In the Great Song, I Issue Government Bonds to Fight Western Xia from the Start

[Historical what-if + no System, pure mind games + Great Song heavy industry + ruthless action]

Transmigrate to the Northern Song and find yourself a poor scholar about to have his hand broken by loan sharks? Pei Jingchen just laughs. As a modern financial tycoon, he’s going to play the ancient world at its own game of capital manipulation?

The Liao trade guild wants to use its military strength to set a trap in Bianliang?

Pei Jingchen hits back with a “tea permit freeze and breach-of-contract compensation” clause, cutting off their cash flow and leaving Liao nobles on their knees, begging the Great Song for loans!

Western Xia’s army is at the border, and the imperial treasury is empty. How will the court pay for a war?

Pei Jingchen issues the Great Song’s first “war bonds,” enlisting wealthy merchants across the land to profit from the war and using money to build a Jiangnan firearms battalion from scratch!

The old fossils at court accuse him of being obsessed with money and bringing shame on the literati?

Pei Jingchen slaps the enemy state’s bankruptcy liquidation papers and the deeds to the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun in their faces. “The Great Song doesn’t need useless poets who write maudlin verses. It needs a living God of Wealth like me, someone who can buy the world!”

Much later...

The Empress Dowager of Liao stares at a pile of worthless paper in the treasury, lost in thought, while the ruler of Western Xia faces a carpet of fire mines and questions his entire existence.

And the Song emperor looks at Pei Jingchen, whose wealth is ten times that of the imperial treasury, and swallows hard. “My dear Pei, this Great Song... whose name is it really under?”