After the fair, everything seemed to be calm again. The work of the work, the fatigue of the work, the distress of the distress. The only difference was that the area of Panjim suddenly became a construction site.

More and more property was received from the Portuguese Governor's Palace and the church, and Zhou Qingfeng not only left the necessary part for local consumption in Goa, but most of it was transported into the isolated island of time and space. In addition to the looted precious metals, more than 100 slave girls, more than 200 Arabian horses, and skilled horse breeders were taken away for the first time.

The fire phoenix was curious and offered to stay in town for a while. Wen Ruolan and others followed Zhou Qingfeng back to Tianjin on a biplane. As for the business problem, it was left to a few financial accounts sent by Xu Bing to deal with it.

For the next three months of 1617, Goa was like the back garden and resort of the 'revolutionary army', with travelers taking turns to come here for vacation. Zhou Qingfeng kept taking the isolated island of time and space back and forth between Goa and Tianjin, handling all kinds of goods. He also sent a large number of men to Goa, including a full infantry brigade of 5,000 men and a militia regiment of 10,000 men.

Xu Bing also plans to recruit and train 50,000 natives in Goa, using whips and food to teach them how to properly obey and carry out orders. The 'Revolutionary Army' needs them to transform Goa in order to better provide supplies for the prosperity of Chinese civilization. Wu Men temporarily became the commander of the garrison in Goa, and every day he had a headache about how to train those stupid natives.

In order to stabilize and maintain the situation in Goa, Zhou Qingfeng even brought over six 50-ton naval commuter ships recently produced by the Golden State Shipyard. Paired with a crash-trained naval crew, Goa will quickly become a naval base. With these high-speed commuter vessels, surveillance of the waters around Goa is not a problem and can effectively deter potential adversaries from coveting.

Colonizing overseas is not something that can be done in a day or two. It is easy to capture Goa, but it takes more meticulous work and time to make the most of Goa. However, the benefits of taking Goa were immediate, and when Zhou Qingfeng returned to Tianjin, the large amount of gold and silver he brought back was immediately sent to the mint in Jinzhou.

Tons of gold and silver were re-smelted, and Zhao Ze, who was in charge of the mint, watched as large quantities of gold religious figurines and even jewelry were liquidized in the furnace. He patted Zhou Qingfeng beside him and said with a smile: "The Portuguese are going to hate you to death, their hundreds of years of hard work have been in vain overnight." ”

"It's not just the Portuguese who hate me." Zhou Qingfeng also laughed at the gold products in the furnace, "Just as those Confucian scholars in the Central Plains hated me for destroying the Confucian Mansion, the religious maniacs in Europe knew that I had destroyed all the traces of God in Goa, and they were afraid that they would be angry to come to a 'crusade'." ”

It was not only gold and silver that were melted down, but also a large amount of bronze. The Portuguese army in Goa was defeated, and almost all the artillery they were equipped with was discarded. Zhou Qingfeng ordered all these copper products to be collected and brought back, even the bronze bells and pipes of the organ in the church.

Known as the 'King of Musical Instruments' in Europe, the organ is intoxicating for its beautiful sound. When the Guards sent people to dismantle the large musical instruments in the church, the white people of Goa were crying out one by one. This is worse than defeat. Some people want to buy these precious works of art, but Uncle Zhou feels that 'compared to gold and silver, Lao Tzu is actually more lacking in copper'.

The 'revolutionary army' is now gaining more and more territory and controlling more and more people. The conditions for large-scale issuance of paper money are not yet mature, and gold and silver currencies are rarely used in daily life, and copper coins are actually circulating in the market. The demand for this is hundreds or thousands of times greater than that of gold and silver. Not to mention the territory of the 'revolutionary army', the whole of China is short of copper.

In order to obtain copper, Zhou Qingfeng even fished up the Portuguese armed merchant ship that was sunk and stranded by himself, just to obtain the copper cannon on it. He also offered high prices for copper ingots and asked the merchants of Goa to bring him copper. Because copper is an indispensable and important material in daily life and industrial development.

The dissolved gold, silver and copper are made into thin sheets of uniform thickness, which are then fed into a steam press to make currency blanks. After polishing and other post-processing, the blank is stamped again into a fine currency.

Zhao Ze accompanied Zhou Qingfeng around the mint, and finally went to the coin packaging line. Skilled women are packing gold, silver and copper coins one by one. These currencies will immediately become the issuing capital of the banks and put them into the market to solve the current money shortage.

Metal money will exist for a long, long time until the process of color printing and currency paper is matured. Just because metal money has a natural store of value, it does not tolerate inflation, but only tightens.

"How much gap is there in the money supply right now?" Zhou Qingfeng asked.

"It's huge." Zhao Ze said in a deep voice: "We are producing more and more things, whether it is consumables such as cloth, salt, and grain, or industrial products such as ships, farm tools, artillery, and firearms, the quantity is constantly increasing. This requires the same value of currency to be put on the market to facilitate transactions.

But production does not stop, but the currency can't keep up, and about a quarter is missing. We're looking at issuing new small-denomination silver-copper alloy currencies because we're really short of copper right now. ”

"Missing a quarter, so much?" Zhou Qingfeng expressed surprise, "Counting these precious metals I got from Goa, it's not enough?" ”

"Not only did you get the currency, you got the goods." Zhao Ze said with a smile, "You used the arquebuses and artillery we eliminated to trade with the Tuwang of Goa, and got back nearly 20,000 tons of rice, cotton and teak in one go." In addition, this year's summer and autumn grain harvests have been bumper, and the grain prices in the entire Gyeonggi and southern Liaoning regions are at record lows. Low food prices have led to a significant increase in consumption.

The grain merchants in the north hate you to death, many people feel that Tianjin is stuck by you, the price of grain in the north will soar this year, and those princes and princes in the capital are stockpiling grain. But you have been transporting grain to the north, and you have even transported more grain than in previous years, and the price of this grain is not only not rising, but falling. Many people find it inexplicable. ”

Last year, the 'revolutionary army' began to build water conservancy projects in southern Liaoning and reclaim farmland. This year, Tianjin has also been vigorously invested in farmland construction. Coupled with the use of a large number of animal power and agricultural machinery, agricultural production has been greatly developed.

In addition, the entire eastern and western Liaoxi was lost to Jiannu, which was tantamount to forcibly reducing the burden of transporting grain to the north. As a result, even if there is no luck, the price of grain in the north will not rise. Many people who are looking forward to making a fortune have lost their blood and money because of this. However, the low price of food has made the bottom of the society reap huge benefits, at least in winter, it is not so easy to starve to death and freeze to death.

Now the whole of Korea and the surrounding area of Goa are being included in the sphere of influence of the 'revolutionary army', and India's grain production is not small. Next year, both localities will transport grain to the Central Plains, and with rich grain, Zhou Qingfeng will be able to unleash his hands and feet to develop industry and expand the army.

Listening to what Zhao Ze said was interesting, Zhou Qingfeng also laughed. The two walked out of the mint, and then turned the corner and entered the nearby artillery factory. Today, Zhao Ze's machinery department has established dozens of supporting enterprises in Jinzhou, which are the fruits of continuous introduction and training of talents. Although the technical level of many enterprises is particularly low, it is a process of starting from scratch.

The artillery factory was divided into several different workshops, and the person in charge of this place was Sun Yuanhua. When Zhou Qingfeng came in, he didn't see Sun Yuanhua himself, but he saw dozens of senior craftsmen who had been poached from various bureaucrats in the Ming court. These craftsmen are often not young, over forty or fifty years old. They also brought thousands of apprentices and grandchildren to become the technical backbone of today's artillery factory.

"These craftsmen are ingenious, but they lack theory. We are organizing night classes and continuous training. The entire mechanical department is currently doing the same thing. It is to transform the craftsman system passed down from master to apprentice to a school-trained engineer system. Originally, I thought it would take at least forty or fifty years to do this, but now that you have your blessed land, I think it can be done in five or six years. ”

Zhao Ze is not only an introduction, but also a gesture, and a request for resources. The traversers have now reached an agreement that the talents cultivated by the Cave Heaven Blessed Land will be given priority to the Administration Department. After all, the Ministry of Administration is the brain of the 'revolutionary army', and all kinds of development plans come from it. The brain is not good, and no matter how thick the hands and feet are, it is useless.

Zhou Qingfeng just smiled at this, and did not take it. He took a cursory look at several workshops in the artillery factory, where army guns, naval guns, and fortress guns were manufactured in different categories. And in order to meet the explosive growth of foreign trade demand for munitions, a cannon casting workshop is under construction.

Casting is much less troublesome than forging, and there are no difficulties in the process, which is especially suitable for large-scale production. Moreover, the casting does not require high-quality carbon steel produced by the converter of the steel plant, and wrought iron can be used. Zhou Qingfeng priced a six-pound cast army cannon at a thousand silver dollars, which was too black-hearted. Because from materials to labor, a six-pounder cannon costs less than a hundred silver dollars.

The mold of the sand box casting is placed on the iron frame of the workshop, and the workers carefully pour the smelted red molten iron into the mold. The whole casting process is quite fast, as long as the supply of molten iron is up, casting dozens of cannons in a day is like playing.

The cast blast embryo is cooled in a later heat treatment to improve the physical properties and then sent to the boring machine for fine processing. Finally, it was equipped with a wooden gun carriage and then it was packed and shipped away for money - for every six-pounder cannon sold, the money earned could be used to forge two large-caliber battalion guns for the Guard, or a fortress heavy gun.

So this arms business really needs to develop well.

"How many artillery orders did you pull?" Zhao Ze asked.

"The Arabs asked for a hundred, and the king of Goa asked for fifty. However, they could not afford to pay that much and had already asked for a physical payment. I allowed it. Zhou Qingfeng said.

"It doesn't seem like much. It's easy to cast artillery, and more orders should be obtained. Why don't you do a little promotion? Zhao Ze suggested.

"Price drop?" Zhou Qingfeng immediately shook his head, "It's not yet a fight, and when the fight starts, the price of arms will only rise." I'm now figuring out how to do business in Europe. If you want to be rich, those Europeans are really rich. Moreover, the profit margin of buying arms alone is too low, so I feel that more after-sales service should be provided. ”

After-sales is the real money!

A cannon brush can sell for a sky-high price.

Zhou Qingfeng and Zhao Ze both laughed. When the two walked to the last workshop of the artillery factory, they saw several oversized caliber short-barreled heavy guns being assembled. Zhou Qingfeng had never seen this kind of cannon, so he asked, "Who is this for?" Fortress cannons? Siege artillery? ”

"No, the guns of our navy's capital ships. Naval artillery needs to be corrosion-resistant, and steel is not suitable at the moment, so these are all copper cannons. The barrel alone weighs three tons. “

"Three tons of cannon barrels alone?" Zhou Qingfeng shouted frantically: "This cannon is too expensive, right?!" “