Emaciated camels are bigger than horses. Although the Kyogoku clan has fallen, it is still quite influential in the Kyoto region. With Kyogoku Takayoshi's name, generous advice, and just the right amount of skill, it took him two days to sell the imported swords, and then spent all the proceeds and the remaining softening, and set up a smelting furnace with a yard, hired a few skilled craftsmen, and purchased a large amount of copper (note 1) and charcoal, and prepared to start the business.

Smelting copper and minting money, this is how Jingzhen plans to earn the first pot of gold. Although Japan is a barren island country, it is rich in various metal minerals, especially gold, silver and copper ores. At this time, the technology of separating copper from gold and silver had not yet appeared in Japan, so the copper ore sold in the market contained a lot of gold and silver. The gold finger that Jingzhen is preparing to use is to buy a large amount of copper containing gold and silver at the cheap price of copper, and then separate the gold and silver from it, which not only obtains the copper with high purity for coinage, but also separates a lot of gold and silver for sale, which can be described as a good business that kills two birds with one stone. The mystery involved in it is the famous technology "Nanban Blowing" in the later Warring States games.

As an upgraded version of the "Ash Blowing Method", "Nanban Blowing" has the effect of significantly increasing the output of mines in the game. According to the Drum and Copper Catalogue, in the last years of the Warring States period, Soga Riemon, a famous copper smelter in the Kyushu region, learned this technique from foreign Nanban people (Note 2), and dedicated this technique to powerful daimyo such as Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. In 1590, Sogari Uemon set up his own copper-smelting shop called Izumiya near Matsubara in Teramachi, Kyoto, and began teaching Nanban Blowing among the people, and Izumiya eventually evolved into the famous Sumitomo Zaibatsu today.

As a flower planting engineer, Jingzhen looks down on the so-called "Nanban blowing" of Soga Riemon. Because as early as during his college years, he mastered the more general blister copper separation and purification technology from the "Heavenly Creations" compiled by Song Yingxing, a great scientist in the Ming Dynasty. Omitting the more cumbersome operating process, the separation principle of copper and silver (gold) can be simply summarized as two steps.

In the first step, taking advantage of the easy fusion of silver (gold) and lead, lead is added to blister copper containing silver and heated by blast to form a mixture of silver (gold) lead alloy and copper. As the temperature gradually increases, the silver-gold-lead alloy with a lower melting point will first flow out as a liquid, and then the copper will melt out, thus achieving the separation of copper and silver (gold).

In the second step, taking advantage of the fact that the melting point of lead is lower than that of silver (gold) and is more prone to oxidation, the silver (gold) lead alloy is put into the ash pit (or in the frying oven) to melt again, and the lead will first oxidize and sink to the bottom of the furnace to become lead oxide, and the silver (gold) will be enriched on the surface of the carbon ash, so as to achieve separation. This is also known as the "ash blowing method"

In addition to mastering the technical know-how, Jingzhen also learned a big killer from "Tiangong Kaiwu" - "gold furnace", unlike the Japanese "Nanban Blow" in the first step, which needs to use an iron rod to artificially control the outflow of silver (gold) lead alloy and copper solution separately, the special gold furnace in "Tiangong Kaiwu" is through the inner and outer furnace body to make the silver (gold) lead alloy melted first flow out of the upper hole. It is suitable for the need to reduce the manpower of the operator, so as to further reduce the labor cost and the risk of leakage.

Three days of sweaty hard work passed in the blink of an eye. With the last furnace of yellow and clear copper water in the cold water, it quickly condensed into a beautiful rose red; The last furnace of soot was poured into the water and carefully washed, and dozens of large and small gold and silver beans were bumped, and the mountains of copper in the courtyard finally disappeared, replaced by dozens of baskets of pointed copper ingots and two small barrels of gold and silver grains mixed together.

Jing Zhen, who had not slept for three days, stretched hard and breathed a sigh of relief. The wealth is moving, and after experiencing the betrayal on the night of elopement, Jingzhen will no longer be gullible. Therefore, after obtaining the silver (gold) lead alloy and copper, Jingzhen pretended to be done to settle the wages, sent the craftsmen away, and completed the "ash blowing method" step to finally obtain the gold and silver.

After quietly transferring the gold and silver back to the dormitory and handing it over to the surprised crane, Jingzhen fell to bed and slept for a day and a night before recovering her spirits and starting to make another living - coinage.

Although Japan is rich in gold and silver, people are still accustomed to using copper coins with smaller denominations and uniform units as the main currency in their daily lives.

Among them, a copper coin is counted as one penny, and a thousand coins are counted as consistent, which is always equivalent to about one tael of silver, which is enough to cover the annual expenses of ordinary families. Therefore, the 10,000 guan per year promised by Jingzhen to Kyogoku Gaoji was enough for him to maintain a hundred samurai, plus to pull out tens of thousands of troops in one go, which made him overjoyed and unable to help himself.

The value of copper required for copper coins is only one or two hundred coins, and the gross profit is five times as much; Even after removing additional costs such as labor and fire consumption, the net profit is three or four times higher. The profits are thick enough to drive every daimyo crazy.

Therefore, all the big names who produce copper in the territory regard private coinage as an important sideline, and dozens or hundreds of copper coins are naturally circulated in the world. Among them, the highest quality is the Ming State casting, through the exploration trade inflow of Yongle Tongbao, commonly known as "Yongle money", its copper contains eight points, the color is purple red, the casting is exquisite, and it is recognized by the people and merchants, so the value is the highest. The private copper coins of the daimyo are different due to the difference in copper content and workmanship, the best ones contain five or six points of copper, and those without a lower limit even only contain three or four points of copper, which are collectively called "bad money" (Note 2), and the exchange ratio of "Yongle money" is also three to one or four to one.

Obviously, casting "Yongle money" consumes the most copper but is the most cost-effective, but so far there has been no successful imitation of the name, and the reason is simple, but the word process.

The process used in the genuine "Yongle money" is called the sand casting method. This method originated in the Tang Dynasty, matured in the Song Dynasty, and eventually developed more than the Ming Dynasty, which is also seen in "Tiangong Kaiwu". Its specific operation is similar to movable type printing, that is, to make a carved mother (also known as ancestral money), and then to cast a batch of exquisite mother money (there are tin mother money, copper mother money, etc.) with the carved mother, and then fix a hundred mother coins with wooden frame and sand as a money mold, respectively, make face and back model, and then take out the mother money, make a gate, a straight sprue, a sub-sprue, and then fix the fan and cast copper juice. In this way, because the money can be made in batches, and because it is the whole frame of the mother money turned into sand, the sand mold is evenly stressed, so not only the degree of money casting, but also the money cast is also very uniform, which is a leap in China's (China) coinage process.

At this time, the Warring States Daimyo who privately minted copper coins only had the Yangwen Mufan coinage method eliminated by the Ming Kingdom, even if the copper content was increased, the money minted would be very unclear, and there was no certain regulation on the size, and the appearance of "Yongle money" was very different. Therefore, the daimyo can only collectively put it on the table, copying or privately issuing all kinds of "bad money" at will.

Jingzhen's reliance on this coinage is not only the sand casting method, he also intends to further reduce the copper content in the original "Yongle money", and the casting cost is lower, but the color is more golden "Yongle money plus", this improvement is not utopian, there is a real basis.

Since Jiajing, the copper material of the Ming Kingdom has become increasingly scarce, and at the same time, a large amount of lead produced in Japan has flowed in, which has led to the imperial court gradually exploring the coin-making formula of copper-lead co-casting, and the copper coins have finally been transformed into six points of copper and three points of five points of lead. Although the copper content is greatly reduced, the new coinage is golden in color, more shining, and the minting is also very good. On the contrary, the golden color is more popular and highly recognized by the people.

After making up his mind, Jing Zhen found a furnace to open the furnace and cast gold (Note 3) to recast the gold and silver obtained from smelting into ingots, and by the way, he asked him to carefully carve a slightly larger carving mother with Yongle money. Later, he walked the streets and alleys to inquire many times, and hired a rough man with a very good reputation, honest and reliable, and who did not understand the text, and brought back the rented smelting furnace, responsible for blowing the furnace, smelting the molten copper and other hard work, and handled the production of the mother's money by himself.

It was more than ten days of continuous day and night of labor, and the dozens of baskets of copper ingots smelted before were all turned into a whole house of bright and shining newly minted copper coins. After taking five pieces of money to get rid of the rough man who was tired and half dead but happy, Jing Zhen had the time to go back to the dormitory to summon the crane, and only after he was stunned for a long time did he start counting the income together.

According to statistics, counting the income from the sale of U.S. insurance customs materials, Jingzhen's start-up capital is equivalent to a total of 2,000 guan, of which the one-time cost of Jingjijia's gifts and dredging the door is about 500 guan, and the actual output of the remaining 1,500 guan is 50 taels of gold, 800 taels of silver, and 5,000 yuan of copper coins, with a total value of more than 6,000 guan. The fortunes are moving, and the original plan is disrupted by the excess profits, and Jingzhen has to prepare to visit Kyogoku Takayoshi again.

Note 1: Strip copper refers to blister copper that has been preliminarily smelted.

Note 2: Bad money, one is a coin of inferior quality; Another type of coin is coinage.

Note 3: The furnace refers to the craftsman who operates the furnace, such as a goldsmith and silversmith.