Dianke, one of the nine kings of the Qin Dynasty, is in charge of the righteous barbarians, which is equivalent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs + Ethnic Affairs Commission of later generations.

The subordinate officials under the pawn are pedestrians, interpreters, and don't fire three orders, which are respectively in charge of envoys, translators, and tributes from barbarian tribes.

Wushiyan, is Zhangye County Dianke Changcheng, this newly built county, although the household registration is small, but it controls the Qin Dynasty and the world and the communication channel, and even the diplomacy of the "Thirty-six Kingdoms", so the rank Lu is higher than that of Beidi and Longxi, 600 stones. The tributes of Wusun, Loulan, Gushi, and Khotan in the Western Regions must be handled by him, which can be described as low and powerful.

However, in September of the 35th year of Qin Shi Huang, Wu Shiyan threw all the affairs of the Western Regions to his subordinates, and personally took an envoy and hurried to Xianyang.

That is the unkempt curly hair, high nose and deep eyes, and the envoy of the Great Xia Kingdom who was dressed in white cloth and clothes at the crossing of the Great River.

This group of "Great Xia" people, like hillbillies entering the city, have been excited since they entered the territory of Great Qin, and they are curious about everything.

Wu Shiyan was very concerned about his words and deeds, and asked the translators who had spent more than half a year learning the Great Xia language to come with them.

"Yu Changcheng, the people of Daxia said that they originally thought that the Qin people were three zhang tall, had a loud voice, and had an extremely long lifespan, up to three hundred years old......"

Wu Shiyan scoffed: "How did I not know? If we really live to be 300 years old, Your Majesty will not let us go to find the Queen Mother of the West and seek eternal life. ”

The interpreter said: "They also say that the secret to the longevity of the Qin people is to drink cold water all day long......

Wu Shiyan felt very funny, as far as he knew, the soldiers and civilians of Huarong in Beidi County were the soldiers who learned from the captain of Heifu County, and after they started drinking hot water, their diseases were slightly reduced, and they lived a long life by drinking cold water? Okay, let the people of Daxia drink it themselves!

And the national imagination of the Bactrian people for "Seris" is: "Peaceful life, no weapons, no war......"

This is even more far from the **** of Great Qin's unrelenting expedition, by the way, Seris, this is the name of Daxia for the Qin people, which literally translates to "Silk Country".

Great Xia's impression of the Qin Dynasty, or the Central Plains, comes entirely from silk and sugar, which has become popular recently.

In mid-September, after entering the Neishi area and seeing the silk silk that could be seen everywhere in the market, the people of Daxia became even more excited, and they took the tinkling silver coins and frantically bought all the silk silk they saw, completely ignoring Wu Shiyan's consolation: "This is just inferior coarse silk, and the silk of Shandong is better".

As a result, of course, because of the use of illegal currency, nothing was bought.

In the Central Plains, the ordinary silk, in the eyes of the Great Xia people, is a symbol of miracles and beauty - in this world, where will there be a second kind of cloth, after three layers, the transparent silk yarn can also completely reveal the ** and umbilicus of the goddess statue?

As for how the silk came from, the people of Daxia also had a violent quarrel in front of Wu Shiyan.

Someone said eloquently: "The silk used by the Seris people to weave silk comes from a small insect called Se'er." The insect is about twice the size of a beetle and spits silk like a web-forming spider under a tree. The spider is eight-legged, and the insect also has eight-legged. The Seris built houses in winter and summer to keep the worm and wrapped its feet with the filaments it spitted from. At first, it was raised with grass for four years, and then changed to green reed in the fifth year. Qinglu is the favorite of this insect, the insect is overeaten, the blood is split and dies, and the body is silk. ”

But some people objected to this statement, and put forward an even more bizarre imagination: "It should be that there are sheep in the forest, and some people have diligently irrigated them, and they have been sorted out into fine silk threads, half like wool fibers, half like viscous silk." ”

This person was passing through Longxi, and saw that the Qin women were knitting woolen clothes one after another, and he was even more convinced.

The more he listened to it, the amier he became, until a scholar of literature who was holding a reed pen and writing and drawing on leather all day long said: "There is no need to argue, Yashi once said that silk fabrics are woven from a cocoon produced by a large maggot with horns on its head!" ”

Wu Shiyan was still smiling, but he turned around but was a little surprised, the sage called "Yashi" is too powerful, he said that he is not far from ten, and he can still be sure that this kind of "maggot" deformation is first a larvae, then a pupae, and then a moth, and the integration process will take six months!

But the rest of the Great Xia people laughed at it, thinking that it was impossible.

In order to protect trade secrets and maintain Daqin's trade surplus, Wu Shiyan strengthened control and prevented the mission from contacting anyone, resulting in the leakage of secrets.

Let them remain ignorant, and the more bizarre the imagination, the greater the thirst for this precious fabric!

……

In any case, in the eyes of the Bactrian people, the image of China is just as light as silk, mysterious and noble.

For them, the far east is a dream, where the sky is clear, the moon is clear, like a dream, like a fairyland, just like a flower in the fog.

And now, with the opening of the Western Regions and the dissipation of the fog, the two sides have their first intimate contact.

But then again, Great Xia knows a lot about Qin, and the Qin people don't know much about Great Xia......

As soon as he returned to Xianyang, in the name of "epidemic prevention", the Great Xia envoys were imprisoned in the post station, and Wu Shiyan was busy communicating with one of the pawns of the Great Qin Jiuqing, that is, the former Beidi County Guard, and now Hou Zhaohai.

How he went to Great Xia and what he talked about with the Great Xia people will be explained one by one.

"Grace guest, Daxia is more than 2,000 miles southwest of Dawan, and the water is north and south. Its secular aborigines, there are city houses, and Dawan is the same custom. There are kings, and cities are often small and long. Its crowd can be more than 100,000, more than 100,000 soldiers, Shanjia City, its capital is called Bo Zhi, the language is heavy nine translations, silver is used as coin, the yang side of the money is painted with its king's face, and the yin side is painted with the image of its god naked. ”

At this time, as an ally of the Great Xia Kingdom, Dawan was relying on the protection of Great Xia to defend against "a large number of nomadic warriors who were approaching". A year ago, when they came into contact with the mysterious "Serisians" and informed them to Great Xia, the king of Great Xia attached great importance to it, which led to the trip to Bozhi City of Ushiyan.

It can be said that the entire thirty-six states of the Western Regions combined, are not as big as the shock that Bo Zhicheng brought to Wu Shiyan!

The city is surrounded by tall city walls, and the temples, stadiums, palaces, etc., piled up with white stones, are neatly regulated, and the people of Daxia are especially fond of figure sculptures, which are of different forms, standing or lying, standing full of beams and columns.

At the end of the barbarism was another form of civilization, which the Qin people had never imagined.

There is Kyushu outside of Kyushu, and the Yin-Yang family's assertion is correct, the world is bigger than imagined!

But Wu Shiyan did not forget his mission: to find the Western Queen Mother, and for several years, he went to a place, and after the translator made the local language coarse, he kept asking:

"We want to find the queen mother of the west, the god of the emperor who has unkempt hair, hoopoes, a staff, and a ladder, who lives in weak water, bears the mountain of fire, and has three blue birds on her shoulders, which can make people immortal, and can also make the wind and rain in the world smooth......"

In the face of this problem, most of the countries in the Western Regions shook their heads in confusion, but the people of Great Xia seemed to understand, and their elders in robes had a heated discussion in the hall built of stone pillars, and the king of Great Xia gave the Qin people a positive answer.

"We know!"

Only then did the Great Xia envoy group pay a return visit to Xianyang.

But Zhao Hai didn't believe in the people of Great Xia at all, and firmly believed that they had some ulterior motives.

"Your Majesty wants to find the Queen Mother of the West, but have you ever thought about why the people of Great Xia are so enthusiastic for no reason?"

Wu Shiyan tried his best to explain: "Pawn Ke, as far as I know, the silk and sugar purchased by merchants in the Western Regions are all gathered in Great Xia. The people of Daxia benefit Qin's beautiful things, and want to be friendly with Qin in order to obtain more silk sugar. ”

Let's put it this way, Great Xia was the "first trading partner" of the Qin Dynasty in the West, so it took the trouble to get a good relationship with Qin, hoping to get more silk sugar.

However, Wu Shiyan still hid one thing from Zhao Hai: he vaguely learned from the words of the interpreter who eavesdropped on the report that most of the silk purchased by Great Xia was not for his own use, but to the west, at a higher price, to sell it to their fellow states.

And one of them, called Tiaozhi, is larger than Great Xia, its territory is vast, its military capacity is so large, it can even be comparable to the Qin Dynasty, and it may annex Great Xia at any time!

However, Wu Shiyan carefully concealed what he knew, and desperately led the purpose of the Great Xia people to the trade of goods.

However, Zhao Hai was skeptical, and still believed that the Bactria people had "ulterior motives" and did not approve their pilgrimage. You have to ask.

But the people of Daxia, who had been trapped in the hall for several days, quit, and in Zhao Hai's eyes, this group of "barbarians" with a strong flavor actually openly protested:

"We are from Great Xia, the country of a thousand cities full of wealth, from Bo Zhi, the mother of all cities, Osidemos, the king of Great Xia, let us present gifts to His Majesty the Emperor of Great Qin!"

"What kind of gift?"

After the translator made it clear, Zhao Hai didn't think so, the Great Qin Land is vast, the territory is vast, the emperor is rich all over the world, and the gifts of small states outside the region, how can Your Majesty take it to heart?

The Bactrian removed the wooden box they had carried, and removed all the filling inside, leaving only a half-human-tall statue carved out of marble.

It was a valiant woman, dressed in a robe, armed with a spear and shield, and a crowned helmet......

"Your Majesty has 10,000 terracotta warriors."

Zhao Hai didn't appreciate this kind of aesthetics, and sneered and said: "Every one of them is better than her!" ”

The people of Daxia were very excited, pointed to the statue of the goddess, and asked the interpreter to tell Zhao Hai: "She is the goddess that the Qin people are looking for, and we also know where she is!" ”

"This is the Queen Mother of the West?"

Zhao Hai was dumbfounded, he could imagine that after the so-called "Statue of the Queen Mother of the West" was placed in front of Qin Shi Huang, His Majesty's expression was similar to that of Bole asking his son to follow the map, but he found a toad.

But the people of Bactria did not perceive this, and they proudly recited the name of this goddess in Bactria and in the Greek states:

“Aθήνη！”