In the seventh year of the Apocalypse, the cabinet and the General Staff urgently formulated the regional division of the Tibetan area, and in the new year, in addition to the new atmosphere, the Tang Empire from top to bottom, both the high-level and the common people have a faint new feeling, and this vast empire seems to have new changes since this year. The new Imperial Assembly began to have a new name, and the new Senate became a new term in the mouths of the people of Chang'an during that time, and the inconspicuous new building erected next to the Law Court seemed to have faintly begun to really enter the political life of the Tang Dynasty. Although this year is just the beginning, the Senate has only one name, and in fact, everyone in the Imperial Assembly is still in session, but the new Senate President Yang Qiu officially took office after the meeting, and began to plan for the selection of real Senate personnel. The personnel of the first Senate were basically composed of some personnel drawn from the three major military, political, and legal departments, and a considerable number of them were not able to take up their posts for the time being, but this did not prevent this body from gradually exercising its functions and powers. The budget deliberations of the Cabinet, the legislative work of the Law Court, and part of the overall strategy of the military began to be transferred to this new institution, and the political circle of Datang entered a new era. And all this gradually spread to the people at the bottom in Li Xuanqing's little by little ear life, so that the people can understand how the political circle of Datang is structured, how the functions and powers of various departments are divided and how to divide labor, and use the most primitive means to cultivate the understanding of the people of Datang on the distribution of power.

While the Tang Empire began to gradually decentralize and balance power in politics because of the emergence of the Senate, the cabinet led by Cen Tianshi was also making all-round efforts in the economic field. Among them, there are large-scale industrial projects led by the cabinet and the government office, and there are also private industries and businesses led by the six major families that have been comprehensively developed. Moreover, in order to meet the growing market demand in the West, the industrial commodities in the northern region and all kinds of products in the Central Plains and Jiangnan also began to go south from the sea route to the ports of Guangzhou and other places to transfer to the railway into Xihai County, and then loaded ships and began to be continuously transported to all parts of the West. The heavy industry base, mainly the large steel mills in Lianzhou Port, was soon started with the support of the huge amount of ore brought back by the Nanyang fleet, and this kind of steel mills that relied purely on maritime trade also allowed the southeast coastal areas to see another path of development, and they followed suit. However, the effect of Lianzhou Iron and Steel Plant is not this, the establishment of the only large-scale heavy industry base in the southwest region has made the entire Lingnan region for heavy industry, especially steel and other smelting basic industries, get rid of the situation of relying on northern transportation, greatly reducing the pressure on the steel industry in the northern region, and also providing a source of raw materials for the next step of the empire to lay national roads and other basic building materials on this basis. Since then, the construction of railways in various parts of Lingnan has been supported by almost all the steel from the Lianzhou Iron and Steel Works, especially the road construction in Nanzhao Province and the Yunnan-Tibet line, which has mobilized manpower to start construction, which has also alleviated the huge demand for steel and avoided the additional costs of transportation from the north. However, this incident also made Li Xuanqing find a problem, so he subsequently asked the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to issue a notice on the restrictions on the overseas investment of imperial merchants, including almost all heavy industries, including the steel industry, into the restricted list, so as to protect the empire's century-old basic industrial advantages and scientific and technological advantages.

However, despite the promulgation of a strict list of restrictions, in the face of strong exports, the empire's demand for the southwest railway became more urgent, and the construction of the north and south lines at the same time also made the railway through the mountains and mountains become a veritable economic development artery as soon as it was completed, quickly pulling up the resources and industries of Sichuan and other southwestern provinces, and the economic development of the southwest region began to become the second key construction area of the empire after the northern industrial belt. This vast inland area, driven by railways and access to the sea, began to follow the path of industrialization that later generations followed. And unlike the artificial construction of the third line in the previous life, although there was Li Xuanqing's artificial promotion in this life, after the southwest territory was directly hit to the shore of the Western Ocean, the original inland area had a convenient outlet to the sea, coupled with the railway series, opened up the undulating mountains in the territory, and this land began to develop rapidly in advance of the Central Plains and the southeast coast because of its resources and geographical advantages. Therefore, in the first half of the seventh year of the Apocalypse, the national income and fiscal revenue of the southwestern provinces have already surpassed those of the southeastern region, and with the gradual commissioning of industrial parks in various provinces, this figure is gradually rising. After receiving this good news, Cen Tianshi even directly demanded at a cabinet meeting that the six provinces of Sichuan, Qiqi, Hunan, Nanzhao, Yunnan, Guangzhou, and Fujian in the southwest must allocate all funds and manpower to ensure that the railway will be completed by July. For this reason, he even demanded that the construction of the railway from Phongju to Diju County, which was being planned in the north, be temporarily halted and that preparations be made after the completion of the southwest railway. To this end, the Department of Railways coordinated with the six southwestern provinces to recruit nearly 200,000 migrant workers, plus the 110,000 prisoners of war captured by the army from the south, and in half a year, the trunk line of more than 2,000 miles between the southbound Luzhou to Dali City in Yunnan Province was all opened, and more than 100 bridges along the line were also rapidly formed under the drive of the new bridge construction technology of Changle Bridge Company. In mid-July, the first train from Fengxiang carried more than a dozen wagons of goods south, all the way through the Qinba Mountains in Hanzhong, arrived in Sichuan, when this steel dragon appeared outside Chengdu, countless Chengdu people made earth-shattering cheers, Sichuan in the country of abundance now not only has a big straight road leading to the north and south, but now there is this legendary prehistoric monster, many people even buy tickets from Chengdu to the south in order to experience the feeling of crossing the entire southwest.

After the completion of the Southwest Railway, what remains is the construction of branch lines in the provinces, which can be done by the Railway Department itself and the provincial political envoys. Standing at the height of Li Xuanqing and Cen Tianshi, the Southwest Railway and the Northwest Railway, which are south and north, are equivalent to drawing a huge herringbone on the territory of today's Tang Empire, and these two railways converge near Guanzhong, making the location of Qinchuan in the eight hundred miles where Chang'an is located more significant, Chang'an has truly become the political, cultural and transportation center of the entire empire, and Guanzhong has an influence comparable to the Kaiyuan period in just a few years by relying on this huge flow of people and goods, and as the empire's economic development continues to accelerate, This influence is also rapidly expanding, and the former city of Chang'an is now overcrowded, and some of the population has begun to live outside the city, and thus has begun to develop residential and commercial areas outside the city. Chang'an began to embark on the era of a metropolis with a population of one million.

The rapid development of the Guanzhong region has also made it possible to implement the economic development plan for the northwest of the country. The huge economic development plan is now being implemented little by little, Gao Chongmin led the Gaochang area to focus on the manufacturing industry mainly to undertake the task of moving the pharmaceutical industry westward in Hexi Province and even Guanzhong and Fengzhou, and provide basic power for the economic development of nearly ten provinces in the northwest. However, both Cen Tianshi and Tuoba Siji, who led the economic development plan of the northwest, were aware of a problem, that is, the northwest, especially the provinces near the border that had just been taken and had not yet been completely sinicized, must not be able to deploy industrial industries in the local area until they were fully integrated into the empire. This also explains that when Tuoba Siji and Gao Chongmin developed their industries, they basically placed heavy industry in Gaochang and the areas east of it, and the west side was at most an ordinary processing industry, most of which were basic light industry or simply agriculture and animal husbandry and mining. This industrial layout, hidden under the guise of environmental protection, also echoes the list of industrial investment restrictions promulgated by Li Xuanqing. And it is precisely at this point that Tuoba Siji and Gao Chongmin officially entered the sight of Li Xuanqing and Cen Tianshi.

However, unlike Cen Tianshi's starting point, Li Xuanqing actually had another meaning in letting Gao Chongmin, who had done a good job as the political envoy of Fengzhou, go to Gaochang, that is, to study and explore the next step of the northern industrial belt represented by Fengzhou. Today, the northern industrial belt of the Tang Empire is the most mature area for industrial development, and a complete industrial system has basically been formed, and the upstream and downstream affiliated industries have all been improved, and even the commercial logistics and other industries developed around the industry have also been in place. So when other places begin to catch up, how these old industrial areas in the northern industrial belt continue to maintain their leading edge is not only in the expansion of scale and output, but also in the transfer and upgrading of industries. If relying on the development of another large-scale iron and steel complex in North Korea's Maoshan iron mine is a scale expansion, then the manufacturing industry that Gao Chongmin pulled from Fengzhou after going to Gaochang belongs to industrial transfer, and the construction plan of the Dizhou Railway is also a preparation for the next step of industrial transfer to the grassland. Li Xuanqing determined this point from the time he planned to rely on the Fengzhou Railway to build a railway in the north and south directions, and the construction of the railway to Dizhou in the north would be able to promote the development of natural resources around the grassland, so as to develop basic industries, while the gradual construction of the railway to the Central Plains to the south would mark the extension of large-scale manufacturing industries to the hinterland of the Central Plains, thus gradually filling the problem of the collapse of the industrial layout of the Central Plains and Jiangnan caused by the development of the surrounding areas.

In Li Xuanqing's adjustment, the industry of the Royal Assets and Equipment Department is quietly moving towards high-tech industries, and all the original industrial factories have quietly started the pace of industrial upgrading and technological upgrading when the country is booming, and a large number of technologies that have been verified in the laboratory have begun to be used in batches, and the deeper high-tech industries brought about by this have also been continuously opened up and developed. This change may not be obvious at first, but after these two behemoths completed the upgrading of all the industries under their control, they invisibly drove all the industries in the entire Northern Industrial Belt to embark on the process of upgrading. This transformation has also led to the urgent need for all the technical industries and technical knowledge, and a large amount of funds have begun to be gradually invested in technology development, for which the Ministry of Education began to rearrange in the northern provinces and complete the plan to establish a higher education college in a province, so that the northern industrial belt invisibly firmly grasps the commanding heights of technology, and becomes the vanguard of undertaking the transformation of the Guanzhong scientific research base represented by Chang'an into productivity. In this way, the first place of industry has truly become the birthplace of continuous industrial progress.

It can be said that the entire Tang Empire in the seventh year of the Apocalypse was immersed in a hot tide of construction, and when the major economic centers really played a role in driving regional economic development, the empire's economy was also like a train that could not be stopped, all the way forward, began to flourish. And what made Li Xuanqing very pleased was that under the policy of continuous plunder and encouragement of childbirth, the population of the empire finally exceeded the 80 million mark. Although this is not worth mentioning compared with the heavenly base of later generations, the increase in population not only expands the internal market of the empire, but also gives Li Xuanqing the most basic source of motivation to implement the new plan. When the West was still in the Middle Ages, the Tang Dynasty not only initially completed the industrial revolution, but also reached the conditions for attacking from all sides in terms of population.

"Has Big Brother decided to start leaning in the direction of the ocean?" When it snowed again in Chang'an, Li Xuanqing, who had been busy for a year, took a family down from Lishan Mountain and returned to the palace, Qiaoxi walked to Li Xuanqing's side and smiled slightly, she was almost thirty years old, as if she was the same as the frozen age girl of later generations, without the slightest erosion by the years, still the same as when the two met, the timid appearance made Li Xuanqing quietly hold her in his arms, no one knows her mind better than her, and now it is time for Datang to radiate out after a whole year of development. After the Empire was forced to retreat from the northern steppes to the west to the Eastern European steppes inhabited by the Slavs by his own army of more than 100,000 troops, the empire had no opponents, and even the Indochina Peninsula region on the southern front was gradually regained under continuous erosion, and the pace of the empire had reached the edge of Manraka, the golden waterway of Southeast Asia in the later generations. After all the surrounding traditional lands were incorporated into the territory of the Tang Dynasty, every step of the development of this huge empire needed a larger market and natural resources, and what he had to do was to lead him to continue to the future and move towards a new era.

"Wait for next year, two years at most, and we will be able to build a great empire that only exists and lasts forever, the only empire in the whole world." Li Xuanqing smiled slightly, stretched out his hand and hugged Murong Feixue, who came over quietly, in his arms and said with a smile: "The whole world is not the king's land, and the shore of the land is not the king's minister." ”