Guangzhou soon received a palindrome from Bianjing. Asked the local government to escort Oviteus and his party to the north with the specifications of envoys of a great country.

Although Zhao Gou was shocked by the Byzantine visit, he was also happy to establish contact with the Byzantine Empire.

He didn't know much about John II today, but he also knew that the strength of the Byzantines should not be underestimated.

And the Great Song Dynasty will not have any conflict of interest with the Byzantine Empire for decades to come, or even longer.

From the moment John II's father let the Crusaders into his territory, the Byzantines' strategy on the eastern front had already been finalized - abandoned! The crusaders clearly gave up in the cracks of these three words, and the Byzantines completely gave up their future on the Eastern Front.

Let a bunch of Crusader nations become their own shield on the Eastern Front, shielding them from the threat of celestial powers.

Then I can recuperate with peace of mind, stabilize the country, and deal with all kinds of troubles on the Western Front.

Therefore, the Great Song Dynasty is still separated from it by an almost complete heavenly world.

There will be no conflict of interest between the two sides at all, and when they see each other and talk to each other, there are only interests.

Guangnan East Road immediately lit up 200 people to escort the envoys and his party north.

They did not take the waterway, but went north along the only national highway that crossed Lingnan.

The latter is a road that Zhao Song invested a lot of manpower and material resources and spent many years building. Connecting Jingnan and Lingnan, although the investment is huge, the benefits are also huge.

From Guangzhou straight north to Shaoguan, out of the south of the south into Jinghu, from Hengyang to board the ship, through Tanzhou (Changsha), hit Ezhou (Wuchang) to cross the river, along a straight north, out of Wusheng Pass into Xinyang, and then straight into Yuncheng, that is, the Luohe River in later generations. Then there is another wide road to Bianjing.

With money, Zhao Gou thought about changing the traffic environment of Zhao and Song, dredging channels and canals is one, and building national highways on land is two.

Although the latter is only the beginning.

The Byzantine group traveled thousands of miles along the way, and fully appreciated the vastness of the territory of the Zhao and Song dynasties and the various states of people's livelihood.

Not every place in this vast country is rich and luxurious, but even the remote counties in the mouth of the accompanying people can see the peace and prosperity in them.

Judging by Byzantine standards, there really are no poor people here!

All of them are ruddy-faced, well-dressed, and the houses are neatly repaired, can they still be poor?

The Song people he saw were those who had been immigrated, and each of them could become the backbone of the city.

"Five years ......" Thinking of the Song Emperor introduced by the translator, this powerful emperor actually changed the entire empire in only five years.

Oviteus could not have imagined that the civil war in this rich and powerful country in front of him had ended completely only five years earlier, and that the capital had been invaded and besieged by the barbarians from the north seven years earlier.

It's a bit like 'Rome was built overnight' and everyone thinks it's incredible.

In fact, in the past few days, the members of this Byzantine mission have frequently quarreled over different opinions, initially with several of Oviteus's attachés, such as his secretary, clerk, and two attendants, and later with the involvement of Oviteus' lieutenants and chief of guard, and even everyone. It was in this debate that they split into two groups.

One faction admired the many state policies of the Song Dynasty and believed that Byzantium should be absorbed for its own use. Not much else, the biggest focus on banks and banknotes, as long as they can be implemented in Byzantium, how much help it can bring to Byzantium.

No matter how much paper money is endorsed by the country's reputation, it is also paper.

These people believe that facts trump everything.

An expeditionary force of the Song people, which drove thousands of miles, could make the heavenly world uneasy, and its national strength was strong, its territory was vast, and the peace of the country was obvious to all.

The policies pursued by such a prosperous and great nation are clearly tried and tested policies for the security of the country.

Why didn't Byzantium just copy the homework?

But there is also another group of people who think that the splendor of Rome is not inferior to that of the East, and that the barbarians of Western Europe are more like ignorant barbarians.

However, there are countless differences between Byzantium and Eastern civilizations, and what you see and hear on the way north can prove that there are countless differences between the customs, cultures, and traditions of the two countries.

Using the policies of the Song Empire to apply to the Byzantine Empire may not be completely suitable!

With what they saw along the way, the Byzantines had given up the desire to compare their kingdom with the Great Song Dynasty, but this did not prevent them from rejecting the latter's institutional policies.

Not to mention anything else, just one 'imperial examination system', which can turn Byzantium upside down. When it reaches Western Europe, it will be hated by the whole world.

Although the Byzantines were very fond of learning, even Constantine IX, who was before the Komnenian dynasty, ordered everyone to go to law school because of the poor quality of the domestic magistrates. But this is completely different from the 'imperial examination system' of meritocracy.

It is true that the grassroots people of Byzantium can also receive a valuable education, but they will not be able to climb to the status of nobility in their lifetime.

This is like the conservatives in the late Qing Dynasty, you Western powers are powerful, but I just don't hold your Shinto.

Oviteus was initially involved in discussions, but gradually he stayed out of the discussion. The reason is not that he is not interested in participating in the discussion, but because he has more important things to do.

Draw an accurate map of Europe, and then cooperate with those kingdoms, principalities, and princes, and write a small biography for them, briefly explaining the connection between them. That's enough to keep him busy for days.

The Song people knew very little about the Western world tens of thousands of miles away, but as a nobleman of the Byzantine Empire and a diplomat of the Byzantine Empire, he knew too much about the entire Western world.

Present such a detailed drawing, accompanied by a pamphlet - anyway, the eyes of the Song people have already seen Europe, and in a few years or decades, they will always figure everything out, and this drawing does not care about leaks.

But it can be used as a tiger skin to be draped in Byzantium.

Don't forget the Crusaders, now that the whole of Europe is united, the forces of heaven are under attack. The Byzantine Empire was not even threatened by the forces of the heavens. In this case, Byzantium can hide their worries about the Eastern Front to the fullest, and Oviteus can instead use Western European countries to brush himself (Byzantium) with a buff!

"No one will refuse an olive branch from an enemy of the enemy, will he?" Moreover, the enemy of this enemy is still thousands of miles away, and there is no direct conflict of interest with the Song people at all.