The moonlight is like silver, and the night wind blows through the solemn Qin Palace.
In a side hall of the Qin Palace, sixty-six bronze lamps of different shapes bloomed with light, illuminating the entire space in the hall.
The First Emperor sat on the couch in a comfortable posture, his face still rosy as he was slightly drunk after drinking, and there was also a faint smell of alcohol between his mouth and nose when he breathed.
His eyes were still bright and lively. His gaze jumped over the wooden desk with a map rolled in front of him, and he looked at the woman in the palace with interest.
This was the rare woman who could arouse his interest.
He is the lord of the world, and there are more than thousands of women in his palace. Just after the destruction of the six kingdoms, the number of women gathered from the palaces of the six kings is already countless.
What was the number of women in the palace reported last time?
Three thousand?
Six thousand?
Ten thousand?
He owned so many women that the First Emperor could no longer remember them.
At his current age, he is not very interested in women. After experiencing too many things, that's all.
After Hu Hai, he didn't have another son for a long time.
The first emperor only had Qin in his heart, and only this world.
Before Zhao Tuo made paper, he used weighing stones to measure books and submit them day and night. If he failed to submit, he would not be able to rest. He would never sleep well until he had finished processing the weight-approved paperwork every day.
Nowadays, good things like paper have greatly reduced the weight of documents, making marking easier and more convenient. Tasks that used to take a whole day to complete can now be completed in half a day.
But also, because of the emergence of paper, the number of tasks he needs to handle has increased several times.
After the First Emperor discovered the benefits of paper for office work, during the year of Zhao Tuo's Northern Expedition, various papermaking workshops, large and small, were opened in various counties and counties in the Qin State. Craftsmen and concubines from all over the country continued to produce huge quantities of paper. paper.
Officials at the county and county levels all used paper for office work, which greatly improved administrative efficiency. Originally, due to the inconvenience of transporting bamboo slips and the shortcomings of not remembering many words, local governments omitted many things when reporting to Xianyang.
Nowadays, because the paper is light and the number of words can be recorded, the number of things reported in various places has greatly increased, several times more than before.
Coupled with the large armies going out to conquer, wars on all sides, the construction of roads and straight roads in various places, and various policies being implemented such as unified currency, unified weights and measures, unified writing, etc., the information that the entire country aggregates to the central government every day is huge.
The First Emperor was also a master who said "everything in the world, big or small, is decided by the one above".
When the world is set, there are many things to do, and he must be extremely attentive. He will not trust anyone who leaves them to him.
Under such circumstances, the working mode of the First Emperor was naturally different from the past.
He no longer calculates his workload by the weight of the bamboo slips, but by working hours.
Five hours a day, that is, ten hours of document review time in future generations.
Then, coupled with all kinds of miscellaneous things such as court meetings, inspections, and interviews with courtiers, he still had to be busy until midnight every day, so he had no idea of favoring women.
As time goes by, these thoughts fade away.
It's just that the noble daughter of the Yuezhi, Sugasha, who is kneeling in front of him now, is different from all the women he has seen, and it is rare for her to attract his attention.
He has a high nose, deep eyes, and slightly curly hair.
The upright facial features give the whole face a unique beauty, and the healthy complexion forged by the wind and frost on the grassland looks very strange compared to the fair skin of the women in the palace.
Especially those azure eyes, which are hard to forget once you take one look at them.
Even though the First Emperor was the emperor, he had seen countless women, and he had also seen a lot of orchids outside the Great Wall, but he had never seen a woman like this.
Sugatha knelt down and stood up, then she felt the emperor's gaze.
He is the emperor of Qin.
The master of the entire Qin State can recruit millions of troops with a single order to conquer any corner of the world.
With the blessing of this kind of power, his eyes had a very frightening sense of oppression. Even though Sugatha had a strong character, she still felt numb from the sight.
When she entered Xianyang, she saw the emperor's magnificent palace, which was like a celestial palace. She was deeply impressed by it, thinking it was a wonder and a miracle, and admired it very much.
But now, what she was thinking about was what she had heard before, that the emperor's palace was filled with women from all over the world.
They are the emperor's women, numbering in the thousands. They live in gorgeous palaces and live a life of fine clothing and food every day. Their only expectation is to wait for the emperor's favor, and their only goal is to give birth to a baby for the emperor. His children.
Thinking of this, Sugatha shuddered.
She was a child of the grassland, a horse that should have galloped on the grassland, an eagle flying in the sky, and a canary trapped in a palace. That was not the life she wanted.
Not to mention, there was someone more attractive in her heart than the emperor in front of her.
Sugatha gritted her teeth and said, "I wonder what your Majesty's orders are when he summons his ministers and concubines?"
The First Emperor did not answer, but said calmly: "Are you a little nervous?"
Sugatha lowered her head and said, "I am a barbarian from the grasslands. I first entered the Qin Dynasty. When I met the Supreme Being, I was frightened by His Majesty's divine power. Naturally, I was very nervous."
The First Emperor smiled and said: "You speak Qin language well and your etiquette is quite elegant. How do you learn it?"
Sujiasha said: "I have admired the customs of the Qin Dynasty since I was a child. Whenever businessmen from Qin came to Yuezhi to do business, I would ask them for advice. I once paid a lot of money to ask a businessman to be my teacher, so I could speak the Qin language. As for the Qin language. Etiquette is on the way to Xianyang. I was afraid that I would be disrespectful when meeting the king, so I asked the general for advice."
At the last sentence, Sujatha's eyes flashed with a touch of tenderness and reminiscence.
The First Emperor nodded slightly, turned the corners of his mouth slightly, and said teasingly: "Wugong Hou wrote before and said that you are quite wise. Even the plot to get rid of the Huns was thought up by You. Since you are so smart, you know that I Why have you been called here?"
As he spoke, the First Emperor looked at her body, as if appreciating the posture of this alien beauty.
But Sugatha had calmed down by this time, and was no longer nervous when facing this look.
She looked around.
It was noticed that this side hall was not a place where the emperor slept and rested. There were eunuchs standing around with their hands hanging down.
Then, she saw the thick silk rolled up on the big case in front of the emperor.
Sujatha took a deep breath and remembered that when she was learning etiquette from Zhao Tuo, she had asked the general how to get the emperor's use.
The general thought for a while and said: "The emperor likes useful people. If you are capable and loyal, you can be trusted by the emperor."
Thinking of this, Sugatha felt settled.
She bowed to the emperor, but did not answer the emperor's question. Instead, she said to herself: "The Qin Dynasty is the master of the eastern world, and your majesty is the supreme emperor of Kyushu. But in the west, there are many lands and countries."
"As far as I know, further to the west of the land occupied by our Yuezhi, there is the Wusun Kingdom. Its country is nomadic and its strength is slightly inferior to that of the Yuezhi."
"To the west from Wusun, there is a vaster land with large mountains in the north and south and a river in the center. It is more than 6,000 miles from east to west and more than 1,000 miles from north to south. Although the land is intersected by deserts, it is also vast and fertile, with small countries in the middle. Lin Li."
"Such as Loulan, Nuqiang, Jingjue, Yarkand, Qiuci..."
Hearing these names, the First Emperor's breathing became rapid, and he felt a surge of desire rising in his body.
He did not interrupt Sujatha and continued to listen.
"Although I am the daughter of Guishuang Jihou, my mother is from the royal family of Dayuan (yuān), so her appearance is different from other Yuezhi people, precisely because she has Dayuan blood in her body."
Sugatha said calmly: "My concubine's mother once said that Dawan is a large country in the west. It has a population of hundreds of thousands and has more than 70 cities. It is rich and fertile. It cultivates fields and eats rice and wheat. It also produces BMWs. His horses can sweat blood and travel thousands of miles a day without failing."
Hearing these words, the First Emperor's blood boiled with passion, and he could no longer hold back his desire.
He suddenly unfolded the rolled up silk cloth on the case.
Then he stared at Sugatha and said in a deep voice: "Come here."
"Come to me!"
Outside the hall, Martial Arts Marquis Zhao Tuo had already arrived at the door.
(End of chapter)
