Fortunately, making money is really not a difficult thing for Yuan Yao, a modern person.

In the past half a month, Ji Ling and the others have not been idle.

Although Yuan Yao mainly stayed in Qianxian County to recuperate, he occasionally asked Ji Ling to lead the soldiers of the warrior battalion to go to various places to sweep the strongholds left behind by Chen Ce.

Although Chen Ce's lair is in the first-line Sky Canyon, there are more than ten strongholds under Chen Ce, which is not small.

As soon as Chen Ce died, the big and small leaders who followed Chen Ce at all immediately went their separate ways, and since Yuan Yao couldn't find other cottages, he could only take them under the knife.

Let Ji Ling go to sweep one by one, and the obedient ones will leave a way to live, and those who are disobedient will be directly killed and plundered the money and food of the mountain bandits.

In the past half a month, Ji Ling has swept seven or eight strongholds that originally belonged to Chen Ce, including some industries.

Among them, there is a large restaurant in Qianxian County, and a wharf on the Yangtze River outside Qianxian County.

Yuan Yao was still worried and didn't know how to make money, but after getting these industries left by Chen Ce, he immediately thought of a way.

Want to make money? Doing business is the quickest way to do it.

And what kind of goods are the most profitable and profitable?

Naturally, it is something controlled by the government, such as salt and iron!

At the end of the Han Dynasty, business was allowed, but the status of merchants was not high, and the things they sold were relatively simple, and if they wanted to make money by doing business, they either went south and north, bought special products from other states and counties, and sold them to other places.

Either it is to sell the controlled items of the imperial court.

Such as horses, tea, silk and other valuable items.

But these things are generally controlled by big families, and there is no source of their own origin, and if they want to try it easily, they can't make money, not to mention, they may lose all their money.

But Yuan Yao is different, as the county magistrate of Qianxian County, he is the official, and he can directly sell salt and iron.

Salt and iron are both extremely profitable things, and not only that, but they are also things that consume a lot of money every day, and if you want to sell these items, you can get a huge profit.

And after Yuan Yao thought about it carefully, if he wanted to make money, he had to start with salt and iron.

Compared with iron, you need to find an iron ore, then refine, forge it into iron and sell it, which takes too long and is more cumbersome, and you can't quickly realize it to make money.

The other type of salt is easier to get your hands on.

Most of the food eaten in this era is coarse salt, Yuan Yao went to the kitchen to check, it was all one grain at a time, coarse salt the size of a bean, and the fine salt of Yuan Yao's era was very different.

Not only in appearance, the coarse salt is very mixed in color, yellowish, and even different sizes, which is easy to deliquescent in the air.

The fine salt is different, not only the particle size is not much different, but the color is uniform, crystal clear, and it looks much better.

The most important thing is that it is not too difficult to turn coarse salt into fine salt, Yuan Yao learned this kind of knowledge in junior high school chemistry, and only needs to be simply dissolved, filtered, and then evaporated to obtain fine salt.

Therefore, Yuan Yao only needs to take out a part of the principal to buy a large amount of coarse salt, and then refine it into fine salt, so that he can earn several times the difference once and for all.

Salt, in the Han Dynasty, was still a relatively scarce commodity, and the imperial court occasionally took it back to the government, and occasionally allowed the people to be private.

By the end of the Han Dynasty, there were basically salt officials in the imperial court, who were responsible for collecting salt taxes, and ordinary people could also operate private salt.

It is not difficult for Yuan Yao to buy a large amount of coarse salt, on the one hand, he can find the people to buy private salt on the spot, and on the other hand, he can directly find the salt official to buy it.

And the salt official is subordinate to the Da Si Nong, and the Da Si Nong under the command of Yuan Shu is Yuan Yin, the last time Yuan Yao went out to fight the bandits, Yuan Yin left a good impression on Yuan Yao.

Yuan Yao planned to have someone visit Yuan Yin and buy a batch of salt from the salt officials under Yuan Yin.

After all, if you buy it from your family, the price can be negotiated.

Yuan Yao checked the market of coarse salt in Qianxian County, and after a general understanding of the market situation, he also had a relatively clear understanding of the price of salt.

The salt sold by the government is generally 5,000 yuan a stone.

However, because of the quality of the private salt of the people, the price is not uniform, and the price of the high-quality salt can even reach seven or eight thousand yuan a stone, which is more expensive than the coarse salt sold by the government, and the poor quality even only needs one or two thousand yuan a stone.

Yuan Yao touched the coarse salt of different colors, and thought about how to price the fine salt after making it himself.

Taking advantage of the fact that the people he sent to find Yuan Yin had not returned, Yuan Yao himself bought a batch of private salt in the hands of the people, and then began to refine it according to the experience of later generations.

Although there were no tools for refining fine salt in this era, it was difficult for him, and it was okay to find a similar tool instead.

After all, refining fine salt is not a very complicated process, as long as you know the process, it is still very easy to get out.

The next day, Yuan Yao refined all the coarse salt he had purchased into fine salt.

Looking at the pile of fine table salt on the plate, Yuan Yao directly picked up some and put it in his mouth to taste it, and suddenly a salty taste spread in his mouth.

The taste is pure, only salty, and does not have the weird taste of those coarse salts.

After tasting this fine salt, Yuan Yao nodded with satisfaction, the fine salt he had refined, whether in terms of color or taste, was far better than that kind of coarse salt.

He priced these fine salts at 20,000 yuan a stone, which should not be a problem.

Don't look at 20,000 yuan is a lot, but in fact, when converted, it's only 2,000 dollars a bucket.

One bucket is almost equivalent to twelve catties

Even in Yuan Yao's time, a bag and a half catty of fine salt cost several yuan, and twenty or so packs of salt were nearly a lot of money.

After all, salt is something that ordinary people may not eat half a bucket in a year.

If you sell it too cheaply, you obviously won't make a lot of money.

What's more, from the very beginning, Yuan Yao never thought of selling this money to ordinary people, he had to package these fine salts into noble luxury goods and sell them to those big families.

Only the big families have enough money in their hands, and they buy things more about value than price.

Yuan Yao divided the process of refining fine salt into several steps, intending to gather some trustworthy people to prepare to start refining a large amount of fine salt.

The reason why it is divided into several steps is mainly to try to control the secret of refining fine salt in their own hands, and everyone only knows one of the processes, and there is no way to refine fine salt by themselves and leak the secret.

And at this time, the person sent to Shouchun to find Yuan Yin finally returned.

and brought two not-so-good news to Yuan Yao.