In June of the third year of Zhidao, Zhenzong Zhao Heng had succeeded to the throne for nearly three months. Although the year name had not been officially changed, he finally temporarily held the emperor's throne after these three months.

However, in May just passed, Zhenzong Zhao Heng discovered a strange phenomenon, that is, after the battle of the ten days after Fafeng, many ministers seemed to be extremely happy, and I don’t know why.

Although Zhenzong had not ascended the throne for too long, he had been participating in politics as the crown prince for quite some time. During his time as the crown prince, he also experienced many days of paying salaries.

Every day, although the ministers were very happy, they had never shown such a joyful expression. Even while they were happy, many ministers would be mixed with a hint of trouble.

The reason for this is that it starts with the ancient salary system. Before the Ming and Qing dynasties, the taxes were basically carried out in the form of collecting physical goods.

Since it was charged physical rent, the court also mainly used physical goods when paying salaries to officials, mainly silk and corn.

The physical goods account for about two-thirds of the official’s salary, and the remaining one-third is currency. However, since the physical goods are mainly silk and corn, the officials must take the other things to the market after leaving enough of their own weight and then use this money to buy other items needed for life.

However, this process of exchange of money has become a problem for officials at all levels, because all officials at all levels basically pay salaries within the same period, so a large amount of silk cloth or corn will flow to the market in the short term, so it is often impossible to sell at high prices during this period, which leads to officials often suffering from physical salaries.

This also leads to why officials at all levels often feel pain and happiness in the days of Fafeng.

However, this phenomenon did not happen in May just now. In the days after May's public service, every official who attended court was extremely happy, everyone was full of red faces, and I don't know what good things I experienced.

In this way, Zhenzong became extremely curious about what good things happened in the court, but the emperor did not know.

So he found Zhang Zhibai, who was his confidant when he was King Xiang, and now he had an important position in the court.

"Zhibai, tell me what good things have happened recently, why are the ministers so happy?"

"When you go back to your Majesty, I think my colleagues are happy for one reason, that is, recently, several businesses have taken the initiative to buy us for salary at relatively reasonable prices. Moreover, they are not only fair in price, but also pay for copper coins, but a kind of gold coins that are very high in quality, quality and casting."

After Zhang Zhibai heard about the problem of Zhenzong, he told him about it without thinking.

Gold coins? After hearing this, Zhenzong became more curious. Who is so rich and powerful that he actually uses gold coins to pay for it? This is something that even the court can't do.

Thinking of this, Zhenzong wanted to see this kind of gold coins. "Does Zhibai carry this kind of gold coins now? Can you borrow it from me?"

Zhang Zhibai did not agree to the emperor's request. Besides, this was not a big deal, and he happened to carry a few such gold coins on his body, so he took out one from his cuff and respectfully handed it to the emperor.

After receiving this gold coin, Zhenzong watched it repeatedly, and put it between his teeth rudely and took a bite. Then Zhenzong was surprised to find that what Zhang Zhibai said was not false. These gold coins were all of the best choices in terms of quality and quality.

Moreover, the seal above is quite exquisite and unique. The gold coins do not have square space in the middle like copper coins, but a perfect whole. The gold coins have two sides, one with a character printed on one side, and the other with four large characters, Tongbao, the Song Dynasty.

This is a huge difference from the copper coins with the word "Yuannual name" and "Tongbao", but it is not limited to this. The fonts of the first and the five characters of the Song Dynasty, namely Tongbao, are also extremely unique. Zhenzong himself can write good characters, and his father Taizong is even more good at cursive, official, running, seal, eight fen and flying white. However, Zhenzong has never seen the fonts used for these five characters on the gold coins.

The font used on the gold coins is horizontal and vertical, thin and thick, with edges and corners, square characters and hard strokes. It has a strong smell of carving on the carving board with a carving knife, which makes Zhenzong feel novel.

In fact, it is no wonder that Zhenzong is new. In order to prevent imitation, Zhao Weiji took out the Song font in later computers that used by default to use the font for these five characters.

Because the Song Dynasty characters lacked changes, they were easily reduced. Therefore, they developed greatly when a large number of books were printed in the Ming Dynasty, so this was a font suitable for engraving.

In addition, since Zhao Weiji was a top-notch otakus in his previous life and had been facing computers for a long time, he was most familiar with this font, so he directly quoted it.

However, it is said that Song font was created by Qin Hui, and this is also a font derived from Huizong's thin gold style. However, no matter which statement, the person who created it has not been born yet, so Zhenzong naturally did not talk about this font.

Although I have never seen this type of font, Zhenzong, as a master of calligraphy, can naturally feel the beauty revealed in this type of font. In addition, the appropriate size, tight texture and excellent quality of the entire gold coin have given Zhenzong a considerable impact.

In front of this gold coin, he suddenly felt a sense of crisis, not sure why.

In fact, Zhenzong didn't understand. This was his political sensitivity that reminded him in his subconscious that the appearance of this kind of gold coins might cause something bad.

However, due to the limitations of knowledge in this era, Zhenzong could not realize that it was a bad thing.

This is because there are too many cases of private coins minting in Chinese history. Sometimes the imperial court cannot control it. If the proportion of private coins containing copper is low, it is easy to find out. If the quality is almost the same as that of the official one, there is no way to ban it.

What's more, what is placed in front of Zhenzong now is gold coins, gold coins of high quality. Gold and silver have always been used as currency in China. However, because the output of gold and silver in China is small, it is often used to create jewelry. This has led to relatively little gold and silver circulating on the market, which cannot meet the circulation of currency, which has to use copper coins with a larger output as currency.

However, no emperor in all dynasties has forbidden the use of gold and silver as currency. It’s not that he can’t, but that he dares not. After all, no one can guarantee whether there will be any problems with the copper coins suddenly. Once that day comes, gold and silver will be the king.

Therefore, the old saying goes, antiques in prosperous times are good, gold in troubled times. Once it reaches a troubled time, gold can still maintain its value.

Even so, no emperor had ever thought that gold could replace copper coins and become the main currency, because all the emperors and Yanjing knew that there was too little gold that could truly flow among the people.

Because of this reason, although Zhenzong felt a little uneasy, he did not go into it in depth, but allowed the gold coins to continue circulation. He did not think that anyone could be as rich as a country.

But there is a person who simply talks about the amount of gold, which is completely fine to disrupt the major cities of the Song Dynasty. That person is Zhao Weiji.

Although there has not been much trade ties with the Song Dynasty in recent years, Xinhua City has established good trade routes with other regions, especially the Arabs. This group of big investors who had gold in this era and oil in the future were the main customers of Xinhua City.

Due to the low tax rate in Xinhua City, some goods that compete with the Song Dynasty goods among Arab merchants have stronger competitiveness. Moreover, because the ships in Xinhua City are larger and advanced, Xinhua City pays more attention to the development of commerce, so now more and more Arab merchants, and even European merchants from farther away, have begun to trade with Xinhua City.

These merchants, like the Central Plains and the surrounding countries, used copper coins, and those places used real gold and silver. In addition to Zhao Weiji's sinicization and "plunder" of the surrounding Indians, he has accumulated huge reserves of gold in addition to digging gold in the mines around Xinhua City.

These golds can not only be fully satisfied with the circulation and use of Xinhua City, but also give Zhao Weiji the strength to leverage the Central Plains monetary system.

In addition, due to the existence of exchanges and banknotes, Zhao Weiji can use the gold existing in the exchanges like modern banks to do other things, which makes his strength in gold even more powerful.

In this way, without Zhenzong's knowledge, a "financial giant" with rich economic knowledge in later generations took advantage of the opportunity of changing the emperor of the Central Plains to let his men enter this land with a large amount of gold, hoping to do something.

Behind this "financial giant" is the largest business alliance in the entire Central Plains. Zhao Guangyi looked down on businessmen without showing off his watch, Zhao Weiji didn't know what kind of power the businessmen had.

The thousand-year-old policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce cannot stop the birth of generations of legendary merchants.

Not only that, due to the early intervention of Zhao Weiji, a time traveler, the chamber of commerce, which was born hundreds of years, was advanced in advance. The emergence of the chamber of commerce has integrated the power of a large number of merchants today.

The lack of attention from the emperor of the dynasty made the Chamber of Commerce develop in an orderly manner towards Zhao Weiji's expectations, so until now, merchants have enough energy.

When these two forces are combined here again, Zhao Heng's headache is coming soon.
Chapter completed!