As he spoke, he pulled a penny out of his sleeve. "The secret is here."

Yelu Chucai took the copper coin and looked at it again and again for a while, there was nothing special at all, it was a Shaoxing Tongbao that could be seen everywhere.

"It's just an ordinary copper coin."

"Exactly!" Song Yi said loudly: "It is by relying on this small copper coin that the Southern Dynasty praises the wealth of the tenth generation!" ”

Kublai Khan, Yelu Chucai, and Wokotai all asked in surprise: "What is it for?" Hülegü scratched his head even more, he couldn't keep up with Song Yichang's rhythm at all.

"May I ask Zhongshu, who uses the most copper coins in the northern roads now?" Song Yichang held up the Shaoxing Tongbao and said.

Yelu Chucai replied: "There should be more copper coins in the Southern Dynasty." ”

"How much?" Song Yichang took a step forward and asked.

"The coins of the Southern Dynasties are always around seventy." Yelu Chucai gritted his teeth and said.

"That's weird." Song Yichang shrugged his shoulders lightly and asked with a smile: "What are the roads in the Central Plains of the copper mine, but the coins minted by the Jin Kingdom itself are not popular?" ”

"It's not surprising." Yelu Chucai replied: "Because the Song Dynasty minted copper coins with good skills, the copper coins were fine enough and beautifully made, and the natural people were happy to use them. The craftsmen of the Jin Kingdom used a lot of effort to catch up with the quality of the copper coins of the Song Dynasty. ”

"This doesn't make sense, Xishu lacks copper mines, and the local people have no choice but to use iron to cast money, known as iron money. But in this way, coins of poor quality minted with cheap iron actually squeezed into the market in Shaanxi and Gansu, and circulated like copper coins minted in Jinguo! It's really the price of iron money as copper money! ”

"The secret in this is hidden deep in the palace of the Southern Dynasty!" Song Yichang said: "Although the person who mints coins is the money supervisor. In fact, the secrets are in the hands of the political affairs hall! ”

Yelu Chucai shook his head and said, "This statement is too mysterious. The Jin Kingdom and the Southern Dynasties have been in contact for many years, and they have never heard of any secrets about the Qian Jian in the Political Affairs Hall. ”

Song Yichang looked up at Yelu Chucai, as an official of the Mongol faction who controlled the Han land in Yanjing, Yelu Chucai was naturally known to the Southern Dynasty with the official title of Zhongshu Ling. But it seems that he does not know much about the operation of the Southern Dynasties.

That's good, Song Yichang thought, it's not so easy for people to distinguish right from wrong when they don't understand things.

"There are six rooms under the jurisdiction of the Southern Dynasty Political Affairs Hall, which was originally used as a staff organization to assist the ministers and ministers of the Political Affairs Hall, similar to the Six Departments, and is also divided into household rites and military punishments, but in fact, the actual tasks of these six rooms have nothing to do with the superficial set," Song Yichang's face was solemn, as if he was talking about a confidential matter: "The secret of the Song Dynasty's use of coins is hidden in the household of the Political Affairs Hall. ”

Wo Kotai was already a little incomprehensible at this time, and he said to Song Yichang: "Song, you said it more clearly, how did Sinansi's Khan use this money to get what he wanted?" Isn't this copper coin just like silver and gold, and used directly to buy it? ”

Song Yichang woke up to the fact that the Mongols had not been out of obscurity for a long time, and to put it mildly, just more than 20 years ago they did not even have the concept of commodity trade, and they were still stuck in barter and tribal distribution. If you dig a little deeper into the economy, they don't understand it very well, even the Great Khan, who reigns over all the nations.

This is where their biggest weakness lies.

But how to expose this weakness of their own, Song Yichang still has to think carefully. After all, there are still shrewd people like Yelu Chucai in the northern court.

He pondered for a moment and said to Ogedei: "Great Khan, as the Great Khan said, copper coins are used to buy what is needed. Money is something that cannot be eaten or worn, and if it cannot be exchanged for porcelain, tea, salt, silk, or grain, it is of no value at all. ”

"So at the end of the day, the meaning of money is attached to what it can buy. In other words, unless it is a forcible seizure, in the case of fair trade, the amount of credit for the money is directly determined by the seller of the goods. ”

"This is also the reason why the coins of the Southern Dynasties occupy eighty percent of the world's coins."

"The tea, porcelain and brocade produced in the Southern Dynasties were sold well in all countries of the world, and at the same time, the corresponding goods had to be purchased from each country. Among the kingdoms under heaven, the Southern Dynasties were the only ones capable of producing fine coins in large quantities. ”

It is for these two reasons that the currency of the Southern Dynasties has become the mainstream of the market. Of course, the Daru Huachi of various countries still do not have a detailed concept of this fact. ”

And the political hall of the Southern Dynasty has seen this a long time ago. And with the house to which it belonged as a secret manipulation agency, it arranged a whole set of secret operation mechanisms to secretly plunder the wealth of various countries, so that the north of the Great Khan was poor and the south was rich. ”

"How?" Wo Kotai said loudly: "You Sinan Siren are really verbose, you like to turn around these many bends, you are not a deer running in the woods, and I am not chasing the wolf you want to eat, what do you have to say straightforwardly!" ”

Song Yichang replied and said: "The mystery of the mystery falls on the word "banknote." ”

"Ah, I know this." Wo Kotai said happily: "Knowing banknotes is not gold, silver, copper and iron, but coins made of paper." And a piece of paper can be used as a hundred dollars and thousands of dollars, it is very convenient, someone gave me this method the year before last, but Chu Cai said that this method does not work, and said that Jin Guo also printed this banknote, but no one is willing to believe this piece of paper, and the officials of Jin Guo do not believe it themselves, just print it out and send it to the people, but they never use it, so this piece of paper can't buy anything at all, and a lot of them can only buy a cake. Therefore, Chu Cai suggested that you can only print 10,000 ingots at most, and if you have more, it will be bad. ”

"Exactly, the Jin people also print banknotes, why do they print waste paper, and the Southern Dynasty prints it?" Song Yichang said slowly: "When the Jin Kingdom began to print and pay money, it was the moment when Genghis Khan attacked Jin on a large scale, and the army broke through more than 70 cities in the south, and everything it passed was in ruins. Yanjing, Hebei, Liaodong, Shandong, Hedong, there are almost no elite areas of the Jin Kingdom that have not been destroyed by our army. All production, from grain to salt, is on a downward trend. The imperial court needs to supply the Jin army that is fighting with me in several aspects at the same time, and the strength is poor, so they issue banknotes and use them in the northern roads to consume the people's strength for military needs, and it is just a foolish move to drink blood to quench thirst. ”

"But not in the Southern Dynasties. Don't look at the victories of our army's southern expedition, in fact, not a single soldier invaded the south of the river, the essence of the Southern Dynasties still exists, and the materials produced are continuously transported to various places. Among them, the trade was not only to Japan and Goryeo, but also to the north, and to the south to the sea. This Southern Dynasty was able to hold the bull's ear in the world's trade, and its copper coins changed to various countries, so that the materials of various countries could be used. After returning to the Southern Dynasty, the imperial court could easily obtain all kinds of materials by issuing banknotes, which was very convenient, and the people's strength was not damaged. There is no need to reserve enough gold, silver and copper coins, and there is no need to worry about the depletion of the people's power, but only a few pieces of paper are required to be printed in the house, and the country has all kinds of materials, and the gold and silver are inexhaustible, and the people are not bothered, because they give all the burdens to the surrounding countries and give the Central Plains under the rule of the Great Khan. Therefore, the Great Khan often felt embarrassed, but the emperor of the Southern Dynasty was at ease. ”

"This is the war waged by the Southern Dynasty against me! In the visible war, our Mongolian elite cavalry came and went, the warriors were good at fighting, and the cowardice of the Southern Dynasty could not resist. But in this war of money, the Southern Dynasty used their money system, rich production and government-issued banknotes to form a system, and the soldiers fought bloodily to obtain a little property, under the silent theft of this system, all became the spoils of the Southern Dynasty, just like this, if it is not changed, even if it is a hundred years of attack, the Southern Dynasty can still calmly organize hundreds of thousands of troops to fight us. When will Gangnam be truly pacified? ”

What Song Yichang said, Wokotai can only roughly understand two or three percent, but Kublai Khan understands five or six percent, and he said to Song Yichang: "Then what should I do?" Song, you are from the Southern Dynasty, what do you say you should do? ”

Wo Kotai said: "As long as you can offer a strategy that works, Song, after conquering Jiangnan, I will let you be the Dalu Huachi of Jiangnan Eighth Road, just like Chu Cai, and everything in Jiangnan will be in your hands." ”

Song Yichang glanced at Yelu Chucai, and happened to meet Yelu Chucai's gaze. It took almost twenty years for Chu Cai to achieve today's position in Zhongshu Ling, could it be that Song Yichang would immediately become an important minister of the empire comparable to him?

"It's not difficult to break this game, some things can be done immediately, and some things are waiting for the time to come." Song Yichang said: "We are much stronger than the Southern Dynasty, our army invades the south every year, and the Southern Dynasty is simply unable to resist, let alone counterattack on a large scale." Therefore, every year we have the opportunity to destroy the production of the Southern Dynasties, but the Southern Dynasties are powerless to pose a fundamental threat to us. ”

"It is imperative that a large-scale minting of money be launched immediately. It didn't matter if the quality of the coins was not as good as that of the Southern Dynasties, and the Great Khan could issue an edict in the form of an edict that the trade with the Southern Dynasties must use the Tongbao of the Mongols, and gradually squeeze the copper coins of the Southern Dynasties out of the northern market. ”

"The next step is to issue our own banknotes." Song Yichang said: "After our copper coins occupy the market, we can follow the practice of the Southern Dynasties and issue a large number of banknotes to arbitrage. However, our banknotes are different from those of the Southern Dynasties, our banknotes can be linked to gold and silver, and a banknote can be cashed out of the corresponding gold, silver and copper coins, so that our banknotes have an absolutely strong credit, even stronger than the banknotes of the Southern Dynasties. In this way, we can also use the banknotes to arbitrage. ”

Wokotai thought about it and felt that this method was really inappropriate.

"This method is not good, in case the people are scrambling to use the payment notes to pay, how can we still support these gold and silver?" Wo Kotai sighed: "This little family background is not enough for the princes and generals to reward every year. ”