"Don't!" Liu Cheng turned his head.

"Tell me!" Min Min stretched out his hand and grabbed Liu Cheng's sleeve and begged: "In this way, if you tell me, if I see anything in you in the future, I will never tell a third party to know." ”

Liu Cheng turned his head and looked at the pretty face of the Mongolian girl, his heart couldn't help but soften, and he sighed and said: "Actually, it's nothing, anyway, everyone will know when they return to Chaoyi." He recounted his request for Hong Chengchou's approval to build a pontoon bridge and the formation of a boat division, but he concealed Qu Duan's transfer to the county commander of Chaoyi. After listening to Liu Cheng's narration, Min Min turned around and scolded the slave girl behind him in Mongolian, and after a while, the slave girl brought a deer skin, and Min Min unfolded the deer skin on the table, but it was a densely marked map. Min Min looked down at the map for a while, then gestured on it for a while, and when he looked up, his face was already full of seriousness.

"Do you want to turn this court into Samarkand?"

"What is Samarkand?"

The girl took a deep breath, a beautiful flush appeared on her cheeks, and a pair of eyes like a hind shone with excitement: "Samarkand is the pearl of the Silk Road, where the rivers of gold meet, where the poet praises her name, where the saint is buried, where the wise men open academies to impart sacred knowledge, the most beautiful jewel in Timur's crown, Samarkand is to us Mongolians what you Han Nanjing and Beijing are!" “

"Why do you think that?"

"Isn't that easy?" Min Min Shen pointed his finger on the position of Chaoyi: "If you build a bridge here, then the merchants who travel between Shaanxi and Shanxi will pass by you, and you will be able to collect taxes from them; If you build so many beacons along the Yellow River, you can use them as a post station as a trade route, you can collect taxes from the fleets that sail on the Yellow River, and the leather, precious stones, and wool from the grasslands can be transported along the Yellow River to you, and then distributed downstream along the Yellow River. You can produce so many good things in your factory, and you have such convenient transportation. Soon your treasury will be filled with gold and silver, and you will become richer and more powerful than the Ming Emperor! ”

If Min Min has surprised Liu Cheng many times, then all the previous ones don't add up to this one. The girl easily revealed the deepest secret in Liu Cheng's heart. Whether it is Hong Chengchou, Zhao Wende, or even Xu Hecheng and Yu He, who are the closest to him, they don't know what he thinks in his heart. The most daring speculation about Liu Cheng among these people is nothing more than rebellion and becoming emperor, but Liu Cheng's idea is much bolder than this, that is, to control the whole world in his own hands.

On the horizon of the seventeenth century, a wave of "globalization" was slowly rising, and a small group of pirates, merchants, and adventurers from Western Europe, a small peninsula in the northwest corner of the island of the world, trampled the whole world under their feet in the next two hundred years, and the great empires with their glorious histories and huge territories were either torn apart. reduced to their colony; Or linger and beg them to raise their noble hands. As an English gentleman of the middle of the nineteenth century put it: "Oceania has our pastures, Argentina and the western steppes of North America have our herds, Peru sends its silver, and gold from South Africa and Australia goes to London; Indians and Chinese grow tea for us, and our coffee, sugar and spice plantations are located throughout the East Indies. Suffice it to say, for about 100 years after Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1814 and before World War I, the world was ruled by the British Empire, the handful of big-bellied "purseers" who controlled the Bank of England and the London Stock Exchange, to be precise.

Undoubtedly. Advanced military technology and organization were an important guarantee that the British would win all this, and there would have been no British Empire without the Royal Navy and the Red Shirts. But the human ability to imitate and learn military technology was astonishing, and even the Indians, who had just escaped their barbarian status, learned to defend themselves with a smoothbore gun by the end of the seventeenth century. Not to mention the fact that the population and civilization were far superior to those of the other ancient peoples of the Indians. If it is said that many peoples in Asia and Africa are for some reason unable to build up a force to rival Western Europe. So why did the British, and not other Western European peoples, end up on top of the world? Almost all of these nations had armies that were at least as powerful as the British, and some even produced the greatest military and political genius of modern times, Napoleon. So why was the final victor still the British and not someone else, like the French?

The person who is most qualified to answer this question is probably Napoleon. The diminutive Corsican was the most formidable enemy of the British Empire, and he used all his political and military genius for one purpose - to establish a grand alliance with the French nation at its core, encompassing all of Europe. Well, it is an enlarged version of the European Union that appeared more than 200 years earlier, which is tantamount to digging the roots of the British Empire. Because the masters of the British Empire, the bankers' most stable source of profit was the various bonds issued by the European kingdoms in the London financial market, where the kings used future taxes as collateral to raise funds for war and maintain their rule, and the British bankers and speculators used this to suck the blood of the people of all Europe. If Napoleon's plan succeeds, the capital in the pockets of the bankers will stagnate and profits will cease to exist, and the public debt, the speculative schemes, the stocks, the coupons, the factories, the imperial government, and everything else will crumble like churches whose foundation stones have been dug up.

Seeing this, it is not difficult to understand why the British organized anti-French alliances again and again, threw large sums of gold at the rulers of Vienna, Berlin and St. Petersburg, equipped the Prussians, Austrians and Russians with "Indian" brown bes, and finally overwhelmed the Corsican in Leipzig. Napoleon was always well aware of who his real enemies were, and in his memoirs he repeatedly referred to the English as "despicable islanders", arguing that it was these bankers who traded gold for the blood of the Germans, Austrians, and Russians and who fought for themselves to blame for the millions of young people who died. He compared the small shopkeepers to the merchants of ancient Carthage and France to the Roman Republic, believing that just as the Romans defeated Carthage in history, the French could defeat the British. But what Napoleon didn't know was that times had changed, and in this era gold was the most powerful thing, and it could buy everything.

But Liu Cheng understands this truth, and he knows the power of capital too well after nearly 400 years. As long as the four elements of money, factories, trade, and the army are combined, he can defeat the strong with the weak. Knock seemingly powerful enemies to the ground. Many later history buffs hated the Jin merchants in the late Ming Dynasty, believing that it was these merchants who sold strategic materials such as grain, salt, and iron to the Later Jin regime, which led to the tragedy of the later Shenzhou Lu Shen. However, it was also the logistical support of these Jin merchants that the Manchu Qing Dynasty was able to complete the conquest of Outer Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet in the next two hundred years, completing the largest part of the modern Chinese map. If the Ming government could give the Jin merchants a suitable profit on their capital, they would be used by the Han nation. In Liu Cheng's view, there is no good or evil in capital, it is just an instinctive pursuit of profits, just like a fierce horse, which can satisfy its ** in this era. And the nation that controls it correctly will be able to climb its back and climb to the top of the world; If you don't know how to ride, you will be thrown to the ground and left behind. The merchants of Jiangnan, Fujian, and Guangdong did not collaborate with the enemy and betray the country, and they earned huge amounts of silver through the trade in silk tea and porcelain, but they hid millions of silver in cellars, that is, they did not pay taxes or hire workers to expand production, but only used it to annex land and live a life of poverty and luxury. In the end, it was ransacked by the Qing army going south, isn't that a kind of banal "evil"?

"What are you thinking? The eyes are stunned, and they look strangely scary! Min Min reached out and patted Liu Cheng's cheek, with a worried look in her beautiful eyes. Liu Cheng, who woke up, reached out and grabbed the girl's hand. He said sharply: "Don't tell anyone what you just said, do you know?" ”

"Oops, you're hurting me!"

Liu Cheng hurriedly let go of his hand, only to see that the girl's white jade-like wrist had an extra dark green circle. His eyes were already full of tears, Liu Cheng hurriedly apologized, and Min Minjiao was angry for a while. Fang Cai was relieved and said with a smile: "I really can't see that you are a man who is sven on the surface, but the strength in your hands is not small, so let's do it, if you promise me one thing, I will forgive you." “

"What's the matter? If you don't say yes, how can I say yes? At this time, Liu Chengke didn't dare to underestimate the Mongolian girl in front of him, the two had only known each other for more than ten days, but he didn't suffer less from each other.

"How did you get the running water to help you make iron, weave, and spin! You've made me hurt so much, you can't hide it and not tell me! The girl's eyes widened, and she looked very concerned, obviously she was afraid that Liu Cheng would categorically reject her. But to her surprise, Liu Cheng still looked like he didn't care at all, and said with a smile: "What's so difficult about this, if you want to learn, I will teach, but if you can't learn, then you can't blame me." ”

"Are you really willing to teach?" The girl was stunned when she heard this, she just wanted to test Liu Cheng's tone, after all, in her opinion, such a technique that seemed to be witchcraft, Liu Cheng would definitely keep it a secret, but she didn't expect the other party to agree easily, but she couldn't believe it.

"Why not?" Liu Cheng smiled and wrote ten Arabic numerals such as "0, 1, 2, 3, 4........." on the paper: "Do you recognize these?" ”

Min Min looked at the symbols on the paper, and replied with some uncertainty: "It's very familiar, I seem to have seen it from Russian businessmen, it looks like some numbers." ”

"Not bad!" Liu Cheng laughed: "These numbers were invented by the poisoners, and later introduced to other places by the Arabs, so they are called Arabic numerals, which are equal to the "one, two, and three......... of our Han people"

"I see!" Min Min nodded, and suddenly asked, "What does this have to do with those machines, don't you want to teach me and use these things to prevaricate me?" “

"How so?" Liu Cheng showed a mysterious smile on his face: "You see that the newborn baby learns to crawl first, and then learns to walk." Everything in the world is from simple to difficult, and if you don't learn this, I will tell you how the flowing water pushes the machine, and you will not understand. ”

Min Min glanced at Liu Cheng suspiciously, carefully looked at the Arabic numerals on the paper for a while, and replied, "I wrote it down, what are you going to learn next?" ”

"So fast?" Liu Cheng asked with some disbelief: "Did you really write it down?" ”

"Naturally it's true, I don't believe you can test a few of me!" Min Min raised his head arrogantly. Liu Cheng picked a few questions, and sure enough, the girl answered fluently, and asked with a smile: "How, can you teach me how to push the machine?" “

"No rush, no hurry, take your time!" Liu Cheng showed an unfathomable smile on his face: "Since you have learned Arabic numerals, then we can learn four operations next!" “

About an hour later, Hao Shaoqi walked in from outside, and just saw Min Min rushing out of Liu Cheng's house, his face was pale, his head was full of cold sweat, and he looked like he had just had a serious illness. Hao Shaoqi hurriedly got out of the way, and saw Min Min rushing under the locust tree in the yard and vomiting heavily. Hao Shaoqi hurriedly ran over and asked, "Girl, have you eaten something bad?" “

Min Min shook her head.

"Is that just getting cold?"

Min Min shook her head again.

"What's going on here? Can I ask a doctor to take a look at you? Hao Shaoqi asked kindly.

Min Min had almost vomited her lunch at this time, leaving only Qing Shui, she held the locust tree and said hatefully, "Shut up, stay away from me!" “

"Away from you? Farther away, farther away! Hao Shaoqi was bored with himself, so he walked away in a daze, muttering: "This woman is really difficult, and her kindness is not worth repaying!" He walked to the door, and vaguely heard Min Min gritting his teeth and scolding behind him: "Liu Cheng, you damn bastard, girl, I blame you for making this appearance!" ”

Hao Shaoqi couldn't help but be taken aback when he heard this, he didn't dare to say more, he hurriedly entered the house, and saw Liu Cheng sitting lazily at the table, crossing Erlang's legs, humming a little song, looking triumphant. Hurriedly approached Liu Cheng's side, and said in a low voice: "My lord, I just saw that Mongolian princess in the courtyard with an ugly face, looking like she was seriously ill. (To be continued.) )

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