, and bonds, especially registered bonds, were their best choice.

"The Qin people are my enemies, if the Qin people come with coupons, will they redeem it?" Guan Yu asked again.

The Qin people are the business objects, and the spice producers will also be the business objects, Xiong Jing had an epiphany and said, "Few people know." ”