Qin Wangji just watched Mao Sui leave like this, his scarlet eyes fell on Mao Sui's back, and his hanging right hand never moved down. The empty hall was extremely silent, with only the sound of heavy breathing echoing in the sky.
The last time he was so patient was when the Queen Mother Xuan was in power. As the King of Qin, he had to listen to the Queen Mother Xuan.
"Zhao Guo..." Qin Wangji muttered angrily like an old lion whose territory had been violated.
The ministers lowered their heads and frowned, not daring to look up.
After a long while, Qin Wangji's cold voice sounded in the hall: "The decree is passed, making Qin Yue the Marquis of Lun, and choosing one of his sons to inherit the title."
Everyone's hearts sank. This meant they had completely given up on rescuing Qin Yue. Although they didn't like Qin Yue, they were so sad that they saw such a scene and couldn't help but feel sad in their hearts.
"Is there any progress in the young master's office?" Qin Wangji asked in a deep voice.
Obtaining alcohol from Zhao has failed, so I have to find a way on my own. But fortunately, there is a hint in the name of alcohol, and it is much simpler to research than paper and cement.
In particular, the name cement is extremely confusing, which caused Qin craftsmen to initially focus all their energy on studying clay, wasting a lot of effort.
"Your Majesty, craftsmen discovered that there is a substance in wine that has the effect of disinfection and sterilization. Zhao Guo should have extracted this substance through some means and named it alcohol. At present, we have successfully extracted alcohol from wine. But... the cost is very, very high... some of the gains outweigh the losses." Lu Buwei said with some embarrassment.
Wine consumes a lot of food. In order to save food, the State of Qin issued wine restrictions many times and increased the price of wine tenfold to reduce the consumption of wine.
When the technology is immature, the amount of food consumed by distilling low-concentration wine into alcohol can be imagined.
In the past, even if alcohol was available in various countries, it would not be possible to use it to treat soldiers.
Because soldiers are not valuable, but food is.
But now Qin has realized the importance of people. All wealth is created by people. Only by protecting everyone can more wealth be created, so Qin no longer ignores life as before.
However, this kind of thing needs to change slowly, and it is impossible to suddenly become more cherishing of the common people at the bottom.
"Is there no way to reduce losses?" Qin Wangji asked.
"The craftsmen are still thinking of ways, but there is no progress." Lu Buwei shook his head. Technological breakthroughs do not happen overnight. Sometimes a flash of inspiration can take a step forward, but most of the time it just stays in place.
"Tell the craftsmen that whoever can reduce the losses to an acceptable level will be promoted to the third level and rewarded with 500 acres of farmland and thousands of gold coins." Qin Wangji waved his hand. He believed that there would be a brave man under the heavy reward.
"Your Majesty is wise." Lu Buwei said, cupping his hands.
"By the way, have the lists of talents selected from various places been compiled?" Qin Wangji asked.
"Your Majesty, it has been sorted out." Fan Ju handed over a roll of bamboo slips.
By now, paper has actually been circulated. After all, Zhao wants to sell money, and if the quantity is controlled, countries can buy it as long as they want to buy it. You can't sell it one by one, so the upper levels of each country basically use paper instead. Bamboo slips were used to deliver documents.
Only the Qin State still uses bamboo slips, not because they are unavailable, but because they want to save money. Qin's current situation is not good. Successive defeats have severely suppressed the people's enthusiasm for going to the battlefield to gain merit.
Each legion has also suffered heavy losses and needs to be rebuilt. However, the westbound caravan has not returned yet, and there is no trace of the Queen Mother of the West or the new trade route. To be honest, Qin Wangji had some doubts about whether they were still alive.
The relations between the surrounding countries and Qin continued to deteriorate, because Zhao was interfering inside, and previous diplomatic methods also lost their effect.
Qin has played too many rogues in the past and beaten other countries too hard. No one will believe it until it completely loses its threat.
If the State of Zhao now has money but no food, then the State of Qin has neither money nor food.
But the determination of the old Qin people to overcome obstacles is still there. For more than 600 years, Qin has been able to grow from a sleepy border town to a world hegemon step by step, relying on the belief that it will never give up.
The current situation is far easier than the difficulties our ancestors faced back then.
In order to save every penny of money, Qin Wangji ordered the concubines in the harem to weave cloth, rewarded the paper purchased from Zhao to the ministers, ordered that bamboo slips and wooden tablets should continue to be used in the future, and also sold the pure white war horse of the Yueshi. , used to raise money to train the army.
The blood of classical militarism has never been cold. Qin's step-by-step progress to today is not based on words. The nobles of the pre-Qin Dynasty had their own pride. King Qin did not bother to pretend to govern the people. What he wanted was to lead by example and lead the entire Qin Dynasty. country.
"Tomorrow the prince and Wang Sun will accompany me to meet them." Qin Wangji looked at Prince Zhu and Wang Sun Chu.
"No." Taizi Zhu and Zichu leaned over and said.
…
Wei Wuji came back and met Zhao Kuo immediately.
In the afternoon, Zhao Kuo held a banquet at Mafu Jun's Mansion, with only him and Wei Wuji.
Zhao Kuo did not ask Wei Wuji about his affairs in Wei State, but only told him Zhao State's future development plan.
In terms of strategic planning, no one in the world can be Zhao Kuo's opponent. After all, the extra two thousand years of vision is not in vain. Many things are difficult to solve now, but if you look at the two thousand years, there are already countless solutions. Zhao Kuo just needs to bring it.
But no matter how good the plan is, it will only be valuable if it is implemented, otherwise it will be just a piece of waste paper. Zhao Kuo needed someone to realize his boasts bit by bit, and Wei Wuji was the person who could actually implement the plan.
"Re-enact the law?" Wei Wuji was a little confused. Zhao State's laws were already very complete, so there was no need to re-enact them.
It was not the Qin State that first promulgated written laws in the world, but the Zheng State. Zichan cast a punishment cauldron, which set the precedent for the promulgation of written laws in ancient China.
But before that, Fan Xuanzi of Jin State had promulgated a more mature and complete criminal law based on the original criminal law of Jin State.
More than 20 years after Zichan built the tripod, Zhao Yang, the ancestor of the Zhao family, even engraved Fan Xuanzi's criminal law on the tripod.
As the hegemon of the world, the Jin State had far greater influence than the Zheng State. It powerfully tore a gap in the ancient Zhou rites and declared that the Jin State and even the world's punishment was not as good as that of a great official, and its etiquette was not as good as that of a common man. 's era became history.
As one of the leaders, Zhao, although this incident aroused condemnation from the world and was reviled by Confucius and other Confucianists, he also received great benefits.
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Especially after the Fan family and the Zhongxing family, who had joined forces with the Zhao family to build the tripod but used the Zhao family as a shield, were destroyed, most of these ideas, inheritance, talents, etc. fell into the hands of the Zhao family.
After that, Legalist talents such as Shen Dao, Le Yi, Ju Xin, and Xunzi continued to emerge in the State of Zhao. As for the State of Qin... we do not produce talents, we are just porters of talents...
Even now, Zhao's laws are the most complete except those of Qin.
