Diao Xian, a businessman in the Western Han Dynasty who left many names in history, such as Diaojian, Daoxian, and Daojian, was given a difficult task after Yan Siqi and Kang Ning met.

A handpicked 100 strong laborers, more than 300 members of the convoy, and dozens of heavy wagons under his leadership landed in what would later become known as Kobe, and they would travel to many parts of the island of Honshu, selling their wares and at the same time bringing back what they needed.

This caravan, backed by the hideous taste, is named the Journey to the East Caravan. Diao Xian did not know at this time that decades later, during the editing process of imperial history textbooks, this caravan appeared in the textbooks of all subjects, and since then it has become the object of admiration of future generations.

But at this moment, the scale of the Journey to the East caravan is not large. Their size has nothing to do with business.

Although Corning's practice of casting Yongle Tongbao has not yet opened, Boss Huang, who has the same idea as him, has already done a lot of accumulation, and in the process of testing technology, they also know that there are many qualified Yongle Tongbao.

As a product of inspection technology, they were originally stored in the warehouse, but later, Boss Huang suddenly remembered that waste utilization, since they originally existed for experimental technology, so simply, they were used as experimental products and put on the Japanese market to see if there was any reaction?

As a stepping stone, Yongle Tongbao is actually slightly different from the genuine Yongle Tongbao. They seem to weigh it a little heavier, but in fact, it is not because it has sufficient materials, but on the contrary, compared to the authentic Yongle Tongbao with six copper and four leads, his copper-lead ratio is 4:6.

But there are not many things that the Japanese people do not know the secret, and when they get this copper coin, the feeling of getting it tells them. The merchants on the other side were a group of honest businessmen, and they were obviously very honest, otherwise the currency they used would not have been so heavy, so they were almost unwary when trading.

And their enthusiasm made everyone in the Journey to the East caravan begin to enjoy this journey, even the porters who were tired and tired every day.

Soon. They found that their wagons were somewhat insufficient. Since most of the goods they carried were luxury goods, they could not afford that price for the average common people. The various supplies purchased from the people, especially cloth and furs, forced the caravan to gather more temporary men.

Horse-drawn carriages are certainly not enough, after all, the density of these things is much greater than before, and the same volume of copper wire can be exchanged for a larger volume of goods. As a result, the original carriage was quickly filled. More goods need to be handled by hand.

Fortunately, in this war-torn era, there were enough landless peasants who needed to work, although many people in Journey to the East did not speak their language. But carrying these things, as long as they compare them twice, they can still understand them.

So along the way, the team continued to expand. By the time they reached the nearest city, the ranks had grown to the strength of the thousands, so much so that the local garrison of the city had been garrisoned. Mistakenly believing that they were here to attack the city, the two sides almost clashed as a result.

When he heard that they were caravans that came to trade, the local daimyo even specially received them, and when he heard that they were caravans franchised by the Tokugawa shogun, he added a little respect. In the end, Diao Xian even lied directly: "The purpose of our trip is to thank Tokugawa Ieyasu for fighting, maybe we can earn some money and food in your country." ”

After hearing his words, the local daimyo even prepared to send an army to escort them to Beijing. But he was rejected by Diaoxian. What he meant was that he hoped that the other party could ensure the safety of their back roads, and maybe they could transport the goods they purchased in the future to the port of Kobe in batches.

Something like this happened over the next month, and the caravan snowballed in size. The emperor who knew about Kyoto heard that a caravan of 5,000 people was approaching.

The emperor, who had just ascended the throne, even wanted to go out to see the scale of the caravan, but was finally stopped by his courtiers. After all, this is a caravan belonging to the forces of foreigners, and who knows what their true purpose is.

Although they were seriously suspicious of the Journey to the East caravan, they did not dare to disobey Tokugawa Ieyasu's orders, so they sent the caravan into Kyoto Castle.

As a result, this caravan also completed the peculiar Shangjing, or Shangluo. In the local area, this is regarded as an act of declaring power, and no one cares about this caravan's behavior, and the caravans who enter and leave Kyoto are constantly flowing every day, is it possible that they will all have unbeatable power like the princes?

But this time they obviously underestimated the strength of the Journey to the East caravan, behind this caravan, there is indeed a prince with unbeatable power. It's just that these are princes, not just the princes of the Wa Kingdom, but the princes relative to the world.

Of course, the so-called relative world is only the degree of ambition, not the degree of strength. It still takes time to accumulate strength, and there are scientific methods, such as the ongoing trade activities.

People only admired the magnitude of this caravan, and seemed to forget to think about what kind of behemoth was behind it, so the Journey to the East caravan could carry out their trade activities calmly, and no one would specifically investigate their background behind the scenes, because they had Tokugawa Ieyasu's charter.

When their goods were placed on the streets of Kyoto, many people rushed out to look at the expensive foreign goods, why did they say they were imported products? Some of those things are produced locally, but after all, they are local after 400 years, so they are still called foreign!

A small plastic lighter can get a lot of income from the local famous family, and those exquisite prints make the vassal and elegant nobles flock to it.

Sometimes more cash flow goes into the pockets of the Journey to the East caravan. This is certainly something Corning would be happy to see, but the more important thing is that copper coins have not been spent more.

Thereupon. Some of the local nobles received a lot of strange orders, some hoped to buy land, some wanted to buy houses, some wanted to buy slaves, and some wanted to buy minerals.

The nobles of the Wa Kingdom were not much different from the nobles of the Central Plains, and their emphasis on fields and houses made them unwilling to sell these real estates easily, so the caravans got more human resources and crude minerals.

In the end, the caravan had to make a decision. I began to buy some things with relatively high value in the cultural field, such as some calligraphy and paintings introduced here in the Song Dynasty, especially the works of Su Dongpo.

But Su Dongpo's works are very valued here, even the owner is not willing to sell easily, during World War II, the collection of Su Dongpo's works hit the Japanese family, because of the impact of the American bombing, the whole house was burned. But he didn't care, longing for his own discomfort, longing for his house that was burning, and taking nothing else. I have published Su Dongpo's works before. Later, news spread throughout Japan, and the owner of the house was praised throughout Japan.

Moreover, the individuals and families who own these cultural treasures are reluctant to accept copper coins as a means of payment. They thought that what appeared in front of them should at least be yellow gold, or even should be. Other calligraphy and paintings that can be compared to their collections.

So the Journey to the East caravan turned to another trade, and they began to collect various artisans. And sell some cash crop seeds, pay a certain deposit in advance, and agree to buy the products here in the coming year.

However, after all, the expenditure of this kind of deposit could not be too large, so the caravan had to continue to find other ways to spend money.

Diao Xian suddenly found that he had never felt that spending money was a very difficult thing to do.

In the end, he began to buy things like freight carriages from the local area, and then all kinds of daily goods, although they were all designed in the style of the Wa Kingdom, it may be difficult for the immigrants from the Central Plains to adapt. But everyday necessities such as table salt are still very valuable.

As a result, copper coins, as the settlement currency for small transactions, can only be traded more frequently to speed up the flow into the market.

After leaving Kyoto, the caravan began to make its way to their next stop, Edo Castle. Thanking Shogun Tokugawa is not just an empty phrase.

When Tokugawa Ieyasu saw the caravan of almost 8,000 men, his jaw was almost dislocated with surprise.

The daimyo or their agents who lived in Edo Castle left the castle to make contact with this powerful commercial force. They were not the old aristocracy, and as the new aristocracy, they were more aware of the importance of commerce to the functioning of the empire.

He felt that it was much easier to spend money here, and that there were many more cultural treasures that he had acquired, and of course, those cultural treasures produced locally had little value for him to buy, unless they could be sold to future generations in Japan. But Boss Huang may not have established his power in Japan in later generations. After all, it was also a relatively xenophobic country.

However, he did get more human resources from here, although these daimyo needed to mobilize these personnel from their territory, but the person in charge of the caravan of Journey to the East with a bold temperament still paid the full amount to others early.

Of course, Tokugawa Hidetada knew very well that for this group of insatiable merchants, business transactions were the best way to win them over, and if he wanted them not to side with Toyotomi Hideyori, then he couldn't break the contract, so he constantly urged those daimyo to keep their trading credit.

Of course, he didn't know that the Journey to the East caravan was not worried about whether they would deliver or not, even if they didn't complete the transaction, it didn't matter, those copper coins would definitely spread in the market.

The principle that bad money drives out good money is based on the fact that bad money can take advantage of the appearance of good money to deceive the user's trust. As long as there are users who are deceived, the makers of shoddy coins can make a profit, and if the deceived people reach a certain size, then this profit is very considerable, and of course it cannot be ruled out that someone will see through their scheme, but so what? Is there less bad money in this world?

After leaving Edo Castle, the caravan prepared to head to Sunpu Castle. From there, look for a nearby port and go out to sea to reverberate in Awaji Province. In that way, a complete mountain road can be considered to be opened. And this trade route is a closed loop that can run in both directions. Whether you're making a U-turn or heading all the way, you can connect the starting point with the destination.

The next task is to open up more trade routes. Mori Terumoto, Date Masamune, Nagamune and my department. They are all good trade partners.

As for the countries of Kyushu that need to take more waterways, that is not something that the Journey to the East caravan needs to consider. Perhaps, the main guild will build another organization called the Journey to the West Caravan to take charge of that matter!

But in any case, Corning is bound to win the country's right to issue currency.

The most effective way to extract the wealth of the country is to give them a central bank for free, which does not need to have too complicated functions, but only has the right to issue money. And the princes of the Wa Kingdom, who were ignorant of the right to issue money, were now busy preparing for war, and had no time to analyze the seriousness of such matters.

When they're done fighting, let them quietly look up and observe the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads!

However, there is still one thing that troubles Diao Xian, that is, the heartache money is too slow.

This problem was reflected to Kang Ning, and after thinking about it for a long time, Kang Ning could only sigh that the production level of the Wa Kingdom was low, and there were not too many good enough goods worth buying recently, so he had to think of another way, that is, to buy copper coins directly with copper coins.

Of course, this method cannot be carried out directly in the market, not because it is not feasible, but because it does not take the IQ of the local people seriously, and whoever does not suspect that there is a problem with your money is a hell of a life, so this way of trading must be covered up by another way, that is, the bank.

So, while the princes of various countries were preparing for war, Corning's subordinates were busy building houses. Not only on Awaji Island, which they occupied, but also at various important points on their mountain trails. (To be continued.) )