Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 2449: The Rule of the World (I)
The copper clock in the west warm room of the Qianqing Palace ticked to three quarters past the hour of the Chou Dynasty. Gao Youshi held the secret report sent by the express horse from the Western Regions in his hand and stroked the cinnabar annotation next to the four words "Jingxi Fort is completed" with his fingertips.

The candlelight cast his shadow on the screen painted with "Silk Road Military Farming Map". Although his forty-year-old body was still straight, a hint of tension could be seen under his sitting dragon robe - since the death of the late emperor, this was the countless nights he had not slept after midnight.

"Prince, it's time to drink ginseng soup." Lin Xi, the eunuch specially assigned to him in the palace, held a celadon bowl close to him. The slices of wild ginseng from Liaodong at the bottom of the bowl glowed amber under the candlelight.

Gao Youshi waved his hand, but his eyes fell on the winding ochre dotted line on the east side of the map - that was the "Westernmost Highway" that took one year and eight months to build - extending from Jiayuguan to Zhenxibao (Tomsk) in Siberia, then through Tyumen and Dingshanbao (Yekaterinburg), and finally to Jingxibao (Orenburg). The whole journey was 8,300 miles, and was finally completed by 100,000 prisoners in the name of "making up for their crimes" and with the help of paid Tatar tribes along the way.

He remembered the report he received in the dead of winter last year: the first batch of conscripted prisoners were mostly salt smuggling gangs in South and North China and horse bandits in Northwest China. He thought they would cause trouble, but because of the "generous conditions" of daily quotas of wheat rice and bacon and "three levels of sentence reduction upon completion of work", they actually burst into amazing work efficiency.

These prisoner laborers braved the Gobi Desert sandstorms and Siberian cold waves, used explosives shipped from Beijing to open up the mountains and build roads. With the standard of "a beacon tower every ten miles and a post station every thirty miles", they managed to carve out a road between the quicksand and frozen soil that could accommodate three spring carriages running side by side.

Although Gao Youshi did not set a very high standard for this first round of road construction, and it was certainly not as good as the famous Qin Straight Road, but because he expected that this road would continue to be used, he was not worried about it being covered over soon, and it was enough to support subsequent maintenance and expansion.

As for the cost, since the main laborers only needed to be provided with food and clothing, or used in the Ming Dynasty's daily necessities that were not very valuable (to the Tatar tribes), it was not too high. The entire road was built, and it cost less than 700,000 taels, which was almost half of what he expected.

To this end, he also sent out several groups of imperial inspectors to investigate along the way whether the Tatar tribes were forced to work or prisoners were allowed to die of exhaustion. However, he was surprised to find nothing.

He thought about it carefully and finally determined that as long as the system was reasonable, supervision was in place, and funding was sufficient, the officials below would not necessarily want to make a profit from it. After all, most of the officials in charge of supervising the road construction along the way were only from the Juren family. They had finally gotten a job, and the prime minister gave them "Gobi Desert Allowance" and "Frozen Soil Allowance", and even "double performance test", so they really didn't want to mess around, lest they waste the hard-earned promotion opportunity.

"Send an order to the governors-general of the three borders, Anxi, and Xiting," Gao Youshi put the secret report on the "Western Region Military Food Dispatch Table," "order each post station along the Western Extreme Highway to increase its coal storage by 4,000 kilograms, and equip each city and fort with ten water wheels made in Beijing."

Just as Lin Xi was about to leave, he was stopped by him, "Allow another 50,000 cotton-padded jackets to be given to the prisoners who are building the roads, in case they are worn out and replaced. If anyone freezes to death, the supervisor will be demoted by one grade."

After Lin Xi left, Gao Youshi finally became too tired to open his eyes, and fell asleep while leaning on the table with his clothes on. The two eunuchs on night duty at Wenyuan Pavilion were not surprised, and quietly went forward to turn up the fire on the stove, and gently covered Gao Yuanfu with a thin blanket, and then left the door to wait.

At 3:30 in the morning, the nine gilded candlesticks in Wenyuan Pavilion had not yet burned out, and Xu Guangqi walked in quickly on the morning frost, with unmelted snow in his hair. The new vice president of the Royal Academy of Sciences had a stack of reports stuffed in his sleeves and a dog-eared revised version of Geometry in his arms.

"Prime Minister!" He lifted up his sable coat, revealing the official uniform underneath. "Last night, I discussed the improvement of the armillary sphere with students from the Academy of Sciences. One of the students, Song Yingxing, proposed the method of 'calibrating the sundial with a copper kettle clepsydra', which is absolutely brilliant!" As he spoke, he pulled out a piece of straw paper from his sleeve. On it was a schematic diagram of the linkage between gears and a copper kettle, with a note next to it saying "powered by water pump, the error can be reduced to a minute".

Gao Fusi took the manuscript and read it carefully for a while before he understood what the other party meant. After all, he was a liberal arts student. Now, this "genius" of his is not so amazing in some related knowledge. However, he is not worried about this, but happy. After all, only when the talent training team begins to change on its own, it means that his reforms over the years have not been in vain. Otherwise, everything depends on his guidance. Even if he is full of iron, how many nails can he hammer? Besides, as a liberal arts student, there is really not much he can guide.

After reading for a while, Gao Youshi's eyes swept over the idea of ​​improving the blast furnace blast system in the "Iron Smelting Chapter" and tapped the diagram of "Serial Leather Blasting" with his fingertips: "Is this kid a student of the Academy of Sciences? Where does he live now?"

Xu Guangqi hurriedly said, "He is one of the first batch of preparatory students of the Academy of Sciences, and is currently studying in the Gewuzhai of Shuntian Prefecture. As far as the students know, he stays in the ironworks to watch the furnace at the hour of Mao every day, which makes his hands full of blisters. People tease him that he doesn't look like he is fit to be an academician, but is more suitable to be a blacksmith." At the end, Xu Guangqi couldn't help laughing.

"Immediately enroll him in the Imperial Academy of Sciences, grant him a seventh-rank salary, specialize in improving and updating instruments, and allow him to continue taking the imperial examinations." Gao Youshi handed the manuscript to Lin Xi, "and reward him with 20 kilograms of Lingnan white sugar - just as I said, life is too hard and it's time to eat something sweet."

Gao Youshi also laughed as he spoke, and after a pause, he added, "If he can make a lightweight iron forging furnace that can operate at minus thirty degrees, he will be allowed to work in Wenyuan Pavilion and listen to the maintenance work."

Xu Guangqi hesitated for a moment, coughed lightly, and whispered: "This boy doesn't seem to care much about government affairs..."

"Oh, I see." Gao Youshi thought for a moment and waved his hand, "It's just a title. It doesn't necessarily require him to come to me. What I mean is that if he has this title, others won't dare to make random comments, which is good for him."

Xu Guangqi said quickly, "In this case, I would like to thank the Prime Minister for his kindness on his behalf."

Gao Fusi nodded and said nothing more. But he was not so calm in his heart - that was Song Yingxing, the scientific genius who wrote "The Exploitation of the Works of Nature"! Talents like this are really the more the better, just let me know if you need them. Oh, of course, Song Yingxing should only be 18 or 19 years old now... Don't worry, cultivate him slowly, gold will always shine.

At noon, a letter was delivered to the Nanyang Fleet in Beijing by pigeon. The five characters "Luzon Sweet Potato Seed" were circled in cinnabar on the cover. When Gao Shishi opened the seal, the wax seal fragments fell on the "Nanyang Trade Map".

The report said that merchants from Beijing exchanged twenty boxes of blue and white porcelain for twenty kilograms of sweet potato vine seeds from the Spaniards at the Port of Manila. They tried planting them in the hills of Fujian and Guangdong, and within three months they harvested a large number of tubers, with an output of three shi per mu. The seeds were also drought- and flood-resistant, and could be stored for up to half a year.

Sweet potato? No, this is not a sweet potato. How could Beijing merchants not know sweet potatoes? This is definitely a potato! "Send a message to the Ministry of Revenue," Gao Youshi threw down the report, his sleeves sweeping across the map of Taiwan Island, "Instruct the Fujian Provincial Administration to allocate a thousand acres of wasteland in Beiling, Fuzhou, and order Xu Guangqi to personally select several agricultural students to supervise the planting. Prepare another 20 kilograms of seed potatoes and send them to Zhenxibao in Siberia by express horse. Instruct the Tuntianwei to test plant them on the banks of the Ob River."

He suddenly remembered something and said to Lin Xi, "Let Gao Qi check to see who exchanged the rattan seeds. Give him a second-class commendation and reward him with two boxes of Jingdezhen's new enamel tea sets. We can't let him lose money."

At the beginning of the Si hour, when the camel caravan of the Persian envoys had just arrived outside Jiayu Pass to water their horses after traveling thousands of miles eastward, Gao Youshi was meeting Wang Huan, one of the Siberian grain supervisors, at the Qianqing Palace. Wang Huan was born in a Shaanxi military household, and his face was now purple and red from the north wind. On the animal skin map he unfolded, "Iletsk Salt Mine" and "Gay Copper Mine" were circled red with cinnabar.

"Your Excellency," Wang Huan tapped his fingers at the intersection of the "Western Extreme Highway" and the Ob River, "After the new road is completed, the salt transport team can reach Zhenxi Fort in as fast as a month, which is 20 days faster than the previous mule and horse transport. The 300 carts of rock salt that arrived before I returned to Beijing are enough for all the garrison troops in Zhenxi Fort to pickle beef and mutton this winter."

Gao Youshi nodded and his eyes fell on the "Jingxi Fort" in the upper left corner of the map - that was the fortress that Erdemutu and Yilduqi spent half a year to build. The foundation was cast with Jinghua cement mixed with iron ore slag. The overall style was bastion, but the area was much larger than that of European bastions. Therefore, it was no longer a hexagon, but had as many as twenty-four corners (the multiple corners were to form cross-fire. Due to the limited range of muskets, the larger the area of ​​the fortress, the more corners were needed). This was obviously learned from the experience of southern Xinjiang.

With twenty-four corner fortresses, the defense of Jingxi Fort is probably comparable to that of Dingnan City. It seems that Erdemutu fully implemented his spirit - to build Jingxi Fort into the first fortress in the West that could intimidate Russia. Well, considering that Constantinople had been lost for more than 150 years, Jingxi Fort is almost the first fortress in Europe, right? (It is on the Ural River, which can barely be considered the edge of Europe?)
"Tell Erdemutu," he reached out to fiddle with the globe on the desk, his fingertips pausing on the west side of the Ural Mountains, "the Pope's letter has arrived, he hopes to mediate the Russian-Polish conflict, 'the Lord's servants should point their muskets at the infidels' - I agreed, so after receiving the letter, ask him to contact Sigismund III to see if Russia and Poland can join forces to launch an attack on Moldavia or Crimea to give the Ottomans a little surprise."

After a pause, Gao Youshi added, "But this time, my Ming soldiers only need to supervise the battle, and let Russia dispatch a part of the special army and a part of the boyar private army, a total of 20,000 people will be enough. This pope is very stingy, and the benefits are all verbal... Humph, if you don't pay, then you don't have to work too hard."

After finishing his duties, Gao Youshi went to the Qianqing Palace to check on the emperor's homework. After that, he stood on the terrace of the Qianqing Palace, looking at the spring clouds rising in the southeast, thinking of the good news brought by Xu Guangqi this morning, and suddenly he was distracted: Is the education of the Ming Dynasty gradually getting back on track? From the original metaphysical things such as the words of saints as everything, to the current emphasis on industry, agriculture, and commerce, to some extent, it can be regarded as the beginning of "developing productivity"?
At the beginning of the night of Xu, Gao Fusi vaguely heard sporadic firecrackers in the distance. After asking, he found out that it was the people of Shuntian Prefecture celebrating the completion of the "Western Extreme Highway". Gao Fusi turned back to the warm room and saw Lin Xi waiting with a brand new official uniform of the Academy of Sciences. The moon-white brocade was embroidered with gears and wheat ears, and a copper badge was pinned on the left chest, with a crossed abacus and musket in the center.

"Prince, this is the sample uniform sent by Vice President Xu." Lin Xi unfolded it carefully. "Vice President Xu said that for the opening ceremony of the Royal Academy of Sciences tomorrow, although you have a dragon robe, it would be best for you to wear this - after all, you are the first president of the Academy of Sciences."

Gao Youshi took over the Academy of Sciences uniform, and his fingertips stroked the finely embroidered gear patterns, and he suddenly remembered the morning when he recited "Kaogong Ji" when he was a teenager. At that time, he thought that one day he would serve as the Prime Minister and open the door to practical learning for students all over the world. Now this ideal has actually come true... Speaking of which, this can be considered a kind of happiness.

"Go call Xu Guangqi," he hung his official uniform on the screen, "and have someone prepare some hot wine - tonight I want to have a good discussion with Vice President Xu on how to let the spark of science spread across every inch of land in the Ming Dynasty."

As the night deepened, Gao Youshi spread out a blank memorial amid the ticking of a copper clock. He dipped his wolf-hair brush into red ink, and the force of his brush strokes penetrated the paper as he wrote: "Governing a country is like weaving a brocade. Morality is the warp, and science is the weft. Neither is indispensable. The establishment of the Royal Academy of Sciences is not for any fancy tricks, but for the sake of creating eternal peace."

However, before the ink had dried, he threw the memorial into the charcoal stove and watched the red characters curl up into ashes in the flames, just like the remnants of an old era that would eventually be reborn into new longitude and latitude in the new fire.

"I've said enough and done enough. Why should I explain myself again when the time comes?" Gao Youshi let out a long breath, shook his head, and muttered, "If someone else comes out to say something irresponsible, just treat it as a mosquito or a fly flapping its wings. Why bother with it?"

That night, the starry sky above the Forbidden City was exceptionally clear, with the handle of the Big Dipper pointing northwest, as if guiding the highway and fortress to the westernmost point.

Gao Fusi stood in front of the window, listening to the drum beats in the distance, and suddenly remembered the situation when the late emperor entrusted his son to him before his death, and felt melancholy for a moment. He also remembered an incident not long ago, and was even more dazed for a moment.

At that time, someone secretly reported to the Queen Mother that a certain Gao "often lived in the Forbidden Palace, which was not the proper behavior of a subject." Then the Queen Mother personally took the secret report to Gao Youshi and asked him to severely punish this person.

Gao Youshi was not sure whether the Queen Mother Wang's move was a test, so he said, "There is nothing wrong with what you said. I should reflect on myself." Unexpectedly, the Queen Mother Wang shook her head and said, "You are not an assistant, but a regent. So what if you live in the forbidden palace? I think the late emperor will be happy if he knows about it."

As soon as Queen Mother Wang said this, Gao Youshi even suspected that this was something Zhu Yijun had secretly taught her before he passed away.

"Father, I have finished writing. Do you want to see it?" The little emperor's voice suddenly sounded behind him.

Gao Youshi turned his head to look at the little emperor, and suddenly he vaguely saw the charm of Zhu Yijun when he was a child more than 30 years ago on his face, and he was stunned.

"Uncle?" the little emperor asked timidly.

"Oh," Gao Youshi took a deep breath and smiled, "Well, Your Majesty wrote very quickly today, quite like the late emperor."

"Really?" The little emperor's eyes showed excitement, "Did father also write very fast back then?"

Gao Youshi smiled, walked over and touched the little emperor's head, chuckled and said: "The late emperor not only wrote quickly, but also had the charm of Zhao Mengfu when he was young. Your Majesty should work hard..."
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