Xianmen Pass, the residence of the Ming Dynasty Mission.
"Brother, times have changed. Our airship can fly three to four hundred miles an hour and three to four thousand miles a day. The speed is much faster than the railway. Although the transport capacity is not large, an army of ten thousand or eight thousand can still fly at any time. Transported to the Wuji Valley! So your approach of not building railways and repairing official roads cannot stop foreign enemies, but only traps yourself. If you allow me, the Ming Dynasty, to build a railway to the Rakshasa Kingdom through Daijin, the Ming Dynasty will Jin’s specialties and resources can all be sold for money. With money, Dajin can run its industry well and stand among the world’s great powers..."
The one who was deceiving Heshen was of course Zhuge Weidao, the eighteenth candidate military advisor of the Zhuge family. When this airship came to his mouth, it almost turned into a large transport aircraft!
Although the transportation capacity of this thing is still limited, and the latest and largest models can lift several tons of cargo, but with an army of eight thousand people, equipment and supplies, how can it be moved by thousands of airships? This is a hydrogen boat! Maintenance requirements are extremely high. If the number is small, maintenance can be done regardless of cost. If there are thousands...how many ground crews will be needed? If we don't blow up the boats every day, the losses will be huge.
Although Heshen also knows the flammable characteristics of hydrogen (this is a Heshen who understands chemistry), ten airships of that size are now parked on the grass outside Xianmen Pass! The facts were there, he couldn't help but not believe them.
But "No roads should be built outside Wuji Valley" is an ancestral family law passed down by Emperor Kangxi! How can you say that it will change if it changes? So He Zhongtang is also in a dilemma now!
"Junior Brother Zhuge, you also know that 'no roads should be built outside Wuji Valley' is an ancestral family law passed down by Emperor Kangxi!" Heshen said, "We have been guarding Dajin for more than a hundred years, how can we change it just by saying it? "
Is this still an ancestral family law?
Zhuge Weidao frowned, but it was not easy to criticize the family law! This ancestral family law is owned by the Kingdom of Jin and the Zhuge family! For more than 100 years, the Zhuge family has guarded the four red lines of "restraining mergers", "doing a good job in compulsory education", "paying taxes to the monarch, ministers and dignitaries as one body" and "discussing and co-governing". Isn't it because of the ancestral family law passed down by King Zhuge Wuzhong? ? His old man's ancestral family law is more powerful than that of Emperor Kangxi - it is written in every "Book of Heaven"!
The military advisors of the Zhuge family relied on the knowledge and information in the Heavenly Book to become semi-immortals and high officials... The Heavenly Book is so effective, how could the Zhuge family's military advisors dare to break the red lines drawn in the Heavenly Book?
And if they stick to the bottom line, other aristocratic families and nobles can only follow suit!
After all, no one wants to be enemies with a bunch of semi-immortals!
Moreover, King Zhuge Wuzhong also opened an opening for them to annex - they could annex Siam, Burma, Annam, Chenla, Nanzhang and other Ming vassal states, and they could also annex Java, Malacca engages in annexation.
But the red line of the Ming Dynasty cannot be touched, otherwise it will be the enemy of the Zhuge family!
As for the red line for paying taxes, it is even tighter. Tax havens do not exist in the Great Tomorrow. Although the Ming Dynasty did not implement a tax law where high incomes paid more taxes, but paid taxes across the board, no one could escape.
Even the sons of powerful people like Zhuge Weidao have to pay taxes like ordinary people!
Even when he inherited the old man's inheritance, he still paid a 15% inheritance tax - the tax was not high, but no one could escape it unless he lived forever. Otherwise, even if you give up your Ming nationality, you won’t be able to escape even a single abandonment tax, and you will have to pay even more!
Therefore, the Ming Dynasty, an empire controlled by noble families, was able to maintain stability more than a hundred years after its founding, without losing the most basic social fairness. I have to say that this "ancestral family method" is quite good if it is used in the right place.
The ancestral family law that Kangxi left to the descendants of Dai Jin actually ensured that Dai Jin and Taoism from China could gain a firm foothold in the Wuji Valley (Fergana Basin) and develop in Central Asia with it as the center. grow.
After all, when Dajin does not build roads and only maintains limited contact with the outside world, the local forces in Central Asia cannot compete with the Eight Banners of Dajin who "cultivate immortality through mathematics, physics and chemistry".
Moreover, having a "half-immortal" from the Zhuge family is enough to prove the correctness of the "immortal cultivation route". The weakness of Taoism's need for empirical evidence (most religions follow a route that cannot be falsified) has been replenished.
Therefore, Lin Zexu and Zhuge Weidao could not force the Kingdom of Jin to give up their ancestral family methods, but they could reinterpret what "road" was.
"Brother and senior brother, we are not building roads, but railways." Zhuge Weidao said seriously, "The railway is not a road, it is just two rails laid on sleepers."
"This..." He Shen was also stunned. There were no railways when Emperor Kangxi died, so the "road" he mentioned should not include two iron bars on a row of sleepers. of.
Seeing that He Shen was silent, Zhuge Weidao smiled and said: "If there is an invasion by foreign enemies, all you have to do is send people to remove the rails, set them on fire with sleepers, and the rails will be burned out of shape, and it will be useless." ”
He Shen also understands this, but he still has to be careful about Daming and Rakshasa. So he thought about it and said: "Junior Brother Zhuge, if you want to build a railway to connect Rakshasa... it is not non-negotiable, but this railway cannot be within a thousand miles of Wuji Valley.
Moreover, our craftsmen must be used when building this railway. You can just provide some engineers. After it is repaired, it cannot be managed by your Ming Dynasty or Rakshasa Kingdom, it must be managed by our people. Just wait for the dividends. "
This Heshen is quite smart!
"Can your people manage the railway?" Zhuge Weidao asked.
"Why not?" He Shen glared, "Junior brother Zhuge doesn't think that we people in Wuji Valley are all uncivilized barbarians, right? Don't forget, we also have a university in Daikin, and our country's Immortal University It also has a world-class mathematics department! Even if our people have never managed the railway, just send them to Daming to study!"
Fortune telling... this is also an "algorithm". The "fortune tellers" of the Kingdom of Jin have studied the mathematics books handed down by King Zhuge Wuzhong for more than a hundred years, and their level is certainly not low.
In addition, King Zhuge Wuzhong explained all the methods of cultivating immortals such as yin and yang and the five elements, refining alchemy, refining qi and observing the sky using physics and chemistry (he does not know how to practice serious immortality!), so the Immortal University of Jin Kingdom is actually " "Xiusian Polytechnic University", students from here want to study railways and engineering, which will not take much effort.
For the Ming Dynasty, it would be great to have a railway connecting the Rakshasa through the Kingdom of Jin... Thinking of this, Zhuge Weidao turned to look at Lin Zexu, who stroked his beard and smiled: "That's it. Just lease materials in exchange for track construction rights. As for the amount of leased materials and the valuation of road construction rights, let's leave it to professional officers like Zhuge Daozi and your Eight Banners Commander.
Let's discuss next what name the Kingdom of Jin will use to send troops to India, shall we? "
"In name?" He Shen thought for a while, "How about aiding the Mughal Dynasty?"
"Isn't this goal too big?" Lin Zexu said, twirling his beard, "Are you trying to drive the British out of India?"
He Shen nodded and asked thoughtfully: "Then...what excuse can I make?"
"Yipian!" Zhuge Weidao suddenly interjected at this time, "You can claim compensation from the British and Indian authorities in the name of the British East India Company illegally smuggling and selling Yipian and poisoning the people of Dajin!"
"Okay! That's a good excuse!" Lin Zexu felt an unknown fire in his heart when he heard the word "Ya Pian". "The East India Company sells YA movies in India and Southeast Asia, causing countless harm to people. It's really hateful!"
Zhuge Youdao called Yapian "Big Smoke" before, but Lin Zexu didn't understand what it was? Because no one smokes Yapian now, and in the Ming Dynasty, Yapian only exists as a raw material for controlled drugs and has not been abused. However, in India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Western Europe, and parts of Central Asia, Yapian abuse is still very common, and various Yapian products (including Yapian cigarettes without smoking) are almost sold as daily necessities!
