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Led by his personal guards, Yi Huawei stepped into the heavy gate of the general's mansion, and an ancient and solemn atmosphere immediately hit him.

The corridor twists and turns. As we go deeper into the corridor, the footsteps of the people walking along it echo in the corridor.

Meng Tian stood quietly at the end of the corridor. Yi Huawei could see his face clearly from a distance of two meters. His resolute face was full of traces of time.

"Greetings, General Meng."

Yi Huawei bowed slightly and saluted: "I apologize for disturbing you today, General."

Meng Tian's eyes moved from Yi Huawei to Xiao Lan beside him. With Xiao Lan's appearance, she was particularly eye-catching even in this general's mansion. But Meng Tian's face did not change much, and he responded lightly:

"Mr. Zhao is a rare guest. Tell me, what's the matter?"

Yi Huawei smiled indifferently and said, "Haha~, General Meng's attitude is not the way to entertain guests. You came from afar, and you don't even have a glass of cold water?"

"What kind of guest are you if you come here uninvited? If it weren't for Xiaochuan, do you think I want to see you?"

Meng Tian did not hide the disgust in his eyes and snorted coldly: "If you have something to say, just say it!"

"General Meng, although Xiaochuan is in prison now, I am treating him well with good food and drink. He has only lost his freedom."

Yi Huawei smiled and said, "Don't worry, General Meng. I came here today to help you relieve your worries. I heard that General Meng has been ordered to build a straight road. Will he set out soon?"

Originally, Meng Tian in this world should have been poisoned and died soon. But Yi Huawei arrived early and did not order the assassination of Meng Tian, ​​so Meng Tian was still alive and kicking at this time.

Because Meng Tian was in good health, the Huns did not dare to act rashly, so there was no border invasion.

In accordance with historical inertia, Meng Tian was ordered to build a straight road, with Prince Fusu as the supervisor.

As soon as Qin Shi Huang unified the six kingdoms, he built many highways in all directions to facilitate his rule over the six kingdoms and to facilitate his travel. As the Qin army marched towards the Lingnan region, highways were also built all the way to Lingnan. This type of highway is called a "Chidao".

The Chidao was about 30 meters wide (some say 50 meters wide). In addition to the flat road surface for carriages, there was also a special concave track in the middle with sleepers, which was very similar to today's train tracks, but concave, making it easier for horses to pull carriages of fixed width on it, and the speed was faster than on ordinary roads. When Qin Shihuang went out for tours, he would walk along the Chidao, and he could go fast or slow.

The Qin Dynasty stipulated a uniform distance between vehicles. The imperial roads led to all parts of the country, with clear signs in the middle to mark the imperial roads, and ordinary people were not allowed to walk on them at will. Three-meter-high trees were planted on both sides of the imperial roads, and rows of green pines were planted in the middle.

Generally speaking, there was no need to build roads so wide at that time. According to experts' ideas about the Qin Dynasty's rail roads and highways, the highways were conventional roads and wooden rail roads running parallel in both directions. If a vehicle needed to, it could get on the track at any time, or it could enter the ordinary road from the track at any time.

The same track symbolizes the political significance of national unity, but it also has practical effects. The roadbed is built layer by layer by hand, and then sleepers are laid on the roadbed to make the road surface track stable, so that vehicles can travel quickly and smoothly. The big trees on both sides of the road provide sufficient material reserves for the construction of the highway. Once the road surface is damaged, it can be repaired anytime and anywhere.

The "straight road" is a super highway.

The so-called "straight road" refers to the road from Xianyang to Jiuyuan. The reason for building this road is that Jiuyuan (today's Baotou, Inner Mongolia) was a fortress for the Qin people to defend against the Xiongnu, so the Qin Dynasty attached great importance to it. In order to ensure smooth communication between the court and Jiuyuan, Qin Shihuang decided to build a national defense highway in the north of the Qin Empire - the straight road, to improve the transportation and military defense capabilities of the northern part of the empire.

It stands to reason that Qin Shihuang had just defeated the enemy and unified China, so he should have rested and recuperated. Why did he waste money and manpower on these two super projects, causing the people to complain? This has to do with Qin Shihuang's dream of immortality. Qin Shihuang once sent alchemists such as Lu Sheng to the sea to seek the guidance of immortals. However, Lu Sheng did not bring back the elixir of immortality after several years of hard work, but brought back a book called "Record of Books". The book said: "The one who destroyed Qin was Hu."

The Hu people referred to during the Qin Dynasty were the later Xiongnu. The early history of the Qin State can be described as a history of struggle against the Hu people.

During the reign of King Zhaoxiang of Qin, the Hu people threatened the northern border of Qin. In consideration of advancing eastward, Qin adopted a strategy of building cities to defend against the Hu people. During the reign of Emperor Qin Shihuang, the Qin army was brave and good at fighting, and the Xiongnu were in a dangerous situation with the Dayuezhi in the west, the Donghu in the east, and the powerful Qin in the south, so they did not dare to act rashly against Qin. Therefore, the border of the Qin Empire was relatively stable.

The farsighted Qin Shi Huang had intended to strike while the iron was hot and subdue the Xiongnu when he was destroying the six kingdoms, but he was strongly opposed by his ministers, led by Li Si, and had to shelve the plan. The reason was that the expedition to the Xiongnu would only consume the power of the court without any actual benefits, which was not conducive to the long-term development of the Qin State. Until Qin Shi Huang saw the prophecy of "the one who will destroy Qin is Hu", no one could stop his determination to maintain the Qin Empire forever with various reasons.

In fact, Sima Qian's record of the sorcerer's prophecy that "the one who will destroy Qin is Hu" makes later generations feel that Qin Shihuang seemed to be dealing with this matter very seriously, but it is also possible that Qin Shihuang used it as an excuse to do something he had always wanted to do, just like when he used the phenomenon of Halley's Comet to postpone his coming-of-age ceremony and eliminate Lao Ai.

To go deeper, defending against the Huns was not the ultimate goal, and this matter was essentially an internal affair. From the Qin State to the Qin Dynasty, the operating rules of this regime were to rely on efficient bureaucratic groups and military merit groups to provide a stepping stone for the lower classes and bring glory to the kings, so as to ensure the stability of the empire. Just like the empires of Genghis Khan and Napoleon, the officers in power became a threat to the royal power in peaceful days, and they needed to be guided to turn their attention to the outside world. Once they were idle, it meant that the soldiers were unemployed, and ordinary civilians could not change their origins by relying on military merit.

In the 215nd year of the reign of Emperor Qin Shihuang (30 BC), Emperor Qin Shihuang appointed Meng Tian to lead 30 elite soldiers to launch a powerful attack on the Xiongnu. In one fell swoop, they recovered Henan and Yuzhong areas. In the second year, they recovered Gaoque and reached Yinshan and Hetao areas. The Xiongnu could not withstand the heavy blow of the Qin army and finally fled to the northern desert. However, the triumphant Qin troops did not continue to attack the northern desert, but turned from offense to defense and began to build the Great Wall on the spot to defend against the Xiongnu based on the northern Great Wall of Yan, Zhao and Qin during the Warring States Period.

Qin Shi Huang connected the old Great Wall into a line and built many more sections, forming a 12000-li long Great Wall. With the Great Wall, the invasion of the northern Hu people could be resisted, but if the Hu people invaded the border, the Qin army still had to rush to intercept them as soon as possible. As the saying goes, "before the troops move, the food and grass must go first." Under the road conditions at that time, transporting 1 stone of grain from the Central Plains to the northern front line would consume 192 stones of grain on the road, which was a huge cost. In order to solve this problem once and for all, Qin Shi Huang decided to build a straight road.

The "Records of the Grand Historian - Biography of Meng Tian" records: "He ordered Meng Tian to build a road from Jiuyuan to Ganquan, cutting through mountains and filling up valleys, a distance of 1,800 miles."

This straight road starts from Yunyang Linguang Palace in the north of Xianyang, along the Ziwuling Mountains through Yulin and the western part of Dongsheng County in Inner Mongolia, across the Yellow River, across the three provinces of Shanxi, Gansu and Inner Mongolia, through 14 counties, and directly reaches Jiuyuan County in the southwest of Baotou. The whole course is about 30 kilometers. The basic width of the straight road is 60 meters, and the widest part is about 12 meters. large trucks can drive side by side. It is called "straight road" because of its construction principles: flat and straight, splitting mountains when encountering mountains, carving roads when encountering rocks, filling ditches and valleys, which shows that its difficulty is no less than the Great Wall.

Ying Zheng ordered Crown Prince Fusu to supervise the construction and General Meng Tian to preside over the specific project. Meng Tian recruited more than 30 people to start building the Qin Straight Road. Since it was used for military defense, the requirements for project quality were naturally very high. Meng Tian used the most advanced road construction technology of the Qin Dynasty to build the Qin Straight Road.

What is the most advanced road construction technology? The ancients did not have rollers when building roads. If they wanted to make the roads smooth, they could only tamp the soil flat and then lay it on the road. Therefore, the ancients invented the rammed earth technology. Let's first introduce this rammed earth technology:
Rammed earth technology existed before the Qin Dynasty. To put it simply, it is to process the soil so that it reaches a certain density and then use it to build roads, city walls, tombs, palaces, etc. The Qin Dynasty used rammed earth to build the Afang Palace, the Great Wall, etc.

Most of the construction projects during this period used soil as the foundation. The soil processing procedures at that time were mainly as follows:
Ramming is to clamp the soil with a wooden board and beat it hard. Due to different projects, the density and shape of the soil to be processed are also different, and ramming can be divided into large ramming and small ramming. A ramming rod is an iron or stone tool, cylindrical in shape, with several ropes tied around it. It takes eight or twenty-four craftsmen to form a group, pull the ropes and use the ramming rod to pound the compacted soil block firmly, that is, to lay the foundation.

To lay a solid foundation, craftsmen also need to use a tool called a crutch. They use both arms to rotate downward forcefully and make holes where needed to increase the friction between soil layers. They then use rakes and iron paddles to level out uneven areas when laying the soil.

The production process is like this, but most of the Qinzhi Road is built on the ridge, so the soil layer must be rammed more firmly.
Before the Qin Dynasty, raw soil and water were used as the basic material after being stuffed. However, this method was not strong and durable and could not be used to build the Qin Straight Road.

Meng Tian asked the craftsmen to use the most advanced soil-making technology of the Qin Dynasty to build roads with cooked soil, which is a bit like today's concrete. The cooked soil used by Qin craftsmen is raw soil that has been crushed and burned.

According to the procedure, the craftsmen laid three layers of soil on the Qin Straight Road: one layer of native soil; one layer of cultivated soil; and the last layer was a reinforced cultivated soil layer.

The Qin Straight Road built in this way was solid and flat, 800 kilometers long and meters wide. Palaces were built around it for the emperor to rest during his inspections, as well as military facilities such as beacon towers and sentry towers.

"The Book of Han: Biography of Jia Shan" records: "The road is fifty steps wide, with trees every three meters. It is thickly paved outside, covered with golden spikes, and planted with green pines." Green pines were also planted on both sides of the Qinzhi Road.

During the reign of Emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty, Wang Zhaojun, a member of the Ninghu clan, married Huhanye Chanyu of the Xiongnu and took this Qinzhi Road. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Cai Wenji returned to the Han Dynasty from the Southern Xiongnu and was also said to have taken the Qinzhi Road.

Later, the military defense function of the Qinzhi Road gradually faded, and its transportation function began to stand out. Shops appeared on both sides of the 800-kilometer Qinzhi Road, forming small towns. With dense merchants and frequent commercial exchanges, the Qinzhi Road gradually became an important channel for north-south trade. Tea merchants, porcelain merchants, silk merchants and other merchants were active and running on this road.

The Qin Straight Road was in use for 2000 years from the Qin Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty. After the mid-Qing Dynasty, the road began to be abandoned.

The reason why it lasted for 30 years is that the road was built with cooked earth. craftsmen used hammers to reinforce the cooked earth in multiple layers, making the soil denser and leaving almost no gaps between the layers. Weeds could not grow in such soil. In addition, the craftsmen mixed salt and alkali into the cooked earth, which made it even harder for weeds to grow.

In addition, the Qin Straight Road has another superb feature, which is that it pays attention to drainage. "Historical Records" says that the Qin Straight Road "cuts through mountains and fills up valleys, and goes straight through": The Qin Straight Road was mainly built in hilly areas with undulating terrain.

The so-called "cutting a mountain" means that if there is a mountain ahead when building a road, the road will be built at a place slightly lower than the mountain. A part of the high part of the mountain will be cut off, and the cut soil will be used to fill the downhill of the road. First, a section of slope protection will be rammed, and then the road will be made of rammed earth.

"Filling the valley" means that when the road is built between two peaks, the valley bottom between the mountains is filled with soil, compacted, and then the road surface is paved layer by layer.

If they encountered higher mountains, the craftsmen would use the zigzag method to build the road, increase the length of the road and reduce the width of the road. Therefore, the entire Qin Straight Road has no large slopes and bends. Even if it rains, the water will not accumulate on the road and will be discharged quickly.

The slope design of the Qin Straight Road reached the modern Class II highway standard. After its completion, it only took the army 2 days to reach Xianyang from the foot of Yinshan Mountain. Once the border defense alarm sounded, the Qin army only needed 5 days and 3 nights to reach the foot of Yinshan Mountain and attack the Xiongnu.

In 110 BC, Emperor Wu of Han led 18 cavalrymen along the Qin Straight Road to the grassland north of Yinshan Mountain. In 622, Li Shimin led 10 Tang troops to the north along the Qin Straight Road.

Qin Shihuang had a long-term vision and great talent, but the six major projects he built successively consumed a huge amount of manpower and material resources, and also laid the groundwork for the early demise of Qin.

These great projects consumed a large amount of manpower and material resources and caused tremendous suffering to the people at that time. The Qin Dynasty was therefore nailed to the pillar of shame for tyranny by Confucian scholars, but later dynasties all benefited from Qin Shihuang's "tyranny".

In addition to the Afang Palace, the Mausoleum of Lishan, the road leading directly to the northern border and the Great Wall, Qin Shihuang also spent a lot of effort on building canals. There are two world heritage-level canals alone, namely the Zhengguo Canal and the Lingqu Canal. The difference is that the Zhengguo Canal is used for irrigation, while the Lingqu Canal is used for transportation.

Lingqu Canal played a very important role in the unification of the Qin Dynasty and the economic development in the later period. Strictly speaking, Lingqu Canal is the earliest Grand Canal in China. The construction of Lingqu Canal fully demonstrated the farsightedness of Qin Shihuang.

The Lingnan region at that time was completely different from the modern Guangdong and Fujian areas. At that time, the region was very backward and the economic center was in the north.

However, Qin Shihuang decided to build a canal to connect the Lingnan region. After continuous construction in later generations, Lingqu Canal gradually became a very important waterway at that time.

Compared with Lingqu Canal, Zhengguo Canal is more famous, and many people compare it with Dujiangyan. Dujiangyan is still in use, while Zhengguo Canal only has ruins. At that time, Zhengguo Canal's contribution to the Qin State was no less than that of Dujiangyan.

More than 100 million people participated in the construction of Zhengguo Canal, which took nearly ten years. It was also because of the completion of Zhengguo Canal that the Guanzhong Plain became a fertile land. The successful construction of Zhengguo Canal prevented the Guanzhong Plain from floods for a long time, and the grain harvest was good, and the Qin army was strong.

"What do you tube?"

Meng Tian frowned and looked at Yi Huawei: "Don't think you can do whatever you want just because I'm leaving with the young master!"

"General, you misunderstood. Haha~ Gao came here today and I have a gift for you."

Yi Huawei took out a piece of cloth from his sleeve and pushed it towards Meng Tian.

"what is this?"

Meng Tian did not reach out his hand, but looked at Yi Huawei suspiciously.

(End of this chapter)