My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 295 Women’s Heart

"Brother Emperor..."

"I'm afraid it's a long-term plan."

A few days later, we arrived at Shanglin Bowang Garden.

I thought that Liu Rong's words in Xuanshi that day were all polite, and in fact he was just looking for an excuse to keep the kings - mainly Liu Fei - until autumn;
Wait until the war breaks out, then find a reason to give Liu Fei'an a nominal title of military supervisor, and symbolically go to the front line for a formality.

But after arriving at Bowang Garden and personally observing the drills of the Suiying soldiers and the matching "weapons and equipment", Liu Fei finally realized: Liu Rong was not joking.

Even the plot to "take advantage of the opportunity to seize the land in Henan" was not a sudden idea, but had been planned for a long time!

Perhaps there is no set time;

But Liu Rong probably had the plan of "taking back Henan as long as there is a chance" many years ago and put it into action.

After coming to this conclusion, Liu Fei couldn't help but become even more excited.

——As the Art of War says: He who plans for victory before the battle has made the most calculations!

This means that before the war begins, those who win over multiple parties in the war preparation and simulation stages will have a greater chance of winning after the war begins.

To put it bluntly, the more prepared you are, the easier it is to win the war.

As for the preparations that Liu Rong made in Bowang Garden, such as Suiying and various other new weapons and equipment, even Liu Fei only had a cursory look at them. It was obvious that these were Liu Rong's preparations for this battle - or every future battle between the Han and the Xiongnu.

If Liu Fei had heard Liu Rong's vague strategic plan of "taking advantage of the Xiongnu's attack on Shang and Dai to launch a surprise attack on Henan", he would have just thought there was an opportunity;

After visiting Bowang Garden and seeing Liu Rong's "temple calculations" for the war between Han and Xiongnu, Liu Fei felt that it would probably work!
There is a high probability that Henan land can be taken back!

The strategic situation of the Han Dynasty will improve significantly and the pressure on border defense will be greatly reduced!

The most important thing is: Han, we need a place to raise horses...

The Han Dynasty no longer needed to spend a lot of money to set up horse farms on the edge of the grassland, where the breeding of war horses was extremely slow, the yield was extremely low, and there was always the threat of military force from the Xiongnu.
In just five or six years, the Han Dynasty will regain the glory of the Qin Dynasty, when the Hu people did not dare to go south to herd horses and fled when they saw the red dragon flag of the Han Dynasty...

"My brother has made great contributions to our Han family and the ancestral temples and the country..."

"And it's a great achievement!"

With confidence in his heart, Liu Fei smiled freely, jumped on his horse happily, and rode back the way he came - towards Chang'an City.

Suiying may be an extremely critical part of this battle.

But in this war, Liu Fei's role was definitely not to lead Suiying to lay a pontoon bridge.

——Even if Liu Rongzheng said so, Liu Fei would never be able to do it;

At this moment, all Liu Fei was thinking about was returning to his Jiangdu Palace in Shangguanli, taking out the geomancy of the north and Henan, and making a careful deduction.

Not to mention whether he could participate in the military negotiation that would inevitably take place in the Xuanshi Hall in the near future - even if it was just for fun and entertainment, Liu Fei would enjoy it...

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It was June, and the entire city of Chang'an seemed like a giant steamer.

The streets were almost deserted - in the huge city of Chang'an, you couldn't see two people appearing on the street at the same time or within the same person's field of vision.

Outside the city, no matter how simple and hardworking the old farmers were, they no longer had the energy to go to the fields to take care of the crops. They just lay in groups of three or five under the roots of trees for shade, chatting and bragging to gain spiritual nourishment.

Even the palace maids felt exhausted by the heat. Whenever possible, they hid in their classrooms, waving bamboo fans wildly in an attempt to dispel the stuffiness.

Compared with the various situations in the human world, the two queen mothers in Changle Palace truly lived a life like a fairy...

"go;"

"Bring some more ice."

"The emperor has a way to make ice. He doesn't have to be stingy and calculate when using ice like in the past years, for fear that the ice will be gone before the weather gets cold..."

Changle Palace, Changxin Palace.

Old Empress Dowager Dou lay contentedly on the imperial couch at the head, enjoying the coolness and tranquility of being isolated from the world.

At the foot of the imperial steps, Empress Dowager Li and Empress Cao sat opposite each other at the first seats on the east and west, both of them looking relaxed.

——If it were in earlier years, the Changxin Palace where Empress Dowager Dou lived would never have been like this!

It is well known that Emperor Taizong Xiaowen was a simple man who could wear the same inner robe for more than ten years;

But no one knew that in order to preserve the reputation of her late husband, Empress Dowager Dou became even more frugal than before.

For example, in the past, Princess Guantao Liu Piao would receive rewards worth no less than a hundred gold coins every time she came to Changle.

But except the Lord of Guantao, no one else - including King Xiao of Liang, Liu Wu, had ever received such a heavy reward from Empress Dowager Dou for no reason.

On weekdays, throughout the Changle Palace, thousands of mouths are staring at the old empress dowager's small treasury for food, but they still try to save wherever possible and avoid spending wherever possible.

Even the palace servants' usual practice of wearing a new set of clothes every year was reduced to one set every three years by the Empress Dowager in the year when Emperor Taizong Xiaowen passed away.

Someone once said: What if a palace maid wore shabby clothes and lost the Queen Mother's face...

The old queen mother said: If there really is that day - if someone really appears in front of me in tattered clothes, then that is the true legacy of Emperor Taizong, blessing his descendants and protecting the Han Dynasty for thousands of years...

They were so frugal even in their daily expenses, let alone ice, which was once a luxury.

——In those years, before the current Liu Rong stepped forward and made ice out of stones like a magician, the only source of ice, both inside and outside the palace, was the cellars frozen in the previous winter.

The so-called cellaring naturally means freezing the water into ice and storing it in the cellar, and then taking it out little by little in the summer.

This is so time-consuming and labor-intensive - the cost of wasted manpower and time, as well as a cellar that could have been used to store other things, naturally leads to the price of ice being basically comparable to the same weight of copper!

Although it is not as exaggerated as "one pound of ice is worth one pound of gold", it is still real: one pound of ice is worth at least fifty coins!

As we all know, the currency most commonly used by the Han people today is still the four-zhu coin minted by Emperor Taizong Xiaowen.

Si Zhu, as the name suggests, is a copper coin weighing four Zhu, or one-third of a tael.

According to this weight, three four-zhu coins equal one liang, and one jin equals sixteen liang.

A pound of coins weighing four zhu is only forty-eight coins - if you want to buy the same weight of ice, you even have to add two coins more!
Although it is known that the Sizhu coin is not pure copper, and even nearly half of it is mixed with lead, it is still terrifying.

In the feudal era, any consumables - note, any!
If the value of any consumable can reach the same weight of copper coins, it means that this thing has reached the category of luxury goods.

In common people's understanding, this kind of thing is roughly spices, seasonings, or precious medicines.

But before Liu Rong "made ice", there was one more item in this category, namely, consumable luxury goods.

The reason is very simple: scarcity makes things valuable.

For an ordinary family, let alone a large cellar, there simply isn’t enough free space for that size!
Even if they had the land, they didn't have the financial resources to dig a cellar underground that wouldn't collapse.

This means that those who can use cellars to store ice are mostly wealthy people. At the most, they are nobles, and at the most, they are powerful and wealthy businessmen.

Perhaps someone might say: Since businessmen are only interested in profit, why don’t they store more in the winter so that they can make a fortune in the summer?
This brings us to the fact that in this era, storing ice is not just about taking some water from the river and then freezing it naturally and storing it.

The answer lies in the riddle.

The real difficulty in storing ice in cellars lies precisely in the two words "cellar" and "store".

Jiao, you must have private land, right?

We need to hire someone to dig it out, right?
We also need to reinforce the roof and surrounding areas of the cellar to prevent it from collapsing, right?
This is already a project of architectural difficulty.

In other words: digging a cellar in this era is no less difficult than building a house.

And it couldn't be a servant's thatched hut, but a good house with reinforced beams and pillars.

The cost is no less than that of a brick house of the same size.

Now that the cellar problem has been solved, the next step is to "hide" it.

——You put the ice in the cellar, you need someone to watch it, right?
Otherwise, if it gets stolen or melted maliciously, you won’t even have a place to cry.

Furthermore, even if everything went well, no matter how well insulated the cellar was, when the hottest days of summer came, the ice that had been stored there would have melted by more than 30%.

Whether the remaining 70% to 80% can be saved depends on how careful you are.

With all the costs of space, manpower and time, this is the amount of ice that can be used every summer.
It is no wonder that the price of summer ice has skyrocketed and is even out of stock.

——It’s not that no one wants to buy it, but that you can’t find anywhere to buy it!

The businessmen themselves have to enjoy themselves too!
The storage is so cold that most of it will be used for personal use!

Whether the remaining amount can flow out depends on whether there are any nobles who have not stored enough ice in the past;

If any noble family did not prepare enough ice, then ordinary people would have no chance of getting any - even a middle-class family with a good fortune would hardly find a piece of thin ice the size of a palm.

With ice priced so high among the common people, even though Empress Dowager Dou had no worries about the source of ice - even though she knew that the Shaofu had stored a considerable amount, she still conceded that ice was a "luxury" and was never willing to use it, or rather, she dared not use it.

When someone asked about it, the old empress dowager only said: Don’t say that the Shaofu stored the ice without spending any money, but when he sold the ice, wouldn’t he still get money in return?

A piece of ice worth a hundred gold coins was used by a blind old woman like me. Doesn't that mean that a hundred gold coins were squandered by my Changle Palace?

All I can say is that Empress Dowager Dou was worthy of being the wife of Emperor Taizong Xiaowen.

When it comes to being stingy, even their train of thought are so strikingly similar...

"The emperor made ice from saltpeter, which really provided a way to escape the heat inside and outside the palace."

"If it was in previous years, the Queen Mother would be stubborn and refuse to use ice, and everyone in the palace would have no choice but to follow suit;"

"Even the ministers and officials in the court only dared to use it secretly, or go to Ganquan to escape the summer heat..."

Feeling the coolness in the palace, Empress Dowager Li felt comfortable, but she couldn't help but think of the hard days in the past.

——In fact, in the past, the only ones who didn't dare to use ice in summer were the concubines in the harem who were the empress dowager's "daughters-in-law".

As for inside and outside the court?

Hey!
There are many people who use ice as their bed to sleep!
To put it bluntly, apart from the women in the harem, the rest of the prominent people were either capable and were supported by the emperor with high positions and generous salaries, or their ancestors were capable and were supported by the whole world with high titles.

Only the women in the harem can get whatever they want in front of the Eastern Palace Queen Mother - let alone ice, even the makeup and jewelry have to be considered carefully before wearing.

During those years in the Weiyang Palace, Empress Dowager Li always became irritable every summer.

I have a bad temper, and when I am suffocated by the summer heat, how can I not cause trouble everywhere...

At that time, it was so hot that the late emperor showed some mercy and sent some ice cubes to the Phoenix Palace, which was better than nothing.
After becoming the Queen Mother, I was still worried about the future. Would I not even be able to use the ice cubes that could only bring a moment of coolness every three to five days?
As a result, in the first summer, the beloved son figured out a new way to make ice, which made the old queen, who was used to being stingy, willing to use ice freely...

"Is there anything the Queen's palace needs?"

As for her daughter-in-law, Empress Dowager Li's muttering, Empress Dowager Dou pretended not to hear it, and turned her attention to her granddaughter-in-law who had just married into the family: Empress Cao.

"If there is a shortage of food, clothing, or anything else, the Queen can summon the eunuchs to give orders - or even directly summon the Minister of the Imperial Household to question them."

"The emperor is busy with state affairs. If the queen is worried about disturbing the emperor, she will come to find me, her grandmother..."

The old empress dowager's caring words naturally made Empress Cao smile happily, and she immediately bowed to the old empress dowager.

"Grandmother, your words are too serious."

"I am well in the chamber, and have no shortage of clothes or things."

"Your Majesty is busy, but he always comes to see me, chat with me, and relieve my boredom..."

Hearing this, the old queen mother only sighed with a complicated expression and shook her head.

"Speaking of which, there has been no major incident in the court in recent days."

"What's more, the succession to the throne is the most important clan and social event;"

"No matter how busy the emperor is, he shouldn't neglect the queen like this."

"Especially since the emperor has time to go to the Pepper Chamber, but can't spare even a day to stay there?"

Empress Dowager Dou's doubts were obviously not unreasonable.

——If Empress Cao was himself, or was forced to be the Empress by his daughter-in-law, Empress Dowager Li, then Liu Rong’s resistance is completely understandable.

Back then, the late emperor took the initiative to seek a marriage from the late Empress Dowager Bo and married the late Empress Bo;

After he was married into the Crown Prince's Palace, didn't he still resist and didn't go to spend a night with his wife or the Crown Princess for three to five months?
But the current Empress Cao was made Empress by Liu Rong against all odds, even at the risk of the Pingyang Marquis family rising again - or even rising too much and threatening the imperial power!

Such a firm choice, but in the end, he was so hesitant and unwilling to be humane...

"The eunuch Ling Kuiwu who was close to the emperor did mention this matter."

"——It is said that the emperor got an ancient book, which is all about the ways for women to give birth."

"Tell me what it is~"

"The younger the woman is, the harder it is to give birth. If she is under 17 or 18, there is a high chance that she will die during childbirth."

As she said this, Empress Dowager Li nodded seriously: "To be honest, it's true!"

"During Emperor Taizong's reign, whether it was the concubines in the palace or the concubines and wives in the crown prince's palace, the younger they were, the harder it was to give birth."

"Those who died of complications during childbirth are mostly 15 or 16 years old, or even younger?"

(End of this chapter)