The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Less than three days after the market opened, the total transaction volume of large-scale transactions in Bagua City had already been tallied.

"General, the transaction volume in the past three days has exceeded ten million taels. This group of foreign merchants alone has paid six million taels of tax. Adding the customs duties paid by the merchants within the pass and those from Tianzi City, our Guanxi Tax Bureau is expected to exceed fifteen million taels of tax this year!"

The head of the Kansai tax office in Iri trembled at the mention of such a large sum of tax money.

They reviewed the old accounts of the former Bei State's Ministry of Revenue.

In its most prosperous year, the national treasury collected a total of 2295 million taels of silver in taxes!

Ninety percent of this comes from land tax.

The unfortunate Emperor Qianwu took over one-third of the Bei Kingdom's territory and exempted the people from land taxes for three years. Even now, only 20% of the taxes have been collected.

The imperial court only collected three million taels of silver in land tax last year!

How could the imperial court sustain its enormous expenditures?
Today, half of the economy relies on the nationwide chain of banks established during the Yongtai reign, while the rest can only depend on salt tax, tea tax, and commercial tax.

Three years ago, the Jiangnan Provincial Administration Commission alone contributed half of the nation's salt tax, tea tax, and commercial tax.

In the past three years, commercial taxes in Jiangnan have been decreasing, while Kansai has shown a trend of catching up.

This year, thanks to the tariffs from the Kansai Textile Bureau and the two border trade cities, it is predicted that it will maintain its first place and leave the Jiangnan Provincial Administration far behind.

As a result, the status and position of these Kansai tax officials would naturally rise accordingly.

How could the head of the tax department not be excited when he thought of all this?
Her eyes almost turned into hearts.

Gan Minglan, as the top official in Guanzhong, was not particularly excited:

"Tariffs are tariffs, and business is business! Foreigners exchange goods that are not valuable locally for real gold and silver. The huge interest difference will cause our gold and silver to flow out of our land."

Precious metals are non-renewable resources.

As someone from a later generation, she was well aware of the risks associated with this trade deficit.

The tax official in charge waved his hand dismissively at her:

"General, please rest assured, all transactions in Bagua City are conducted using silver notes. After the foreigners sell their goods, they still expect to buy goods from us."

Gan Minglan then asked:
“Besides the brocade from Guanzhong, where else can we find luxury goods worth tens of thousands of taels of silver to sell to these foreigners? They bring glass cups that cost tens or hundreds of taels of silver to our Bagua City and sell them for a thousand taels of silver.”

"You do the math," I said, "if you used that thousand taels of silver to buy ordinary silk and cotton cloth, how many bolts could you buy? Currently, the most expensive item in Bagua City is the Seven-Colored Shu Brocade, worth its weight in gold! The labor and effort required to weave a single bolt of Shu brocade far surpasses that of a mere glass."

This is not an equivalent transaction.

The premium has exceeded its cost price by many times!
Hearing her speak with such conviction, even the tax official in charge, who had been in a state of excitement, was stunned.
"Then, shall we find some worthless junk and sell it to foreigners at a high price?"

Yes.

This is exactly what General Gan is worried about right now!
She wanted to find something that looked valuable but was actually worthless to sell as a luxury item to those foreigners!

Gan Minglan was balding and couldn't come up with any good ideas for a while.

I can only find inspiration in places frequented by foreigners.

She was gone for less than half an hour, thankfully she didn't faint from the scorching sun.

Lu Ye, who was traveling with them, was so angry that he kept cursing:
"It stinks! It smells good but stinks bad! Doesn't the inn have hot water? Why don't those foreigners want to take a bath in this heat? Are their noses blocked?"

you do not say.

It's one thing if they don't like taking baths!

These foreigners must have used countless amounts of perfume to mask their sour body odor. Even from a distance, the strong fragrance could make you dizzy and nauseous.

People with keen senses like Gan Minglan were the first to suffer.

Lu Ye and others expressed their great admiration for the merchants from within the pass.

Even though the foreigners smelled terrible, it didn't stop them from using body language to make deals despite the language barrier.

After exhaling a few breaths of stale air, Gan Minglan used her supernatural abilities to give herself a brain spa treatment, and then her eyes lit up.

It smells both bad and smells good?

What smells good?
Is it a spice or a perfume?

Some lingering movie clips in her mind reminded her.

Perfume was a popular luxury item among European nobles and royalty.

But how can the current European perfume-making techniques compare to her max-level wood-type ability user?
Moreover, during the Yongtai era, there were far too many flowers, fruits, and trees that could be used to make perfumes!
Thinking of this, she was suddenly filled with boundless pride.

For example, aside from using her max-level wood-type ability to obtain food seeds and plant trees in the desert, she hasn't really used it for business.

It turns out, this was where her opportunity was waiting!
At noon that day.

Several jade carving and embroidery workshops in Kansai received large orders personally placed by the general.

We need 50,000 jade and agate bottles the size of eggs, which will be ordered in half a month.

Two hundred thousand embroidered sachets!
A huge order has landed!
One big payout is enough to feed you for three years!
The workshops were immediately engulfed in this enormous pie.

In order to develop perfume, Gan Minglan went into the Divine Tree Space at night to conduct experiments.

Before getting to work, I have to praise myself for my foresight!
In order to make more and better-smelling soaps, she has collected almost all the flower and herb seeds and tree seedlings with special fragrances that exist in the Yongtai Dynasty over the past few years.

Of course, this also included spices sold to Kansai by foreign merchants.

She can extract plant essences directly using her supernatural abilities.

She also has no shortage of alcohol, the solvent and fixative of perfume.

All that's left is to add fragrance.

Blended fragrances are the way to go.

They were all former urban beauties.

Who hasn't made their own perfume before?

Gan Minglan still remembers the pairing methods her fragrance teacher taught her when she first started learning:
"The top notes should be fresh and light, such as citrus, mint, and apple, to establish the first impression of the perfume."

The middle notes should use stable floral scents to define the style of the perfume.

Roses, jasmine, gardenias, osmanthus, wintersweet, tuberose, orchids are all good choices.

The base notes, with their deep fragrances such as woody notes like sandalwood and cedar, animalic notes like musk and ambergris, and resinous notes like myrrh and frankincense, add depth and longevity to the perfume.

Following this order and pattern, the rest is just a matter of free combination.

The thought that these perfumes, whose cost is almost negligible, can be sold as luxury goods to foreigners is truly astonishing.

Gan Minglan felt she could work for three days and three nights! (End of Chapter)