Late Tang

Traveling eastward from Chang'an, Yang Fuguang was filled with amazement.Compared with today's population in Guanzhong, where wormwood is growing, bones are lying in the wild, there are ruins everywhere, ruined villages, barren fields, and Henan is full of houses and nine empty houses, thieves are rampant, refugees are everywhere, and hungry people are everywhere. After crossing the Bianhe River and entering the Shandong Province of the Qin Fan, the landscape is completely different.Although when they first entered the original territory of Tianping and Xuanwu, these places were only better than other places in Henan.But when they passed Juyeze in Yunzhou, crossed the line of Surabaya, especially passed through Ludi, and entered Guqidi, the whole scene was completely different. It was shockingly stable and full of food and clothing. It is abundance and etiquette.

This place is like a paradise. I don’t know there are Wei and Jin Dynasties, wide and flat roads, well-planned farmland and water canals, and villages dotted around it. Along the avenue, there are brand-new small towns established. stand up.Guanzhong, Henan and other places have been in chaos for nearly ten years, but in Qidi, the rear of Qin Fan, it seems that it is still in the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, and even surpasses the scene of the heyday of the Tang Dynasty.At least, he has never seen from the history books that there were such peaceful, harmonious and prosperous villages in Zhenguan when the Tang Dynasty was in power, and Kaiyuan when the Tang Dynasty was in its heyday.

In the evening, the smoke from the cooking in the village was rising, and under the afterglow of the sun, there were even some extremely hardworking villagers in the fields who hadn’t closed their work, and there were also shepherd boys driving their cattle and horses home, and the women at the entrance of the village called their children who were playing outside to go home The calf is mooing and looking for the cow. From time to time, the village dogs are chasing and barking. Occasionally, chickens that have not yet returned home can be seen pecking on the ground.

The smell of firewood from the firewood under the kitchen stove is in the air, and the oily smell of the villagers' cooking is everywhere. People with a keen sense of smell can even smell the richness of the food right away. It's exciting, this is a rich dinner.

It's hard to imagine that people in an ordinary village of the Qin people can have such a rich meal during the New Year and holidays.

All of this made Yang Fuguang, who was carefully observing along the way, amazed and even a little jealous.He didn't know how Li Jing did it. In the eyes of outsiders, the strength of Qin Fan started with the strength of Qin Jun.In less than 12 years, Li Jing has built a million-strong army from scratch, and even has a reserve system with a system so huge that others cannot imitate. With so many troops, under normal conditions Look, this will only cause Qin Fan to lose a lot of strong labor, and in the end it will inevitably delay the farming season, followed by bad results such as grain failure.Just like Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty who was respected by countless people, he dominated the Western Han Dynasty and waged war on the Huns who had been threatening the frontier. After fighting for decades, he finally beat a powerful Huns away. At the same time, it was the result of the halving of the population of the Western Han Dynasty.

He was even jealous of Li Jing. How did he manage to expand his military strength so rapidly while maintaining the economy and people's livelihood in the feudal clan?

But these surprises after he entered Yanjing, he was completely shocked.

His route this time was to start from Chang'an, pass through Tongguan to Luoyang, then leave Wulao to Bianzhou, enter Song Caoyun in the Shandong province of Qin Fan, then go to Qizhou, and finally to Qingzhou, enter Dengzhou, and then from Qingdao Hong Kong took the sea route to Shanhaiguan Qinwangdao and landed, then went south to Tangshan, Tianjin, and finally entered Yanjing.This route is actually not more convenient than the land route in winter, but Yang Fuguang still chose this route.The purpose is naturally to witness the real situation of Qin Fan.If you choose this road, you will not only pass through the newly controlled states on the east bank of the Bian River, but also see the Shandong Peninsula, the rear of the Qin Fan, and see several major ports of the Qin Fan, as well as the route leading to the northeast of the Qin Fan. Gateway Hills area.

Licheng in Qizhou, Yidu in Qingzhou, Penglai and Qingdao in Dengzhou, Qinwangdao and Tianjin in Beiping, the prosperity of these cities made Yang Fuguang unbelievable.When traveling along the way, in Guanzhong and Henan, there are often no people for hundreds of miles. The people who see the most are either the huge army in the feudal town, or the refugees wandering around. It has a population of several 10. For example, Zhoucheng in Dengzhou used to be a small city with a population of over [-] people, but now, a huge city has already been built along the coast. The population of Dengzhou City has exceeded one million, and it has become the largest city of Qin Fan even surpassing Yanjing, the center of Qin Fan, in terms of population.

Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, was once known as the House of Millions.But after the Anshi Rebellion, Chang'an no longer had a population of one million.Today's Chang'an, even adding up the 10,000+ troops, has a population of no more than 30.Especially the prosperity of Dengzhou is even more unbelievable.

But after arriving in Yanjing, Yang Fuguang sat on the comfortable luxury four-wheeled rail carriage, and was even more surprised from ear to ear.

The prosperity of Dengzhou is full of commercial prosperity. There are high-rise buildings everywhere, markets everywhere, and merchant ships everywhere in the port. Merchants of various skin colors are walking in the streets, selling all kinds of the latest and rarest products. Commodities, there are also school cities that are larger than many ordinary state cities, with countless students.The prosperous Dengzhou is also a city without city walls.

Compared with Yanjing, I always feel that something is missing.

When he thought about it carefully, he finally understood.

Dengzhou and Yanjing, one is a city of commerce, the economic center of the Qin Dynasty.The other is the military center and political core of Qin Fan.

Yanjing, which has an entire inner and outer five-story city, will make everyone who sees him for the first time dumbfounded.The twelve gates of the Acropolis are like ten small castles.The length of the earth wall of the Acropolis can scare people even more. Although the earth wall of the Acropolis outside the Yanjing Outer City is not a regular square, its length is a full 360 miles long.Compared with the 180-mile-long Yanjing outer city wall, it is almost a hundred miles longer. In terms of area, it is four times the size of the outer city.The inner city of Yanjing City also has a circumference of 81 miles, which is equivalent to one-fifth of the outer city.The core of the royal city and the palace city are twin structures arranged from north to south, and the palace walls have a circumference of 36 miles.

In fact, the five-city division of the entire Yanjing City is equivalent to the capital of later generations. The acropolis wall is equivalent to the sixth ring road.

When Li Jing designed Yanjing City, he considered the situation in Dengzhou.Dengzhou has a population of more than one million, and it has expanded over and over again, but in the end, even the city wall cannot be planned.Therefore, when Yanjing City was designed, Li Jing simply built it in Dali. After all, Yanjing City is the future capital city. At this time, it is impossible for the military and political center to have no city walls, especially after Yanshan City in the north and Taihang City in the west. , is still an unstable enemy-controlled area. Whether it is for the sake of current security or the future security of the government, it is impossible for Yanjing to be a city without walls like Dengzhou.

But in general, although it is a bit huge, the Acropolis is basically a suburb now, and even the outer city is not saturated. This is also a long-term plan for the future.The current Acropolis is basically just twelve satellite towns surrounded by twelve gates and fortresses.But this huge long-term plan alone is enough to scare Yang Fuguang from Chang'an.

What's more, there are four layers of cities: the outer city, the inner city, the royal city and the palace city.

"Sima Zhao's heart is known to all passers-by!" Yang Shouliang, the vanguard of the Shence Army who followed Yang Fuguang's adopted son, snorted coldly.In his opinion, the city of Yanjing reveals a clear rebellion everywhere.A vassal king's residence in Yacheng is named Jing, which is far more presumptuous than when the Wei Bo Jiedu envoy called the king and rebelled and changed Weizhou into Daming Mansion.In the Tang Dynasty, only the place where the emperor stayed could be called a mansion. Up to now, there are only ten mansions in the Tang Dynasty.The name of Beijing refers to the capital and accompanying capital of the Tang Dynasty. The entire Tang Dynasty only established five capitals for a while.Now Li Jing actually named his vassal's resident Beijing, what is this not called arrogance?

What's more, who has ever seen a vassal king's residence, there are actually five floors of the city, especially the king's city and the palace city.In particular, there are 99 buildings and 99 houses in the palace city, which is completely the size of the emperor.

The heart of disobedience is obvious.

Yang Fuguang just frowned but didn't say anything. Such a thing as violating the rules and etiquette, if it was in the prosperous age, it would be a great crime.But in this day and age, this is nothing, not worth mentioning at all.Yang Fuguang also pays more attention to Li Jing's palace city, but what he pays attention to is that Li Jing is not a luxurious person, why does he want to build such a luxurious palace city, especially on such a scale, how much manpower, material and financial resources will be used? ?But why, he has never heard of how long it took Li Jing to build the palace city, and what kind of public grievances he caused.

It was another adoptive son who had already guessed his doubts and explained on the side, "Li Jing's palace is magnificent and magnificent, but in fact it only took less than two years to build it, and even only moved it. There are hundreds of thousands of people, and they are all refugees who fled.”

"How is this possible?" Yang Shouliang couldn't believe it. They came from Chang'an. How could they not know that building a palace is not like building an ordinary city? For stones, huge stones must be used, and special palace bricks and glazed tiles must be fired, all of which require a lot of manpower, financial and material resources.Especially for those giant trees and boulders, many of them have to be felled from the far southwest and other places, and then follow the Yangtze River to the Jianghuai River, and then go northward from the Jianghuai canal. Each giant tree requires countless manpower and material resources, which is why the construction of ancient palaces is so time-consuming , also requires a large population for reasons.Such a project requires too many civilian workers, often tens of 10 people.For example, in the Sui Dynasty, it was because of the construction of canals, the establishment of the Eastern Capital, and the conquest of Liaodong that the peasants were overburdened, which led to a peasant uprising.

Yang Shouyi explained to them: "Li Jing's palace city, even including the entire huge Yanjing City, has not actually used a single giant tree that is more than a hundred years old, and even the entire city uses very little wood, and there is no wood. Use boulders."

"how can that be?"

"Because Qin Fan has long had a new type of building material, cement."

"Is it the kind of material used by Qin Fan to build roads for thousands of miles like a spider?"

"Yes."

Yang Shouliang still couldn't believe it. Over the years, the Qin army worked hard to build roads and cities. They built countless roads and towns precisely because they had this very convenient and fast new building material.It is not an ordinary road town to build such a huge Yanjing City.

"Cement alone is not enough. As you all know, Qin Fan's mining is also very developed. They have the most iron ore, the most iron factories, and steel factories. Li Jing built Yanjing City with cement and steel bars. Instead of giant trees and boulders. Using this method, they can easily create high-quality giant trees that are comparable to or even far beyond the ordinary hundred or even thousand years. See if the tall clock tower is there. The eighteen-story clock tower has a height of 36 feet. , It took only one year to complete the construction. If you use the usual method, such a high tower will take a few years, or even a dozen years."

He continued to explain: "When outsiders see the hugeness of Yanjing City, they think that Li Jing has used a lot of people's power and that Li Jing has begun to change. In fact, no, Li Jing built this city. I heard that not only did he not spend a penny before and after, he even spent a lot of money. It also earned 8000 million copper coins, and also absorbed as many as [-] refugees to work here, allowing them to use their own wages to make them settle in Yanjing. Moreover, we also found out that the construction of the entire Yanjing City, It also stimulated tens of thousands of workshops in the territory of Qin Fan to receive business, making these workshop owners a fortune, and at the same time allowing more than a million workers in these tens of thousands of workshops to also earn a sum of money. At the same time After earning money, these workshops paid a large amount of taxes to the Qin Fan, and the income of those workers increased greatly, and at the same time, it also greatly promoted the sales of other businesses. All in all, Li Jing used an incredible method to not only build a A huge Yanjing city was built, making it a place to show the majesty of the Qin Fan's strength, and it also became a place for Li Jing to firmly nail his power in Hebei, looking outside the Great Wall in the north, Hebei in the south, and East in the west, making it an unbreakable place for the Qin Fan. A super fortress of the Qin Dynasty, protecting the northeast of Qin Fan and the rear of Shandong."

"Moreover, Li Jing also miraculously earned 8000 million directly to support Qin Fan's continuous wars over the years. At the same time, he also earned more taxes later. He also absorbed more refugees, allowing them to settle down place."

Yang Fuguang was already a little numb, and sighed, "It's far more than that. Look at this brand new Yanjing City, which now has a population of over one million. With such a Yanjing City, the feudal towns of Hebei and Hedong will never be able to get along with them." Qin Fan confrontation. Li Jing is really amazing, how did he do all this, Yanjing City, Hejian City, it is estimated that in the next step, Li Jing will also build in the southern part of Hebei and the land of Daibei It’s a huge city. Control the surface with points, and finally connect it, Li Jing is building a world!”

Yang Shouliang has been thinking about how Li Jing built a super big city without spending a penny, and can still earn 8000 million.Seeing Yang Fuguang close his eyes, he whispered to his brother Yang Shouyi.Yang Shouyi just told him a few words, "Real estate, businessman!" Then he let him scratch his head and scratch his head, trying not to tear up sister Qi! (To be continued.)