The news of the Luoyang Revolution reached the Puzhou front two days later, when the Northern Army had taken full control of Luoyang, and the 35,000 Northern Army under the command of Fu Yanqing and An Xianqi had also crossed the Yellow River south at the mouth of the Qinhe River, and had already occupied Heyin, Xingze, and Zhengzhou.

Fang Zhiwen persuaded Li Conghou to lead his army to flee south and go to Wu.

Li Conghou thought for a moment and said; "Instead of going to another country, it is better to bear the guilt of petitioning, or to save the clan."

Then he sent someone to submit a letter to Li Qi, the son of heaven in Weizhou, expressing his willingness to lead the army to surrender.

Yuan Xing, who was accompanying him, admonished and said: "What Li Siyuan did is like usurpation, and the three clans should be punished, and the Son of Heaven must not be spared!" ”

Li Qi thought about it but sighed: "Why is this so painful!" But he agreed to Li Conghou's request to surrender.

On October 20 of the seventh year of the Republic, Li Qi led a large army to cross the river from Desheng and arrived outside Puzhou.

Li Conghou braved the light snow, bare his upper body, tied a few thorns on his back, and led the crowd out of the city to welcome the surrender.

Li Qi waited for Li Conghou to lead the crowd to kneel in front of the horse, and after completing the surrender ceremony, he jumped off the horse, untied the thorns for Li Conghou with his own hands, and put on a brocade robe and said: "You and I are brothers, why is this!" You were still young, so I don't blame you, so get up and go into the city with me. ”

Since he said this, it was difficult for those officials and generals who wanted to ask Li Siyuan to punish and investigate the "Xingjiaomen Incident" back then. Since the Son of Heaven no longer pursues the past, it is naturally not good for others to talk nonsense anymore.

It's not kindness, but Li Qi feels that it doesn't make sense.

Many people were at fault in the turmoil back then, and if they really want to be investigated, they will be widely implicated. Moreover, Zhuang Zong has done many things that are unpopular, and the root cause is still in himself. It's just that if someone dares to betray him, Li Qi will not be so magnanimous.

Shaanzhou's Zhenguo Jiedu made Chang Congjian surrender to Fu Yanchao, and then Xuzhou Kuangguo Jiedu made Fan Yanguang and Chenzhou Kang Yicheng also surrender one after another. In the end, Shannan Dongdao Jiedu made Li Congke swing between the surrender of Wu and the Northern Army for a while, and when Li Qi arrived in Bianliang, he also asked for surrender.

In this way, it only took more than ten days for Li Qi to successfully pacify the Central Plains without spending a single soldier, and basically unified the entire north.

On the first day of November, Li Qi returned to Luoyang, stationed in the palace, and accepted the worship of hundreds of officials.

On the third day of the first month, his mother Empress Liu was buried in Yongling and buried with Zhuangzong.

On the sixth day of the first month, he led hundreds of officials to Beibi Mountain to worship Yongling.

On the seventh day of the first month, he vetoed the proposal of the hundred officials to return the capital to Luoyang, changed Luoyang to the western capital, and ordered the second brother Li Jisong to stay in the western capital, and He Fujin to be the defense envoy of the western capital. Subsequently, Fu Yanqing was appointed as the Bianliang Guard, An Xianqi was appointed as the envoy of the Yunzhou Tianping Army, and Li Jizhong was appointed as the envoy of the Xuzhou Kuangguo Festival.

On the ninth day of the first month, Li Qi left Luoyang and led some officials in Luoyang to return to Jinyang.

Li Qi's return to Jinyang also made Wu Guo, who had been paying close attention to the movements of the Tang army, finally breathe a sigh of relief.

In this year, Li Renfu died of illness, and his son Li Yichao asked the imperial court to succeed the Dingyan army.

At this time, Qian Biao, the king of Wuyue, died of illness, and his son Qian Chuanqian succeeded to the throne. Wang Yanjun, the king of Fujian, proclaimed himself emperor according to Fujian, promoted Fuzhou to Changle Mansion, and monopolized Fujian. In addition, the Changsha Wu'an Army made Ma Xisheng sick and died, and Li Siyuan had also allowed his brother Ma Xifan to succeed him.

Only in Shudi, Meng Zhixiang and Dong Zhang each have one side, and they are still ministers to the court on the surface for the time being.

Li Qi also knew that Meng Zhixiang's time was running out and he wanted to settle Shu first, so he vetoed the generals' proposal to take advantage of the southern expedition and return to the court first.

……

More than 30 student soldiers who had just graduated from Jinyang Academy were assigned to the Gukou Water Division and the Dengzhou Water Division.

The Tang people were no strangers to the sea, and during the period when the Tang Dynasty's overseas trade was booming, hundreds of ships from Tianzhu, Persia and Dashi arrived in Middle-earth every year on this maritime Silk Road.

However, these seas generally only reach Guangzhou and Quanzhou, and only some ships sail into the Yangtze River to Yangzhou for trading. For the northerners, the sea and the sea were very distant things.

Now, based on the Dagu estuary and Dengzhou, Li Qi began to build wharves and shipyards, and formed two naval battalions on this basis.

Among them, the Dengzhou Water Division Battalion has been continued from the pre-Tang Dynasty.

The other is offshore aquaculture.

Iodine-rich plants such as kelp, seaweed, and sea cabbage are included in the list of military support materials as the main food for the prevention and treatment of "big neck disease". With the surge in demand, fishing alone is no longer sufficient.

Relatively speaking, the level of shipbuilding in the north is extremely poor, and it is even inferior to that of the Balhae Kingdom and Goryeo.

The most important task for these students to go to Gukou and Dengzhou was to help improve the manufacturing level of the shipyards in these two places.

The warships equipped with the Dengzhou battalion were all several kinds of offshore ships, which could not meet the needs of long-distance voyages, while Li Qi's expectation was the kind of sailing warships that could sail the far sea.

The construction technology of river ships in China is very high, but it is much worse in the manufacture of sea boats. River vessels are flat-bottomed boats with shallow drafts, but they are not up to the requirements of long-sea navigation. The requirement of a sea vessel is a pointed head, a V-shaped pointed bottom, and a deep draft, so that it is not easy to capsize and facilitate the progress of breaking the waves on the sea. In addition, the structure of the sea vessel needs to be stronger, with sealed compartments in the hull for added safety. The bottom plate and side plate are respectively made of double or triple plate structure, and the large ship should adopt a multi-mast method to facilitate the use of multi-faceted wind.

The establishment of the Gukou and Dengzhou Naval Divisions was of far-reaching significance to the Tang Dynasty, indicating that the focus of the empire's future expansion and development began to gradually shift from land to sea.

Wharves and shipyards were expanding, and maritime trade with the south began to develop slowly.

As soon as the Gukou and Dengzhou battalions were established, Li Qi gave each battalion a strength of 6,000 soldiers, which also showed his great ambition. The strength of the battalion is not only based on the training of personnel, but more importantly on equipment.

This is what Li Qi often admonishes these students who study water masters.

As a result of a war at sea, the quality of equipment is of even more decisive significance.

In order to strengthen the management of shipbuilding, the imperial court set up shipbuilding supervisors in Gukou and Wendeng, and it is very strange that the two shipbuilding supervisors were not under the supervision of the Shaofu, but were designated by the Son of Heaven to be under the control of the ordnance superintendent, which means that these two shipbuilding superintendents are ordnance manufacturing workshops directly under the ordnance superintendent.

The other is the source of the wood. Due to years of development in the north, there are almost no giant trees suitable for making large ship keels, and this kind of giant wood needs to be purchased from the south and dried for several years before it can be used.

This is currently the biggest expense of the two shipbuilding superintendents.

However, I heard the Son of Heaven say that less than 200 miles away from Fujian, there is a large island called Ezo, and the giant trees on the island are towering......

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