Established a thousand-year family from the end of Qin Dynasty

Chapter 458 Competing in the Central Plains (26)

Four years later

Autumn of the fifth year of Yanhou 180 (395 years)
In the past four years, the situation in the Central Plains has become increasingly unpredictable.

Tuoba Tuobagui, the monarch of the Wei Kingdom, defeated Rouran and captured more than a million livestock, including more than [-] horses, and his strength soared instantly.

Khitan also made a lot of money as a middleman. A large number of Wei State’s cattle, sheep, horses and livestock entered Khitan, and then were resold by Khitan to Yan State. Khitan, and then resold by Khitan to Wei Guo.

Relying on being a middleman, Khitan has entered a period of rapid development.

Tuoba Wei State was ambitious and was unwilling to buy luxuries such as fine wine from Yan State. All the livestock were used to buy basic daily necessities, including as many armored armors as he wanted.

This is completely opposite to the Great Jin court in the south. The royal families of the Great Jin are not interested in weapons and equipment, nor are they interested in daily necessities. Anyway, the north is busy fighting and has no time to fight them, so there is no need to increase force, and They can't starve to death, and those who starve to death are low-level people, so they don't need living supplies.

Therefore, the luxury goods in the Yan Kingdom were mainly consumed by the Jin Dynasty, and fine wine became the standard equipment for every family member of the Jin Dynasty. If anyone does not drink some fine wine when discussing metaphysics, it is a manifestation of lack of cultural literacy .

When Tuoba Wei was ambitious, the struggle between the imperial family of the Great Jin Dynasty and the aristocratic family was unprecedentedly fierce. In this struggle, the people at the bottom became victims and suffered misfortune. A huge civil uprising was brewing.

In Guanzhong, Yao Xing defeated Fu Deng, Yao Qin entered the development period, and Yao Xing vigorously built Buddhist temples in Guanzhong to stabilize people's hearts.

After Murong Chui eliminated Zhai Wei, he began to attack the Qingzhou area of ​​the Jin State. The Jin State was busy with internal fighting and had no time to take care of the newly recovered Qingzhou.

Not only were there frequent wars in the Central Plains, but in the north of the Yan Kingdom, Goguryeo, which was already dying, gave birth to a hero. , and annexed part of the Sushen tribe, the strength grew rapidly, and the population increased to [-] in a short period of time, saving Goguryeo, which was on the verge of extinction.

But that's it. Goguryeo will be busy digesting these newly conquered populations for a long time to come.

Moreover, the main enemy of Goguryeo is Fuyu. Fuyu has been the dog of the Wang family for hundreds of years, and has been engaged in the slave trade with the Wang family for hundreds of years. The Fuyu kings of all dynasties would sell criminals in their own country to Yan as slaves, or go to the kingdom of Yan. In the north, slaves from the Sushen people were captured and sold to Yan.

After several years of recuperation, Yan State in Liaodong has recovered from the losses suffered in the Shanhaiguan War and the War to Suppress Pirates. The 94-year-old Yan Hu passed away last month. Yan Lan" and "Yan Hou Lan".

Yan Lan is already 30 years old, but she is still unmarried, and the succession of princes and marquises seems to be interrupted again.

The succession of the King Yan family has been interrupted many times, not only the succession of the princes and princes, but also the succession of the various city lords.

However, under the [Designated Inheritance Law] implemented by the Yan State, the nobles designate an heir, so when there is no heir, they can randomly choose one person from the side branches to become the heir.

It is worth noting that since the Yan State implements monogamy, there is a difference between the concubine and the concubine.

The implementation of the system of monogamy and multiple concubines will encounter opposition from female nobles, and the implementation of the system of monogamy and multiple male pets will encounter opposition from male nobles. Therefore, in order to prevent civil wars in the family, everyone takes a step back and implements monogamy.

The system of Yan State is always born out of mutual checks and balances and compromises, and is rarely determined by the will of a certain person.

Yandu
Yan Houlan's 30th birthday is underway. In order to celebrate her birthday, Yan Houlan applied for funds from the parliament to hold a huge "Gentlemen's Club".

In the "Gentlemen's Club" event, talents from all over the country of Yan can participate in the competition of various arts of gentlemen, and women can do weaving, needlework, and painting. In addition to these elegant arts, there are also some things that are looked down upon by scholars, such as carpentry, Inventions, cooking, and more.

The various arts of gentlemen in the Yan State version include: horse riding, driving, archery, melee combat, art of war drills, arithmetic, music, chess and so on.

Yanhou Lan (Su Lan) wants to gather the wisdom of all the talents in Qin State, promote the further development of technology, and enhance the overall strength of Yan State.

Even if you invent some tricks and tricks for fun, you can still get rewards.

This [Gentlemen's Meeting] has been publicized across the country a year ago, and everyone can participate, but in order to prevent bluffing, participants need to write a reason for their participation in advance.

Those who can't write can be written by literate people. Therefore, the vast majority of ordinary people have no way to participate.

But Su Lan also gave ordinary people the opportunity to let officials from all over the country look for people with fantastic ideas among the people, and report such fantastic ideas to Yandu. If Yandu passes the review, this official and that The people can all be rewarded.

Yan Houlan doesn't believe that Chinese feelings can make people actively innovate. Compared with this feeling, she believes in benefits and uses real benefits to lure people to innovate technology, instead of using so-called Chinese feelings and benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and trust. Encourage the people.

An ordinary rural woman who improves the weaving method and makes the weaving more efficient than ordinary people, this is considered technological development and can also be rewarded.

An ordinary farmer, he has summed up a set of standardized farming procedures, which has improved the efficiency of farming a little bit. This is also considered technological development, and he can also be rewarded.

A tailor, the clothes she makes are very innovative and eye-catching. This is also regarded as technological development and rewards.

An explorer who discovers a better spice route, which is also a technological development, is rewarded.

There is even a prostitute who proposed a position of love with a higher chance of pregnancy, which is also considered a technological development and also rewarded.

But today's highlight is not these, but Ji Yulong's arc of the earth, and the "bamboo tube fireworks" jointly made by the team of doctors and craftsmen.

Since breaking through Xingfan City, Ji Yulong has been traveling all over the country of Yan for the past few years, creating a new calendar for the country of Yan. Because the north-south span of the country of Yan is too large, he made a shocking discovery, that is, the earth may It's round!
Since the traditional calendar of the Central Plains was formulated during the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, it has been outdated for more than 500 years. (Because of the deviation between the earth's revolution and rotation, there will be a little error every year. If this error accumulates for a long time, it will accumulate and make the previous calendar outdated. For example, the previous calendar said that there is more rain in these days. But because the deviation is too large, not only has there been no rain in these few days, but it is very dry, which greatly affects normal agricultural production activities, so a new calendar needs to be formulated every few hundred years.)
In order to formulate a more accurate new calendar, Ji Yulong started to observe from the fur island (Sakhalin Island) at the northernmost point of Yan Kingdom, and went all the way to Xingfan City (Jakarta) at the southernmost point. The more vertical, and when he arrived at Xingfan Island, the sun, which was originally located in the south, actually ran to the north.

The sun is always in the south, which is the consensus of everyone, after all, no one has been to the southern hemisphere before.

But now, because the territory of Yan State spans too far from north to south, this consensus is being broken.

Based on his new discoveries, Ji Yulong conducted various conjectures and experiments. After several years of hard thinking and on-the-spot investigations, he finally came up with a conjecture: Our earth may be circular or arc-shaped. It's not flat anyway, otherwise it wouldn't be able to explain these variations in the sun's angle.

However, his conjecture is just a conjecture, no one wants to believe it, even Mozi in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period also conjectured that the earth might be round, but Mozi is also just a conjecture.

The difference from Mozi is that although Mozi guessed that the earth is round, he only guessed and left no evidence for his guess to future generations.

But Ji Yulong used the angle of the sun as evidence, and now he is looking for more evidence to prove his bold conjecture.

The earth may be round, which is a major discovery of Yan State, and another major discovery is the "Bamboo Tube Fireworks".

Subsequently, several craftsmen and doctors brought their latest achievements, which were their painstaking efforts for more than 30 years.

As early as more than 30 years ago, Yan Guo's gunpowder could already produce quite powerful explosive effects. Now after more than 30 years of research and development, new progress has finally been made.

I saw that the craftsman brought a bamboo tube, the bottom of the bamboo tube was sealed, the top of the bamboo tube was filled with many small gravels, and a rope was connected to the hollow part of the bamboo tube.

As the rope was ignited, there was a "bang", smoke came out of the bamboo tube, and many red sparks appeared on the starry sky at night. These sparks were the ignited gunpowder.

However, the current bamboo tube fireworks are only scratch-made and very imperfect. The bamboo tube can only be used once and then it will be scrapped, and sometimes the gunpowder inside does not respond when the rope is ignited, and sometimes the gunpowder inside burns the rope directly. The bamboo tube exploded, but could not rise into the sky.

The craftsmen brought a hundred bamboo tube fireworks, and there were less than five bamboo tube fireworks whose sparks could rise to the sky. Of the remaining 95, 41 exploded and 54 did not respond.

"All craftsmen and healers who participated in the production of bamboo tube fireworks will be rewarded!" Yan Houlan liked this new toy that can release brilliant sparks in the sky very much.

(End of this chapter)