“Young Master, if this sea salt is used by our Dayuan people, the imperial court will naturally not interfere. However, if it is sold outside the fiefdom, taxes will need to be paid to the imperial court. Once the taxes are paid, it can be sold throughout the entire Great Xia territory.”
Qin Mo understood after listening to Lin Bo's explanation for a while. The Great Xia Dynasty had no control over the salt and iron within its various fiefdoms, but if the salt was sold outside the fiefdoms, a fixed tax had to be paid. The so-called fixed tax was a certain amount of tax levied according to the regulations of your fiefdom. For example, the fixed salt tax for a high-ranking official was 10,000 dan of sea salt. After paying the tax, you could sell it however you wanted for the rest of the year.
Qin Mo nodded. The fixed tax system in Da Xia seemed simple and rigid, but it actually prevented tax evasion. If taxes were levied proportionally, such as one-tenth, you could underreport the value of your goods and evade taxes. But with the fixed tax, it was different. If the fixed tax wasn't paid in full this year, and you sold even a pound of salt privately, that would be considered smuggling salt.
Qin Mo had a plan in mind and decided to start with Haiyan. After all, she would be arriving in the capital after autumn, and she would only have less than five months left in her own world. She would need to spend time buying weapons after getting the money! If she couldn't produce tens of thousands of heavily armored soldiers, it would be a disgrace to transmigrators.
For the next ten days or so, the people of Dayuan Danshui City believed that Prince Qin Mo had gone hysterical. He was directing all the idlers to go up the mountain to quarry stones, dig clay by the river, and build many kilns by the river to burn something... "cement".
Lin Bo and his men thought that Qin Mo should start training elite soldiers now. It would be even better if they had money to make weapons. But everyone knew that the Wangfu's warehouse was almost overflowing with rats. It would be good if they could gather enough weapons for ten thousand men. As for armor, even the imperial guards didn't have enough. You can forget about a private army in a territory.
Qin Mo, however, did the opposite. He used the limited amount of refined iron to forge several "water-powered millstones" to crush the large bluestones on the mountain into powder, making everyone secretly think he was a spendthrift.
Qin Mo ignored all of this. He built many kilns by the river, then mixed bluestone powder and clay powder in different proportions and began to calcine them separately. He then judged which ratio was closer to the optimal formula based on the quality of the cement produced, and thus improved the experiment again.
Finally, Qin Mo found the most suitable formula and production process for the current conditions. When he used cement, mixed gravel and river sand to build a simple but sturdy concrete dock on the river next to the cement workshop, everyone was speechless with their mouths agape.
"Young Master, this cement... are we going to sell it?" Uncle Lin's eyes had turned into silver.
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