A conspiracy against the sweaty horse trade was brewing in Jinyang, and Aristotle IV, one of the future parties, was still completing his Journey to the East. Although the East Asian states were considered barbarians, he was the 'first' Greek to arrive here. In the small garden next to the inn, he sat on a makeshift chair, took a sip of tea and said:

“…… The Chuni have black hair, black eyes, and skin that if it is a nobleman, it should be white. If it's a citizen or a slave, it's yellow or brown. If a man is over twenty years old, he wears a hat and a sword - I have to emphasize that all the Chuni men I have seen are armed with swords, and some citizens who do not have titles carry a Chuni sword.

This tradition is said to have arisen hundreds of years ago. The sword is not just a decoration, but also a weapon of self-defense, and even a tool of judgment. On the outskirts of the capital of Chuni, I witnessed two people who had been arguing for more than a decade over a small vegetable plot – a judge, perhaps not a judge, who did not know how to decide, and the jurors in the open-air court did not know how to decide, and finally the judge asked them to compete in a joust, and the victor would take ownership of the vegetable patch.

The gods are above, and I don't know what the basis for the judge to judge in this way, it is very unequal to decide the ownership of property by force. But the Chuni were glad to do so, and the whole village came to watch the joust, and one of them won, and he got the little vegetable patch, while the other failed, and he left the place in shame......"

Aristotle IV only said that his retinue Porus was in charge of the record. When he said 'there', Porus raised his hand, and Aristotle IV spoke so quickly that Porus could only raise his hand to make Aristotle IV pause slightly.

"Yes, the loser was ridiculed by the villagers, and he left there in shame." Aristotle IV continued his own narrative. Wu Ji explained that this was how the throne of Chuni was decided hundreds of years ago. Even if the previous king has already appointed an heir, if the royal friends (princes) choose another heir to the throne, they will compete in a contest, and the winner will be crowned king, and the loser will be killed. The descendants of the loser can change a name to be pardoned if they submit to the winner. ”

Speaking of this, Aristotle IV suddenly hesitated, he felt that this was a sign of kindness on the part of the Chuni, and few people could be tolerant of the family of the loser. If the Macedonians had been as merciful as the Chuni, the Emperor's wife and son would not have been poisoned.

"I can't praise the barbarians." Aristotle IV hesitated and said, "Delete the 'descendants of the losers......." ”

"Yes." The papyrus had been produced with a few scrolls, and Porus found the sentence to be deleted, and smeared it heavily with black ink, obscuring the letters.

"The Chuni ......," Aristotle IV watched as he deleted it, but at this point he found that his train of thought was disrupted, and after a while he said, "I have changed my mind, Porus." As one of the most knowledgeable and wise scholars in the known world, I cannot do that, so please restore that statement. Then ......" he thought again, and then said: "Add before 'loser': 'according to uncertain rumors'"

"Yes." Porus was expressionless, and he rewrote the deleted sentence, adding 'according to uncertain rumors' at the end.

“…… The Chuni Iron used to make the Chuni Sword was far superior to the Seris Iron, and the iron-smelting workshop was located to the north of the Chuni Capital. There was black smoke and loud noise every day. Truckloads of ore were brought into the workshop, and then armor was made in batches. Now I understand why King Chuni agreed to the request of the merchants of Sogdiana for thirty sets of armor for one horse, and the citizens of Chuni only had two hundred dollars to buy Chuni armor, which is five drachmas.

The gods are above, and I have to say that the Chuni were cunning merchants and clever craftsmen, and in Greece a pair of the same armor required at least three hundred drachmas or even more. Heavier bronze armor, if exquisite, required two hundred drachmas. If it was ordinary bronze armor, maybe a hundred drachmas would have been able to buy it. The cheapest linen armor cost at least ten drachmas. It costs one hundred and twenty drachmas to sell the armor of the Chuni to other countries, and three hundred drachmas if it were sold to India and Seleucus......"

Aristotle IV spat out a series of numbers, and he wanted to show that the Chuni were cunning merchants comparable to the Sogdianas, but before he could finish speaking, he came running from a distance, and he could only stop to see what he had to say.

"Teacher, the Chuni sailboat will return to the shipyard for repairs." Needless to say, he was followed by his attendant, Ngago Vala. Both were out of breath as they rushed over from the North City Gate.

"Sailboat?" Aristotle IV laughed, and from the moment he saw the Greek-style three-oared battleship, he looked down on the shipbuilding skills of Chuni. But he was happy to mention sailboats, and he will write a lot about shipbuilding technology in "Journey to the East".

"Yes. Sailing boat. "I don't know what the teacher is thinking," It's a Suzaku class, a Chuni ocean-going sailing ship of about two hundred tons. They had just returned from Seleucus, and the people of Yingdu had gone to see them. ”

The ton is a unit peculiar to Chuni, and one ton is equal to thirty-eight tarrants. A sailing ship of more than 200 tons is a big ship even in the Mediterranean. It is said that the sailing ships of the Chuni were very fast, and the journey of more than 60,000 Tertia could be completed in just three months. Within a year, it is possible to travel between Chuni and Seleucid or India.

Aristotle IV immediately instructed Porus to receive the draft, and he was to immediately go to the quay north of the city to see the two galleons that had just returned from Seleucus. Aristotle IV moved quickly, but unfortunately when he arrived at the north gate, there was already a crowd of people outside the city gate, and two sailboats full of sails that had never been seen before were towing more than a dozen large-wing warships to the north pier of the city.

The crossbeams on the mast of the sailboat face the cold wind blowing from the northeast, and the bulging sails carry the ship slowly, and once the sailboat deviates from the course, the large wing warship towed in front and behind will tow the ship back to the correct position according to the instructions on board.

"The gods are above, and I swear by Poseidon, these are really two beautiful ships." As soon as he saw the two sailing ships, Aristotle IV exclaimed in admiration. Beauty was the eternal pursuit of the Greeks, just as he loved the beautiful king of Chuni, and he was completely conquered by the beauty embodied in these two Chuni galleons.

The sea boats produced by the Purple Mountain Shipyard generally enter the sea from the Yinglu Canal through the Yangtze River, and the sea boats return to the Chu State to call at the port of call in Zhufang, and no sea boat has ever docked directly in Yingdu. The arrival of the two Suzaku class ships left Yingdu empty, and Aristotle IV's carriage followed the carriage in front of it before barely squeezing into the dock.

He was certainly not the protagonist of the event, just a loyal bystander standing on the roof of the carriage. Some barbarians danced and sacrificed two boats before a noble woman dressed in a white fox fur boarded the boat, surrounded by servants. The people on the ship saluted her, and some of the slaves even prostrated on her.

"Who is she?" Aristotle IV couldn't help but ask.

"She?" Wu Ji also saw a noble woman boarding the ship surrounded by everyone, but he didn't know who it was, and asked him around before he said: "That's the princess of Chuni, she owns these two sailing ships......"

"Oh, gods!" Aristotle IV had no intention of hearing what Wuji had to say—when two servants were carrying a large heavy wooden box from the ship, one of them accidentally fell, and then the wooden box fell on the dock, and the familiar and seductive golden light caught his eyes: it was a whole box full of Greek gold coins, at least four tarrants.

Aristotle IV couldn't help but whisper, and the crowd of onlookers also whispered, everyone has seen gold, but such a whole box ......, no, there is a bunch of such large wooden boxes on the ship, so much gold is really enviable.

"Teacher, that's Princess Chuni's sailboat, and it is said that most of the princesses' dowries are used for shipbuilding." Seeing that Aristotle IV came to his senses, he immediately told him who the noble woman was.

"It's not necessary, it's not necessary." Aristotle IV's tone suddenly became a little vicissitudes, and he looked at his retinue Porus and said, "Porus, I want you to record it." ”

"Yes, sir." Porus quickly took out the pen and paper.

"The Chuni are the smartest craftsmen and the most cunning merchants. Their sailing ships could travel between Chuni and India and Seleucus within a year. Cheap Chuni goods are sold to the known world at twenty or fifty times the price. At the same time, truckloads of gold and silver from the known world were brought into Chuni. On one of the sailing ships alone, more than one hundred and twenty gold coins of the Talant were transported back to the capital of the Chini Kingdom......"

Just as the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, more than 200 years later, lamented in the Natural History that 'the lowest estimate is that India, Seris and the Arabian Peninsula take away 100 million silver coins from our country every year, which is the total amount of our luxury goods and women's spending', Aristotle IV had a similar feeling when he saw those Greek gold coins.

His tone of confidence, optimism, had become sad, as if the gold coins had not been obtained through trade, but had been deceived by the Chuni people in some unknown way. When Porus had carefully recorded his words, he said, "Let's go back." ”

"Back to ...... Get back? "It's a little weird," Teacher, the sailboat might be sent to the shipyard today. ”

"In the name of the Greeks," exclaimed Aristotle IV, "I must see the Seleucid envoys at once." ”

"Siranus?" Needless to say, he looked at him even more strangely, Seleucus and Bactria were enemy countries, and he couldn't figure out why the teacher wanted to meet the envoys of the enemy country.

"Yes, I want to see Siranus." Aristotle IV spoke very firmly. "The Chuni are ......," he wanted to say stealing, but the Chuni didn't really steal. He took a new breath and said, "The gold and silver of the known world are being transported by the Chuni boatload by boat, and maybe in ten years, we will be poor, and we will not even be able to pay the soldiers' salaries. ”