Three days after Eunuch Cao started ringing his little brass bell on Double-Decker Bus #1, something strange began happening in the neighboring provinces of the Great Yan Kingdom outside Pei Xuan’s official borders.
Fifty miles east of Silver-Fork Port lay Maple-Bridge City, the busiest trade crossroads in the Central-West Province, still nominally ruled by the Royal Court.
In the center of Maple-Bridge City’s silk and iron market, a fat royal purchasing clerk named Official Pang slammed a heavy wooden chest full of Royal Silver Ingots and Hundred-Copper Big Coins onto the counter of the largest iron-ore merchant in town, Boss Luo.
“Boss Luo!” Official Pang barked, wiping sweat from his double chin. “The Royal Armory in the capital ordered fifty tons of pig-iron! Here are five thousand taels of Royal Silver and ten sacks of Royal Big Coins. Load my wagons at once!”
Five days ago, Boss Luo would have bowed and scraped before a royal purchasing clerk.
Today, however, Boss Luo didn’t even open the wooden chest. He calmly sipped his tea, pushed the chest of royal silver back across the counter with two fingers, and pointed to a freshly painted wooden sign hanging behind his cash desk:
> NOTICE: THIS SHOP ONLY ACCEPTS DRY-WELL PAPER GRAIN-NOTES! > (Royal Lead-Coppers and Watered-Down Court Silver NOT Accepted!)
