Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 23 This is simply huge profit!
Zhu Houzhao also learned from Wei Bin that the person in the magnificent carriage below the stage was the wife of Prime Minister Liu Jian.

Frankly speaking, as the emperor, Zhu Houzhao naturally had no good feelings towards the Prime Minister Liu Jian, but this did not affect his business with the Prime Minister's wife.

Moreover, Zhu Houzhao thought it was quite interesting to let Liu Jian's wife exchange 60,000 taels of silver from her family for a crystal lotus-sitting Guanyin statue which cost only 2 taels.

When the Prime Minister's wife saw the emperor, she had to come out and pay her respects. Zhu Houzhao also exchanged a few words with a smile, and then asked Wei Bin to give the crystal sitting lotus Guanyin to the Prime Minister's wife.

Zhu Houzhao also received bills of exchange for 60,000 taels from the wife of the Prime Minister. These were large bills of exchange worth tens of thousands of taels each. It can be seen that the Prime Minister Liu Jian's mansion was still very wealthy. The fact that the wife of the Prime Minister was willing to spend 60,000 taels to buy a luxury glass craft was enough to prove this point.

It seems that Gu Dayong's investigation that Liu Jian received no less than 100,000 yuan in gifts every year is true.

Of course, this also further strengthened Zhu Houzhao's determination to raid Liu Jian's mansion in the future.

At least for now, Zhu Houzhao did not feel much guilt for selling a two-liang handicraft for 60,000 liang. After all, it was the people's hard-earned money, and he could give back to the people with the money. But with Liu Jian, he could only buy concubines, houses, or even some useless antiques.

However, Zhu Houzhao was somewhat surprised that the wife of the Prime Minister was really not low-key. She dared to take out 60,000 taels in front of himself, the emperor. Wasn't she afraid that the emperor would become jealous? But when he thought that he was an ignorant and incompetent monarch in the eyes of all officials, it was possible that the wife of the Prime Minister felt that she did not have the scheming and cunningness to do so and naturally ignored it.

In any case, since they came to buy handicrafts from his Royal Industrial Company, they were customers, and customers were God. Zhu Houzhao did not do anything and even asked Wei Bin to personally send the Prime Minister's wife back to the car.

The wife of the Prime Minister was indeed as Zhu Houzhao had thought. She loved the crystal Guanyin sitting on lotus so much. She wanted it to bring many children and good fortune. Since her Liu family had always been a small family, she could not wait to take out 60,000 taels of silver to buy this royal treasure. She also knew that the current emperor was nothing but an ignorant and incompetent ruler, so she did not care about anything. As for other people knowing that the Prime Minister was rich, so what? Could they possibly overthrow her husband?
Even so, the eunuchs around Zhu Houzhao were still a little jealous. After all, they had worked so hard to accompany the prince for so long and only managed to save up tens of thousands of taels of silver, while the wife of the prime minister could take out 60,000 taels of silver in one go. So Liu Jin even said sourly: "After all, she is the wife of the prime minister. She is so generous!"

"Guests are welcome, let's continue the auction!" Zhu Houzhao heard Liu Jin's complaints and couldn't help but say something to Liu Jin.

Zhu Houzhao was indeed not angry now, and was in a very good mood, because he sold two glass crafts for 90,000 taels of silver, which was a huge profit among huge profits! Moreover, he also found that Prime Minister Liu Ge Lao might become a cash cow for his huge financial resources, so he was naturally happier.

At this time, the third auction item was brought out, but this third auction item was two glass beds. According to Zhu Houzhao, this kind of glass bed is not only beautiful and clean, but also has the firmness of a wooden bed and can make the skin fragrant and prolong life. Anyway, it is just bragging and fooling around. From ancient times to the present, doing business is just like Wang Po selling melons.

Not only that, Zhu Houzhao also asked Liu Jin to emphasize that if this kind of bed broke, it would not hurt anyone because this kind of glass bed was made of tempered glass.

Don't think that tempered glass is glass made of steel. In fact, tempered glass is just the temperature of the glass that is effectively controlled during the firing process. To be precise, the glass is cut into the required size after it is half cooled but not solidified, and then heated to about 700 degrees for four or five minutes, and then quickly cooled to form tempered glass.

The so-called tempered glass is to form uniform tensile stress inside the glass, which makes the glass's bending and impact resistance several times higher. In this way, the glass can be made stronger and less brittle. At the same time, even if it is broken, it can be directly broken into debris without causing any harm to people because the tensile stress is evenly distributed.

In general, the most critical thing in making tempered glass is the accurate control of temperature. Zhu Houzhao used kerosene and glass to make a kerosene thermometer, and then used the theory that the boiling temperature of water is a constant 100 degrees Celsius under the atmospheric pressure of Beijing to calibrate the thermometer, so that the temperature of the fired glass can be accurately controlled, and tempered glass can be successfully manufactured.

It is worth mentioning that although kerosene does not exist in large quantities in the world, it is still used by humans in the form of natural kerosene. After all, kerosene lamps were used in Baghdad in the ninth century. It was not difficult for Zhu Houzhao, as an emperor, to find some kerosene. Although he could not directly use a large amount of kerosene to make chemical products, it was not a problem to make a few thermometers.

Without further ado, although the manufacturing of tempered glass is relatively more complicated than ordinary glass, the cost of manufacturing a tempered glass bed is less than three taels of silver, but Zhu Houzhao directly set the starting price at 20,000 taels!
What's more, Zhu Houzhao also ordered Liu Jin to compare one of the two tempered glass beds with an ordinary glass bed in front of all the people at the Royal Expo. That is to say, he had to use a big iron hammer to hit the tempered glass bed and the ordinary glass bed at the same time. In this way, there would only be one tempered glass bed left in the entire Ming Dynasty.

The people at the Royal Expo looked at the eunuch with some heartache as he hit the tempered glass bed and the ordinary glass bed with a sledgehammer at the same time. They saw that after one blow, the ordinary glass bed directly cracked into several pieces, while the tempered glass bed only hummed once. Then, when he started hitting again, cracks began to appear on the tempered glass. After a long time of hitting, the tempered glass finally broke into slag.

"Wow! This glass is worthy of being called tempered glass, it really is as good as steel! I want to buy it, I want to buy it, the key is that there is only this one in the world now, 20,000 is not a loss, not a loss!"

Gu Dayong shouted, "Twenty-one thousand taels!"

After other people came to their senses, they also started to rush to buy the bed. As more and more wealthy businessmen were attracted to the bed, and the tempered glass bed really showed its extraordinaryness and there was only one, the rush for it was very hot. In a short time, the auction price was raised to 50,000 taels.

In the end, this tempered glass bed was bought by a Hu merchant at a high price of 74,000 taels.

But the luxury goods auction has not yet ended. Next, glass chairs, glass tables, glass screens, glass bowls, glass chopsticks, etc. will be put up for auction.

In addition, there was also a 100-jin collectible edition of the "Shu Fu Gao" super soap, which was also auctioned off.

The entire luxury goods auction made Zhu Houzhao earn nearly 400,000 taels of silver that day!
Sorry, I forgot to update yesterday afternoon. I really didn’t mean to stop, I just forgot. Now I really don’t dare to stop, otherwise I will let you and the editor down, and I can’t use this pseudonym to write books. I will definitely update twice during the new book period, and I will become very diligent after it is put on the shelves, because I have saved manuscripts and outlines! I really forgot yesterday, and no one reminded me yesterday. I still found out about it in the group today. I will repost yesterday’s picture first, and then update today’s one.

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(End of this chapter)