open sea

Chapter 876 Three Days
When the little emperor walked into the telegraph branch office in the Forbidden City, the first thing the eunuch under the department did was to quickly hand the handkerchief to King Lu, and the others hurriedly entered the telegraph branch office with hands behind their backs like a stroller. emperor.

Lu Wang's snot was about to fall into his mouth, but he still raised his head and didn't take the handkerchief. Instead, he looked at the little eunuch and said, "Brother Huang said, I need to be more mature, I'm past the age for wiping my own snot."

So His Highness chose to eat snot?
Facing the most favored person in the world, even the little eunuch Lu Wang couldn't say anything wrong with his snotty nose, so he could only smile and wipe off the crystal clear snot hanging from the underside of his nose to his mouth for Xiao Lu Wang to wipe off the frozen snot. Only then asked in a low voice: "Your Highness, why did Your Majesty call the room?"

Lu Wang blinked, as if he was confused by someone asking such a question: "Call the office, what else can you do if you don't send a telegram?"

After all, King Lu didn't care about the eunuchs around him, anyway, the snot had disappeared by itself, and Lord Wanli, who pushed the door open, had already raised his legs and stepped over the threshold, so he had to catch up with the emperor quickly.

Although the telegraph has been born in the Ming Dynasty for several years, for Wanli, all this is still full of novelty to him.

The telegraph room in the palace was built this year. It is located outside the Wenhua Gate, facing the Donghua Gate, and is far away from the palace complex.

At first, the imperial court didn’t plan to build telegraph poles in the Forbidden City. Apart from the cabinet and the Jinshui Bridge, there were no telegraph poles in the Forbidden City. Except for a few eunuchs and maids who served the emperor and entered the military room, no one knew that the emperor was in the ear room next to the palace. Contains steam engines, generators and light bulbs.

Electric wires are easy to catch fire, and most of the palace buildings in the Forbidden City are wooden structures, and the installation of electric wires can easily lead to disasters. Therefore, only the pavement stones around the Meridian Gate, Jinshui Bridge, and the Cabinet were raised to lay circuits.

The original only telegraph room in the palace was the cabinet telegraph room, and even the six departments on the opposite side of the moat belonged to the cabinet's internal telegraph room.

But after the little emperor's repeated request was ignored, he paid for the courtyard outside the Wenhua Gate and dug the stones on the ground all the way to the Qianqing Palace to build his first telegraph line. With the telegraph room as the center, seven lines including the sweet room, Shangshan prison, and Yuma prison were repaired.

The telegram outside the palace had a code book, but no one told the emperor, but fortunately, the emperor was very smart and he didn't use the code book.

For example, the telegraph line from the Qianqing Palace to the telegraph room leads to the sweets room. There are several corresponding three-row buttons on the table of the Wanli ship of Master Wanli. If he presses the first one on the upper row, the sweets room will be in the corresponding position. Turning on a light means 'I want to eat silk-wort tiger eye candy', press the second one on the top row, which means 'I want to eat pine nut cake'.

There is only one button in the second row, which means that on the basis of the first row of silk nest tiger eye candy, it expresses the meaning of "Lu Wang is also here, give three copies, and the little fat thief can eat it".

However, most of the time, the eunuchs in the dessert room delivered snacks. There was no King Lu in the Qianqing Palace, only Wanli who was lying on the couch with his feet up, waiting for takeaway.

There is only one button in the third row. When Wanli presses this button in the military room, there will be a square stamp on the side of the dessert room, and a little horse will be printed on the paper, which means "starve to death, hurry up." '.

The earliest eunuchs in the dessert room were able to ride across the royal road with this printing paper. Since the emperor was whipped by the queen mother, he couldn't do it later.

As we all know, there are two takeaways, and the telegram from Shangshan Supervisor is the same.

The Yumajian is also similar, as soon as the lights are on, horses and carts are ready.

The first stage of the Forbidden City telegraph network has greatly improved the life enjoyment of Xiao Wanli, but Wanli is not satisfied with this, he still wants to control the Forbidden City.

The first is intelligence.

In order to fully grasp the information of Empress Dowager Li and Zhang Juzheng, the little emperor made the feat of digging out the imperial road for two and a half miles overnight and filling it in again. Without anyone noticing, he buried all the circuits in the palace. The gates, turrets, and gates of compassion are all equipped with buttons, and one of the missions of the military eunuchs stationed everywhere is to press different buttons when Empress Dowager Li leaves the palace or Zhang Juzheng enters the palace.

Wanli likes the telegram the most, because of this thing, two eunuchs who tried to sue Queen Mother Li for not studying hard were sent to Nanjing by the "Wrathful Emperor" as a clean army because they deceived the Queen Mother to frame the emperor.

Since then, no one dared to speak ill of the emperor to the queen mother.

Because it's useless to say it, as long as the queen mother leaves the palace, the emperor must be studying the scriptures hard.

Then it was done, and the little emperor's telegraph room was easily connected to the telegraph network outside the palace.

This made the ministers more and more annoying to Chen Mu.

In fact, ministers have no right to interfere with what happened in the Forbidden City, so what makes ministers seem to have the power to control the emperor?The answer lies in the Ministry of Households, the financial power of the empire.

Most of the emperor's self-assessments cost money, but in the relatively enlightened dynasty of Ming Dynasty, if the emperor's needs were unnecessary, for example, if a fool in the Forbidden City wanted to dig the bottom of the city wall to bury wires, then the ministers could do it according to Reasonable efforts, not to grant money to the emperor.

What else can you do without approving money?If the Emperor Daojun is not granted money, how can he still ascend?

Doesn't exist, right?

But Wanli is different. Wanli only uses eunuchs to get things done.

Because he is rich, he even thinks he has too much money. This year, when the coal merchants in Beizhili gave away money, they specially sent his trusted eunuch Wang An to spread the word: "This year's filial piety will be waived by half, and the coal price of the people will be reduced by three cents. It's cold." , don’t freeze my people.”

The eunuch in charge of the telegraph room stood respectfully in front of the door. The roaring steam engines next to the telegraph room made it as warm as spring even without burning charcoal. However, Emperor Wanli could not bear this kind of warmth. As soon as he stepped into the room, his back feet stopped up.

"Too noisy, too noisy!" They blocked their ears with their hands and shouted at the eunuch: "I want to send a telegram to the frontier army. Where can I send it as far away as possible? Bring me a map and let me have a look!"

Wanli's words made the eunuch, the owner of the telegraph house, nervous, and asked cautiously, "Grandpa Rong Xiao asked, what do you want to do to find the frontier army?"

"Do things honestly, don't ask questions." The little emperor said with a tigerish face and no power, "Hurry up and get the map."

The apprehensive eunuch waved his hand quickly, and after a while, he fetched the map, which marked more than [-] marked areas, large and small, starting from Jiulian City in Liaodong on the Yalu River in the east of the northern border to Jiayuguan in the northwest.

However, according to the distance on the map, there are also marked circles such as 'half day', 'one day', and 'three days'. The emperor pointed to the map and asked, "What does this mean?"

"Returning to Your Majesty, according to the construction of telegraph networks in various places, Beijing sent telegrams, and North Zhili, Shandong, Shanxi, and Xuanda, as well as the three prefectures of Weihui, Zhangde, and Huaiqing in Henan, took half a day for telegrams; south of the Yellow River, the Yangtze River In the north, Shaanxi, Liaodong and other places, it will be delivered within one day."

"Three days is for the news to spread across the country, but if the news is to be delivered to a certain capital or a certain township, it will take seven days." After the eunuch said, he slightly raised his bowed body and said, "That is to say, any one of your majesty The order, up to seven days, can be notified to every inch of land in the sea."

The little emperor pondered this mechanism thoughtfully, nodded slowly and said: "Send the soldiers on the nine sides, I am the great tomorrow..."

The eunuch shook his head like a rattle: "Your Majesty, I can't send it out. There is no such word in our cipher text. It is taboo."

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)