Even in the last period of the ninth year of the Apocalypse, the Slavs continued to brave the wind and snow to launch an attack on the Desert, but after receiving a lot of assistance from the Tang Dynasty and even more than 300 active officers on the spot to teach these Slavic warriors to use breech guns and artillery and other weapons, they relied on gunpowder weapons to suppress the attacks of these Slavic forces, and successfully lasted until the tenth year of the Apocalypse. With the arrival of the real bitter cold in the Volga and Dnieper river basins, the two sides temporarily withdrew. However, the aid officers sent by the Tiance Army made all the Slavs take advantage of the extremely low temperature of winter to build a magnificent ice city outside Sizhao City, and a large amount of solid ice was cut directly from the Dnieper River and glued with water to block the harassment of the Slavs in the long winter.

However, at this time in Chang'an, the annual meeting of the Senate in the new year, Li Xuanqing first proposed the basic strategy of the empire's foreign policy, and began to divide all the lands outside the current official territory of the Tang Dynasty into three types, and in addition to the third type of countries and forces that were already owned and the empire did not want to attack, the other two were divided into colonies and territories for expansion. This is also the first time that Li Xuanqing officially proposed the concept of colony as a later term to the top of the empire. After the meeting, the Cabinet, the General Staff, the Senate, and the Law Court all began to consciously bring this concept to their practical work, and foreign affairs began to gradually come to the forefront of the imperial administrative affairs. Soon after, the good news from the northwest also made the imperial higher-ups begin to deepen their understanding of Li Xuanqing's philosophy. Subsequently, in accordance with this idea, the General Staff began to formulate a series of plans for the expansion of the Tiance Army to the outside world, and began to faithfully implement Li Xuanqing's previous idea of giving priority to the occupation of major transportation routes and important resource areas in the expansion plans of various overseas territories.

The planning cabinet of the General Staff is not known for the time being, but at this time, the cabinet led by Cen Tianshi has become the busiest imperial institution in this last year, almost from the end of the annual meeting of the Senate, all the staff entered a busy state, on the one hand, a large number of materials and personnel began to be transported to the northwest with a steady stream of trains, and even in order to have a certain capacity when the roads were closed by heavy snow in winter, the cabinet specially purchased hundreds of large trucks to send to the northwest. Assisted the Northwest Military Administrative Region in setting up a transport fleet of trucks and wagons to facilitate the transportation of supplies in the Northwest in winter. However, this attempt made the Ministry of Communications' Straight Road Department begin to consciously and spontaneously start to build a service area similar to that of later generations, so as to facilitate the rest of these transport convoys in the vast and uninhabited Gobi Desert steppe and other places. And after that, the traffic guard personnel were also specially divided from the Ministry of Guards, and became the joint jurisdiction and joint law enforcement of the two departments.

Tuoba Sizhi and Wan Yi, who are at the top leadership of the Northwest Front, also drew up the outline of the northwest development of the 10th year of the Apocalypse at this time, because it is a military administrative region, so in this development plan, in addition to the civil affairs section, the military also put forward some opinions, which even includes the construction of a complete arsenal in the northwest Gaochang area of the equipment department, in addition to repairing the active weapons of the Tiance Army, more is the production of guns and weapons for export. However, it is obvious that after Wan Yi's plan was transmitted back to the General Staff Department, Li Xuanqing directly changed it to build an ordnance industry cluster in the Gaochang area that can produce large-scale weapons, including some new weapons for secret experiments, and with the help of the characteristics of the northwest side being located in the hinterland of the empire and the vast and sparsely populated area, the second complete military industrial system of the equipment department in addition to Fengzhou was formed near Gaochang. As a result, Gaochang later became an important base of the empire's military and political forces in the northwest, and the level of industrialization developed rapidly together with Hexi Province, and the tentacles of industrialization began to gradually transition from the Central Plains to the northwest. The plan of the military side was subsequently overhauled by the General Staff, but the civil affairs section was strongly supported by the cabinet, and even the Ministry of Finance increased the financial allocation to the northwest again. At the same time that the southern railway was not yet completed, Tuoba Siji began the ambitious survey of the western railway from Shule to Chelcheng, and on the other hand, he mobilized manpower to pick up the section of the straight road that had not been completed for the time being from Baishuicheng and other places to the northwest, and strictly ordered the construction company to complete it before the arrival of spring, and even asked the prisoners of war to complete the road cement laying in the winter for the sake of the progress of the project, and then used the method of continuously lighting fires on the roadside to ensure that the cement could be solidified. However, this move has also led to another innovation in cement production technology, and a variety of cement products for various terrain and climate characteristics of the natural environment have been quickly developed and sent to various places.

When the time came to March of the tenth year of the Apocalypse, the Central Plains began to rejuvenate, and the northwest side gradually began to come out of winter, the northwest garrison of the Tiance Army began to move westward according to the previous plan, and began to carry out the task of occupying a large area of land on the east bank of the Volga River. In this way, a large number of prisoners of war urgently needed for the construction of the northwest were also obtained, and these Slavs were not as influenced by the Celestial Sect as the tribes in the southern region, and they could be transferred to various places with confidence, and these Slavic tribes basically belonged to a brute force, and after strong suppression, they became a good labor force. It is precisely because of this that the development speed of the northwest has also embarked on the fast lane. Immediately after clearing this part of the hidden danger, the two major corps began to be deployed along the river, preparing to respond to the Slavic attack if necessary.

The northwest is ready to fight at any time, but Li Xuanqing in Chang'an City has begun to slowly calm down, and a large number of ideas from later generations have taken root this year, but in the final analysis, these have to be implemented by various departments of the empire, and there is not much he can do at this time. So taking advantage of this rare gap, Li Xuanqing, Qiaoxi, and Murong Feixue left the palace with their three children and went to Lishan. After avoiding complicated military and political affairs, the three of them soaked in the hot springs from time to time while talking about trivial matters, which made the three of them really calm down.

"Big brother, I'm going to go to Hokkaido with Sister Feixue to check how the palace is being built after a while, big brother, do you want to go and see it too?" At this year's House of Councillors meeting in Hokkaido, there was no proposal to establish a separate province, and part of the consideration was that Hokkaido and Shikoku Island were too close to Kyushu and Honshu, where the Japanese are currently gathered, and Hokkaido was a little better, and the islands such as Sakhalin Island to the north could be listed separately, but Shikoku Island made Li Xuanqing not think about whether to dispose of it as a colony or become an overseas territory for a while.

"It's good, I heard that the scenery is good." Li Xuanqing and Qiaoxi have never been to Hokkaido in their previous lives or in their current lives, but in this life, the legendary beautiful island has become a territory under his rule, which makes him feel unreal. But then Li Xuanqing smiled and said, "Where is the palace you let Zhang Qiang build?" Is it near Hakodate? Didn't you hear that the navy built a harbor in that place? ”

"Yes, but the navy changed the place when they knew we were going to build a palace, and they built a straight road on the island connecting the palace to the military port. However, Sister Blizzard and I plan to build a port on our own. Qiaoxi's words made Li Xuanqing suddenly think that he had ordered the Equipment Department and some laboratories and projects under the Imperial Family Assets Group that were inconvenient for outsiders to know were moved to the northern region of Hokkaido last year, so he was afraid that the navy would avoid Hakodate and also have this consideration. So after hearing Qiaoxi's words, he nodded and smiled: "You can arrange someone to build a small wharf, but since it is a private port, we can simply find time to design it ourselves." ”

"How else can the port terminal be designed independently?" Murong Feixue asked Ziyan and the other maids to take Tianqi and the other three children to play outside and then walked down the hot spring pool, staying by Li Xuanqing's side, and when he heard this, he couldn't help but ask curiously. She used to be known for her pungent temper, but in the past two years since she married Li Xuanqing, she has become gentle and amiable, and she has become a lot softer when she speaks. However, she naturally didn't understand the kind of dock in the future that Li Xuanqing and Qiaoxi had conceived in their minds, so when she saw the two of them talking, she came over and looked at the sketches drawn by the two of them, shook her head, and said, "How can this dock still float?" And why is this trestle so long? ”

"My sister is very good at building a port, so let's design it first and then show it to my eldest brother. I've always felt that designing this kind of thing is still the best thing for us women. Qiaoxi smiled and pulled Murong Feixue to the side to mutter, but left Li Xuanqing alone.

However, after the two left, Li Xuanqing was also able to take the opportunity to think about the development stage of Datang today. According to the experience he brought from later generations, due to the relationship between domestic population and consumption level, after nearly ten years of industrial construction, the current Tang Empire has initially completed the industrial revolution, and the level of industrialization and mechanization has been able to increase year by year, that is to say, according to later generations, it seems that he can directly claim that the country he established has entered the so-called imperialism. When this term that was almost insulated from the land under his feet first appeared in Li Xuanqing's mind, even he himself sighed, and he and Qiaoxi were like a butterfly at the beginning, but ten years later, the empire really embarked on a different path, hundreds of years ahead of the future generations into the industrial age. In addition to the Tang Dynasty, when it was basically still in the feudal era, and even many local feudal societies were the objects of its admiration, he and the Tang Empire had inevitably embarked on the road of external expansion, and in fact, even if this imperial territory was now officially established by itself, many of them had surpassed the limits of the territory of previous dynasties. However, under the circumstance that the population base is still less than one-tenth of that of future generations, if the expansion of the whole world is eaten, then once those other nations learn the industrialization and ideas they have brought with them, there will definitely be various independent trends of thought, and when the Chinese nation with the Han people as the main body will inevitably wage war with all the conquered nations in the world, and fight against other nations that have learned their advanced technology and ideas with their own strength, I am afraid that even if they are still alive at that time, they will not be able to suppress it. Therefore, it is precisely for this reason that Li Xuanqing proposed the colony. Let the top of the empire be mentally prepared that even if it expands externally in the future, it will be mainly in the form of colonies. In short, this method can draw blood without taking into account the interests of the local people to supplement the needs of the development of the Tang Empire. Moreover, when necessary, in fact, the colonies are not directly converted into formal territories, and this is up to the rulers of later generations to determine whether they have the ambition and whether the population base of the empire can increase rapidly. Only the population of his own nation has increased significantly, and Li Xuanqing believes that the current leading edge of the Tang Empire alone is enough to include the whole world under his rule. As long as there is enough population support, and the Chinese nation, which has been corrected by itself, has enough confidence and confidence to face any challenge, it is natural that the ideals of the sages who once said that "the whole world is not the king's land" and the pride of "there are countless heroes, and the sword and horse are all Han land" will be truly realized. Unlike the European nations that advocate freedom and separation, the Chinese nation has a tireless pursuit and persistence for reunification and integration that has lasted for thousands of years, and the belief in great unification has been deeply imprinted into the bone marrow of both high-ranking officials and nobles and ordinary people. And this is especially obvious in the Han and Tang dynasties, their own Tang Empire is to inherit the previous generation, the catastrophe of the Central Plains was ploughed by their own court to end the war and quickly enter the industrialized society, the people's hearts of the pride of the great country and the spirit of the Celestial Empire Nirvana reborn, become more upright, not only the former "if a scholar Wanhu Hou" even those ordinary people talk about national affairs as if they are talking about their own affairs. It is precisely because of this that although the war in the northwest lasted for several years, countless soldiers and wealth flowed to the northwest every year, but no one complained because of this, but between words and deeds, they expressed deep regret that they could not personally experience this great war, and those relatives and friends and nephews who participated in the Western Expeditionary Army were admired by everyone, because the blood of this nation has never cooled, and his people have supported the vigorous development of the Tang Dynasty and the ambition of foreign expansion.

Li Xuanqing's thoughts gradually drifted away, and Qiaoxi, who was beside him after discussing the port matter with Murong Feixue, came over and snuggled up to him after seeing Li Xuanqing's face constantly changing, and said with a smile: "Big brother, isn't it because he thinks about our empire so obsessed?" ”

"I wonder if future generations would say that our empire today would say that we were imperialists, and that our foreign policy would be called colonialism?" Li Xuanqing's words made Qiaoxi smile slightly, which surprised both of them, but then they both laughed in unison.