Da Tang Si Zi: My Six Super Rich Little Nuggets!

Chapter 339 Selling Official Positions and Amassing Wealth—The Myth of Accumulation

Zhen Xiaosi paused, her hand holding the abacus beads. Her eyes darted around, and the rustling of the sycamore leaves outside the window sounded like the grain sacks being shaken off by countless tenants as they paid their rent.

She gazed at the densely packed list of estates in the ledger and suddenly chuckled softly—people only know that royalty and nobility spend money like water, but they don't know what an intricate network of wealth lies behind these glittering estates…

Take, for example, the way land and fiefs were granted; it was truly a model of being blessed by Heaven. The princes received permanent land, a hundred hectares spread out, more orderly than the chessboard of Chang'an City.

Zhen Xiaosi said to Zian, "If all these lands were connected, they could probably stretch all the way from Daming Palace to Luoyang City."

The fiefdoms were even more interesting. In name, the taxes from a thousand households were to be stuffed into the pockets of nobles. Although what they ultimately received was converted into copper coins, the gleaming silver flew in like snowflakes, making anyone who saw it envious.

As for the manor economy, that was the nobles' secret to quietly amassing wealth. Zhen Xiaosi remembered passing by Princess Taiping's estate once. From afar, the wheat fields stretched across the hills like golden waves, mules and horses chewed hay in their stables, and the sound of shuttles from the spinning mills rose and fell. Tenants bent over planting rice seedlings in the fields, their heads bowed like rice stalks, and the grain they brought out to pay rent piled up like small mountains, enough to feed the high-ranking officials and nobles of Chang'an for a whole year.

Zi'an interjected, "I heard that later Princess Taiping even raised sheep and planted mulberry groves, making the entire manor a veritable treasure trove that lays golden eggs."

Zhen Xiaosi used a silver hairpin to light the candle on the table, making the words "official salary" on the account book shine brightly. These were the rewards that the emperor had bestowed upon the emperor in the Golden Palace.

She once saw her brother Qiu Rongmu receive his monthly salary as a first-rank official, and thirty strings of copper coins filled half a room—an amount that an ordinary family couldn't earn even after wearing out ten plows.

Even more wonderful were the palace's rewards. Last year on the Dragon Boat Festival, Yang Guifei's third sister, Lady Guo, received ten cartloads of Shu brocade, each woven with flowing lotus patterns. She directly transformed her residence on Zhuque Street into the Yunjin Pavilion, and even the threshold was inlaid with South China Sea pearls.

Speaking of taxation, Zhen Xiaosi's fingertip traced the red stamp on "tax-exempt land" in the ledger, a mocking smile playing on her lips. Those land deeds bearing the seal of a prince could make all the taxes in the entire Weibei Plain bypass them.

She had heard from a caravan that a certain military governor had set up three tax checkpoints at Hangu Pass. Each time a salt caravan passed through a checkpoint, 30% of its goods had to be left behind. Eventually, the salt merchants simply set the price of salt at the price of pearls, and ordinary people had to think twice before buying any salt.

The sound of copper bells from the government-run workshops suddenly came to mind—it was the official brocade workshop of the Imperial Household Department, where hundreds of weavers worked day and night on their looms, producing brocade that could reflect human figures.

Zhen Xiaosi touched a piece of freshly made fabric, which was lighter and thinner than a cicada's wing, but she heard that the cost was entirely covered by the national treasury and that all the money from its sale went into the emperor's private coffers.

Princess Taiping was even more impressive, extending her business directly to the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Lacquerware from Sichuan and ivory from Lingnan were all transported freely using her travel permits. Her merchant fleets lined up in the canal, creating an even more magnificent spectacle than the imperial procession.

However, what made Zhen Xiaosi's heart race the most was the salt and iron business.

She had seen counterfeit coins on the black market, made of copper and tin mixed with lead oxide, which could leave white marks when thrown on the ground. And those warlords who controlled the salt wells treated the snow-white salt as if it were worthless silver—in the year Liu Yan reformed, the salt profits from the Jianghuai region alone amounted to six million strings of cash, enough to fill three Hanyuan Palaces.

Once, she passed by the Hedong Ironworks and saw bare-chested craftsmen taking iron ingots out of the furnace. Sparks flew onto the governor's brocade robe, making it look like a handful of gold leaf had been sprinkled on it.

Zhen Xiaosi touched the gilded armor on her chest, her gaze sweeping over the list of exotic tributes piled up on the table. In her view, the wealth of the Tang Dynasty was not entirely built from farming and business, but also from two little-known but extremely lucrative sources—the smoke of battle and the incense of Buddhism and Taoism.

First, let's talk about the business on the battlefield, which can be described as a business with no capital and huge profits.

Zhen Xiaosi remembered the battle in which Li Jing defeated the Eastern Turks, which was described in great detail in the history books. The battle report stated that "hundreds of thousands of livestock were captured." However, she knew that of these hundreds of thousands of livestock, only three or four tenths actually went into the national treasury. The rest of the fine horses, foals, fat sheep, and cattle were turned into living wealth in the estates of nobles.

Some lucky minor nobles could even acquire a few Turkic slaves, which they could then resell to the Chang'an entertainment district for a windfall. The tribute trade along the frontier was an even more ingenious business. Every year, the Uyghurs would send caravans to "pay tribute," and when the horses were valued, the imperial court would generously pay three times the market price. These horses would then be labeled "Imperial Gifts" and sold to Western Region merchants, generating exorbitant profits.

Zhen Xiaosi once joked that the horse market in Chang'an probably fluctuated with the emperor's mood. As for Buddhism and Taoism, in Zhen Xiaosi's eyes, they were two inexhaustible gold mines. She remembered that when Wu Zetian was a devout Buddhist, the temples built under Princess Taiping's leadership were even more magnificent than the imperial palace.

Under the guise of "promoting Buddhism," each temple actually concealed vast tax-free "merit fields," with the profits split 50/50. The temple gained empty fame, while the nobles reaped the real benefits. Even more outrageous were the cultural transactions, where nobles could exchange a plaque or a poem for real money.

A nouveau riche merchant, wanting to appear cultured, spent a hundred taels of gold to have a prince inscribe a message for his shop. This tale circulated throughout Chang'an for a long time. Zhen Xiaosi shook her head upon hearing it—this wasn't selling calligraphy; it was clearly turning privilege into gold dust, sprinkling it into the hearts of merchants. As for the rare ancient books and paintings by famous artists, monopolized by the nobility, the profits from reselling them were even more astonishing. The authentic works of Wang Xizhi circulating on Chang'an's black market—how could they be without the support and encouragement of the nobility?

Zhen Xiaosi chuckled softly: "Zi'an, do you know why those nobles who wield immense power always fall to their wits' end at the height of their glory?"

Zi An shook his head.

A sly glint flashed in her eyes as she lowered her voice and uttered four words—"Dunning-Krug effect."

Zi'an's hand holding the teacup trembled slightly, and the tea soup rippled in the cup.

Zhen Xiaosi rose and paced, her skirt sweeping across the Persian carpet: "This is a groundbreaking discovery made a century ago by the Western medical masters Dunning and Kruger, specifically for curing those arrogant fools. Look at those newly arrived nobles, they only have a few acres of land but dare to challenge the established aristocrats, thinking they can turn the world upside down; on the other hand, the families that truly control half the country always say on the surface, 'We're just trying to make a living.'"

She suddenly stopped in her tracks, her eyes piercing: "Just like those self-proclaimed shrewd merchants in Chang'an, who always thought they had figured out the ways of the nobility, but in the end they couldn't even see through the traps they were set up."

Zi'an nodded: "The most terrifying thing in this world is not incompetence, but ignorance of one's own stupidity—the more narrow-minded a person is, the more they think the sky above their head is the entire universe..."

Xiao Si summarized the essence of the Dunning-Kruger effect: "Those with low ability tend to overestimate their abilities; those with high ability tend to underestimate their abilities. Moreover, both tend to exceed the average level by a large margin... This is indeed a problem that those who want to get rich should think about carefully."