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Chapter 869 Losses and Gains

"Alas... I remember this child. He had good grades, liked to think, and was a steady person. I wanted him to go out and broaden his horizons for a few years, and then come back to lead a team to stay in Europe. I didn't expect him to die young!"

After working for three and a half days, I finally completed the translation and compilation of the maps and various materials. A small white copper plate fell out of the bottom piece of parchment.

Hong Tao reached out to pick it up, and habitually rubbed it hard with the tip of his thumb. Looking at the clear fonts and numbers on it, his face showed fatigue and a hint of sadness.

Liu Shimin didn't bring back all good news. The appearance of this ID card meant the death of a graduate of the Haihu Division. His name was Liu Cheng, ranked 179th, only 21 years old, and was an intelligence officer of the Statistics Division.

After arriving in Europe, Liu Cheng and two of his companions went to the Papal States of Italy as visiting scholars of the Ming Empire, intending to gain a deeper understanding of Christianity.

The process was quite smooth. The Pope personally met with these three young men from the far East who could speak fluent Latin, and granted them permission to consult the church's book collection.

But good things come with hardships. Liu Cheng fell ill the following year and died in a church in Rome within a month. His two companions buried his body according to local customs, leaving only his ID card.

In fact, among the 20 members who went to Europe for investigation, 7 including Liu Cheng have been confirmed dead, and the 4 missing are probably also gone.

The known causes of death include illness, accidents, and war. In order to find out the details of the area they are responsible for as soon as possible, these children are really brave enough to join the mercenaries. Three of the four missing people joined the Protestant and Catholic mercenaries, but they were never found alive or dead.

Compared with them, the 10 craftsmen who returned to Moscow with the Russian delegation were much luckier. Liu Shimin met four of them in the port of Arkhangelsk.

They were designing a small shipyard for the Tsar. The other five stayed in Moscow and were said to be working on a foundry, secretly casting artillery for the Tsar.

Only one person died of illness on the way before reaching Moscow, but Liu Shimin did not see the person holding the ID card and could only bring back a name and number.

"Your Majesty, the next list of names has been prepared... Why don't we take a look at it after dinner? It's getting late..."

The emperor was wasting time in the Yangxin Palace, so Wang Chengen naturally had no time to rest. After more than three days, his eyes were obviously darker. But he couldn't delay his work at all, so he ran in and put a piece of paper on the table. Then he saw the identity card in the emperor's hand, and immediately understood what happened, and wanted to take the paper away.

"Put it down... Tell Tan Mingming to prepare more silver coins for them. They already have a foundation for this trip to Europe. Let them get in touch with the local nobles and find a suitable city to jointly open a bank.

It doesn't matter if we have to pay the money. I will make an agreement with the Dutch and let them pay for what we need, and then use the goods to compensate. Let Tan Mingming figure out who will take over and how to hide his identity. In short, protect the people, don't take risks easily, and don't join the mercenary army! "

Hong Tao was not stunned, but was thinking about how to reduce the casualties of intelligence personnel. That's right, people must continue to be sent, information must continue to be gathered, and the depth will be getting deeper and deeper.

But I can't lose so easily again. I didn't expect to join the mercenary army back then. Now that something has gone wrong, I must correct it in time. As for the illness, there is nothing I can do about it. I'll just leave it to fate. "Wait, there are still these books. Take them to the new guy, Johann Adam Schall von Bell, to translate. After you finish translating one, give the manuscript to Silva for review. Do you understand?"

Without waiting for Wang Chengen to turn around, Hong Tao called him again, kicked the wooden box under the table, and continued to remind him of another thing.

"Uh... Your Majesty is afraid that the new foreign monk has ulterior motives and is unwilling to translate it exactly, so he wants Silva to do it again to verify it?"

Wang Chengen looked at the box, then at the emperor, and then at the translated parchment on the table. He seemed to have some insights and repeated it with his own understanding.

"Hehehe, you've become smarter... That's what I mean. If you don't mind the trouble, you can go find Oyani to translate it again. I'm just afraid that she's not so easy to manipulate and won't listen to you."

This answer satisfied Hong Tao, and he started to tease him again. Wang Chengen was not afraid of anyone except himself, and he didn't care about anyone else. He had the awareness of being a lone minister. But he was most afraid of one person, a woman, the female head of Sun Moon Bank.

Almost every time he entered the palace, Oyani would give him difficult problems, such as refusing to wear what he was told to wear and arriving a few minutes late when he was told to arrive, making him lose face in front of the emperor and seeming as if he was not doing his job well.

But this foreign woman is very trusted by the Emperor, and her job is quite important. Not only will it be ineffective to tell on her behind her back, it may also cause backlash. There is really nothing we can do.

"Prime Minister Ao is very busy with official duties and is often not in Beijing. I'd better go to see Director Sang. He will not shirk his responsibility when he sees the book from his hometown."

However, Wang Chengen also had a solution. A man named Sanchez was captured together with Oyani. He was a clerk on the Montanes and was currently working in the Sun and Moon Bank.

Even though he couldn't do anything to Oyani, that was because the emperor didn't support him. But the status of the chief eunuch of the inner palace was not something that anyone could challenge at will, and others really didn't dare to disobey him.

What kind of books are so important? There are many, more than 80, covering theology, philosophy, medicine, architecture, astronomy and many other aspects. Some of the authors are unknown, but some are well-known, such as Aristotle, Plato, Bacon, Gilbert, Galileo, Kepler.

In addition to collecting local natural, social, and economic information, the expedition teams that followed Dutch merchant ships to various European countries also had a mission to purchase books that were relatively well-known or popular in Europe.

These boxes are the first batch. After Liu Shimin returns, he will find a way to gather the members' stocks together, and then send them in batches to Dutch merchant ships for transportation back to Beijing.

Now Hong Tao wants to translate all these books, and then build a library in the university, and put all the books in it together with some of the royal collection for students to study. These are all the lives of the expedition team, and they must be taken seriously and not be sloppy at all.

It is not enough to just put the books in universities. Hong Tao also plans to select some books and publish them in various parts of the country. It is definitely difficult to make money at the beginning, so he will subsidize them with the internal treasury and fix the selling price at a relatively low level, so that most people who are interested in reading can afford them.

(End of this chapter)