light, short, scattered

Chapter 69 "Game of National Destruction" Part [-]

My name is Goudan, and I am a graduate waiting to graduate.

My best friend Dahai and I started studying together in elementary school, and we also went to the same school in middle school and high school.

This led to us having a secret hangover before graduating from high school and choosing the most difficult Chinese Studies major for college.

Yes, Chinese studies are the history of the country.

The ancient writing is difficult to understand, and the unofficial history is complicated.

Our country’s Chinese Studies major has only 27 students nationwide.

Not because of difficulties, but because our country has long since perished.

It's ridiculous and sad.

There is only one continent and three countries in this world.

Two big and one small, and we are a small country.

2000 years ago, our small country sandwiched in the middle was attacked by two powerful neighbors.

Our nation's warriors are simply unable to withstand the firepower of enemy armies, or even to alleviate the despair of their own people.

The two superpowers chose to start the First World War outside our nation's walls.

If the troops are stationed within the length of our country's territory, whoever of the two sides will push the other side's army out of our country's borders first.Whoever wins will win, and the reward will be our country’s territory.

And we simply cannot fight, regardless of whether both sides win or lose.

We are like a plate of fish between two predators, and the predators are covered in blades.

This battle lasted for eight years, and both sides suffered numerous casualties but no winner was determined.

Our small country has been piling up corpses and armors that cannot be processed. As soon as the two sides cease fighting, we need to clean the battlefield.

In the past eight years, no one in our country has been worried, fearing that one day we will wake up and our country will be destroyed.

All people will be captured and become slaves of other countries.

The old king of our country paid countless tributes to the two great powers almost every year.

Basically, except for the food and water sources to maintain survival, almost all the contributions were divided [-]-[-] to the two powerful countries.

But they have no intention of stopping, and their wavering hearts will always be strengthened again by the enemy's war reports.

It was never-ending until the eighth year, when Prince Jock replaced the old and disease-ridden king.

Everything turned around, King Chok was not paying tribute to either country.

Instead, he went to the meeting alone with a few followers and went to the two powerful countries to meet the king.

He met with the kings of the two powerful countries respectively, and each spent a long time speaking out his theory.

Early the next morning, both powerful countries withdrew their troops.

There are many versions of this conversation, and Unofficial History even praised King Jock to the sky.

A messenger of God, the smartest man in the world, and so on.

But the most reliable and acceptable version is that King Chok elaborated on the negative effects of the war, comparing the decline in the treasury of a powerful country over the past few years with the pressure on families caused by the deaths of people joining the army.

It’s really cool to imagine these scenes, because as long as King Jock says the wrong thing, it will bring death.

These words should have touched the powerful king, but they were clever enough not to make him furious.

After that, they took out eight or more years of trading in exchange for a small country's territory for comparison.

Of course, these are just lubricants before the final trump card is played.

And this final trump card is the testimony of King Jock's greatness.

Just five words: War turns to business.

The powerful king was confused.

But after King Jock explained, the powerful king nodded angrily and said that he would agree as long as you can convince the enemy country.

The result can be imagined. The next day King Jock rode off to another great country to repeat his old tricks.

The next day, the two powerful countries withdrew their troops.

Converting war to business is pretty much what it sounds like on the surface.

Cancel this eight-year protracted war and let the two countries send caravans to both ends of the small country.

Unify the national currency and allow merchants to do business.

It is limited to one year, and both parties provide profit-making funds.If you exceed half of the opponent's funds, victory is declared and the territory of the small country is obtained.

The referee is King Jock. After declaring victory, King Jock is willing to take off the crown and let the victor do whatever he wants.

This reasonable and legal transaction obviously made both powerful countries feel that they were at a disadvantage.

But the real winner is King Jock.

Almost the next day, due to the withdrawal of the two powerful countries, the panic of the people in the three countries disappeared.

Then King Jock converted all the gold and silver treasures that were not paid tribute this year and gave them to the blacksmith to cast them into a kind of cyan copper coins.

Within a week, this cyan copper coin was distributed to civilians equally according to the harvest and the number of members in the family.

With the caravans from the two big countries stationed, hiring local civilians to make goods and then selling them to civilians became a way to make money.

For a time, all the people lived a good life, and the hard but stable life lasted throughout the year.

The day has come to compare amounts.

King Jock stood between the caravan representatives of the two countries with a sneer.

His spies learned yesterday that both empires had secretly minted more than double the number of blue copper coins in order to win.

When the two sides announced the quantity, it turned out to be thirteen to sixteen tons of coins.

But neither side is more than half as good as the other.

Both parties knew there was something wrong, but neither party admitted that they were cheating.

These coins were piled at both ends outside the city wall. King Joke picked up one with a smile and said: "I will design an anti-counterfeiting mark. You all go back and report the situation to the king and come back next year?"

King Jock just added a circle of patterns around each green copper coin, and then let the caravans from the two countries take them away.

That's it, year after year.

Reforming copper coins year after year.

By the time the two powerful countries discovered something fishy, ​​the small country had become the most stable bridge between the merchants and people of the two big countries.

Any new gadgets that appear in the two powerful countries will first become popular in small countries and then spread to enemy countries.

The two powerful countries wanted to send troops to suppress it again, but what they got was the resentment of the people in their own countries.

Of course, the two big countries did not give up their thoughts, and they still launched their armies.

The target is not the small country, but the palace of the small country.

King Chok was put to death by soldiers from two great powers.

But the sophistry King Jock used the excuse that he could die, but the death penalty equipment between the two countries was different.

Neither country could impose the death penalty on him, allowing him to survive natural death.

King Jock died at the age of 63, having worked hard for half his life without having any children.

The statue of King Jock is built in the park in the middle of the small country for people to visit.

And since the death of King Jock, the small country has no king.

But the comparison between the two great powers never ended, and the verdict was left to the caravans of both countries stationed in the small country's mutant industries.

This industry is all kinds of banks, and the cheating methods of big countries have never stopped.

In this way, the small country became the third most powerful country between the two big countries without an army or king.

The year 2000 has passed in a blink of an eye, and the country has entered the technological era from the ancient farming era.

But nothing has changed, and this history has become the content of Chinese studies classes.

It has been repeatedly studied and organized.

Of course, ordinary citizens will not delve into this period of history, but we, the 27 Chinese students, remember everything in it.

One of the reasons why there are only 27 students in Chinese Studies is because it requires memorizing a large amount of obscure ancient texts and recording and analyzing history. Another reason is because the graduation exam for this degree is the most difficult of all degrees.

Because the Chinese studies of a small country do not belong to the academic qualifications of any of the other two big countries, and the invigilator you have to face in the graduation exam is a bank from a small country.

And this bank, supreme among its kind, is called the Green Coin Bank.

The bank's logo is exactly the unpatterned blue copper coin held by King Jock.

My best friend Dahai and I will take the graduation exam tomorrow, but we still don’t know what the exam is about.

All we know is that no one has graduated from Chinese studies for five years.

(End of this chapter)