Fortunately, in addition to the increasingly scarce honeydew crow honey, the ant association also has other means of payment!

When the protagonist and the Minister of Finance "Little Rope" took inventory of the treasury before, they unexpectedly found that there was a lot of gold, and a small pile was stacked in the treasury.

Only then did he remember that [Golden Beach City] still produces sand gold.

This summer's floods are more violent than usual, and parts of [Xinyangcheng] are once wet, which is a problem every year during the flood season.

On the bright side, the floods also brought more sand gold, which was washed out of the mountain mines upstream and carried eastward by the floods. When the nearby river section is due to the topography, after crossing the sharp bend of the [Xinyangcheng] Peninsula, the castration at the golden beach has been exhausted, and the slow flow of water has caused heavy golden sand to accumulate on the river beach, and when the flood waters recedes, a golden glow will be left behind.

In the past, the Ant Alliance had to pay tribute to the nominal suzerain, the old Red Fire Ant Country, and could also use the sand gold to buy some supplies, so the main industry of [Golden Beach City] was to collect sand gold particles, and there were thousands of resident ants here, collecting gold sand every day.

These sand gold were constantly piled up into the treasury of [Xinyangcheng], and due to the outbreak of the war with the Red Fire Ant Country this year, these newly mined gold sand were not spent, plus last year's retention, the total number is quite a lot, enough to make a few hundred grams, enough to make a gold brick.

The protagonist thinks that since the Red Fire Ant Nation is willing to accept Jinsha in exchange, will the other ant tribes also be willing?

Although during the conquest of the Red Fire Ant Country, the protagonist only sees a small number of nests using gold sand as a building decoration, this consumption is obviously not enough to explain the use of the large amount of gold sand required by the Red Fire Ant Country, and most of the gold and gold in the past to pay tribute and trade to the Ant Alliance are unknown.

Maybe it's used in the territories occupied by the Leafcutter Ant Nation? Maybe it's a tribute to the Paving Ant Empire? The protagonist guesses.

But this mystery does not stop the Ant Nation from seeking to use gold as a means of payment.

In the days that followed, the trade representatives of the ant tribes of the other civilizations were personally received by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, "Little Flower", and asked if they could exchange some of the gold for honeydew and crow honey.

The caravan representatives agreed, and the protagonist was surprised by how cheerful it was.

Later, as the news from different caravans and different ant tribes was gathered, the puzzle of the answer to this mystery finally became clear and complete.

It turns out that the tradition of using gold and silver as trading equivalents among civilized ant tribes has been so long that the trade representatives of various tribes cannot tell the origin.

In fact, the consumption of gold and silver in all countries and ethnic groups is not much, and black fire ants with processing technology will also make gold and silver into simple ingots or containers, and most of the ant forces are actually gold and silver without consumption except for the wall mosaic decoration of religious places and important places.

But conventionally, all ants are willing to accept gold and silver, because they know that this kind of thing can be easily exchanged for the supplies they need from other ant tribes.

Gold and silver have become the general equivalent of the ant world, that is, money.

The ant world actually unified the "currency" so early, which is the most surprising thing for the protagonist, not only the whimsical willingness of barbarian ant tribes like the Red Fire Ant Country to use gold as currency, but even the civilized ant tribes that may be as many as tens of millions are willing to use gold.

Is this still a primitive world? This monetary concept is a bit too advanced!

Fortunately, the ants rely on the weight of the gold sand to measure the value, and even most of the ant tribes don't know much about the way to identify the purity of the gold sand, which makes the protagonist reluctantly recognize this "world setting"!

If the ant tribes trade with "gold coins" and "silver coins", the protagonist will not be able to complain!

With gold as an auxiliary means of payment, there is a place for the abundance of gold in the treasury, which is not edible or worn by ants, but even the male ants of the country are fascinated by its alluring color.

The protagonist does not hesitate to pay a sum of money, regardless of the regret of the male ants, and exchange it for a lot of food and other supplies.

In addition to this, the protagonist is also seriously thinking about "coinage", and collecting a "seigniorage" seems to be more profitable than simply using gold sand!

Therefore, in the previous life, a certain hegemon deliberately wanted to treat its own currency as the world currency, which was first linked to gold, and later linked to oil, in order to exploit the whole world with "seigniorage"!

It's just that gold needs to be melted when coinage, and the melting point of gold is too high, and the current blast furnace temperature cannot reach it. Stamping and minting coins requires a lot of strength of machinery, and the technological level of the Ant Union is also not up to it.

The protagonist thinks about it and first assigns the subject to the scientific research department of "Little Secretary II".

————

While the protagonist is busy with gold and gold coins, an ant-made natural disaster is about to befall the south bank of the Qing River.

The Northern Expeditionary Force on the south bank was at this time in a war with the neighboring Red Forest Ant Tribe, unaware of the impending disaster.

Although at first, the legionnaires of the Northern Expeditionary Army were not very accustomed to the long-range attack methods and ranger fighting methods of the Red Forest Ants.

However, after many years of military career, several senior and brilliant kings of the Northern Expeditionary Army quickly grasped the opportunity to surround and eliminate the main force of the Red Forest Ant Tribe on a favorable open ground.

After that, the offensive and defensive momentum reversed, and the Northern Expeditionary Army dispatched almost all of its troops, including 4 legions and more than 3,000 auxiliary worker ants, to surround the grove where the red forest ant tribe was located.

After a brutal tree-by-tree battle, the Northern Expeditionary Army, which was not good at tree warfare, finally cleared the red forest ant warriors from other places and surrounded them on a pine tree where their nest was located.

After several days of fierce attack, the Northern Expeditionary Army suffered heavy losses, but it was never able to break through the tree ridge of the Red Forest Ant Tribe, which left the commanders helpless.

The road in the tree ridge is tortuous, and the advantage of strength cannot be expanded, but the red forest ants can use the long-range attack of slime and acid, which not only temporarily blocks the road, but also kills the big-headed ant warriors of the Northern Expeditionary Army.

The Northern Expeditionary Army does not have endless ant claws to consume, and other nearby tribes have been coveting this side like flies that have smelled blood.

Once the Northern Expeditionary Army declines, other ants will definitely rush up and take the opportunity to snatch the benefits.

If the Northern Expeditionary Army wants to survive another winter, it must preserve its strength from this war while replenishing its own coffers with the spoils of war.

Faced with the spiky and hard-to-bite stinging caterpillar-like nests of red forest ants, most of the commanders of the Northern Expeditionary Army were at a loss.

At this time, a male ant that had caused the protagonist to gnash his teeth appeared, and he contributed a poisonous plan!