Unlike the starvation in Guanzhong, after the land of Shuozhou entered June, all kinds of crops grew very well, and various infrastructure was constantly improved under the leadership of Ma Lin, Zhang Quan, Wang Fu and Wang Gui brothers, however, another crisis is approaching here.

Li Jing finally came back from the Western Regions, with him came hundreds of caravans from the Western Regions, with more than 10,000 people, and the goods brought were even more dazzling, no less than a thousand kinds, last year, those Tang merchants who lent goods to these merchants in the Western Regions, not only earned the profit brought by the price difference of the goods themselves, but also earned a lot of interest money.

This result proved that Ma Zhou's suggestion last year had an effect, and it was surprisingly good, however, these good news could not hide a bad news, that is, Jieli and Tuli had divided the victory and defeat in the Western Regions, Jieli won, occupied part of the land west of Yumen Pass, Dunhuang, Yiwu and Gaochang Kingdom, and together with Tuyuhun, completely blocked the road to the west of the Tang Dynasty.

And Tuli, who fled east with more than 10,000 or 20,000 remnant troops, has already reached the border of Shuozhou, and it is very likely to threaten the land of Shuozhou, which has only 3,000 garrisons.

These two guys have now received the news of the drought in Guanzhong and Li Xiaochang's rebellion, and they have begun to take advantage of Li Shimin's anxiety to seek some benefits.

Jieli collected a lot of Tuli's troops, as well as the population plundered from the Western Regions, a total of more than 100,000 horsemen, has repeatedly tested the defense of Yumen Pass, if it weren't for their nomads who are not suitable to launch a war in the south, Jieli would like to take this opportunity to be ashamed.

"Tuli is really a useless coward, he was defeated so quickly, but there is no need to send troops to Shuozhou to guard against him, let the Wang family fight with him for a while, and in addition, he ordered Cheng Zhijie to be the general manager of the march of Longyou Road, leading the left and right guards and horses, and going to Yumen Pass to garrison."

Early in the morning, after meeting with Li Jing, Li Shimin immediately issued this order, and at this time, he felt even more that Sun Xiangfu deceived the Wang family into farming on the grassland, what a clever strategy.

Of course, he didn't send troops to Shuozhou not because there was the Wang family as the first line of defense in Shuozhou, the Hui and Xue Yantuo around Shuozhou must have the intention of eating Tuli at this moment, as long as Tuli didn't have a pit in his head, he wouldn't start a war with the passively defensive Datang at this time, so he was likely to be attacked from three sides, what he needed more was cultivation to stabilize the relationship with Hui and Xue Yantuo.

And Jieli, who has been tired of fighting for two consecutive years, in Li Shimin's opinion, has been tired of veterans, although there are more than 100,000 people, but they are not able to fight, and now the Tang cavalry has increased a lot in terms of number and combat power, and they are not afraid of him at all. However, the timing he chose was too good, the disaster in Guanzhong, how to feed the people is Li Shimin's headache now, not to mention the organization of an expeditionary army.

As the most outstanding military strategist in the Tang Dynasty, Li Jing of course not only brought back such a bit of news, but the purpose of his westward trip was mainly to train troops, so what he reported to Li Shimin was mainly about military training.

The first problem mentioned is that the war horse is unbearable, he went back and forth for a whole year, the distance is not thousands of miles, even if it is a person with two horses, the horse's hooves are also worn out on the march of this year, so, don't look at Li Jing brought back the five thousand cavalry, in fact, their war horses have been changed in the middle, fortunately, the war horses are not expensive for the nomads in the west, and when the replacement is made, there are Hu merchants who make up the difference, but let the five thousand soldiers have horses to ride back to Chang'an.

The second is to explain the importance of trade with the Western Regions, he has investigated on the spot, he knows that the Western Regions folk crafts are weaker than the Tang Dynasty as a whole, and the Tang Dynasty can obtain huge benefits from its trade.

Moreover, there are a lot of strategic materials in short supply that the Tang Dynasty needs, high-quality iron ore is one of them, all countries west of Gaochang are rich in iron ore, this iron is best used to forge blades, Li Jing brought back a lot this time, if Jieli occupies the westward passage for a long time, it will inevitably cause damage to the industry and commerce of the Tang Dynasty, and once Jieli goes west and destroys several countries in the Western Regions, then his strength will rise sharply, and it will be difficult for Datang to clean him up.

Therefore, Li Jing's suggestion is that Jieli must be eradicated as soon as possible.

Got Li Jing's suggestion, Li Shimin hated that this drought came at the wrong time, otherwise, he would be able to raise a large army this year to eliminate Jieli, and now, the locust plague in Guanzhong and the plague are rampant, even if you want to fight Jieli, you must first solve your own internal problems.

"If there is nothing to do, the pharmacist will hand over those iron ore to the smelting workshop in Xingfu Village to make some good weapons!"

Since he can't fight, he can only take care of the present, the quarantined Sun Xiangfu and Li Chunfeng are the top priority to deal with the plague, Li Shimin wants to wait here, the first time to know the news, at the same time, he wants to have a deeper understanding of the various crafts and business essence of Happy Village, so he took Li Jing to the smelting workshop.

After the iron was introduced into the Central Plains during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, it soon became a sought-after item for the warriors, but Li Shimin took Li Jing to the smelting workshop, not to see how they smelted iron, after a few days of understanding of the happy village, he has been infected by the atmosphere here, whether it is farming, or the work of various workshops, the people here are very willing to find a way to make all the processes simple, efficient, those who wear ' Farmers are the best at finding problems and solving problems, once some processes are improved, they become time-saving and labor-saving, then those who propose improvement plans can get rich rewards.

Li Jing encountered a problem, and Li Shimin wanted to hand over this problem to the peasant children of Xingfu Village to solve.

Soon, he found Marseille, who had previously cast the Uzi steel Mo knife, to cast the iron knife for Li Jing.

The smelting workshop has coking coal as fuel, and it is very easy to melt iron, Marseille made a knife embryo mold according to the style required by Li Jing, after the iron ore melted, the knife embryo was quickly formed in the mold, and after cooling, it was handed over to the blacksmith to be repeatedly forged, and Marseille was able to withdraw, and Li Shimin raised whether the war horse could not be used, and whether the workshop could develop some utensils to solve this problem.

Hearing this, Nazhi Marsai smiled, took out a crescent-shaped piece of iron, and said, "Previously, the village chief said that the war horses in the village ran back and forth from Shuozhou to Luoyang, and the toes of many war horses were cracked and unusable, so I asked me to wait to develop an iron shoe that can be worn by horses. ”

Don't underestimate the design of a horseshoe, people who have not seen the prototype of the finished product, want to get it out, it is necessary to go through repeated research, the shape of the curved shape of the horseshoe in the hand of Marseille is similar to the shape of the horse's shoe, but at first it could not be fixed on the horse's toes, and then some way to make it grooved, leaving holes for the nail to penetrate, and then, after several tests, it is still easy to fall off.

Finally, they thought of the kind of threaded mouth when the water pipe was connected, and then they thought of making a kind of screw to fix the horseshoe, at the level of this period, it was really not so easy to make small screws, but this technical difficulty was broken by the smelting workshop in two days, and the speed of getting the screws was much faster than that of hand-carving.

It's just that this kind of horseshoe that is driven up by screws is difficult to remove after being damaged, and it can only be fixed with an extra layer of new iron underneath, which is still a little imperfect in the eyes of the people in the smelting workshop, however, the horseshoe that fixes the iron sheet in this way avoids the damage caused by the horsehoe horn directly rubbing against the ground, and should be able to greatly reduce the damage caused by the wear of the horseshoe to the war horse.

Inventions like horseshoes are actually nothing in the workshop of Xingfu Village, when Marseille was nailing the horseshoe to Li Jing's war horse, a craftsman brought over a new type of saddle, and this saddle had a large iron hook on it.

"What does this hook do?"

"General Li, this hook is called the victory hook, which is used to hang weapons, so that when marching, the cavalry does not need to separate one hand to hold the weapon, and the control of the horse will be more stable and fast. When fighting, after charging the battle with the cavalry lance, you can quickly hang the cavalry lance on this hook and use the more efficient saber to kill the enemy with a melee chop. ”

When Li Jing heard this, his eyes lit up a little, and he hurriedly asked his subordinate soldiers to take weapons and turn over on the back of this war horse equipped with a horseshoe and a new saddle.

The war horse loaded with horseshoes ran on the cement road of Xingfu Village There was a sound of gold and iron, Li Jing on horseback kept converting the riding gun and the saber, and found that it was very convenient, and immediately showed joy, and ran along the cement road around the village, Li Jing turned over and got off the horse, "Your Majesty, with these designs, the combat power of my Tang cavalry can be increased by at least two or three percent." ”

Hearing this, Li Shimin was overjoyed, he knew that Li Jing had never been full of words, he said two or three percent, then there would be three or four percent, the role of the horseshoe is not only to protect the horse's hooves, you know, the ancient war horses have to go through a long time of training, in order to reach the level of free control of the cavalry.

However, due to the rapid wear of the horse's hooves, it will speed up the replacement of the war horse, which will greatly increase the economic cost and time cost of the horse training, you know, the life of the horse is very long, as long as there is no injury, riding for decades is not a problem, once the horse's war horse is installed on the horseshoe, it can save a lot of money every year in the training of new war horses, and the old horse is used to the army, more suitable for the battlefield, a large number of equipment training mature old horses, for the agility of the cavalry to change the formation of the charge, The increase in the number of cavalry will also be much faster, and the country in this era is weak and weak, and it is often at these points that the army has enough mobility and expeditionary ability to be considered a strong country.

Li Jing suggested that the smelting craftsmen of Xingfu Village should be rewarded heavily, and the poor jingle Li Shimin waved his sleeves and rewarded all the craftsmen who participated in the production of horseshoes and new saddles with ten guan money, and Marseille and others who received the reward were not very happy, because they were already very rich, and ten guan money was nothing to them, but it was a little annoying Li Shimin who always came over to disturb their work these days.

"Your Majesty, the craftsmen of our Xingfu Village workshop are not much more clever than the craftsmen of the Imperial Court Ministry of Industry and the Supervisors, they can actually make these things, but why haven't they made them, but we can?

Because, we are good at using our brains, good at thinking, the village chief once said that the progress of all civilization comes from thinking, you only need to let the craftsmen of the imperial court use their brains, they will also be able to create more things that are conducive to the development of the country like us.

That, the horseshoe and the new saddle, as well as this iron sword, you can hand over the general of the imperial court to make it in large quantities, and the alloy technology that the grass people will study here is very complicated, so I will not accompany you. ”

Li Shimin was dumbfounded when he heard this, and Li Jing was the same, they had never seen a craftsman who spoke so well, the one in front of him, but the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, he actually dared to give an order to expel guests.

But soon, Li Shimin walked out of the smelting workshop, with a thoughtful look on his face.

You know, the early Tang Dynasty martial arts prevailed, but there was no Confucianism as exclusive as in the Song and Ming dynasties, through Marseille's words, Li Shimin was already considering the status of workers, he is now under the elbow of the family, because the family monopolized knowledge, monopolized the scholars, but does the Tang Dynasty really need what knowledge is monopolized by them?

Not necessarily, the knowledge that can make the people of the Tang Dynasty fed and clothed, and the knowledge that can make the Tang Dynasty strong and improve production efficiency may be more important, why don't you use a large number of people who know this knowledge as officials to break the family's control of the government?

With this idea, what Li Shimin has to consider is what he needs to do to achieve this idea, Xiao Yu once said that scholars will have an opposition attitude towards any other class of people and officials, and changing the views of scholars is the key.

After thinking about it for a long time, Li Shimin had a lot of new ideas about the imperial examination system that had not yet been restored in the Tang Dynasty, perhaps influenced by the atmosphere of Happy Village, and he began to like to use his brain more to figure out how to solve problems.

It is not easy to change the discrimination of scholars against other classes, so why not open up a channel for ordinary people to become scholars?

The imperial examination system should be changed, it should be divided into different subjects, any subject, have a certain basic cultural knowledge, you can pass different professional assessments, obtain the status of scholars, of course, Confucian students have to give them some privileges, the big deal is to leave a few prime minister positions in the core of the politics to them, and the people who take the engineering examination can only be officials of the Ministry of Industry.

Historically, Li Shimin was the originator of the improvement of the imperial examination, and he divided the imperial examination into more than 50 subjects, such as Xiucai, Ming Jing, Junshi, Xiushi, Ming Law, Ming Zi, Ming Calculation, Ming Medicine, etc., but because many subjects were not taken seriously, they were gradually abolished, but now it is different, and Li Shimin, who has figured out that professionals should be used in professional matters, will definitely implement the system he conceived firmly.

He wouldn't be stupid enough to use a Confucian student who didn't understand the manufacturing process to manage the Ministry of Justice, and he wouldn't be stupid enough to use a Confucian student who didn't understand the laws of criminal names to manage the Criminal Department.

Therefore, on this day, he found a few ministers of the humerus to discuss for a long time, after brainstorming, a more complete and complete imperial examination system gradually took shape, of course, the current system is only in consideration of the design, really implemented in the country, and he has to wait to solve the internal and external troubles, let the country settle down and then say, he has never been an impatient person, planning and then acting is one of the main reasons for him to run the prosperous world of Zhenguan.