At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 509, Making History and Propaganda Preparation
At this time, the dock area was bustling with singing and dancing. All the people flocked to the dock. On the dock there were three tattered and extremely old ships. The tattered sails and cracked decks told of the hardships of this voyage.

After three years of sailing, Liu Bi was now completely black and looked very old, but when he saw his compatriots welcoming him, he was still excited and said, "Great man, I, Liu Bi, am back."

At this time, someone suddenly asked: "General Liu, outside of the Han Dynasty, are there any continents or countries?"

As soon as these words were spoken, the whole audience fell silent, and everyone looked at Liu Bi with excitement.

This is also the most concerned issue for the entire Kuaiji County. Kuaiji County has prospered due to the maritime trade. With a population of over one million, more than half of the people in the county are engaged in industries related to the shipping industry. The discovery of the South Seas more than ten years ago made Kuaiji County one of the top five richest counties in the Han Dynasty, and the prosperity of Kuaiji County began from then on.

Three years ago, the Indian civilization was discovered. Kuaiji County, which was in a state of economic crisis at the time, quickly got out of the crisis because of the addition of a market with a population of tens of millions. Now, Indian civilization brings billions of wealth to Kuaiji County every year.

Thanks to this wealth, Kuaiji County surpassed Chen County, the birthplace of the Han Dynasty, and became the second richest county in the entire Han Dynasty. The factories in Kuaiji County worked in three shifts to produce overtime, but the goods were still in short supply. The salaries of the craftsmen increased by thousands of coins, and their income increased by more than one third. In the eyes of many people in Kuaiji County, they were the best in the world, and Chang'an City was just a convenience in the capital.

Maritime trade has become the foundation of Kuaiji County. Now even ordinary people in Kuaiji County know that only by discovering new continents and new civilizations can their Kuaiji County become better and better, and even one day surpass Chang'an City and become the number one city in the world.

Liu Bi thought for a moment and said loudly: "There are of course continents overseas, and there are more than one, and there are many civilizations, countries, and even tribes. It can be said that they are as numerous as the stars in the sky."

At this time, a voice asked again: "General, have you ever encountered a civilization or country that is more powerful than our Han Dynasty?"

Liu Bi puffed out his chest and said proudly: "In the tens of thousands of miles of sea I have sailed, I have not encountered a civilization or country more powerful than my Han Dynasty. It can even be said that there is no civilization or country close to my Han Dynasty. As far as I see the world, my Han Dynasty is still the beacon of civilization throughout the world. Many continents are waiting for my Han Dynasty to ignite the fire of civilization. This is the clear destiny of all Han people."

Hearing this, everyone present cheered. This expedition not only discovered new continents, new civilizations, and new countries, but also showed that their civilizations were not as good as that of the Han Dynasty. The Han Dynasty was still a beacon of civilization. This was the most satisfactory answer for them.

Xiahou Ying, the governor of Kuaiji County, looked at Liu Bi and said, "You are indeed good men of the Han Dynasty. You have proved that the earth is a sphere. You will go down in history. I have arranged a banquet in the government office to welcome you."

After that, Xiahou Ying took Liu Bi to the government office of Kuaiji County. At the same time, he immediately sent a message to Chang'an City, saying that the North Sea Fleet had completed its round-the-world journey and landed in Kuaiji County.

On February 26th, the 22nd year of the Han calendar, Chang'an City, Yan Palace.

The news of Liu Bi's return was delivered to Xu Fan in just one day. Xu Fan was overjoyed and said, "Come here, go find Shusun Tong, the head of the Imperial Clan, Fu Sheng, the head of the Academy, Zhong Jun, the editor-in-chief of the Han Monthly, Chen Lian, the head of the opera troupe, and Lu Shu, the patent officer, and others."

"promise!"

Soon Shusun Tong and others came to Yan State.

After showing them the contents of the Guangbao, Xu Fan said excitedly: "Zongzheng, the academy has ordered you two to go to Kuaiji County immediately and then look for the logbook of the North Sea Fleet. I allow you to gather scholars from all over the world to find out from this information whether the civilizations that appeared during the voyage are the descendants of our Han Dynasty left overseas. There are so many tribes in Nanyang that are the bloodlines left over from the time of our Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, and even the bloodlines of the Yue Kingdom. It can be seen that even the dangerous sea cannot stop our Chinese civilization from expanding. I think other continents should also have the bloodlines of our Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors."

Shusun Tong and Fu Sheng could only smile bitterly and said, "Yes!"

Only the emperor can speak so openly about compiling history. The historians of the Han Dynasty were originally a restriction on the emperor. No emperor would not care about his own affairs after his death. After I die, who cares about the floods? This is not the mainstream of Chinese civilization, but the emperor is an outlier. He openly claims that history serves the Han Dynasty. The tampering of history has reached the level of blatant.

Then Xu Fan looked at Zhong Jun and the others and said, "You should also rush to Kuaiji County immediately to obtain the information discovered by the North Sea Fleet's global tour as soon as possible, and then adapt it into a story and leave a page in the Great Han Monthly to serialize it. I want every citizen of the Great Han to be able to read the story of the expedition team in the Great Han Monthly within three years."

Zhong Jun nodded and said, "Yes!"

Then Xu Fan looked at Lu Shu and Chen Lian and said, "You will be responsible for compiling these stories into a drama. I have even thought of a name, which is "The Adventures of Liu Bi". I only ask that within five years, every village in my Han Dynasty must know this story. You can exaggerate it moderately and focus on the story of overseas wealth. After all, most people like to get rich."

Lu Shu and Chen Lian said: "Yes!"

Judging from the current progress of civilization, the Han Dynasty can only build a few strongholds in the Sahara, and it is almost impossible to transform it into a native land. I am now in the Roman area. Although Rome is still in the slavery period, it is the peak of Roman civilization. Judging from the later colonial experience of Western civilization, it is almost impossible to assimilate if the civilization does not form an absolute generation gap.

Although the great voyages of the West were a disaster for all civilizations, most civilizations withstood this disaster. These civilizations may be strong or weak in later generations, but they still continue, which proves that this civilization is still vibrant.

On the contrary, the civilizations that were truly destroyed were primitive civilizations such as the Maya and other zombies. It took two generations to exterminate these civilizations that had lasted for thousands of years. It can be seen that it is very difficult to truly destroy a civilization. Xu Fan did not want to do such a thankless task.

If, during his lifetime, he could see the Han civilization take root in the Yinzhou continent and then discover Oceania, with three continents plus half of the Asian continent, the Han civilization would be able to occupy a dominant position like Western civilization in later generations, and even if his descendants were prodigal sons, it would only last for a few hundred years.

If I could force Rome to become the industrial center of the world, but everything you buy is expensive and everything you sell is cheap, and I occupy more territory, I can use the scissors gap between agriculture and industry to make you a beast of burden, and that would be a way to vent the anger of future generations.

Therefore, the most important task for the Han Dynasty over the next hundred years was to migrate to Yinzhou, allowing the people of the Han Dynasty to take root and establish a nation on those two continents. In this way, the thousand-year foundation of the Han Dynasty was established.

After leaving the Yan Palace, Shusun Tong and Fusheng, who were 110 years old in total, were so exhausted that their faces almost turned into buns. Fusheng, who was a little more respectable, smiled bitterly and said, "How will the historians of the future record us? Will they say that we are the treacherous villains of the dynasty?"

The historians would not give them a good reputation for such a thing of tampering with history. Fusheng still wanted to go down in history, but how did he end up on another path? He didn't even dare to retreat. The Order of Academy had become more and more important in the political landscape of the Han Dynasty. There were millions of students and hundreds of thousands of Confucian teachers in the Han Dynasty every year. Every year, 30 billion in fiscal expenditures were given to their academies. It was a real powerful government office in the Han Dynasty, and its scale was not inferior to that of the Order of the Imperial Household. If their Confucianism lost the position of Order of Academy, it would be equivalent to losing the foundation of Confucianism.

Shusun Tongdao said: "The Han Dynasty is prosperous and the emperor is wise, so there will naturally be no treacherous ministers. I am just thinking about whether I should contact my junior brother this time and let him officially enter the Han Dynasty's official career."

Shusun Tong had a flexible moral bottom line and did not attach much importance to his academic status, so he naturally did not care about these things. In his opinion, the most important role of Confucianism to the Han Dynasty was these, because their education enabled tens of millions of ethnic minorities to smoothly integrate into the life of the Han Dynasty, allowing the Han Dynasty to devote all its energy to the development of social production.

Fu Sheng said: "Master Zhong has indeed reached the age to enter the government. We are already old and can only serve one more term before retiring. However, there are not many Confucians who can take our place. If there are really no Confucians among the Nine Ministers, the position of Confucianism in the Han Dynasty will definitely be in jeopardy."

It’s not that Confucianism does not have elites. Kong Yu brought more than a hundred students to join Xu Fan. Some of them fell behind over the years for various reasons, but five of them still became prefects of the Han Dynasty with an official salary of two thousand stones. At the same time, there were also a large number of Confucian elites in the vassal states outside the Han Dynasty who were educating people everywhere.

But Confucianism did have a talent gap. Those elites who joined Xu Fan were not young either, and most of them were only a few years younger than Shusun Tong. If Shusun Tong wanted to retire, they had to retire too. Originally, there was nothing wrong with the kingly way. With their recommendation, maybe he could have become a high-ranking official of the Nine Ministers, or at least the position of the Order of the Academy could have taken over. But he ruined himself, and Confucianism had to push a new generation of leaders into the Han Dynasty.

March, the twenty-second year of the Han calendar.

The new issue of the Han Monthly solemnly announced to the people of the world that the Han expedition team had returned. They set out towards the east and finally returned to the Han Dynasty in the South China Sea in the west, proving that the earth is a sphere. Liu Bi and his team became the first people in the world to complete a circumnavigation of the world.

So the Han Monthly published this news, the Legal Monthly, the Confucian Monthly, the Mozi Monthly, and almost all the mainstream newspapers and periodicals of the Han Dynasty published the news of the expedition on the front page, explaining the significance of this expedition to the Han civilization from all aspects, and the news from various continents began to spread slowly. In a very short period of time, Liu Bi's reputation was known to everyone, and the news of global travel and the New World quickly dominated the hot spots in all counties of the Han Dynasty.

All the major restaurants, teahouses, and theaters in the Han Dynasty were discussing the expedition team's completion of their round-the-world trip. After twenty years of rapid development, even the lowest-level people in the Han Dynasty no longer believed that the wasteland around the Han Dynasty was useless. No piece of land was useless. As long as someone cultivated it, it would become a wealthy place.

Jiangnan became a land of fish and rice, the Western Regions became the source of jade and agate for the entire Han Dynasty, and in the past two years it has become the source of lamp oil for the Han Dynasty. The desert is the Han Dynasty's pasture, and the cheap livestock they use, the mutton they eat, and the woolen cloth they use are all provided by the harsh conditions in the desert.

Liaodong is a fishing ground, and whales are full of treasures. The oil provides jobs for hundreds of thousands of Han people, and whale meat can feed hundreds of thousands of people. Not to mention Nanyang, which is the Han Dynasty's largest money bag. Now everyone can be exempted from corvée labor, have tax reductions and exemptions, and can live a good life now, all thanks to the specialties of Nanyang.

There is also the Indian continent. Although it has only been discovered for a few years, the last time the Han Dynasty was able to quickly get out of the crisis, it was all thanks to the Indian market. It was these tangible benefits that told the people of the Han Dynasty that no piece of land is useless.

And now the imperial court has discovered new continents. If these new continents are developed, who knows what benefits they will bring to them? Of course, for the people in Guanzhong, it would be best if they don't have to do these development work.

Of course, such a statement would be ridiculed as long as it was spoken. How could one enjoy happiness without suffering in this world? After 20 years of promotion by Xu Fan, the people of the Han Dynasty finally had the concept of equal rights and responsibilities, and understood that the good life of the Han Dynasty today was not only due to your hard work, but also to the pioneering efforts of tens of millions of people from the surrounding vassal states.

The ordinary people of the Han Dynasty were just gossiping together. No matter how many new continents were discovered, the impact on them was extremely limited. But for the merchant class of the Han Dynasty, the discovery of new continents, new civilizations, and new countries was simply a matter of great joy. After two crises and the explanation of the crises by various university factions in the Han Dynasty, these merchants have understood that economic crises are caused by insufficient markets. The last economic crisis was caused by the emergence of Indian civilization. The Indian merchants dumped tens of millions of pieces of cloth to India in one go, which directly pulled the Han Dynasty out of the quagmire of the economic crisis.

This made all the merchants in the Han Dynasty understand that finding new markets is the best way to solve the economic crisis. Now Liu Bi and his men have found several continents. If they are all like the Han Dynasty, they can expand their production capacity several times without worrying about the economic crisis. At the very least, they can reap the economic dividends for decades. This is great news for them. It almost means that they don't have to worry about encountering an economic crisis in their lifetime.

If these civilizations were the same as Tianzhu, that would not be bad either. The combined market spending power of several civilizations should be comparable to that of the Han Dynasty. The market would double, so at least they wouldn't have to worry about overcapacity in the next ten years. They could earn money in peace for ten years, which was also great news. Therefore, merchants from the Han Dynasty went around asking the expedition team for news about the New World. Countless merchants rushed to Kuaiji County just to get first-hand information so that they could prepare in advance.

Another excited class was the Han aristocracy, especially the Han elders who had been forced to retire by the emperor in the past two years. They had almost occupied all the good land in Southeast Asia. The desert was too barren, the Western Regions were windy and sandy, and Liaodong was too cold. They didn't want to go to the places where the Han people settled their princes. But now the New World gave them new hope. Their best wish was to occupy some fertile land and establish a vassal state to live in their old age.

Chang'an City, in the Qi Palace Garden.

As more and more Han Dynasty veterans retired, many of them were unwilling to return to their hometowns and stayed in Chang'an City. Xu Fan transformed the Qi Palace into a place for Han Dynasty heroes to retire.

Dozens of elderly Han veterans were practicing swordplay, jogging, playing Go or chess, creating a leisurely and warm scene.

Among these places, there is one that is the most murderous place, and that is the Sand Table Garden of the Qi Palace. Almost all of these retired veterans of the Han Dynasty have experience in military service. Now that they can no longer lead troops into battle, the sand table has become their only tool if they want to fight on the battlefield.

These people are not short of money. They built the best military model and transferred some soldiers from the Han Dynasty's military department to serve as referees for their calculations. As long as there are three soldiers to help these veterans calculate the parameters, it will be a sandbox simulation game that is closer to actual combat. These old generals kill each other on these sandboxes. Many people play sandbox games for the whole day.

These old generals even set up a league and began to formalize and institutionalize it, setting up three sand tables. They had to explore all the information on the sand tables bit by bit, and when the two sides clashed, the staff would replicate the information on the central sand table based on their information. It can be said that it was a perfect replica of the war game simulations of later generations.

These veterans formed a headquarters in groups of five, and then found a dozen soldiers to calculate the combat effectiveness parameters of each branch of the army. Such a battle sometimes lasted for more than ten days. Every time such a wonderful battle would attract countless spectators. The people could watch the open-air sand table for a whole day without feeling tired. Countless people looked at these sand tables and imagined themselves as the leaders of one side. Faced with the current situation, how to defeat their enemies? Even these spectators argued endlessly about this, and even fists and feet were used in intense situations.

After all, the Han people are martial, but in the past ten years, the Han has had no enemies at all. The only achievements they have made are that the Mobei Governor's Office wiped out several gangs of small bandits, Jincheng resisted several indigenous invasions from the plateau, or destroyed several pirate ships in Southeast Asia. However, such military reports, let alone occupying the front page headlines of the Han newspaper industry, rarely report this information even on the second and third pages. Most of them are just short messages.

Wargame simulations are the closest they have come to war, and sandbox games have replaced Go as the most difficult and most IQ-testing board game in the Han Dynasty.

(End of this chapter)