Financial System Development and the Vision of All Citizens as Soul Masters

Of course, before that, Xu Mochen still had to solve one problem: the source of funds required to establish a factory for manufacturing soul-guided steam engines. Although the Sun Moon Royal Group was the most powerful conglomerate in the Sun Moon Empire, the manufacturing of soul-guided steam engines fell under the category of heavy industry. The two most prominent characteristics of heavy industry development are high investment and slow returns, making it difficult to recoup capital in the short term.

Considering the rapid development needs of the Sun Moon Empire, Xu Mochen did not intend to build only one or two production lines. Added to the costs of training the soul masters and workers needed to manufacture these soul-guided steam engines, it meant that in the short term, all the various burdens of soul-guided steam engine manufacturing would have to be borne by the Sun Moon Royal Group itself.

This burden was undoubtedly heavy, but Xu Mochen was not without options, as he held a trump card in his hand that could be used for fundraising: the Sun Moon Royal Bank.

Speaking of the financial system of the Sun Moon Empire, in fact, long before the establishment of the Sun Moon Empire, some of the most primitive currencies had already begun to appear among the various tribes. However, initially, due to the crudeness of tribal currencies, the fact that materials were chosen based on local availability, and poor liquidity, they never achieved formal popularization.

It was not until the establishment of the Sun Moon Empire that, in order to facilitate trade among the people of the Sun Moon Continent, the Sun Moon Empire officially began to issue currency made of gold, silver, and copper—namely gold coins, silver coins, and copper coins. This monetary system has continued to the present day.

After the founding of the Sun Moon Empire, many merchants, for the sake of the security of their wealth, reached an agreement with the Emperor of the Sun Moon Empire, choosing to temporarily place their currency in the national treasury of the Sun Moon Empire, requiring only the payment of a certain custodial fee to the Emperor each year.

But soon, merchants discovered that because the gold was deposited into the national treasury, and the early national treasury funds of the Sun Moon Empire were not effectively supervised and could be mobilized by the Emperor at will, much of the property merchants placed in the treasury was taken and used by the Emperor at will. When merchants wanted to withdraw their assets, the Emperor would use various excuses to shirk responsibility or simply renege on the debt.

Therefore, in order to seek another way out, many merchants united to set up specialized savings institutions and vaults, and jointly hired armed personnel to protect their property. Later, with the demands of economic development, more and more vaults began to use fundraising and lending to loan money to others for commercial investment, taking the opportunity to collect interest. This was the origin of the money shops in the Sun Moon Empire.

The establishment of formal banks can be traced back to the year 2746 of the Sun Moon Calendar. At that time, the Sun Moon Empire was in the midst of a surging tide of ideological liberation. With the rapid development of the economy and the improvement of productivity, the owners of the major money shops soon discovered that simple property custody and commercial lending could no longer meet the economic needs of modern society.

Consequently, the major money shops began to expand their scope on one hand, and on the other, they introduced a series of services including asset mortgage pawning, commercial contracts, deposit interest rates, and the exchange of gold, silver, and copper currencies.

At this point, the major money shops of the Sun Moon Empire began to transform one after another, eventually forming banks. To this day, after years of development, the Sun Moon Empire has formed a financial group led by four major banks: the Sun Moon Royal Bank of the Sun Moon Royal Group, the Nebula Bank of the Nebula Group, the Soaring Dragon Bank of the Soaring Dragon Group, and the Xiali Bank of the Xiali Group.

However, Xu Mochen did not intend to take money solely from the Sun Moon Royal Bank. After all, the amount he needed was not small, and if he took too much, it would affect the other financial activities of the Sun Moon Royal Bank. Therefore, Xu Mochen planned to create a new system of financial institutions: insurance companies, trust companies, leasing companies, and stock exchanges.

But this time, he did not intend to do it alone; he decided to join forces with the other three major banks. This was not just because Xu Mochen wanted the financial system of the Sun Moon Empire to develop collectively rather than having one house dominate, but more importantly, it involved many financial business systems.

To allow the industrial development of the Sun Moon Empire to rapidly improve, it was necessary for other groups to pool more capital so that they would have more money to buy the industrial devices he manufactured and to conduct industrial investment.

After handing over all the subsequent blueprints and design concepts for soul-guided steam engine derivatives to Kong Dehan and the others, Xu Mochen returned from the Sun Moon Royal Soul Tool Research Institute to his study in the imperial palace. At this moment, Xu Mochen was cultivating while waiting for someone to arrive. These days of cultivation had caused Xu Mochen's level to begin to loosen; he presumed that within this month, he would be able to enter the twelfth level.

However, Xu Mochen also knew that to cultivate to the twenty-first level, he had to complete the assessment set for him by the Purple Imperial Chaos Dragon King. But how easy is it to complete the assessment? At the very least, it was unlikely to complete such a task before next year.

That was fine; for now, Xu Mochen was not in a rush to cultivate, but rather needed to prepare for the series of industrial development paths ahead. Before that, however, Xu Mochen also realized the irreplaceable role of soul masters in the development of soul-guided technology.

Even if soul-guided steam engines and related products were put into production, the key components of the soul-guided steam engines would still require soul masters or soul master technicians to complete. Without enough soul masters and soul master technicians, it would inevitably be fraught with difficulties to promote soul-guided steam engines and their auxiliary products on a large scale nationwide.

But relying solely on the number of soul masters the Sun Moon Empire could currently put into industrial production, it was difficult to help the Sun Moon Empire quickly complete its industrial development. Therefore, the best method for him at present was undoubtedly to have more soul masters appear among ordinary people. There was no need to improve the quality of their martial souls; they just needed to possess soul power. It didn't even need to be very high—a few levels, a dozen levels, or even twenty or thirty levels at most would be enough.

According to the novel Douluo Dalu 1, the only successful example of an ordinary person becoming a soul master was Jixiang, the disciple taken in by the protagonist Tang San. However, for Tang San to achieve this, he relied on the Mysterious Heaven Skill he brought from the Blue Star, special acupoint-striking techniques, and a ten-thousand-year-old ginseng king! And even with Tang San's mastery of the Mysterious Heaven Skill, there was only an eighty percent chance of success!

Thinking of this, Xu Mochen felt a bit of helplessness in his heart. To be honest, although he also came from the Blue Star and his brain chip stored extremely rich knowledge, with hundreds and thousands of years of technological development, the emergence of genetic agents, mechanical prosthetics, and various superweapons meant that those ancient martial arts techniques of the Blue Star had long been eliminated and lost. No matter how heaven-defying his brain chip was, it was impossible to contain knowledge that had disappeared in the long river of history.

Not to mention the ten-thousand-year-old ginseng king! The Sun Moon Empire was not without such precious items, but they were definitely the rarest of the rare. Usually, the owners of these heavenly treasures were unwilling to enjoy them themselves; expecting them to take them out for ordinary people to try their luck? They must be out of their minds.

However, speaking of genetic agents, if he really had a way to fathom the source, essence, and production method of soul power, and then absorbed some of the unique pharmacological knowledge of the Sun Moon Continent, combined with some pharmaceutical methods from his previous life, it might not be impossible to create a potion that could allow ordinary people to possess soul power.

But even if he could succeed, the soul power possessed would only be limited to allowing ordinary people to use and manufacture some soul-guided tools with low soul power requirements. As for combat power? Sorry, although the potion could allow ordinary people to possess soul power, it could not change the fact that ordinary people have trash martial souls. Although soul masters with trash martial souls who possess soul power have a certain improvement in physical fitness compared to before, their combat power cannot increase much.

Without external help, they might not even be able to beat a soul master of the same level with a low-tier martial soul in a one-on-one fight. After all, no matter what, the other person's soul power is something they were born with, and no matter how poor the quality of their martial soul is, it is still better than a trash martial soul. But it doesn't matter; as long as they can possess soul power, any lack of combat power can be compensated for by equipping them with soul-guided weapons later on.

"It seems it's time to find some relevant books again. But if I really want to complete this plan, I'm afraid I'll need the help of that noble person mentioned by my grand-uncle." Just as Xu Mochen was thinking quietly, a figure appeared silently at the door of the study.

"Finally here?" Xu Mochen was not surprised, but waved his hand and said, "Senior Mo, has the intelligence I requested been prepared?" That's right, the figure who came was none other than Mo Wuying, the commander of the Shadow Guard.

He took a thick stack of documents from his storage soul tool and respectfully handed them to Xu Mochen, saying, "Reporting to Your Highness the Crown Prince, the information on the current situation of the ten great families has been prepared by this subject. This is the intelligence I have collected and summarized over these days." Xu Mochen stood up, took the intelligence handed over by Mo Wuying, and began to read it carefully. The more he read, the gloomier his expression became.

From the intelligence, although some members of the ten great families were in contact with some underground organizations and criminal syndicates in the Sun Moon Empire that were in the gray and black areas, and although judging from their behavior, the dealings between them were basically limited to limited transactions, it was still undeniable that these family members had the possibility of colluding with the enemy.

However, these behaviors were fortunately limited to some members of the ten great families; the top brass of the ten great families had not yet appeared to be directly colluding with unknown forces, and these were not the reasons why Xu Mochen felt angry.

What truly made Xu Mochen feel angry was the monopolistic behavior carried out by these great families in conjunction with other large groups! Among the ten great families, apart from the Xu family and the Kong family, which were royal families, as well as the Sun Moon Royal Group, and the Nebula Group led by the Ye family, which were slightly better, the other seven great families and their affiliated seven giant groups were all more or less involved in the plan to jointly monopolize the market!

More importantly, even though he had formally proposed the Anti-Monopoly Law and state intervention in the economy more than ten days ago, unfortunately, many high-level officials in the current seven major groups were secretly bribing members of the Imperial Congress, attempting to obstruct the Anti-Monopoly Law he was about to promulgate!

Now, although the seven major groups had united with some large enterprises to monopolize some industries, fortunately, the vast majority of pillar industries related to the people's livelihood of the Empire had not been jointly monopolized by them. This was mainly thanks to the fact that he still had the largest group in the Sun Moon Empire in his hands: the Sun Moon Royal Group.

The Sun Moon Royal Group controlled many industries related to the national lifeline, such as the largest banking and financial institutions, the most vast private land, the largest number of forest farms and mines, the largest-scale light and heavy industrial companies, and many other natural resources, as well as advanced soul-guided technology and industrial systems.

This meant that as long as the royal family was willing, they could completely and easily break the monopolistic behavior of the seven major group alliances in many fields. As for openly confronting the national armed forces? Sorry, the Emperor of the Sun Moon Empire also served as the Commander-in-Chief of the Sun Moon Empire's military, and he also had the Shadow Guard, the highest intelligence agency of the Empire that could not be restrained by Congress. Just relying on those private armed guards in the hands of the seven major groups, whose numbers and weapon configurations were strictly limited, to confront the royal family? Keep dreaming.

Of course, although the Emperor was the Commander-in-Chief of the military, he had no right to mobilize troops against the seven major groups at will without the legal approval of Congress and the courts. But once the seven major groups dared to openly engage in armed rebellion, the royal army stationed in Ming Capital had the full authority to take emergency suppression measures against the seven major groups in accordance with emergency military regulations without the approval of Congress and the courts.