The translucent lens sparkles in the light of artificial light.

The inkstone platform cooperated with a papermaking workshop to make this blue core paper.

There were people coming and going in the basement, Gu Chuan stared at the reflection of the mirror, his mind was ethereal, and he was eager to try.

Obviously, there is a problem with this industry.

Rushing to get started, rushing to raise funds, and rushing to spread the results is a disease. But this is not also a kind of helplessness. Because without accumulation, it is impossible to be perfect, and without experience, you need to start from scratch.

"With the design of this paper and the use of this mirror, your ambitions are probably not limited to a division of Sunset City, right? Do you want to open a branch? ”

The concave-faced merchant looked sideways at him.

The world has long had the concept of branches. For example, the Yantu family's pawn line is to drive from the inner city all the way to the outer city, and even in several large villages around Sunset City!

"Of course, with one, naturally want to have two."

Gu Chuan smiled.

Not even just Sunset City, he also wants to open the bank to more villages and try to form a union. In the process, money can be used to build a network of collectors of curiosities.

It's just that who can I confide in this kind of thinking?

He chose to remain silent.

"And your use of strange objects is also ingenious."

The concave face merchant said.

"Interest is the best teacher! I've always been interested in curiosities. Don't you think these little strange things are precious? Gu Chuan first asked rhetorically, and then said, "It's just that there is no financial resources, so this can't be involved." Now that he has money, like those rich and noble patients in the inner city, he can't put down his love for strange things. ”

They walked back.

"This cannot be said nonsense, citizens are not rich and noble patients, nor are they in love with strange things, they are only in love with powerful strange things...... Like you, you're interested in weak curiosities...... I've only seen children like you who came out of the village and were so curious. "But that's only because they haven't paid attention to their surroundings, and they haven't dug underwater or underground into Sunset City. If they did, they would find that strange things were everywhere. The real Sunset City has been commonplace since childhood. ”

"It's okay to be commonplace, but I haven't seen many strange things wandering around in Sunset City, right?"

"So you know what? Gu Chuan. Many of the things that are now taken for granted were once considered strange by the people of Sunset City. ”

Twilight shines through the new transparent glass and scatters it in all the rooms of the city. The wind from the river blew into thousands of households, and rushed into the corners of people's clothes.

These words made Gu Chuan's eyes open wide in surprise:

"What does that mean?"

The concave-faced merchant put his hands on the window, leaving a shallow mark of his hand on the clear glass, "Just like this transparent glass, when I was still nursing, this glass was once regarded by my parents as some special curiosity, shining on the glass day and night at various angles, hoping to find out the special power of the glass, like the mirror that is said to cause fire, able to shoot through the enemy!" ”

"The result?"

Gu Chuan asked curiously.

The concave merchant said calmly:

"I remember they wrote a detailed guide to clear glass, which I still have in my house today. As a result, the day after the writing was completed, the caravan told them that a village had mastered the art of firing clear glass, proving that clear glass was in fact the same as ordinary colored glass, and that it was not some flawless crystal, nor was it a sacred diamond. They brought with them a large shipment of clear glass. My dad was so angry that he smashed the old clear glass in the house. Then the broken glass stabbed into the temple, and he died. ”

This made Gu Chuan funny, and Gu Chuan was shocked, and apologized to the concave-faced businessman:

"I'm sorry, I didn't expect Ling Zun to be so unfortunate to go away......"

"It's fine, it was a long, long time ago." The concave-faced merchant smiled and waved his hand, pursed his lips and said, "But before artificial transparent glass existed, there was transparent glass in nature. There was a trend in Sunset City at that time to find the function and meaning of transparent glass. ”

"Is Sunset City found now?"

"Whoa." The concave-faced merchant pointed to the window and snorted, "Now, I'm afraid, I think, this has no meaning or any purpose, just to be used here as a decoration." ”

"But isn't this the first person to put glass in the wall to let in the light, giving it meaning and function?"

The fiery red dusk was so bright in the transparent glass that it seemed to be burning the sky, spreading endlessly.

The concave merchant tugged at the corners of his mouth, and the sunken face with a collapsed nose seemed to agitate, and it was his laugh that looked a little horrified at first glance, but when he became familiar with it, he would find it funny:

"Probably yes, probably yes! Ha ha! You can say something strange that I don't understand! ”

Along the corridor in the hallway, the two walked upstairs. When a concave businessman passes by, he occasionally looks into the classroom. The apprentices recruited by the bank from various villages sat in the classrooms and listened to the people on the podium begin to tell the history of the world. They were dressed in overalls and most of them had a sign on their chests. Inside the sign were their own badges made from those two strange things.

Most of these apprentices have strong expressions and are full of joy in life.

This is an expression rarely seen on the faces of border dwellers by concave faces.

Then the concave merchant said:

"That's a surprise! Usually, I can only see a little sad expression, complaining, but I don't know how to work hard! ”

"Knowing that you can go up, being promised to go up, feeling that you can climb to the top, naturally feels joyful."

Gu Chuan didn't like this, and said slowly.

"But most people who feel this way can't climb to the top. In Sunset City, it has been a long time since there has been a border family that can enter the inner city again. ”

The concave merchant shook his head.

Most of these apprentices knew the name of Gu Chuan, the founder of the bank and one of the inventors of the bicycle, and those who didn't know him knew that this person was the owner of the place where they worked.

It's just that when Gu Chuan and the concave-faced businessman walked by the window, no one looked out, none of them were looking at them, but listening to the teacher's speech.

For a moment, Gu Chuan actually felt like a class teacher or principal who inspected the school's teaching situation.

The corridor was empty, and only some external personnel were walking. The complexion of external staff varies. Some of them were arrogant, and when they saw Gu Chuan walking by, their faces changed suddenly and they smiled. Some don't care about it, avoid people, and don't want to bump into any Rizhao villagers, and only chat with apprentices who are not deeply involved in the world.

The concave-faced merchant knew that these were hired teachers, who might have been down-and-out citizens or poor scholars who had been educated somewhere, but who were now teaching their apprentices arithmetic or cultural lessons at the bank's training office.

There are many things that the concave face merchant does not understand.

For example, this training class is something that concave businessmen don't understand. In his opinion, the quality of these people is enough now, so why bother taking more classes? For example, those answers to chickens and rabbits in the same cage or the problems of ancient history, what is there to talk about? Will they be able to use it in their work? Instead of learning general knowledge here, it is better to work directly and accumulate experience.

In particular, the concave-faced businessmen know that the work that these people do with "labor dispatch" is not very high-level, and it is already a terrible thing to use addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, so why waste such efforts?

But he didn't ask, but thought it was the habit of the young man of Rizhao Village, who had made a fortune, to be a vassal and elegant, and pretended to praise it:

"It's just that you are not bad, you can awaken their self-motivation, so that they can work harder and do their work well, and it will not be a loss to you for spending money on cultivation."

Gu Chuan didn't mean any joy at this praise, he only glanced at the concave-faced merchant, causing the concave-faced merchant to squint.

This young man also cares about the left and right, and when it comes to other things, he picks out the deepest meaning of the concave-faced businessman.

"Now I think. I'm afraid you didn't just come here to see how I used the strange things here, right? ”

"Of course, there are other purposes."

The two of them came to the makeshift conference room, and after the concave-faced merchant closed the door, he was neither smiling nor expressionless, and he slowly revealed his other meaning today:

"There is another family in the inner city that has deciphered the technology of bicycles, and I thought about it for a long time the other day and decided to dilute my own stock as you say...... Let the Deep Earth family be able to take a stake. ”

Nothing in Sunset City remains unique for long.

This is the case with bicycles.

In just two solar terms, there have been inner city families who have used the method of dismantling to decipher the technology of bicycles, but they do not know much about some of the precise parameters of the components, but it is not a problem to imitate a movable pedal two-wheeled bicycle at all. According to this law, some families have tried to produce bicycles, forming a trend of competition with concave face merchants.

And the Shendi family, which was originally related to the concave face merchant and helped the concave face merchant, is now also concerned about the side line of this family, and it is no longer a tributary of the family insiders.

You must know that after the Shendi family's strange trade was warned by the council, the internal morale was sluggish, and it was a time of depression to need some good news to refresh and uplift, which also showed that the Shendi family was no longer obsessed with the strange trade.

This is the political side that concave businessmen need to do.

The next solar term is the solar term of Hakuro.

When you get up in the day, you can see a layer of white and flawless dew on the leaves of the trees, it means that the solar term has been transformed, and the white dew solar term has arrived.

On the third day of the Bailu solar term, the concave-faced merchant diluted more than half of his shares and gave them to the Shendi family.

The Shendi family was greatly satisfied with this, and then sent a management team of nearly 100 people to the concave face merchant's industry.

This news unexpectedly benefited Chuanshui Bank, or First Bank.

"Why is that?"

While arranging flowers, Yuhua asked Gu Chuan, who had just taken a bath and was wearing a loose yukata.

Gu Chuan yawned and ate something before he propped his head and said with his eyelids lowered:

"Because of the interference of the richest Shendi family in Sunset City's bicycle industry, it also represents the rapid appreciation of our stock bonds."

Yuhua only stared at Gu Chuan at that time, slightly puzzled:

"You look...... So melancholy. ”

This is a euphemism for a bad face.

"Because I'm in a bit of trouble."

Gu Chuan showed a smile.

Bikes are not unique. Naturally, banking isn't unique in Sunset City.

Sunset City's currency is the Chameleon coin. The chameleon itself is a commodity that is difficult to ban, but its private casting is strictly forbidden by the council, and it is killed until the head is rolling. Therefore, the people nominally only have non-monetary processing factories for color-changing stones, and generally process color-changing stones into jewelry or drill bits used in mining exotic objects, which are controlled by the Yaoshi family, which also belongs to the inner city family.

There are quite a few citizen merchants in Sunset City who have become rich in business and have possessed a large number of color-changing stones through various means. But unlike the big inner-city families who hold large tracts of land, they will store the color-changing stones in the hands of the medicine stone family for safety and to avoid theft and robbery. And the merchant's certificate of taking the color-changing stone is the stone evidence.

This long-term wealth preservation and certificate itself is a prototype of the bank.

After learning of the existence of the bank, the Yaoshi family thought about the same as the stored chameleon, and decided to set up a similar currency dealer.

At that time, it was known as Yaoshi Bank or Second Bank.

The bank in Rizhao Village is known as Chuanshui Bank or First Bank.

This is undoubtedly a big shock.

Because of the imperfect mechanism for withdrawing money and depositing funds among civilians, coupled with the problem of the trust system, it is simply impossible to absorb the deposits of the largest number of people.

In fact, judging from the current social development situation, only the wealthy among the border people (such as merchants) and citizens will actively choose to find other ways to preserve their wealth.

For quite a few people, even if they use interest to induce and threaten with the concept of inflation, most of them will not waver in the face of such a potentially unsafe thing.

"Wouldn't it be nice not to take deposits?"

In response to the impact of the Pharmastone Bank, the young people of Rizhao Village immediately held another meeting.

Here's what Riverbank says:

"Ogawa, did you say? I think we're doing a good job now...... I don't need to make it bigger, I don't feel at ease if I have more money...... The security facilities here kept me awake all day and night, for fear of missing a penny. The big vault is still under construction, and I'm afraid that someone will do something in the project, staring at it every day, and I'm so nervous! ”

His words resonated with other teenagers. The ambitions of this group of simple guys who were seduced quickly disappeared in a comfortable life.

So the naivety made them think that the well water did not interfere with the river water, and it was not bad to live mildly and gently, according to the current way.

It's just that Gu Chuan can't think like this.

"Have you ever thought about the riverbank?"

Gu Chuan, the only one who opened his eyes and knew countless examples of other worlds, could only sigh:

"Will Pharmastone Bank spare our lives?"

"Ah......h

The riverbank snorted stupidly, and the quickest minds of Qinglu and Pebble already frowned, guessing the situation.

Gu Chuan said unhurriedly:

"Okay, let's say PharmaBlock wants to get bigger, will that take away deposits from us? This kind of taking away is not peaceful, nor is it taken away by them personally, it does not cost a single soldier, only propaganda. ”

"Propaganda?"

"For example, many businessmen heard the propaganda of Yaoshi Bank, heard that Yaoshi Bank had a large number of color-changing stones as confidence, and felt that Yaoshi Bank was safer and more profitable, so they took Yaoshi Bank as their first choice, took their deposits from us and deposited them in Yaoshi Bank, and then ...... Guess what we're going to do? ”

Halfway through Gu Chuan's words, the faces of the young people were already difficult to see.

They are just naïve, they are not very experienced, and they are not hard enough to fall on their heels, but they ...... It's not stupid, it's not disobedient.

The lights flickered, and the figures flickered in the lights.

"So what do we do?"

One after another eyes shot at Gu Chuan's body. For some reason, Gu Chuan lowered his head, sighed, and said:

"I'm trying to figure it out, too."

Then, after a while, they saw the clean fingers of the leader of the same age tapping lightly on the table, and said earnestly:

"Just like a concave face businessman, we also need to find a strong enough backer."