“…… The entire kingdom has run out of gold, silver, jade, and pearls! The gold and silver that our tribe's caravans had just exchanged for porcelain, slippers, sea salt, and salted fish from far inland were all here. ”

Wen Deji sat cross-legged on a plastic sheet, and pushed a small rattan basket over with some helplessness. Inside were the gold, silver, and precious stones that the tribal caravan had recently exchanged, as well as the only remaining stock of precious metals in the kingdom of Hunghitizgan.

Wang Qiu took the basket, just took a cursory look at it, and felt that the shape of these gold ornaments was twisted, and it was obvious that it could only be recast after taking it back, and the fineness was generally not very good, it seemed to be mixed with a lot of impurities, not to mention any 24K pure gold, I am afraid that even the purity of 18K was not there.

If you take them to a gold store or bank in the plane, the other party will only give a purchase price of about 300 yuan per gram at most.

In addition, the weight of these gold nuggets and gold grains is only about one kilogram, plus those silver and precious stones, after bringing them back, they can be exchanged for about 1 million yuan, which is just enough to buy a slightly decent house in a big city......

Well, that's a lot of money for just four people.

But the problem is that this money is not pure profit, and they still have to buy a lot of goods for Wendesi!

Otherwise, how could this small and stormy regime withstand the impending storm of Spain?

In this princely state, which was barely made up by exiles, the authority of the chiefs was not as great as that of the traditional tribes, and it was impossible for every member to give voluntarily, and if they wanted to take their gold and silver, they had to be exchanged for "equal value".

- In order for the Indian women to willingly hand over the gold bracelets on their wrists and the golden hairpins on their heads, the travelers had to bring in all kinds of colored cloths, porcelain, cheap glass jewelry, and small mirrors from later generations;

In order to get the Indian warriors to voluntarily remove the gold and silver ornaments embedded in their weapons, the traversers had to provide them with mellow soju, novel curry powder, monosodium glutamate and other condiments, sharper stainless steel kitchen knives and other cold weapons;

In order to "upgrade civilization" in this obscurantist country and further develop the productive forces, Wang Qiu had to purchase a large number of vegetables and seeds for grain crops, as well as supporting fertilizers and steel farm tools - hoes, shovels, shovels......

In addition, there are small carts for transportation, solar-powered street lamps for lighting, cement for renovating houses, mountain bikes for his own use, and illegal homemade muskets that can only fire iron sand...... Well, Zuihou was confiscated by the police for a contraband, and it didn't cost anything.

In order to prevent the germs brought by the Europeans and the time-travelers from causing a catastrophe in this isolated primitive country, and to prepare for the impending brutal war, Wang Qiu and his team must also purchase a large number of aspirin, oral penicillin pills, anti-inflammatory powder, Yunnan Baiyao, and most importantly, smallpox vaccine and syringes - so many medicinal products, which add up to a terrible price!

Zuihou, the four traversers are not volunteers for voluntary labor, at least Wang Qiu has always wanted to take his share of gold.

It is important to know that even in the eyes of modern people who have one foot in the age of electronic money, gold still has infinite magic.

Those who treat medals as broken pieces of iron do so because they have never stood on the podium and enjoyed that incomparable glory!

Those who don't know the magic of gold are also because they have never really witnessed the brilliant golden light emitted by a large pile of gold in front of their eyes!

As the famous line from Shakespeare's play: "...... Gold, yellow, glowing, precious gold! With just a little bit of this thing, it can turn the black into white, the ugly into beautiful, the wrong into right, the humble into noble, the old man into a young man, the coward into a warrior......"...,

At least, when Wang Qiu got the box full of small gold and silver nuggets from Princess Maca, he was indeed as if he was enchanted, and he was in a daze for half an hour, playing with those golden nuggets one by one, refusing to let go for a long time......

Unfortunately, in order to expand the scale of trade as soon as possible, all the gold was sold as payment, and not a single dividend was used.

Therefore, when he heard that the gold was gone, before the others could speak, Wang Qiu couldn't help but be a little anxious.

“…… Literary chief, now is not the time to be stingy with this bit of gold and silver! If you can't make use of modern industrialized products and improve the overall strength of your side as soon as possible, when the Spaniards come to kill, even if you have more gold, silver and jewelry in your hands, what use can you have? ”

“…… I really don't have any more gold! Wen Deji smiled bitterly and spread his hands, "...... I'm afraid you don't know that the elder of the town even pulled out the gold tooth in his mouth in order to buy your Red Star Erguotou......

Speaking of this, he couldn't help but sigh again, "...... Where else can you let me get gold? ”

To be honest, although Wen Deji occasionally has some brains that can't turn around, he is definitely not a miser like Grande.

In this barbaric age of Central America, even if you have more gold, what can you buy?

Corn? Dried fish? Dog meat? Cotton cloth? Crussy pottery? Or obsidian-polished stoneware?

As the future heir of a small state or a large tribe, he will not feel that he lacks any of the above. And the modern goods brought by the traversers from the afterlife, even if it is a Sprite or a stainless steel fruit knife, they can't be bought on this shijie for any amount of money.

What's more, the armies of the Aztec Empire were on the other side of the mountains, and the sailing ships of the Spanish invaders were already roaming the Gulf of Mexico, and the date of destruction was approaching...... If he can't enhance his comprehensive strength as soon as possible, take the initiative to participate in this crucial history of ups and downs, and change the tragic fate that was already doomed, then even if he hoards more gold in his hands, he can only invite the looting and massacre of the Spaniards.

However, the gold and silver were indeed gone, and in order to pay for the goods, the local Indian women even cut off a gold nose ring from Zuihou. If you want more gold and silver, you can only wait for the tribal caravan to find a way to raise it elsewhere.

And this obviously takes a long time.

In the face of such a bottleneck in payment capacity, Wang Qiu and others are also unthinkable.

But after checking the account books, Wang Qiu was quite surprised to find that during this period of time, they seemed to have collected five or six kilograms of gold from beginning to end, plus more than a dozen kilograms of silver......

“…… Hey, Chief Wen, you have a territory of hundreds of miles at the moment, but you can only get such a small amount of gold and silver, it's too pitiful! Isn't Central America in this era supposed to be full of gold and silver treasures?

In those pirate legends, the treasure ships of the Kingdom of Spain were the most tempting prey in the entire Age of Discovery! Later, the Mexican Eagle Ocean was widely circulated in the entire Chinese market...... Why can't you even put together a box of treasure here? ”

“…… Alas, young man, you don't seem to have learned enough about foreign history! The mining of those big gold and silver mines was all a matter of the Spanish colonial era! In Mexico these days, there is not so much gold and silver! ”

In response to Wang Qiu's question, Professor Yang immediately pulled out a book of information notes that he had compiled by himself and explained the reason.

It turns out that there are a lot of gold and silver minerals in this part of Mexico. But the problem is that the Indians, who were in the Stone Age, were very backward in mining jishu, and at best they could only mine a small part of the veins in the open pit. …,

Moreover, most of Mexico's gold and silver veins are located in uninhabited areas, and few indigenous people have set foot in them.

So, in the early 16th century, before the Spanish colonizers invaded, the total amount of gold owned by the indigenous people of Mexico was actually very limited, and it was far less abundant than some adventurers thought.

The reason why the first Spanish explorers set foot on this land had the illusion that the Aztec Empire was full of gold and silver, and even exaggerated it as "El Dorado", was mainly because the Aztecs used almost all of their gold to decorate palaces and temples, or made all kinds of jewelry to hang on their bodies, and did not mint money into the treasury - their hard currency was obsidian and cocoa beans!

In fact, many of Europe's kings who were worried about their fiscal deficits at that time could have achieved a more exaggerated and ornate visual effect if they had used all the gold and silver in their coffers to decorate their palaces.

As for the contemporaneous Great Ming Dynasty, not to mention, if you can exhaust the treasury, it is not a dream to cast a golden house to hide Jiaojiao!

For example, in the case of the rich families of the later era of paper money, although they wore gold rings and necklaces, and displayed gold artifacts in their mansions, these things were really nothing compared to the deposits in their banks. The gold and silver that the bandits were able to rob from a billionaire's house would not even be worth 100,000 yuan.

Therefore, the Spanish adventurer who conquered the Aztec Empire, His Excellency Colster, after two years of bold adventures and arduous battles, finally conquered the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan, but they were disappointed by the amount of wealth they had looted from the city.

According to the notes of the Spanish missionaries at the time, after deducting one-fifth of the tax paid to the Spanish king, as well as the major expenses of the expedition (ships, food, munitions, etc.), plus a share of the property left to himself, his subordinates, who were full of wealth, were in fact only able to receive 60 to 80 pesos worth of gold, silver and precious stones (the old Spanish currency) each.

What's worse is that Colster's expedition did not receive government support from the beginning, and these explorers basically purchased weapons and equipment and daily necessities at their own expense, at that time a crossbow was sold for 50 pesos in the Spanish New World colony, a steel sword cost 30 pesos, and as for the treatment of various tropical diseases, at that time they had to sell for sky-high prices, and many people owed doctors a lot of debt.

In this way, relying on the little loot looted from the ruins of the Aztec Empire, these Spanish explorers who crossed the ocean and died died after two years of hard fighting, instead of making any huge profits, they had to lose their pants......

As a result, as soon as this dismal distribution plan was announced, Colster's men almost broke out into a riot. Zuihou was still in charge of Colster, and he gave them the land of the Aztec Empire, which was barely appeased.

As for the huge amounts of gold and silver that the Spaniards later plundered from Mexico during the colonial era, it was up to them to find their own way to prospect and mine and then dig out of the ground - and the more powerful traversers were obviously not in a position to do so.

Although Wang Qiu and they can get the distribution map of various minerals in Mexico from the Internet in later generations. But the problem is that none of these gold and silver veins in Mexico are currently outside the territory of the Hungsiutizgan Kingdom. In order to occupy these places, the traversers would have to climb thousands of kilometers of mountains and deserts, and they would have to defeat the Aztec Empire in their way before they could do so, which would be irrational in the face of an imminent invasion by the Spaniards, and would only deplete the indigenous Mexicans and destroy their potential market. …,

On the contrary, the Inca Empire, located in the mountains of Peru in South America, was the real El Dorado. Another famous Spanish conquistador, who led more than 100 people to conquer Pizarro of the Inca Empire, easily looted 13,000 pounds of gold and 26,000 pounds of silver from the country by kidnapping the Inca king for ransom. The Peruvian silver mines, which were later mined on a large scale, were also claimed to have long provided half of the silver production of all shijie – a far inferior amount to Mexico's gold and silver deposits.

“…… Therefore, if we want to directly obtain a huge amount of gold and silver through trade, we must go to the Inca Empire, thousands of kilometers away to the south, to find a way. The Aztecs in Mexico did not have much gold in their hands, and even less in the hands of their Aztec neighbors, such as the Mayans, Tlaxcala, and Hunsutizgans on this side. ”

Professor Yang summed it up this way, "...... In my opinion, if you want to continue your business for a long time, you should not stop at gold, silver and gemstones, but diversify your business and see what other trading items are worth bringing back! ”

——————————————————————————

Well, given that the local people of Hungshuitizgan have basically run out of gold and silver, it is indeed time to think of other ways of trading.

But the question is, apart from gold, silver and jewelry, what other good things can be taken back to future generations in the hands of these natives?

Skins?

In Central America these days, there were no large animals at all, and otter skins were produced thousands of kilometers away in North America. Senior Wen Desi tried everything he could, but he only got a bunch of old dog skins and rabbit skins that had already lost their hair and changed color, and they couldn't sell for any price.

As for the jaguar's skins, there are only two of them in total for the Hungshutizgans, one is the ancestral cloak of the Great Chief of Avaha, a symbol of royal power; One is Ms. Apopina's ornate robe, representing her status as a "jaguar warrior...... No matter how you look at it, you can't just sell it.

In addition, when they were searching for rare animal skins with Wen Desi, Wang Qiu and the others found a very rare human skin robe and two even rarer human skin drums...... As a result, they were all scared, and Cai Rong, the head of Lori, couldn't help but vomit again and again.

Handicraft?

Yes, when the Spanish invaded the Americas, they destroyed a large number of valuable local artifacts, such as the bark books of the Mayans. Many things of the Native Americans in this era are out-of-print treasures in later generations, and they can definitely be sold for a high price as long as they are picked up. Don't worry about carbon-14 identification or anything - these ancient artifacts are usually one or two thousand years old, even if the production age is shortened by 500 years, they are still cultural relics!

The problem is that if it were the kingdom of Honshutizgan before the invasion of the Aztec army, it might indeed be possible to find many old sculptures, frescoes, and relief panels in the temples, palaces, and noble residences of the capital.

But at present, the people of Hongshutizgan who live in these newly built villages and towns are all war refugees who fled after the death of the country, and it is impossible to carry too much bulkiness and burden with them when they flee at the beginning.

Despite this, Wen Desi still carried a few bottles of Red Star Erguo Tou as a trade item, and walked around several villages and towns, and although the villagers were all very cooperative, they only collected some exquisite flint knives, jade pendants, and obsidian amulets. And according to them, these things are also very new, and they have not found any old antiques with hundreds or thousands of years of history.

In line with the idea that chatting is better than nothing, everyone still sent these flint knives, jade pendants and obsidian talismans back to the next generation, and then the well-connected senior sister Ma Tong went out and took them to the familiar vendors in the flower and bird market to sell on consignment. …,

In addition, her family's online store on Taobao also launched two new advertisements in due course:

“…… Dear, now sell a variety of handmade Indian-style stone knives! The stone knife has a rough shape, a sharp blade, can cut fruits, the handle is beautifully carved, the pattern is full of original charm, and the pieces are not the same! Now in the hot promotion, free shipping! ”

“…… Dear, now sell all kinds of handmade Indian-style amulets! There are various shapes such as the god of rain, the god of the sun, the god of feathered quell, the god of corn, the jaguar, the parrot, etc., in order to thank the new and old customers for their patronage, special preferential activities are currently being launched, buy one get one free shipping! ”

However, compared to gold and silver jewelry, these things are too slow to realize, and it should be thankful that they can all be sold in half a year...... Considering the huge difference in the speed of time on both sides of the wormhole, I am afraid that the Spaniards have already conquered Mexico before the funds are returned!

zuihou, Senior Wen Desi was forced to have no choice, so he simply took out a bunch of small squares tightly wrapped in oiled paper and plastic film.

“…… These things were stuffed into crystal skulls by Mexican drug dealers before I crossed over, and they were worth tens of millions of dollars, so let's just use them to offset your bills! As for whether they are cocaine or something else, you can only analyze and study it yourself! ”

In the face of this rogue trick, Wang Qiu, Ma Tong, Cai Rong and Professor Yang were all choked and rolled their eyes.

“…… Actually took drugs to pay the bill...... Senior, don't talk about how to sell drugs, you want us all to eat guns?! ”

-- Although the method of drug trafficking was rejected at the first time, the problem of the bottleneck of payment capacity still cannot be solved.

With nothing to do, Senior Sister Ma Tong, who has always been like a cloud on the horizon, actually suggested to excavate the ancient royal tombs of the Hongxiu Tizgan Kingdom and become a captain of Jin. Then he was told by Wen Dehei, who looked embarrassed, that the tombs of the kings of this sad country had already been excavated by the Aztecs!

“…… I really can't think of a way! Moon scratched at his unkempt hair in infinite anguish, "...... There are no silver mines, no gold mines, no precious stones, no oil and gas, not even iron ore and coal mines! There are few pearls in the sea, and the tropical fish caught are also ugly...... Alas, the territory of this country after the defeat is too small and barren! Except for the fish in the sea and the trees in the mountains, and the crops in the corn fields, there is almost nothing to be produced! ”

Hearing Wen Desi's frustrating words, the rest of the people were also melancholy, and they couldn't stop sighing again and again.

However, Wang Qiu suddenly had an inspiration in his mind, and he couldn't help but look happy, and jumped up with a slap on his thigh.

“…… That's right! Even if there is nothing in this place, at least there are trees! That's great! Senior! I've got an idea! ”

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