The Empress raised her phoenix eyes, glanced at Qin Chuan, and said, "Qin Chuan, what do you think?"
"Split it in half, each of us gets 50% of the profits!"
Qin Chuan said to Lou Shishi, "Your country will send the jade over. The mining and transportation will be handled by your country, while we will be responsible for processing and selling it. We will split the profits equally."
Lou Shishi frowned and said unhappily, "How would this princess know how much you earned? What if you lied to this princess? Wouldn't that mean Loulan would suffer a great loss?"
"I'd be lucky to get half of it from you. Do you believe I'll bring my troops and just rob you?" Qin Chuan said bluntly.
Lou Shishi was speechless for a moment. Qin Chuan's style of doing things was just like that of a barbarian, completely unreasonable.
Fortunately, the green stone wasn't worth much money, so Lou Shishi thought about it and agreed.
Qin Chuan put a piece of freshly cooked mutton roll into his mouth, chewed it for a while, swallowed it, and continued, "Princess Loulan, I won't lie to you. The green stone you mentioned is actually called jade, and it's very valuable. One like the one you have is worth about 5 taels of silver."
"Five taels?"
Lou Shishi's jade eyes widened, she opened her mouth, looked at the ten jade thumb rings on her hand, and stared at Qin Chuan in disbelief: "50 taels?"
"right!"
Lou Shishi's pupils widened even more, and she exclaimed in delight, "The Five Ends Land has many green stone mountains, with endless green stones. Wouldn't that be 50,000 taels... 500,000 taels... 5 million taels?"
The more she talked about it, the less she dared to think about it.
The entire Loulan Kingdom's wealth couldn't possibly be 5 million taels, yet this small Wuduan region is already richer than a country... Tsk tsk, it's truly unbelievable!
Seeing her delighted expression, Qin Chuan then uttered something that left her speechless—
"Theoretically speaking, if all the jade from your country's five most remote regions were mined and processed into jade artifacts, the value would be well over 50 million taels!"
The Loulan princess, dressed in red, couldn't help but stand up: "What did you say! 50 million taels!?"
Meanwhile, the wealthy merchants from Loulan at another table couldn't sit still any longer. They said in broken Chinese, "50 million taels? Then...aren't we...getting rich?"
Qin Chuan gestured for the Loulan princess and the wealthy merchants to sit down, and then slowly said, "What I'm talking about is a theory, just a hypothesis. The reality is that, whether it's your Loulan or our Daqian, there isn't much demand for this kind of jade. According to our dynasty's statistics, last year the entire Daqian region only had 200,000 taels of silver in jade transactions."
Upon hearing this, Princess Loulan and the wealthy merchants immediately sat down, looking dejected. Lou Shishi sighed, "In that case, it would be better to do the cattle and sheep business!"
"Not so!" Qin Chuan smiled. "Jade is a luxury item, and luxury items mainly circulate among the gentry and wealthy. Last year, the market transaction volume of jade was low because there was no such good Hetian jade available. But once such good quality Hetian jade is put into the market, the entire Daqian market can reach a scale of at least 300,000 taels, or even 400,000 taels!"
Lou Shishi's expression changed slightly, her green eyes sparkling, "If it can really reach that level, it would be better than doing cattle and sheep business."
Qin Chuan smiled and continued, "The reason why Da Gan can only reach a scale of 400,000 taels is because Da Gan has been quite turbulent in recent years, with wars, natural disasters, and so on, leading to national unrest and people going hungry. However, once Da Gan enters a period of national peace and prosperity, the market size of jade will expand by at least 3 to 4 times, which means it may reach a scale of more than 1 million taels. Of course, the national treasury revenue will also rise accordingly."
Upon hearing this, the Empress was taken aback, thinking to herself, "If my great efforts truly bring peace and prosperity to the country, wouldn't my national treasury's tax revenue reach tens of millions of taels of silver?"
This number was only reached during the reign of Emperor Taizong!
Lou Shishi parted her thin lips slightly and said, "If we can reach one million taels, then our Loulan can also get five hundred thousand taels, which is much more than what we can earn by selling cattle and sheep. It sounds very good!"
Qin Chuan continued, "One million taels is just the amount for a large-scale operation. If we sell Hetian jade to the Jiang, Xiongnu, Dongyi, and Nanyue, and then export it to the Western Regions, or even to India, Persia, and other countries, earning ten million taels a year is not a problem at all!"
Hearing Qin Chuan's words, the Empress took out her golden abacus and tapped it away. After Qin Chuan finished speaking, she said leisurely, "If it is really as you say, jade alone can earn ten million taels. In addition, our country also has salt, tea, copper, iron, porcelain, cotton yarn, and each of them can earn ten million taels... I don't even dare to think about it!"
Qin Chuan looked at the Empress and smiled, "Your Majesty, all of these things will come true!"
The Empress glanced at Qin Chuan with her phoenix eyes, opened her mouth as if to speak, but hesitated, then said to the Loulan Princess, "Let's talk about something practical. After you return to Loulan, try to collect as much jade as possible and send it over. Let's earn the 340,000 coins we can first."
“That’s right,” Princess Loulan raised her Coke to the Empress, “Instead of daydreaming, let’s earn something real.”
Seeing this, Qin Chuan couldn't help but chuckle. Two women who loved making money together—it was quite amusing…
With the Empress's words, Lou Shishi finally felt relieved and no longer worried that Qin Chuan would really lead his troops to attack Loulan.
Thinking of his poems, every line of which called for the annihilation of Loulan, sends chills down my spine.
This guy's jokes are so outrageous, I'm really impressed!
After finishing the hotpot meal, the Empress personally signed a contract with Lou Shishi, thus concluding the transaction regarding Hetian jade.
In addition, the barter trade, in which livestock such as cattle, sheep, and horses were exchanged for large quantities of salt, tea, copper, iron, porcelain, and cotton yarn, continued as usual.
Princess Loulan agreed to send the 5,000 cattle and sheep as soon as possible. After all, with the jade business, losing these cattle and sheep wouldn't be a loss; in fact, she could still make a considerable profit.
Qin Chuan, of course, would not let this opportunity to make a fortune pass him by. He took out the Seven Dimensions and mineral water and showed them to Princess Loulan and the wealthy merchants. The merchants clapped and cheered, never expecting that the Grand Preceptor of Gan would have such abilities. Not only could he solve women's menstrual problems, but he could also invent a water bottle. They immediately bought nearly 10,000 bottles of mineral water and tens of thousands of bags of Seven Dimensions from Qin Chuan.
The land of Loulan, despite having only desert and grassland terrain, was extremely wealthy. Every household had herds of cattle and sheep, and they were well-fed and clothed. The only problem was the lack of water. The wealthy merchants bought mineral water mainly because they were attracted by these thin, cicada-wing-like bottles. They had relied on water bags or bamboo tubes to store water along the way, and with these bottles, the problem of water storage would be much more convenient.
Of course, Qin Chuan also acted like a shrewd businessman, not telling them that if they stored water in opened mineral water bottles, the water would spoil in a few days, and they foolishly thought it could be stored for a year.
After completing a series of transactions, Princess Loulan was very satisfied. Just as the Loulan army was about to return home, a small unexpected event occurred—
General Che Zhao has no intention of returning.
Lou Shishi was very surprised by this, and asked Che Zhao, "General Che, Daloulan still needs you to guard the border, why are you unwilling to return to your homeland?"
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