Chapter 311: The Emperor's Letter

At the end of November, when Li Bao was busy dealing with various daily chores in Weizhou, he suddenly received a letter from Li Yi, the emperor of the Tang Dynasty who was in exile in Shu.

Rokuro saw the words as well:

I've wanted to write to you for a long time, but I'm free today. You also know that I didn't go to school much since I was a child, so the letters I wrote would not be as paper-filled as those of the scholars. Rokuro forgive me!

Since I left Chang'an, I have known that I am just a mortal, and if it weren't for my father's care, I wouldn't know where I am for a long time. But after arriving in Shuzhong, I still miss the freedom of Chang'an, and it feels good to do what I want.

When I'm bored, I ask people to wrap the objects in the house in gold paper so that they look like they're made of gold.

Li Bao couldn't help laughing when he saw this, Gorou This is the origin of the allusion to "drunk gold fans", but laughing and laughing, he still continued to look down.

It's really boring, I will still summon Chen Jinghuo, and Yang Shili will ask them to accompany me to play polo. Their skills are really good, although they are still not as good as Rokuro's skills.

You know that without you, I've always felt bored. But Liulang, you've been staying in Weizhou, aren't you going to come to accompany me?

Seeing this, Li Bao suddenly felt a little sad, maybe in the heart of this Tang Emperor, he is more important than the thousands of miles of the Tang Dynasty.

Do you know Liulang, Father is getting more and more intensified now, he only knows how to loot money all day long, in order to protect himself, Father recruited a lot of soldiers, but he doesn't know how to pay equal attention to grace and power, only knows that he rewards the soldiers he recruited, so he ignores the local soldiers in Shuzhong, so he provoked a mutiny, which caused me to almost die. Fortunately, I was blessed by Destiny, but this mutiny also caused me to suffer from weakness, and I often had heart palpitations and couldn't sleep.

Seeing this, Li Bao couldn't help muttering, maybe the reason for Emperor Xizong's premature aging originated from this.

I sometimes wonder if I've really deserved to die since I became this emperor. But I don't want to die, I just want to have fun, play as I please. Our father, the first emperor, could do whatever he wanted, so why can't I? Rokuro, you are very talented, and you must be able to understand what I mean.

But I'm just complaining about this, and if you're too busy, don't bother. I know you have great ambitions in your heart. When I left Chang'an first, my father didn't take you with me, and I was very annoyed for a while, but when I learned later that you held on to Chang'an and severely damaged the thief army, I knew that you would not come back.

Leaving you in Chang'an is to give you the opportunity to get out of the cage of Chang'an, a genius like you just lacks the opportunity, and now you have become an eagle, soaring freely in the sky of Datang. I'm happy for you, but I'm touched by the endless loneliness, and I wish you could come back and play with me.

Father will often speak ill of you in front of me, saying that you have self-respect and bad intentions. I didn't care at all when I heard this, this throne was yours, you just let me do it.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if you made this throne? But I just thought about it, after all, there was no chance to do it all over again. To tell you the truth, when I knew that Lieutenant Ximen and Lieutenant Han were going to support me as emperor, I couldn't sleep with excitement, you know that I yearn for freedom and freedom, but I have been emperor for a few years and caused such a big mess. What's going on here?

I think about it now, when I was young, I was deceived by my father and did a lot of wrong things, but now I don't have the opportunity and I don't know how to correct my mistakes. Rokuro, you are the wisest, please tell me. It's just that although I am sober, my father has a large army in his hands, and I can't do anything.

Okay, let's not talk about these annoying things, let's talk about some happy things, because I am no longer in Chang'an, so I have time to be with my concubines, and now two of my concubines are pregnant, and I am about to become a father. I don't know if Rokuro has any heirs, but if there is me, I'll be happy for you, okay, I'll write it here, and I'll write it when I'm free in the future.

At the end of the letter, Emperor Li Yi did not sign it, and Li Bao looked at this letter with mixed feelings, but he knew that no matter how much the emperor woke up at this time, it would be useless.

At the same time, there is also a lot of information in this letter, and the emperor is gradually unable to bear Tian Lingzi's hand covering the sky. Moreover, the emperor's letter was not delivered to him through Jin Luanwei's channel, which is very revealing.

However, the emperor's tricks are not enough to see anywhere in Tian Lingzi. Tian Lingzi's understanding of the emperor is far deeper than the emperor's understanding of Tian Lingzi. However, Li Bao is not worried about the safety of Emperor Li Wulang, after all, the emperor is still Tian Lingzi's talisman and life lock, he will not do anything to the emperor, at most he will just guard him more strictly.

Although all forces in the Shuzhong court are wrestling with each other, the situation of Tian Lingzi's family dominance will not change for the time being, unless Li Bao leads troops into Shuzhong. But today's Shuzhong is not very attractive to anyone. After all, the traffic situation in Shuzhong is very devastating.

The poet immortal Li Bai's sentence "Shu Road is difficult to go to the blue sky" is very figuratively clear about the difficulty of entering Shu, so Li Bao had to put Shu in Shu first, and then try his best to develop the cause of Weizhou.

He also does not hope that the emperor will wake up and change his ways, he still has to go to his work, and now Weizhou is in a rapid development cycle of "big / leap / advance", he must put all his efforts on the development of Weizhou.

The workshop in Weizhou has developed rapidly, and the original Chang'an will be the leader of the gang of people, who have become the backbone of the Weizhou workshop, and they led the apprentices from the first Zhuang School to update the technology of the steel industry very quickly, and the blast furnace that Li Bao instructed them to drum has produced results.

The annual production of steel in Datang is about more than 1,200 tons, and now the Tang Dynasty is in turmoil, and it is on the ground in Weizhou that can be stabilized and developed in various places.

As a traverser, Li Bao knows that the only difference between steel and pig iron is the carbon content, the less carbon content is steel, and the more carbon content is pig iron, and the specific ratio is that the carbon content of pig iron is two to three times that of steel. The output of steel and pig iron is about the same, and the output of pig iron seriously restricts the output of steel, so the smelting of pig iron has become a bottleneck in the development of the iron and steel industry, and a breakthrough must be made.

There are two main types of steelmaking technology in Datang, one is called "frying steel", which began in the late Western Han Dynasty and has become quite popular in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

In this smelting, the bellows are used to blow air to the molten pig iron, and at the same time, the carbon in the pig iron is oxidized by stirring. In this way, pig iron can be made into mature iron, which can then be carburized and forged into steel. It is also possible to control the carbon content of pig iron to the required level, and then forge it into steel products. The iron silicate inclusions contained in this steel are more consistent in composition and in smaller quantities.

The other is called the "steel filling method", the earliest record of this method can be found in the "Northern Qi Shu Qi Mu Huaiwen Biography", called "Su Tie", and later generations called steel filling, also known as Tuangang.

From the early Warring States period to the Han Dynasty, China's pig iron steelmaking technology has developed from block ironmaking and carburizing steelmaking to solid decarburization of pig iron steelmaking, frying steel, smelting wrought iron, and re-carburizing and hardening or quenching hardening. On this basis, craftsmen invented a method of diffusion carburizing wrought iron from liquid pig iron to make steel.

The blast furnace iron-making method proposed by Li Bao is mainly to use the shaft furnace that exists in the iron-making masonry stove today, and use modern experience to improve the iron-making method of Datang.

The main thing in blast furnace ironmaking is to increase the furnace temperature, ancient craftsmen have tried to use carbon to make iron since the Han Dynasty, but it has not been adopted on a large scale, and it was not until the Song Dynasty that large-scale use of coal began to make iron.

Weizhou has long begun to use coal on a large scale due to Li Bao's reasons, and the coal around Bianzhou is very convenient, so Li Bao has contacted merchants in Bianzhou early to stock up.

The blast furnace can be continuously fed and continuously increased due to the help of the blower, and there are also new reducing agents, such as pulverized coal, limestone, coke, etc., which can effectively improve the efficiency of ironmaking.

Of course, the innovation of new technologies has brought about an increase in output, and the output of steel will also increase significantly, and now Weizhou's monthly steel output can reach two or three hundred tons, which is a very remarkable achievement.

In addition, Li Bao took advantage of the abundant water resources of the Weizhou River, he erected a large water conservancy hammer in the workshop, this hammer weighed a thousand catties, and was driven by water power to hammer armor very cool, and the Weizhou workshop was able to mass-produce armor such as Mingguang armor, and this big water hammer was the hero behind the scenes.

Today's Weizhou production efficiency is provided, and raw materials are also abundant, so this is also the reason why Li Bao agreed to sell weapons to the Khan of Lilong in Fuqicheng.

In addition to adopting new technologies and combining them with traditional techniques, Li Bao also mobilized artisans to open their hearts and minds to share their secrets, so that everyone can make progress together. In addition, the patent system advocated by Li Bao also fully protects the interests of patent holders from infringement, and this system promotes the birth and development of many new technologies.

In the past, Weizhou was poor in resources, but now Weizhou, which occupies the land of five towns, has a large economic and resource hinterland, and can transport materials from the south through the advantages of the waterway between the rivers and rivers in Shannan, and the development of various industries in Weizhou is very rapid.

Now that Weizhou has a sufficient population, and the experience and knowledge of the traverser Li Bao, they can rely on their first-mover advantage to crush the warlords on the ground of the Tang Dynasty.

Of course, this is not an overnight thing, according to the existing production efficiency of Weizhou, Li Bao must be patient, waiting for the production capacity of various industries in Weizhou to climb, he must endure some more time to accumulate minions, and for the time being, he can only be a spectator and watch the hard work of the role of the Central Plains.