By the time summer came, the city had changed dramatically, the moat had been cleared, and the former stinky ditch had become a clear river. All the main streets are turned into flat stone avenues. It's not muddy on rainy days, and it's not gray on sunny days! A number of clean and tidy enclosures are laid out in all corners of the city. The people of Taocheng seem to have changed suddenly, and no one dares to defecate and litter anymore! There are no more dirty beggars and tattered slaves in the streets! Some of the merchants who had fled moved back, and the city was completely new and lively.

On this day, Xiao He came to report: "The moat, the city wall, and the road have been repaired. What will be done with the remaining 10,000 or so slave laborers? ”

"Tell them that now they are civilians of Great Qin, and let them build a township for themselves to live in on the south bank of Jishui. I'm going to build a big workshop by the water, and they're going to be the first workers of the big factory. Montenegro said.

Feng Mofeng and his second brother Ming arrived in Taocheng two months ago, and Montenegro asked them to organize manpower to quickly install water turbine mills in various townships in Taocheng! Montenegro called Feng Mofeng, and the two came to a large piece of flat land on the shore of Jishui, which was originally the land of the Wei nobles, but had just been forcibly acquired by the government! Enough for 12,000 acres.

"Your Mo family is full of talents, and I want to build a residential area in the upper reaches of Jishui that is enough for tens of thousands of people to live. The 7,000 acres in the middle were all built into workshops. The wharf downstream should be five times larger, and the road from the wharf to Taocheng should be widened. Montenegro said.

"With such a large-scale workshop, I wonder what the county guard wants to produce?" Feng Mofeng asked.

"I want to make paper that is as light and thin as parchment, but at a price point hundreds of times lower than parchment. This kind of paper will be the greatest invention ever made in China, and the price of books will be as low as tens of dollars a copy in the future. Montenegro said. Paper has appeared in this era, and there is a parchment paper made of lambskin through a special process of layered grease removal, and the price of a foot square is a gold. There is also cheap paper made of rotten grass and wool, which rots when exposed to water and can only be used by nobles to wipe their buttocks, and real wooden paddle paper has not yet appeared.

"If there is such a divine object, I am willing to lead the disciples of the Mo family to fully assist!" Feng Mofeng said.

"First build dozens of water wheels by the water, dig dozens of deep pits for soaking wood, these slaves will be the first batch of workers, and the disciples of the Mo family will become the first batch of craftsmen in the paper workshop. And you, Feng Mofeng, will be the chief manager of this paper city! Montenegro said.

A few days later, the big construction site by the Jishui River was in full swing! The slaves now not only have enough to eat, but also get paid! As soon as they heard that the house built on the construction site would become their residence, they worked very hard. Occasionally, if someone is lazy, he will immediately be denounced by others. The project is progressing very well. At this time, the forest coverage rate was very high, and Montenegro set up a team to go to the mountains on both sides of the Jishui River to cut tree branches, cut them into three or five feet long, and soak them in the pool.

One hundred days later, hundreds of houses in the paper mill and various production workshops in the workshop were all built! Montenegro instructed everyone to put the wood that had been soaked for 100 days into a special large stone mortar, and use a water wheel to beat it day and night, and finally scooped the wood into mud after a few days. After mashing, the raw materials are mixed with an appropriate amount of water, so that the fibers are completely separated and soaked in water, becoming a suspension of paper fibers, and then poured into the paper tank. Then use a thin bamboo curtain to filter in the pulp, and the paper fibers are left on the bamboo curtain to form a paper film. This process is the most laborious in the papermaking process, where the paper-making artisan stands next to the paper trough and repeats actions such as scooping water and lifting the bamboo curtain. Control the thickness of the paper by controlling the concentration of the wood pulp! When the first batch of paper was trial-produced, although the color was still a little mixed, the thickness was not very consistent, and the surface was not too flat, but it could already be used for writing! This one has already caused a stir. Montenegro also asked Feng Mofeng to improve some production processes and methods. He found a craftsman and carved the book "Mencius" that his teacher had compiled and copied into pieces of engraving. In this era, the engraving technology is very mature, and it is not difficult to engrave on hardwood! When the first paper close to the descendants was produced, a complete set of Mencius engravings was also engraved! Later printing and binding are even simpler. Copying books is the hardest and most tiring work for readers in this era, which is not only time-consuming and laborious, but also prone to errors. A bamboo slip of "Mencius" is fully eleven volumes weighing fifty catties, and after being printed on paper, it is only a book with the thickness of an index finger. Hei printed 2,000 copies at once, and found Zhang Cang's "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic", "Book of Songs", "Zuo Chuan", "Analects", etc., and asked them to engrave and print. Of course, all this was carried out in secrecy, and he was going to give King Qin a heavy gift at the annual court meeting next year.

In the blink of an eye, it was the harvest festival of the twenty-first year of the reign of King Qin. Montenegro was overjoyed to receive a letter from home. He became a father, and Haru bore him a daughter. Montenegro excitedly replied to his family, and regardless of the daylight, he hugged Qiu and kissed wildly, eager to fly back to see his daughter immediately.

According to the usual practice, the county guard should conduct a big assessment of the county officials after the autumn harvest. After becoming a county guard, one of the advantages is that you can give knighthoods to meritorious personnel, and the county guard has the final say below the doctor. As Tao County has been turned upside down in the past nine months, the industrial, agricultural, commercial, and military personnel have all made great achievements, and there are many meritorious personnel. Montenegro gave more than 500 meritorious soldiers, hairpins, and hairpins on the same day, Xiao He's highest third-level hairpins, Song Lei's second-level hairpins, and more than 100 other officials with excellent assessments. And more than 300 slave-born workers with outstanding performance in the workshop and good skills also worshiped the title of meritorious man! This is no less than nirvana rebirth for a slave. Because Tao County has not yet fully implemented the Qin law and has not banned alcohol, on the night of the knighthood, more than 30,000 soldiers and workers from slaves drank all the wine in Taocheng to celebrate, although only a few people were knighted, but all the slaves saw the hope in front of them.

After the autumn harvest, Montenegro sent a thousand guards to Xianyang with several large truckloads of newly printed books and fine paper. He came to Daliang City with two thousand guards, and Qiu also insisted on walking with him on the grounds that Montenegro was injured and needed to be taken care of.

By the time I arrived at Daliang City, Daliang City had been soaked in water for more than two months. He is also the deputy general of this war to destroy Wei in terms of reputation! Therefore, Montenegro first inspected the camp of Xinsheng in the east of the city, and then went to the west of the city to see the main general Wang Ben.

His subordinate Xin Sheng was responsible for besieging the west of the city, and the large camp was set up on the higher slopes of the west of the city, with hundreds of bed crossbows facing the city gate, and each bed crossbow was operated by ten sergeants. The two thousand horse teams on duty are all on standby at any time, as long as they give an order, they will immediately get on their horses and rush to kill. Looking down from the barracks, Daliang City is like a castle floating on the lake, still very majestic and magnificent.

Xin Sheng introduced to Montenegro: "The water in the city is only one and a half feet deep! Lao Ling Zheng Guo said that this depth is the limit, and no matter how deep it is, the people outside the city will be flooded. Don't look at the water is not deep, the wood of the low-lying houses in the city is soaked, the people have no firewood to cook at home, some earthen walls have collapsed, there is a foot-thick mud on the street, and it is difficult for people to move around! Hundreds of people have fled every day these days! According to them, the common people of the city began to eat raw rice, and there was already a spread of epidemics. The Qin army in the south was the most tired, and dozens of dead bodies would be thrown out of the city every day, and in order to prevent infectious diseases, they had to dispose of and burn these corpses every day. ”

When the Qin army began to clean up the chasm, the middle and lower-ranking officers in the Wei army understood that the Qin army was going to attack Daliang City by water, so they asked for orders to go out of the city to fight the Qin army to the death. How could the generals who defended the city not allow it, and scolded these middle and lower-level officers for being ignorant, and they did not defend the city, but went out of the city to fight, isn't it thankless? It is not surprising that the senior generals have such thoughts, because after the death of Xinlingjun, the prestige is still there, and King Wei Anli is very angry, and all the generals promoted by Xinlingjun in the Wei army are removed at once, and many civilian officials who do not understand military affairs are appointed as senior generals. When these civil officials finally learned to understand military affairs for the first time, Wei Wang sent many officials who "loved dogs" and "praised dogs" to replace them. After two replacements, the senior generals in the Wei army no longer have a decent talent, and even when Sima Qian wrote about the military generals of the Wei State in later generations, Xin Lingjun could not find a name behind him.

Until the siege of the city by the great water, the Wei army never had a single soldier out of the city to meet the battle, and the battle went so smoothly that Wang Ben scolded: "The monarchs and ministers of the Wei State are so ignorant that many of Lao Tzu's careful arrangements are useless." "When the flood first surrounded the city of Daliang, the thick and tall walls kept the flood water out of the city, and all the gates were blocked with sandbags, so that the water could not come in at all. This made many soldiers and civilians in the city rejoice for several days. A few days later, water from several wells in the city began to pour water upwards, and the government immediately sent people to block the overflowing wells. As the days passed, the overflowing wells grew more and more, and they could no longer be plugged, because the garden ponds in many of the city's officials' residences were also bubbling upwards, and within a few days the water was overflowing the streets and into the houses of every house. It was in the prime of life, the weather was hot, and the water level in the city was already the same as outside the city for half a month! The people of Daliang are on a slightly higher ground at home, and the water is only calf deep, and the water on the street is just knee-deep! Although the stone foundation is not afraid of flooding, it is soaked for a long time, and the tide rises, and the rammed earth walls of many houses collapse in a month, and the streets of the houses are full of a foot-deep silt, and when you step on it, you can hardly pull it out. All kinds of mushrooms are starting to grow on the beams! The stored grain began to mold, the vegetables in the fields were rotten, and the stench of dead rat carcasses floated everywhere.

Everyone in the city understands that defending the city is a dead end! There was no clean water to drink in the city, so they began to tear down the furniture in the house and use it as firewood for cooking. Every day, people who drank raw water and died of illness were thrown out of the city for the Qin army to bury.

Some officials and wealthy families began to buy the soldiers who defended the city, and fled out of the city by walking down the city in the middle of the night. Seeing that many people who had escaped were drowning in the moat every day, Wang Ben ordered many wooden bridges to be erected in the moat to facilitate the escape of the people in the city.

Montenegro came to Wang Ben's camp outside the West Gate, and saw Wang Ben.

Wang Ben laughed and said, "You, the deputy general who destroyed Wei, have finally returned!" What do you think? Is the injury healed? ”

"General Xie cares, and the imperial doctor says it's all right! If I don't come again, the soldiers and civilians of Daliang City are about to become fish and shrimp! Didn't the King of Wei surrender yet? Montenegro said.

"Last night a group of Wei troops came out to surrender, and they said that the city was almost soaked in water except for the royal palace on higher ground. The outside of the city wall is made of bluestone, but the inside has begun to collapse in a large area, at most for more than ten days, this is known as the world's first strong city is about to collapse! Wang Ben said.

"General, the last general suggests that the flooding of the city be stopped immediately! The people in the city had no firewood, so they could only drink raw water and eat raw rice. The weather is also getting colder day by day, and more people will die of illness if they are drowned, many will die at home, and no one will find out, it will lead to a plague, and all the people of Daliang will be difficult to be lucky, and the Qin army will also be infected, so it will be a big deal, stop flooding the city, and tell the king of Wei that if it does not fall, it will deepen the amount of water to scare him, and the king of Wei will fall! Montenegro said.

Wang Ben was stunned and replied: "I only thought about the city wall as soon as possible, and I didn't think of the plague!" This epidemic does not distinguish between the Qin people and the Wei people. The military order Sima passed the general's order, immediately stop flooding Daliang City! ”

As soon as the military ordered, in less than an hour, the water level immediately dropped, gradually revealing the thick silt on the ground. As soon as the water receded, the situation in the city became even worse, with silt filling all the wells and ponds, and the common people could hardly find even dirty water to drink! Occasionally, a well was dug out and immediately requisitioned by the army, and the people could not drink it at all.

In the middle of the night on the third day after the water receded, the military officials came to report: "There is a Wei army to come out of the city to surrender, and they want to see the general by name!" ”