It is said that the credit for repairing and expanding the official road from Huangzhou to Gwangju has long been hung on the heads of Cao Zhizhou and Chen Tongju, even if there is some residual shade, it should fall on the uncle Yao Zheng, the genuine transfer envoy, why did he give Huang Jie an errand of "imperial official envoy", not to mention Huang Jie himself, even Cao and Chen are puzzled.

It's a pity that Huang Jie only knows how to dream, and he really can't calculate the heavens, in the absence of sources, why bother thinking about such problems if he can't understand them, after discussing with his uncle and Cao and Chen, after determining that this will cannot be sealed, he can only pinch his nose and take on the mission of surveying the road.

My own children have not yet entered the house to study, and they already have a formal official position, and the old man and the second mother are overjoyed, but this pair of transfer envoys and imperial envoys, one has no formal grade, two has no official rank, and three has no formal official uniform to wear, which is a bit of a fly in the ointment

However, Zhao Guanjia is still kind, and gave a brass job card, the front is "Imperial Emperor Dao Envoy" five big characters and Huang Jie two small characters, and the back is "Imperial Edict 15 Road cheap act" small characters, but unfortunately the fly in the ointment is that there is no bag for this job card, because according to the Song system, the official position of more than five grades should be equipped with gold and silver fish bags to pack, and the five grades are not given fish bags.

And Cao Zhizhou is also kind, taking advantage of the new Zhizhou that succeeded him has not yet arrived, he directly allocated a thousand paper money and five hundred copper coins from the public funds of Huangzhou Mansion as the road expenses he was ordered to explore, and his family's more than a dozen fields, houses, workshops and several shareholding industries in the city also allowed Cao Bao to buy them all at a high price of 8,000 yuan.

Although the edict does not say the beginning and end of this half-year period. But since it cannot be sealed, the day of receiving the edict will be counted as the starting day. Counting the journey from Huangzhou to Chengdu and then to Bianliang, Tokyo, even if it is not 5,000 miles. There are also more than 4,000 miles, and I don't know if I can complete a circle after riding a horse and driving for half a year, let alone surveying along the way and coming up with a plan to repair and widen the road.

Huang Jie Yao Zheng took the map in the yamen and counted it one stop at a time, from Huangzhou to the west through Jiangling Mansion, Xiazhou, Guizhou, Dazhou, Bazhou, Zizhou and finally arrived at Chengdu Prefecture, the road along the way is more than 2,400 miles, even if you travel 60 miles a day in a carriage, there is no wind and no rain all the way safe, you have to walk a full 40 days to arrive.

In case there is a headache and brain fever on the road, water and soil adaptation, diarrhea and diarrhea, horse disease, car damage, bandits robbing the road and so on. The schedule may be delayed by a certain amount, so it makes sense to start as soon as possible.

It's just that the old man, Erniang and his uncle argued about whether to let Huang Jie go on a horse or in a carriage, and his uncle meant that the decree was like a mountain, and now the official family wants Huang Jie to survey the route and come up with a plan within six months, so he can't delay it for a day, so naturally he will ride a horse to go the fastest.

But Lao Qi and Erniang thought that Huang Jie couldn't go alone first, at least he had to bring a few entourage. and the concubines and girls who serve their daily lives, after all, Huang Jie is the only seedling in the family, and the fourth daughter is left behind heirs, so Wan Chunnu and Yao Yu, who is about to get married, must follow them on the road. If you stay on the way, it's best to plant it.

Then Huang Jie has to survey the road along the way, naturally he has to look at pictures and paint, and he also has to take into account the study and study along the way. Therefore, the four treasures of the study, pen, ink, paper, inkstone, and the collection of the history of the Kezi Sutra should also be brought. The third is that he is a dignified imperial official and Taoist envoy, but he doesn't even have an official robe. If you don't take a car when you go out for office surveys, your face will be lost.

Arguments and arguments. In the end, the uncle compromised, after all, the heir is the eldest child, and the old couple asked Huang Jie to bring Yao Yu and Wan Chunnu to him, and he really couldn't refuse.

After finalizing this matter, Huang Jie went directly to the Sun family's blacksmith workshop and put forward a request that made the Sun family's blacksmiths all dumbfounded, and the steward of the workshop was also surnamed Sun, but he was a relative of the Sun family, so he also asked: "Xiucai just said that we want to use good steel to make the axle and frame?" Since ancient times, the axle has only been made of thorn wood and elm, and I have not heard of it being made of iron. ”

Huang Jie was impatient, and asked rhetorically: "I heard that since ancient times, bows have been made mostly with wood, tendons, horns, and silk, and at most they have used an iron tire as a mold...... But now this strong bow made entirely of steel, aren't you also making it? ”

Huang Jie's sentence made the Sun steward blush, and even the craftsmen in the workshop who were making soft steel bows and trimming cast iron handles were stunned and then laughed, and they didn't dare to say more.

As soon as Steward Sun thought that the idea of this steel combination bow was also proposed by Huang Jie, he didn't dare to question that he might be wrong, so he also humbly asked for advice, not knowing how to make this all-steel axle and frame.

Huang Jie didn't talk nonsense, so he asked people to drive a carriage first, and directly unloaded the yoke, balance, yuan, shi, web, wheel, hub, jurisdiction, spoke, shaft and other components, just like the steps in the previous trial production of the combined bow, first use the cement to make the clay fan, then use the pig iron juice to turn out the iron fan, and finally use the iron fan to hold the molten steel steel components.

Because now the process of manufacturing the combined bow has a large standard, it only took three days to make a set of parts, and it took two days to polish and combine, but it was really pretended to be a car, but the weight of the car is too large, enough to have more than a thousand catties, the empty car is equivalent to the weight of ten stone rice grain, and it is very laborious for a healthy horse to empty the frame.

As a last resort, Huang Jie simply only took the axle and the two parts of the horse, and the rest also used wooden parts, and the weight was about fifty pounds heavier than the all-wooden carriage after being installed.

Of course, Huang Jie did not forget to leave a technical problem for the craftsmen of the Sun family for them to tackle, which is the lightweight of all-steel vehicles, as well as the exploration of manufacturing technology for three-wheeled vehicles and four-wheeled vehicles with steel frame structures.

In a blink of an eye, it is the first day of June in the fourth year of Zhenghe, which happens to be an auspicious day for travel.

The Huang family went out early in the morning to the west gate of Huangzhou, all of which were pulled by six mules and replaced with modified oil-walled vehicles with steel axles and moulders, and then sent out 30 horsemen and horses from the camp of the transfer yamen and the Sun family respectively, forming the escort of Huang Jie's expedition to Chengdu Prefecture. (To be continued.) )