In just one day, Zhang Zong had already decided to invest in the textile industry in the north.

This is not because he particularly wants to see the "fairy palace with beautiful women", but because he keenly sees the prospects of the textile industry in the Chinese Empire.

First of all, as a Confucian scholar (although he is a bit of a deviant maniac, but a Confucian is a Confucian scholar, and the core cannot be changed), he feels that the products of the luxury industry that his family has invested in before cannot satisfy hunger, and the cold cannot keep out the cold, which is not beneficial to the country.

However, the textile industry, which is a basic livelihood industry, is very in line with his moral cleanliness.

Secondly, he did feel that he could make a lot of money by investing in textile factories in the north.

Zhang Zong's travels in the north really heard a lot of news that was considered "secret" to the southerners, most of which came from the various newspapers he bought along the way, and a small part from the introduction of the reception officials - Huaxia did not hide the meaning of this information, it only depends on whether you are willing to collect and analyze it.

Zhang Zong and his companions collected a lot of information, and according to this information, he found that the output of Qingzhou Textile Factory was in Jiangnan, which was probably higher than that of Yiyi Road (Province).

But this factory was not the largest textile factory in the north - although it was indeed called "the first factory in the world", it was probably only because it was the first large textile factory, and all the other factories in China were built on the basis of this factory.

At present, it is known that the scale of Quancheng Textile Factory is much larger than that of Qingzhou Textile Factory. There is also the Yanjing Textile Factory under construction, which is larger than Quancheng and Qingzhou.

There are also Liaoyang Textile Factory, Datong Textile Factory and Chang'an Textile Factory, which are basically similar in scale to Qingzhou Textile Factory, and are now in the process of being fully rolled out.

In addition to these "Qingzhou-style" factories, the young official also told Zhang Zong that a new, more efficient factory was being built in Huaxia — a kind of water conservancy textile factory (Cartwright machine) that was about five times more efficient than the Qingzhou-style factory.

Zhang Zong couldn't imagine what a textile factory that was five times more efficient than a Qingzhou-style factory would look like, but if you calculate it a little, such a factory will produce 9.9 million horses a year!

Of course, there won't be so many, because the water machine can't be turned on in the winter, but even if you subtract a quarter, the yield is too impressive.

This is almost twice the annual output of the entire Great Zhou Imperial Weaving Bureau, and this is just one factory!

Adding up all the factories that have been built and are under construction, the output of textile enterprises in the north is about 20 times more than that of Dazhou!

Clothes are all over the world.

This word really appeared in Zhang Zong's mind.

This means that in the past, all kinds of textiles that could be used directly as money may have a process of price collapse in the future - in fact, the textiles in the north, especially cotton, wool and hemp, are much lower than those in the south of the Yangtze River.

But this does not mean that the absolute profit of the textile industry will be reduced, because textiles are necessities of life after all, and the share of this market is far from saturation.

What's more, there are still a large number of overseas markets in the north that can digest this capacity.

In fact, Zhang Zong's willingness to invest in textile factories is not only that, he now has an idea: if the water conservancy textile machine is really so powerful, then can it be introduced to Jiangnan?

Before the rise of China, the textile industry in the south of the Yangtze River has been much more developed than the north of the Yangtze River, with this foundation, plus the rivers in the south of the Yangtze River, the rivers are basically not frozen in winter, if the Jiangbei style textile factory can be built in the south of the Yangtze River, then it is certain that the output of the factory in the south of the Yangtze River will be much more than that of the north of the Yangtze River.

At night, when no one is around, Zhang Zong often thinks about this issue.

He thinks that the biggest problems now are two for introducing the Jiangbei factory to Jiangnan:

First, if the production capacity goes up, can the raw materials be supplied?

The advantage of the textile factories in Jiangbei is that after more than ten years of war, they have suffered large population losses, and they can be regarded as vast and sparsely populated, so there is not much obstacle to planting cotton and hemp on a large amount of newly reclaimed land.

In addition, the Chinese Empire was close to the Menggu grassland, and they could import large quantities of wool from the grassland to support the wool textile industry.

Jiangnan is much worse in this regard.

Second, and what makes Zhang Zong even more dissatisfied, Jiangbei and Jiangnan are not a country after all, and factories like textile factories that can not only benefit all the people, but also earn a lot of profits, Jiangbei may not agree to be learned by Jiangnan.

Unless Jiangbei and Jiangnan are unified into the same country.

But if it is reunification, is it better for the north to unify the south, or is it better for the south to unify and the north to be strong?

As a Confucian scholar from a Jiangnan gentry family, Zhang Zong felt that his answer was likely to be a little rebellious.

……

On August 17, 1871, after a short break, the Chinese army again began to advance towards the area of the Molong River.

At this time, Xu Shiyang's declaration of the end of Yan had spread throughout the Molong River Valley, so those born Jurchens who had been following the Yan Sect in recent years unceremoniously and without a trace of hesitation abandoned the last remnants of the Jin Kingdom in the East.

No one stood on the side of Wanyan Zonggan, and when Xu Shiyang left the Songhua River and went north, dozens or hundreds of Shengjuzhen brought their own ordnance, grain, and horses to join the ranks of the Chinese army.

By the time Xu Shiyang arrived in the Aihui area, there were more than 5,000 new daughters who had taken refuge.

The Chinese army did not advance quickly, Xu Shiyang gave the surrounding tribes enough time to surrender, and did not cherish this time, and the tribes that did not send troops to help the war did not need to be polite, they all regarded as the remnants of Yan and died with Yan Zonggan.

As the Chinese army pressed forward step by step, Wanyan Zonggan gradually fell into a desperate madness, and during the period when the Chinese army went north, Wanyan Zonggan sent two envoys in a row, sending two other daughters and sons, groveling to try to escape from the steel knife hanging from Xu Shiyang's head.

However, Xu Shiyang was unmoved, and the fate of the second wave of envoys was no different from that of the first wave: the children of Wanyan Zonggan were sent to Schönbrunn Palace, where they would live a miserable life of discrimination and abuse as the lowest eunuchs and palace maids, and the rest of the envoys were all beheaded.

With the lessons of the first two times, as soon as the third wave of envoys set off from Aihui, the envoys directly tied up the children of Wanyan Zonggan, and they surrendered to Xu Shiyang as Jin soldiers instead of envoys of the Jin State, in exchange for a chance to live as slaves.

At this point, Wanyan Zonggan's last hope was shattered, and he no longer rearmament, he spent all day drinking to dispel his sorrows, as if he was dead, quietly waiting for the last moment to come.

On the 8th day of September, the first part of the Chinese army forcibly crossed the Molong River from a small place called Hurma between Aihui and Yaxa, and reached the upper reaches of the Xilinmutong River, a tributary of the Molong River, cutting off the road for Wanyan Zonggan to continue to flee north.

On the 10th day of September, a Chinese fleet of ships rushed from Miaojie at the mouth of the Molong River to join forces with Xu Shiyang and complete the complete encirclement of Aihui before the snowfall.