Cheng Qi, Huang Yang, and a classmate named Guo Shan met together to take advantage of the fragrance of osmanthus in the golden autumn season to visit the most prosperous metropolis of this era.

Essentially, the megacity of Bianliang in Tokyo is a city of consumption rather than production. Although there are also large chimneys in the direction of Zhengzhou, millions of citizens depend more on the daily flow of hundreds of steamships and three railway stations from the Grand Canal opened by the Sui Dynasty.

It is also a kind of cycle, the destiny of history. Three thousand years ago, Dayu, the founder of the first dynasty on the land of China, won the support of the people because of water control. According to the summary of Chinese and foreign documents by the scholars of Pu Xue, it is pointed out that at the beginning of mankind's transition from ignorance to civilization, mankind may indeed have encountered a global flood, but the difference is that the human ancestors in the land of Taixi prostrate themselves under the boundless power of nature and pinned their hopes on a creator named "God" or "Jehovah". And the ancient ancestors of China, when the sky is broken, they will make up for it, the rivers will overflow and they will be combed from generation to generation, the sun will dare to shoot it with bows and arrows, and the sea will use stones to balance him. "There is no Jade Emperor in the sky, there is no Dragon King on the earth, I am the Jade Emperor! I'm the Dragon King! Drink to order the three mountains and five mountains to open the way, I'm here! This limerick poem circulated among the people fully reflects the courage of the Chinese ancestors, which is also the root of why after 3,000 years, Westerners are prostrate in the Chinese people and cannot raise their heads forever.

The mighty Yellow River, the majestic Taihang, this is the great bank of nature, and the hanging river flowing above the heads of the citizens of Bianjing is the magnificence of manpower!

As early as the turn of the First Empire and the Republican Empire, the Yellow River has become a hanging river, it is precisely under the stimulation of the catastrophe at any time, the Song people's long-dormant engineering talent was quickly activated, the invention of cement and concrete, the discovery of the gravity equation, the use of the steam engine, so that the Song people built the first majestic wonder leading to modern society in the Middle Ages: the Bianhe embankment.

This long causeway, which stretches for more than 20 miles, is the first miracle of the industrial age completed by Lord Liu Dun, an academician of the Imperial Academy of Gewu of the Great Liao, and Guo Shoujing, the secretary of the Ministry of Water of the Great Song Dynasty. Cheng Qi and others also went to pay tribute to the four big characters of "great deeds in the world" written by Wen Tianxianggong more than 300 years ago.

In his previous life, Cheng Qi had studied Wen Tianxiang's "Crossing the Zero Ding Yang" since he was a child, in which "the panic beachhead said panic, and the zero Ding Yang sighed in the zero Ding Yang." Since ancient times, no one has died, leaving Dan to take care of his sweat. It is a swan song that has been passed down through the ages. Unexpectedly, Wen Tianxiang is still the champion in this world, and he is a high-ranking official such as the privy envoy and Shang Shuling, but he has not been displaced again, and the human tragedy of his wife and daughter being forced into slavery has happened. This made Cheng Qi, who had suffered from a discordant education of the nation since he was a child, feel very gratified.

After the completion of the Bianjing embankment, successive governments repeatedly repaired it, and in order to solve the problem from the root, they successively built the Xiaolangdi and Sanmenxia projects in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, and built the comprehensive treatment project of the Huaihe River basin in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, which took more than 100 years. However, it solved the flood and sand plague in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River for thousands of years, and trained a large number of mature industrial workers, stimulated the development of dozens of industrial sectors such as iron and steel, machinery manufacturing, metallurgy, chemistry, and engineering construction.

Now in front of Cheng Qi and them, there is not only the stone tablet left by Wen Tianxianggong, but also the huge steam pump in the distance - this monster of the industrial age, even if you stand on this end of the causeway and look at it, you feel that it is as huge as a hill, not to mention how magnificent it should be if you go to that end!

Cheng Qi's biggest feeling about the industry in this era is: big! Two words: big!; Three words: very big!

The mechanical designers of the steam age seem to have an aesthetic taste for the beauty of the big. Every kind of machine they designed seemed to have to be installed in a huge workshop.

There is a mechanical computer called the "Difference Machine" in the graduate school, which has more than 5,000 parts and weighs 10,000 catties. But the functionality is simply unbelievable: it can only convert complex calculations from tables of functions into differential operations, replacing squares with simple additions. It can handle three different 5-digit numbers with a calculation accuracy of 6 decimal places – but such an accuracy is now enough to be called a national weapon and is very tightly protected. Its inventor is said to be trying to work on a more advanced and improved version that could be calculated to twenty decimal places! So how big should this supercomputer be? The most optimistic estimate is that it will take about 20 acres of land.

After visiting the wonder, a few friends bought some souvenirs and drove down the wide carriageway at the top of the causeway to a building.

This is no ordinary building, although it is submerged among the countless buildings of Caoyun Wharf, with gray cement plastered walls, flat roofs and unadorned appearances, a cold air blowing over the face. The four gun-wielding guards in black uniforms at the door stared intently ahead, as if all the prosperity behind them had nothing to do with them.

This inconspicuous building is the City Department of the Great Song Empire, or in more popular terms, the General Administration of Customs.

Bianjing is a commercial city, and the attributes of commerce have been extremely strong since the Warring States period, which can be said to have been brought by the mother's womb.

And as in "history", the Song people themselves are a maritime people, but the Song people in this time and space have more energy and resources to discover the wealth of the sea after solving the land crises in the northwest and northeast successively.

As early as the beginning of the Song Dynasty, because of the heavy financial burden, the imperial court was very enthusiastic about overseas merchants to trade in China, and the tax source brought by the city shipping department to the Song Dynasty accounted for a very important part. More than 30 feudal princes of the South China Sea made the Great Song Dynasty completely control the key nodes of the Southern Song Sea, and the various resources from the South China Sea further stimulated the upsurge of folk exploration of the ocean, the discovery of the New World America, especially the lost empire of Central America, and the mysterious Yindian tribe set off a wave of "America has been an inseparable sacred territory of China since ancient times".

Now, there are merchant fleets flying the banner of the Xuanyao of the Great Song Empire running on every ocean at all times, whether it is Tianzhu or Tianfang, whether it is a mining town along the coast of America or a traditional trade market in western Europe, there are footprints of the Song people. With their activities, the Chinese language and the Analects gradually spread all over the world, and the statues of Confucius and the academies teaching the Four Books and the Five Classics were opened in every uncivilized barbarian land. And there are exchanges, and many things that are far away in the world have also been introduced to Middle-earth in the increasingly close economic, trade and cultural exchanges.

But how confident the people of the Great Song Dynasty are! Whether it was the Greek-speaking Byzantines or the Latin-speaking Genoese, the robed caravans or the Dongying people who floated on the sea, the inhabitants of the Great Song Dynasty welcomed them warmly, did business with them, absorbed their lovely folklore, and then made them our own.

At the gate of the city's ship, Cheng Qi saw Tianzhu people with their heads tied to file taxes, and black people juggling on the streets (they were really talented in music and dance, regardless of the era). There are also old ladies who sell spices from the South Seas, and shamans who sell mysterious voodoo masks to tourists......

Guo Shan saw that Cheng Qi and Huang Yang were attracted by these foreign customs, as an eight-lifetime old Tokyo, he already knew where to take the two classmates to open his eyes next.