The most important thing of the country is to sacrifice to the army!
The princes' meeting with the emperor is one of the most important events in the country. It represents a stable ruling order. The princes who have been in Chang'an City for a long time and have communicated with each other walked into the palace together.
Today's Han Dynasty is no longer the nascent dynasty it was back then. All rules and regulations are basically complete, and the most important rituals and music are naturally the same.
The ministers walked into the field and took their seats to the sound of different music. There was a complicated process for the emperor to receive the princes, which lasted for a long time before reaching the part of paying tribute.
The purposes of paying tribute to the emperor varied. Many officials still thought that they could ascend to heaven by paying tribute to divine objects, but most of them were quite satisfactory. After all, it was basically a dream to find a magical object like He's Bi.
Among all the tributes, the most eye-catching ones were those from Lingnan, not the Zhao family, the king of Lingnan, but the descendants of the guilty officials who were exiled to Lingnan.
Starting from Liu Bang, after the imperial court formulated a special exile policy, every time there were powerful officials or princes, the number of people exiled to Lingnan ranged from thousands to tens of thousands.
In the past few decades, if Lingnan had not continued to consume these people, the population in Guanzhong would have expanded rapidly. This has to be said that one of the shortcomings of the Lingyi system is the large-scale import of Shandong people, and these people came to Guanzhong needs to be relocated. The court cannot let the people who guard the tombs of their ancestors go hungry. The local powerful forces in Shandong have been weakened, but the annexation of Guanzhong has been strengthened, and a large number of wealthy people have gathered together, and Other negative effects.
In real history, the abolition of the mausoleum system was not just the emperor's stupidity.
In fact, there were indeed problems with the Lingyi system at that time. If it continued, Guanzhong and Shandong would explode. This was the main reason.
The biggest problem is that no new method has been found to inhibit powerful mergers, which has caused subsequent serious consequences.
The essence of the Lingyi system is to plot to harvest unstable elements in a way that does not completely break the relationship.
The purpose of exile was to send people to open up the barbaric land in a reasonable way and to mix water with Lingnan Kingdom. However, in the process of implementation, the same purpose was achieved. It was a win-win situation, meaning that the court won twice.
After looking at the criminal who walked in from outside the venue, everyone in the venue started talking and even made bets.
"I wonder how many people will be pardoned by His Majesty for their past crimes during this visit and be able to return to the Central Plains, their homeland or even Chang'an."
"According to past practice, the number of people will still not be too many, so I'll bet on three people."
"Our Majesty is kind. In the past few years, more and more people have been released. I will guess five people."
After kneeling in, the sinners felt their palms burning and their knees began to hurt. Although they couldn't hear the comments around them clearly, they still felt quite ashamed. This is the way to treat slaves!
But everyone endured it, because this was a hard-earned opportunity and the hope of the whole family to return to the Central Plains. No matter how much shame there was, could it be more terrifying than dying miserably in the wilderness?
"The sinner pays homage to His Majesty the Emperor. May your Majesty be safe! May your Majesty be blessed!"
"What tribute is there? Present it quickly!"
The tributes from Lingnan were nothing more than pearls, jade, coral, or beauties. There were no particularly valuable treasures. In fact, whether to pardon them or not was completely up to the emperor's own idea. As long as the emperor said that they were sincere, it was enough.
Liu Heng looked at the tribute presented. Although it was not extremely precious, it was already a very sincere expression to get such a thing in a difficult survival environment.
In the past, he would definitely have encouraged him a little more and painted some cakes for those subjects who were in Lingnan to atone for their sins. But today, Liu Heng couldn't wait to use paper to offer sacrifices to the emperor. He just said a few words to send these people away, and then directly Asked: "Where is the envoy from Duke Zhao?"
At this time, all the ministers stopped smiling and looked solemn. Then they saw Prince Zhao of Duke Zhao walking into the palace. Four beautiful palace servants were walking in carefully holding a white object. There seemed to be some writing on it.
"The ministers are going to see the emperor, and they bring this thing as a special offering."
Luo Ban bowed and saluted, and then said: "This thing is paper. There is a poem on the paper, called 'Dahan', to wish Dahan prosperity for thousands of years!"
Paper?
There was some commotion in the palace, and the papers held by the palace attendants were very different from what they had remembered.
Liu Heng walked directly down from the top. He had already seen the paper, but looking at the flourishing prose on the paper, he couldn't help but admired: "This thing is so ingenious!
A Jing's poem written on it is really ten times and a hundred times better than the bamboo slips. All the ministers came to see it. "
So a group of people rushed forward, looking at the flawless handwriting and the light paper. Everyone gasped. Everyone could not restrain their shocked expressions and had no regard for the elongation of etiquette. They scratched their necks and asked the question they were most concerned about: "Sir, how much does this paper cost?"
Another reason why bamboo slips are so popular is that they are far less expensive than silk. This paper seems to be of such good quality, so the price should not be cheap.
Luoban chuckled and said: "Paper of this quality is naturally a little more expensive, but compared to silk, it is still much lower.
However, there are some papers in the family that are of slightly lower quality than this. They also do not smudge when writing, but the surface is not as smooth. The cost of that kind of paper is lower than that of bamboo slips. "
Luoban didn't say how high the cost was, he only said it was lower than the bamboo slips, which completely shocked everyone.
This is obviously to replace bamboo slips as a new tool for carrying text!
The most important thing is that the text that can be recorded on this small piece of paper far exceeds that of bamboo slips. With this thing, wouldn't it be much easier to spread books in the future?
This thing can be used to harvest the wool of hundreds of families and quickly take possession of hundreds of classics as your own.
This is the first thought of most people, and with paper, less materials are needed to explain the classics, making it easier to transform from a meritorious family to a classics family.
This is a bit of trivia. When paper was first invented and the imperial examination system first appeared, it actually made powerful families stronger, because these most advanced things were always used by the upper class first.
What really allowed the lower class to rise was the advancement of productivity. The imperial examination system was able to completely take over the mainstream because poor families could also support scholars.
But by the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the imperial examination system still became a game for prominent families.
After all, except for those very few geniuses, noble families can study hard every day, but poor families have to support themselves first and then compete. If they study for two hours or four hours a day, the final results must be completely different.
Looking at everyone's shocked expressions, Liu Heng laughed loudly and said: "This is a divine thing given to me by God. This is a divine thing given by God to praise the glory of the Han Dynasty. Where is the painter?"
The palace painter quickly walked out of the queue, bowed and said, "I am here."
Liu Heng said with a smile: "In the future, we no longer have to paint on silk and walls. We can go to the Young Master's class to get paper and record today's situation completely. Then we named it "Paper Drawings Given by the Emperor". This will be the first painting made on paper in the world."
The painter happily accepted the order. He could already imagine that after the birth of cheap paper, the painter could paint whatever he wanted, and he could paint at any time without having to conceive in his mind first and then restore it based on memory.
When all the ministers were amazed, Liu Heng said loudly: "The birth of Luo Zhi is a good sign from heaven. I should warn God that this paper full of poems will be used as a sacrifice for this sacrifice."
The next step in paying tribute was for the emperor to lead his ministers to offer sacrifices to heaven. Now there was just one more sacrifice, so the ministers naturally bowed their heads and obeyed the order.
Liu Heng stood on the high platform, looking at the dark crowd, recalling everything that had happened since he took office, and seeing that divine objects like paper were born in his own era, he felt more and more that he might really Those who are appointed by Heaven.
Liu Heng personally presided over the sacrifice, placed the sacrifices one by one on the high platform, and then held up the piece of paper filled with poems. It was an extremely gorgeous article dedicated to praising the Han Dynasty.
When the palace man finished reading the article, Liu Heng raised the torch and slowly lit the paper.
Streams of green smoke instantly flew away from the sky, straight, as if they had really reached the sky, as if Huang Tian had really received the news.
Everyone is watching this scene!
(End of chapter)
