When Li Zhi left, Li Xiao gave him two sprouted corns.

"Take it back and keep it well, remember to water it too often, water it once and wait until the potting soil is almost dry, and then water it. For about half a month, add some fertilizer. It is best to use dry cow dung and horse manure, remember that it is dry dung, not fresh, otherwise it will burn the tender corn. ”

The two corn plants were dug out of the space, growing much more energetically than those in the yard, and the leaves were black and green like ink, and they were transplanted in two broken pottery jars.

Li Zhi let the two guards take it over like a treasure.

"As long as you raise it well, after three months, you will be able to harvest four large corns, which can be more than a catty."

"Don't worry, I'll be tending to them myself." Li Zhi looked at these two corns like a baby, he wanted to take care of these two corns himself, and he wanted to see for himself how much they produced. "Fifteen hundred yuan, I will be sent when I go back, and you will hand over the bond to the person who comes to bring it back when you arrive."

Li Zhi left in a carriage, and he was in a bit of a hurry. Two six-grade Qianniu were prepared, carrying a Qianniu knife in their waists, and one of them was sitting in the emperor's carriage like a pot of corn seedlings. As guards with swords in front of the emperor, they were also qualified to sit by the emperor's side for the first time.

What a glory is this? Of course, they also knew that in fact, it was the two jars of corn seedlings that were really sitting in the same car with the emperor, not the two of them.

Sent away Lao Wang, the unjust boss, and Li Xiao prepared to make bonds.

What a bond is, there was no one before, and no one knows what it will look like. However, the five Lizheng were very happy today, because 1,500 pieces were actually in hand.

With 1,500 yuan, that can buy 5,000 stone of grain, and Lanxi Township will not have a famine this year.

According to Li Xiao's idea, the bond is denomination of 100 yuan, which is more convenient for him to circulate. Although Lao Wang bought all the bonds alone, the liquidity may not be large, but he has to follow his original design concept.

Fifteen thousand, you get fifteen thousand bonds.

After thinking about it carefully, Li Xiao suddenly found that the cost of this bond is also very high. Even if you make a bond as big as the banknotes of later generations, it will be 15,000 pieces. He had forgotten that the paper was actually very expensive, and that he had to write on this bond, fifteen thousand sheets, how long would it take to write it?

The wages of the scribes have always been very high.

Suddenly, there were many additional costs, which made Li Xiao a little unhappy.

After all, it is estimated that the wages for copying bonds are much higher than those of paper.

In Chang'an City, the price of copying a book is 1,000 yuan. And a book is 10,000 words. Li Xiao's more than 10,000 bonds, each bond must be marked with the face value, and the interest rate and maturity time must also be indicated, there are a lot of words.

In particular, he has to add some anti-counterfeiting marks or something.

It's a bit of a feeling of lifting a stone to shoot yourself in the foot, and the estimated cost of these 15,000 bonds will cost dozens of dollars.

No, costs must be controlled.

Fifteen hundred yuan was raised, but it had to be bought for food, and it could not be wasted elsewhere.

There are other ways to save on this expense.

Bigger denominations? A thousand dollars a piece? Li Xiao shook his head, the main reason for getting a hundred wen is to circulate, if it is a thousand wen, wouldn't it be more difficult to circulate, after all, a thousand wen is a big deal.

"By the way, engraving bonds. Engrave a engraving and then print more than 10,000 bonds, which is much cheaper. As long as you ask someone to write a manuscript of the bond and then find a craftsman to carve it out, you can do both. ”

There are many people who write books, and although there are no engravings in this era, there are engraved monuments. It is easier to carve wood than to carve stone.

The only problem is the ink.

It seems that the ink for engraving printing must be ink, not ordinary ink, and adding fuel to the ink is a technical problem.

Fortunately, Li Xiao immediately remembered that his sworn brother Wang Fangyi's family was an ink-maker, and when Wang Fangyi's mother and son were driven out of the family, they did not make a fortune by farming, but by building an ink workshop with ink-making technology brought out from the Taiyuan Wang family.

Paper, pen, and ink are all relatively valuable things in this era, and ink is generally processed by burning pine smoke from pine trees, which is difficult to produce and expensive.

Li Xiao felt that it would be good to leave professional problems to professional people, although Wang Fangyi left home to join the army, but it should not be a problem to send him a letter and ask him to ask the craftsmen in the workshop to develop an ink suitable for printing for him.

Engraving technology is actually an old antique technology in later generations, and any silk screen printing is stronger than engraving printing, let alone lead movable type.

However, Li Xiao has no idea of vigorously developing printing now, so let's print this bond first.

wrote a letter to Wang Fangyi, and then sent Zhang Cong to chase after the army that had just set off.

Li Xiao sat down to study the style of bonds, he had a kind of take-it-or-leave-it-or-leave-it doctrine, and directly designed it according to the 100-yuan bills of later generations, of course, much simpler.

The size is about that big, and the paper used is mulberry paper, which is a lot of Datang, and the price is cheaper than jute paper, but it is stronger. The famous rice paper in later generations has not yet appeared in this era, in fact, rice paper also belongs to a type of leather paper.

took out a piece of mulberry paper, cut out the size of a hundred-yuan bill, and then Li Xiao began to write and draw on it.

On the front of the People's Bank of China, Li Xiao wrote six characters from the Convention Hall of Lanxi Township.

In the middle is one hundred words and three big characters, and then he also added a 50 Arabic numeral below, bonds, you have to make it more complicated.

In the upper left corner, Li Xiao also designed a simple pattern as a proprietary mark.

Then he drew a small dot of 50 in the lower left corner, and then wrote a string of codes below, using English letters plus Arabic numerals, four English letters and four Arabic numerals.

This string of codes is the ID number of each bond, the code of each bond is different, and the code contains a lot of information, such as the first few English letters, each represents the printing batch, and the following number represents the order in the same batch.

"This code has to be engraved with a movable type seal, and the bond is printed and then stamped on it, which can be used as an anti-counterfeiting mark." Li Xiao looked at the encoded numbers and thought, there can't be a version of every bond, but fortunately, it's easy to print this string of numbers.

Engrave a batch of letters, then a batch of numbers, and then make a movable type stamp that can be installed and removed from these letters, so that the problem of coding and printing on each bond can be solved.

On the back, a simple sketch of the Blue Creek is drawn, backed by Wang Shunshan, a blue stream meanders, and Li Jiazhuang lives in the middle, simple but vivid.

"If you want to print on both sides, you have to open two pages and print twice. Is it necessary? Li Xiao thought, but then he still felt that it was necessary to print on both sides, as long as the problem of ink can be solved, then it is not difficult to print a pattern on engraving, and it can greatly increase the anti-counterfeiting ability.

There is a printing date on the bottom of the back, such as March of the fifth year of Yonghui.

By the way, you have to write six words on the front of the Blue Creek Grain Bond, and a row of small characters below, with an interest rate of five cents per month, redeemed in half a year, and a total of 130 yuan of principal and interest at maturity.

After thinking about it, Li Xiao drew a stick figure peony flower on the front.

I took it in my hand and looked at it a few times, and I felt that no one should be able to imitate it easily, well, it would be even more difficult to imitate it if I put a few more stamps or a few signatures on each bond.

This is Datang's first bond, the first negotiable note, and it can be regarded as Datang's first banknote.

This should be of great historical significance, Li Xiao looked at the bond he had drawn with a ghost, and his heart was full of pride.

Today's Datang doesn't even have a money bank, and there is not even a historical cabinet now. In the big cities, merchants opened cabinets to provide valuables for the residents of the merchants, and gold and silver money can also be stored, but there is no interest on saving money in the cabinets, and there is a storage fee.

Li Xiao felt incredible.

Depositing money in the bank has to be paid by the bank for safekeeping, which is really intolerable.

This also made Li Xiao see a great business opportunity, although he didn't have time to get it now, but this was indeed a money-making business opportunity in the future.

What is a bank? The bank is to absorb the deposits in the hands of customers, pay low interest, and then lend to other customers at high interest, making interest rate differentials in the middle, which is simply an empty glove white wolf.

Moreover, banks can also do foreign exchange, custody and other businesses, the larger the scale, the easier the money to make.

The Eastern Expeditionary Army had just started and was heading all the way to the east, Zhang Cong rode a horse and quickly caught up with the army, and with Li Xiao's letter, he saw Wang Fangyi relatively quickly.

Wang Fangyi is now in the army, with fifty brothers, although the official has been demoted, he is very excited, and finally has the opportunity to go into battle to kill the enemy and make meritorious contributions.

Seeing Li Xiao's letter, he immediately replied that he would write a letter back to arrange it, and said that the ink was estimated to be fine.

Sure enough, a few days later, Li Xiao met the manager of Wangjia Ink Workshop who came to visit Lijiazhuang, and they brought several new trial inks, changing the previous ink strip style, which used the latest technology.

Li Xiao has found someone to carve the carved plate in the past few days, one on the front and one on the back. Although the engraving is quite complicated, it is both words and paintings, as well as English letters and Arabic numerals, but for the carver, it is actually the same. The old craftsman with the white beard was not even illiterate, but that did not prevent him from carving a plate in just a few days.

Li Xiao carefully checked it several times, and found that it was natural, without the slightest flaw, and the old craftsman replied that no matter what words and symbols were on it, he should have carved it anyway. Anyway, put the words written by the scholar on the board, and then imitate the carving little by little.

He said that he didn't need stickers on it, he could carve it out.

One of the two old craftsmen asked for the same salary, but Li Xiao felt that it was too worthwhile.

After trying a few sheets of ink on the wooden board a few times, Li Xiao finally found the most suitable ink, and the bond printed on the engraving plate with this ink will not paste or stick, and the effect is very good.

Li Xiao happily started printing that day, and printed all 15,000 bonds in one day. Zhang Cong and Liu Garlic and his group were responsible for stamping, and Li Xiao designed a full eight kinds of seals for the bonds, plus the unique string of code seals, plus Li Xiao's own handwritten signature, he estimated that no one could counterfeit it.

"Perfect!" Li Xiao shook a Baiwen bond that had been printed, stamped, and signed on both sides in front of him, and let out a sound of admiration.