Unconsciously, almost a month has passed since the day of the crossing, compared with the initial embarrassment, the current Li Hui has at least no worries about food and clothing, and his safety is also guaranteed. Well, now Li Hui himself is already an official, although he is only a nine-rank official who does not enter the stream

The reason why he was able to get an official position in less than a month after coming to Tianjin Machinery Bureau is mainly because Li Hui successfully trial-produced the smokeless gunpowder that Tianjin Machinery Bureau originally planned to start developing in two years.

Because Li Hui has no fame and his origin is unknown (Li Hui claims to be a returnee from overseas, but he only speaks a little English that is not fluent, and he does not know the more popular overseas Hokkien and Cantonese), so even such a pioneering contribution has only earned a non-mainstream nine-rank official title, but at the same time, the thousand taels of silver he received made his face difficult to hide his joy, because now what he needs most urgently is real money!

Long before he realized that he had crossed over, Li Hui found that a strange interface suddenly appeared in his mind, and he suddenly thought of the so-called "system" that had been written about in many online articles. But before he had time to rejoice, Li Hui regretted to find that the system still needed to charge 1 kilogram of gold or other precious metals of "equal value" before it could be activated, which Li Hui, who had nothing to do when he first crossed, could not afford to pay, and it was not until now that he got this bounty that the system was finally activated

If the current ratio of gold and silver in the world is close to 1:30, there is actually only about 36 kilograms of silver after removing impurities, but it is just enough to activate the system, fortunately, the value ratio of the three types of precious metals built into the system is 1 gram of platinum group metals = 2 grams of gold = 20 grams of silver, so Li Hui still has enough money to use some functions of the system after activating the system. Moreover, since it was still the end of the Qing Dynasty, where silver taels were still the main currency in circulation, such a bargain would exist for a long time, unless Li Hui took too much silver from the present world

Since no one else could be present when the system collected precious metals, and it was difficult to explain that so much silver was suddenly gone, Li Hui did not put the box of silver into the system until he went to bed that night, and the next day he happened to pretend to be a thief, and by the way, he could avoid the cost of entertaining guests. Speaking of which, Li Hui was not stingy, but the pain of having a system but not being able to use it during this period of time made him have a thirst for precious metals far beyond the past, and this is probably the first major impact of the system on him

Although he couldn't use it before, after so many days of research, Li Hui already had a preliminary understanding of this nameless system, so after he had money, he first clicked on the "technology tree" interface, because this should be the core of all functions of the system. After opening this sub-interface, Li Hui found that the system technology tree includes three branches, namely "Army", "Navy" and "Industry".

After some understanding, Li Hui found that the technology on the science and technology tree is actually not comprehensive, even the technology on the "industrial" branch is more or less related to the military, not to mention the other two branches, but this is convenient for Li Hui to name the system, "Since it is all related to the military, there are so many technologies directly related to weapons, so simply call it 'military industrial system'"

Under the three branches, the tech tree is subdivided into five sub-branches, each of which has 5 levels of major technologies in chronological order, and must be completed one by one from top to bottom when researching, and cannot be skipped halfway. The so-called "sub-technologies" under the names of these main technologies do not have this restriction, but most of the sub-technologies have so-called "premise technologies", and if the "premise technologies" are not researched first, even if Li Hui wants to study this sub-technology, there is no way.

The lower the main technology ranks, the more difficult it is to research, the more R&D costs and research time it takes, and vice versa, while the sub-technology is consistent with the main technology to which it belongs. In addition, if you research technology ahead of time, you will be punished very severely.

However, Li Hui has only just started research, and he does not need to face this difficulty, but because of this mechanism, he has taken a big advantage, because for outdated technology, the cost and time required for research will be reduced by 10% for every year of lag, and the corresponding age of the 15 main technologies of the level 1 system is 1836, which is a full 57 years away from the present (1893).

Because of this, researching a Tier 1 main technology requires only 24.65 grams of silver, which can be completed in a day, and if it is a sub-technology, the amount of silver required is halved. It is precisely because of this that the research of system technology, which is not cheap, has become Li Hui's first choice, and the attraction of the technology tree is overwhelming compared to other functions that can be discounted

It must be noted that the scientific and technological age set by the system does not refer to the era when the technology was born in history, but more like the earliest era in history when the technology may be studied, and it also takes into account the mutual influence between various technologies, so it is generally more advanced, and the further back it is, the more obvious it is, for example, the scientific and technological age of the main technology of "World War I" is only 1900

Having said that, for today's extremely backward technology, even the first-level main technology marked as 1836 is almost still of great value.

Take the science and technology that Li Hui first studied, the first-level main technology "mechanized mining" of the sub-branch of the industrial branch "mining and metallurgy", for example, there are still only a handful of modern mines in China that have reached this level!

In addition, the cost of Level 1 science and technology research is so small, and each item only takes one day, so Li Hui is not in a hurry to study advanced technology, but first completes all 15 level 1 main technologies and 16 level 1 sub-technologies that can start research, and only costs 567 grams of silver, which is actually not a lot of silver reward of a thousand taels, but it is just a drop in the bucket

However, the level 2 technology in the second row of the system technology tree is not quite the same, since the earliest date is also 1845 (starting with level 2 technology, the age of the same level of technology is no longer exactly the same.) ), as late as 1860, the discount rate was greatly reduced, and the increased difficulty of research meant that it would take four times as much money and twice as long. Although the silver was barely enough, Li Hui, who had experienced the poverty and embarrassment at the beginning, still started to take precautions early. As a traverser, Li Hui has countless ideas in his mind that can make a lot of money, but they all take time, and if he wants to get rich quickly, he can only rely on the system