Chapter 55: Rescue on the River

During the melting process, workers continuously stirred the alloy solution in the crucible with stirring rods. After confirming that the mixture was evenly melted, the molten liquid was poured into steel molds to create silver bars for coining.

Since silver is denser than copper and zinc, it is prone to silver sinking to the bottom and other metals floating to the top during mixed melting. Without thorough mixing, it is easy to cause the first bar to have insufficient silver content and the last bar to have an excessively high silver content. Therefore, a small amount of powder was ground from the end of the first silver bar and the top of the last silver bar from each furnace batch and sent for analysis to ensure a consistent silver content ratio in the bars.

The cast silver bars could not be used as stamping material yet. They were just castings and had not undergone the “forging” process. The finished bars were sent to the rolling workshop to be rolled into sheets of a certain size for stamping. Compared to processing steel plates at high temperature and high pressure, making silver alloy, which has good ductility, into sheets of uniform thickness and a flat surface was no longer a major issue for the current Lingao industrial system.

Next was stamping. A stamping machine was used to punch out round, blank discs from the sheets, which were the blanks for various coins. The leftover scraps from stamping were collected and remelted to be pressed into new sheets.

The silver coin blanks obtained from stamping were polished by a deburring machine to remove burrs and then sent to the pickling workshop to be cleaned of oil stains.

The washed and polished blank discs were neatly stacked into a rimming machine. This machine held each blank disc in place and then forcefully squeezed its edge to form a raised rim. This raised rim is very common on modern coins and can protect the coin’s design from wear and tear. Of course, this design was very advanced in this time and space. The mint also pressed a fine pattern on the rim during the rimming process. Under normal use, the wear of the pattern would be imperceptible to the naked eye, but once it was filed with a file, traces would appear immediately. This was to curb the very popular “clipping” trick in this time and space.

The rimmed blank coin blanks were placed one by one into a coining press. The press was equipped with steel coin dies, and the silver coin blanks were stamped into coins.

The pressed coins still needed to undergo a weighing procedure. A characteristic of stamped coins is the precision of their weight. However, in actual production, it is difficult to make every coin have exactly the same weight. This requires controlling the tolerance value.

After discussion, the industrial and financial sectors believed that with their current technical capabilities, the tolerance could be controlled within 3%. The coins were weighed on a special continuous weighing machine. The principle of the weighing machine was similar to a balance. After the coin landed on the machine’s platform, if the weight swung within a certain value, the coins would continuously flow out of the exit. Once the tolerance was exceeded, the swing would open another flap to discharge the coin.

The pressed coins were inspected by hand and then cleaned again. They were sealed in packages of one hundred with mulberry paper, stamped with the seal of the Ministry of Finance, and then placed in sturdy money boxes, sealed, and sent to the vault of the Central Reserve Bank in Hong Kong to await use.

In the mid-spring of Guangzhou, the winter had not yet ended, and there was still a lingering chill. A bleak wind and rain had just stopped, and the sky was still covered with dark clouds, adding a touch of depression to people’s hearts.

At this moment, on the Shiziyang at the mouth of the Pearl River, an Australian-style self-propelled boat belching smoke was sailing upstream. By the side of the boat, Meng Xian stared at the gloomy river surface, looking worried.

It was now the seventh year after D-Day, the year 1635 in the Western calendar. Even according to the Datong calendar commonly used in the Ming Dynasty, the time had already entered the eighth year of the Chongzhen reign.

Since the first year of the Chongzhen reign, the northern part of the Ming Dynasty had been plagued by continuous disasters. There was a great drought in the first year of Chongzhen, a great famine in the third year, a great famine in the fifth year, a great flood in the sixth year, and an autumn locust plague and great famine in theseventh year. From the Central Plains to the northwest, the land was barren for thousands of miles, with not a blade of grass growing. The people were displaced, and the fields were filled with the bodies of the starved. Ma Maochai, the Shaanxi Provincial Inspector, said in his “Memorial on the Great Famine” that the people vied to eat the mugwort in the mountains. When the mugwort was finished, they peeled and ate the bark of trees. When the bark was finished, they could only eat Guanyin soil, and finally died of abdominal distension.

The Later Jin in Liaodong also raided the borders year after year. The court not only did not provide relief to the disaster areas, but instead intensified its taxation. The officials forced the people to rebel, and countless starving people who could not survive rose up in arms. The north was filled with smoke and dust, rotten for thousands ofmiles, and the people were plunged into misery.

In the eleventh month of the sixth year of the Chongzhen reign, a large number of peasant rebels from the northwest crossed the Yellow River and entered the Henan region.

In the seventh month of the seventh year of the Chongzhen reign, the Later Jin entered the pass for the second time, ravaging the areas of Xuanfu and Datong.

In the first month of the eighth year of the Chongzhen reign, thirteen groups of peasant armies from seventy-two camps, including Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong, Lao Huihui, Luo Rucai, Ge Liyan, Hun Shiwang, Jiu Tiaolong, Zuo Jinwang, Gai Shiwang, Heng Tianwang, Shun Tianwang, Guo Tianxing, and She Tatian, gathered in Xingyang. Li Zicheng, a general under Gao Yingxiang, proposed the strategy of “dividing the troops and attacking in four directions.” Afterwards, Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong, and Li Zicheng led their troops south to Fengyang, dug up the ancestral tombs of the Ming imperial family, burned down the Huangjue Temple where Zhu Yuanzhang had once been a monk, killed more than sixty eunuchs, beheaded the commander of Zhongdu, Zhu Guoxiang, and plundered countless rare treasures. The court was shocked, and many insightful people in the court and among the public secretly sighed: this Ming Dynasty is probably finished.

As a large number of refugees, gentry, and wealthy households fled to the south, the harmonious and peaceful city of Guangzhou instead added a distorted prosperity. The Senate’s industries, such as the Ziminlou, Zichengji, and the Grand World, were booming. At the same time, batches of refugees without a livelihood were transported to Lingao by sea to enjoy the “benevolence” of the Senate.

The fruit was already rotten. To take advantage of his illness and take his life, the Senate launched the Guangdong campaign at this juncture, which was tantamount to stabbing this weak patient again. From the bottom of his heart, Meng Xian was quite sympathetic to the plight of the Chongzhen Emperor in the Forbidden City, who was desperately trying to maintain the situation despite knowing that it was hopeless. It was something that ordinary people could not understand.

However, Meng Xian was not happy at all. As the president of the Delong Bank and the president of the Guangdong branch of the Central Reserve Bank, he was the commander-in-chief of the Senate’s financial front in the new district of Guangdong. It was his inescapable responsibility to maintain the financial and financial stability of the new district, so he felt a heavy pressure.

In the cargo hold of this ship was the new currency he had just withdrawn from the Hong Kong warehouse of the Ministry of Finance. 200,000 yuan of silver coins of different denominations: this batch of silver coins was mainly half-yuan and 20-fen subsidiary coins. There were not many 1-yuan coins. They were mainly used for the office expenses of the army and administrative agencies after entering Guangzhou. After all, a 1-yuan coin weighed more than seven mace of silver, which was a bit too high according to the current purchasing power of silver on the market in Guangdong.

In addition to the silver coins were 20 boxes of banknotes, also mostly subsidiary coins, with a total face value of one million yuan. This money was the “start-up fee” for the Guangdong Grand Area Government of the Senate. Not only that, but it also had to be used to try to maintain financial stability on the market.

The mint in Hong Kong was still continuing to mint silver coins, and the printing presses in the Lingao printing house were also continuing to run. However, he knew that the available resources were limited, and he had to find a source of revenue for this newly established regime as soon as possible.

“You have a look of worrying about the country and the people. Is something on your mind?” A teasing voice came from the side.

“Get lost. I’m so burdened that I can’t breathe. What country am I worrying about?” Meng Xian turned around. The person next to him was Liu San. He was appointed by the Ministry of People’s Livelihood and Labor this time to be in charge of the sanitation work in the new district. The reason for choosing a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner was probably because the Senate did not have many modern medical supplies to support the new district, so it was better to start with traditional Chinese medicine that could be implemented with local methods.

Liu San nodded: “We are all going to cook without rice.”

Just as Meng Xian was about to speak, he suddenly heard a crew member exclaim in surprise. He turned his head and saw several crew members pointing at a black dot in the middle of the river ahead. Liu San was a little nearsighted and it took him a while to roughly determine that the black shadow was probably a person. Meng Xian had practiced in the shooting team and had excellent eyesight. He saw him tightly hugging a piece of wood, drifting downstream, sometimes submerged and sometimes floating. He did not respond to the crew’s shouts, and it was unknown whether he was dead or alive.

At this time, the captain came to ask for instructions. There was someone floating on the river. Should they rescue him?

Because the ship was loaded with “special grade materials,” the captain did not dare to decide on his own whether to slow down to rescue the person.

Meng Xian saw that the ship had already sailed near Yuzhuzhou, not far from the Grand World. This was the Senate’s sphere of influence, and the public security had always been good. There were no suspicious phenomena around, so there was no problem. He immediately agreed to the rescue.

The captain ordered the ship to slow down. Several experienced sailors jumped into the river and dragged the person onto the boat. Liu San went forward to check. The rescued person was a young man of about twenty. He must have been in the water for a long time. His skin was bruised and purple, his teeth were clenched, his expression was painful, his body was cold, and he was in a semi-comatose state.

Everyone worked together to carry him into the cabin. Liu San saw that his breathing was fine and he had not drowned. He ordered someone to pry open his mouth and feed him half a bowl of hot water. The young man gradually regained some consciousness. In a daze, he pressed his right abdomen and cried out in pain.

Liu San ordered his two young apprentices—these were orphans he had recently taken in; Fu Wuben was now a famous traditional Chinese medicine practitioner in Lingao—Liu De and Liu Quan to take off his wet clothes and check his symptoms. There were no external injuries on his abdomen, but his face was red, his eyes were bloodshot, his lips were dry, his breath was foul, and his tongue was red with a yellow coating. He took his pulse, which was floating, large, and wiry. The yang qi was deficient inside, and the yin cold was too strong. The pathogenic evil had penetrated deep, and the abdomen was full of yin haze. It was a critical sign of intestinal abscess, which is acute appendicitis with perforation leading to diffuse peritonitis. The situation was quite serious.

Liu San couldn’t help but hesitate a little. This was a critical situation where the evil had entered the blood, and yin and yang were on the verge of separating. The line of life was about to be severed. The illness was critical, and it could be said to be a life-and-death situation. He was afraid that using common traditional Chinese medicine methods such as Da Huang Mu Dan Tang or Da Cheng Qi Tang would not be effective in time, and the person would be gone. But there was no way to perform surgery on this boat. What should he do?

“This person’s life is in danger. It’s very dangerous!” Liu San said. “We need to operate, but we don’t have the conditions. Alas!”

“If we can’t save him, then so be it.” Meng Xian had no interest in a half-dead person. It was a casual rescue anyway. As for whether the person could live after being rescued, he couldn’t be bothered. After so many years under the rule of the Ming Dynasty, he had seen too many human tragedies, partings of life and death, and he knew very well that personal compassion could not change the fate of most people. His heart had already become very hard.