"Teacher Su... can these banknotes really work?"
Mu En's hand still trembled slightly as he held his teacup.
Although Su Xian's picture of "exchanging paper for soul coins" was enticing, the Limit Douluo who had spent two hundred years born and raised on the Douluo Continent was still filled with dread toward such intangible financial methods. "What if... what if we issue too many, nobody accepts them, and they turn into wastepaper?"
"That's because you people don't understand the essence of money at all, or the pain points of large-scale commercial transactions!"
Leaning back in his bamboo chair, Su Xian rolled his eyes toward the voice as though looking at an illiterate. "Let's follow your scenario! The Douluo Continent still settles payments in Gold Soul Coins, right? For ordinary people buying a couple of pounds of meat or a few pieces of clothing, Gold Soul Coins are great. Hard currency."
"But!"
Su Xian emphasized his words. "What about the 'large-scale procurement for industrial assembly lines' Shrek Academy wants to undertake now? Metal transactions running into tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of Gold Soul Coins! Do you understand what that means?"
"How much do tens of millions of Gold Soul Coins weigh? How much space do they take up?!"
"How many high-ranking Soul Masters would you have to hire to escort them? Even if you have high-grade Storage Soul Tools, those things are rare strategic resources too, aren't they? If jealous Evil Soul Masters or desperate outlaws rob you during transport, who bears that loss?"
"Extremely high transportation costs, enormous security risks, and funds circulating as slowly as a crawling tortoise! That's the absolute fatal weakness of using physical metal currency for bulk transactions!"
Qian Duoduo nodded repeatedly as he listened.
As the Soul Tool Department's vice dean, he knew all too well the agony of traveling to the Three Great Empires and the Sun Moon Empire to purchase metal in bulk each time. The slightest carelessness by the escort team could mean losing both lives and money.
"And paper currency?"
"In essence, it's the tangible embodiment of Shrek's ten thousand years of unrivaled credibility!"
"As long as Shrek keeps enough soul coins in its vaults, maintains reserves guaranteeing that paper currency and soul coins can be exchanged in either direction at an absolute one-to-one ratio at any time, and never overissues or issues recklessly! Believe me, all the major merchant groups and great nobles across the continent will go crazy for these banknotes bearing the Sea God Pavilion's seal, for the security and convenience of their transactions!"
"Because a single sheet of paper can represent Gold Soul Coins, and you can carry it away tucked inside your clothes! Who the hell would still want to use soul coins?!"
"Well..." Mu En and Qian Duoduo exchanged a glance.
Indeed, if the Sea God Pavilion guaranteed them, who across the continent would dare question these banknotes' gold backing?
"Then comes the most exciting part: reaping the harvest."
Su Xian picked up his Goji Berry Tea and moistened his throat, breaking down this ruthless scheme of "snaring a white wolf empty-handed" in detail. "Shrek opens branches of the Sea God Pavilion Bank in the major cities of the Three Great Empires."
"Major trade associations and nobles deposit enormous quantities of soul coins for safety, and you issue them easily carried, high-denomination banknotes. If they make fixed-term deposits, you can even pay them a little interest."
"Uncle Mu En, Uncle Mo Niu, use your heads! Would every merchant and noble under the heavens withdraw all the Gold Soul Coins they deposited with Shrek on the same day, at the same moment?"
Mu En shook his head. "Unless the sky falls, that's absolutely impossible!"
"Exactly! That's the time gap!"
Su Xian roared excitedly, "As long as there isn't a catastrophic bank run, hundreds of millions, even billions of idle soul coins will always be sitting in Shrek's vaults!"
"Then! You take this astronomical fortune that originally belongs to other people, bypass the middlemen trying to blockade you, and buy out the mining rights to those massive rare-metal deposits for ten years, even a hundred years, paying in full!"
"You don't even need to touch Shrek's own original treasury! Use the enemy's money to buy out the enemy's sources of supply! By the time those trade associations catch on, not only will their mineral deposits be gone, but..."
Su Xian let out a derisive laugh that struck straight at the heart. "The funniest part is, those major trade associations trying to strangle Shrek economically might have already deposited everything they own in your Sea God Pavilion Bank to keep their own treasuries safe!"
"Use your money to cut off your escape!"
Mu En suddenly realized something.
How the hell was this merely resolving a crisis caused by a trade association blockade?
If this financial system called the "Sea God Pavilion Central Bank" and "banknotes" truly took shape, when the lifeblood funds of the Three Great Empires all flooded into Shrek's vaults, when merchants across the continent became accustomed to trading with the Sea God Pavilion's banknotes...
What Shrek held would no longer be mere supremacy in Martial Souls!
Instead, it would have its hand directly around the economic throat of the entire Douluo Continent, controlling everyone's lifeblood and fate!
This was truly victory without bloodying a blade!
This was truly subduing the enemy without a fight!
So what if the Sun Moon Empire's Soul Tools were incredible?
Once Shrek's central bank started operating, using the entire continent's wealth to build up industrial assembly lines, it would only take running the printing presses to batter the Sun Moon Empire fifty years backward economically!
Utterly shaken, Qian Duoduo looked at the blind young man sitting in a battered bamboo chair, his eyes wrapped in gauze as he drank Goji Berry Tea.
In Qian Duoduo's eyes, how was this a volunteer teacher in the mountains? He was plainly an immortal who had fallen from heaven!
"Teacher Su! How... how does that brain of yours even work?!" Qian Duoduo's reverence came from the heart.
Putting on an exaggerated country accent, he began pouring out flattery:
"You're practically an immortal descended to earth! Good heavens, my dear mother! If you really transmigrated to that Shrek Academy, all those damned elders and deans in the Sea God Pavilion put together wouldn't have the brains in one of your fingers!"
"Teacher Su, with this ruthless scheme of yours, forget saving Shrek. Even unifying the whole continent would only take a few words from you!"
"Hahahaha! Uncle Mo Niu, you've hit the nail on the head!"
Hearing such blunt, enthusiastic praise, Su Xian found his vanity, pent up in the mountains for more than half a month, immensely satisfied.
He smugly crossed his legs and began climbing the pole he had been handed, recklessly unleashing indiscriminate point-blank fire:
"Of course! If I really transmigrated into 'Peerless Tang Sect' and became Shrek's chief financial officer or director of its reform committee, those elders of the Sea God Pavilion would be nothing but a bunch of dickheads who couldn't even read a ledger!"
Just as Mu En was about to voice his agreement, the smile on his face froze.
Dickheads?
But Su Xian clearly had no intention of stopping. He enthusiastically began naming names:
"I won't even bother with Yan Shaozhe, that idiot who only knows how to chase romance. Industrialization will weed out his sort sooner or later."
Outside the window, Yan Shaozhe rolled his eyes, already numb to it.
"Let's talk about Qian Duoduo, the Soul Tool Department's vice dean!"
Su Xian raised a finger and jabbed it in the air, his face full of disdain. "Always pinching pennies! That guy's just a simple-minded blacksmith with overdeveloped limbs! Not a shred of strategic vision, only knows how to hammer a few scraps of sheet metal, and he thinks he deserves to be vice dean?"
"..."
The words fell.
The brilliant smile on Qian Duoduo's face, as he had been showering Su Xian with flattery just moments before, instantly froze.
I'm fucking flattering you, and you call me a blacksmith to my face?!
"And then there's Xian Lin'er!"
Su Xian seemed to be getting a high from his tirade, dragging out the Soul Tool Department's dean to flog her as well. "At her age, her temper's still more explosive than a Fixed Soul Cannon Shell! She's just an old menopausal berserker of a woman! All she does is fight over Yan Shaozhe's affections. There isn't the slightest concept of economic development in her head!"
"People like them have neither foresight nor scope! If they worked under me, I'd be embarrassed even to have them carry my briefcase. I'd send the whole lot straight down to the workshop assembly lines as off-the-books labor!"
A gust of autumn wind swept past.
Qian Duoduo clenched his fists.
If the blind man before him hadn't just contributed a brilliant financial strategy capable of saving Shrek's ten-thousand-year foundations, if Limit Douluo Mu En hadn't been warning him fiercely with his eyes...
Qian Duoduo swore he would absolutely have pulled out a Class 8 Soul Guidance Ray Gun right then and blasted this bastard who didn't know the height of heaven or the depth of earth into ten thousand chunks of charcoal!
"Pfft-!"
Yet amid this oppressive atmosphere...
An insolent, muffled laugh came from outside the window!
It was Yan Shaozhe!
Crouching at the foot of the wall, Yan Shaozhe clamped his hands over his mouth, laughing so hard he nearly cried, his whole body curled into a ball in the mud!
Wonderful!
This felt so fucking wonderful!!!
Although Su Xian had casually called him an "idiot chasing romance" again, he wasn't angry in the slightest!
Because he was finally no longer the only victim!
He watched Qian Duoduo, who always needled him during Sea God Pavilion Meetings, get called a "blacksmith" to his face by Su Xian, while his ex-girlfriend Xian Lin'er, who constantly mocked and sneered at him, was called an "old menopausal berserker."
Yan Shaozhe felt a hundred times better than if he had eaten ten supreme-grade immortal herbs in a row!
Hahahaha... Qian Duoduo, oh, Qian Duoduo, so you've finally had your day too! Yan Shaozhe laughed maniacally in his heart.
He suddenly discovered that the feeling of watching his old rivals get insulted by this blind man...
Was simply... the greatest pleasure on the entire Douluo Continent!
Before you continue