In Jiangbei, the Chu army has captured Liyang County.

The Chu army still has to be stationed in Jiangbei for a period of time, and it is obviously not a matter to be stationed in the field for a long time.

Li Zuoche's army, which was originally entrenched in Liyang County, did not entangle too much with the Chu army in Liyang, but decisively shrank all his forces to Dongcheng, Yīn Mausoleum, and Quyang counties.

Today's Jiujiang County has a population of about 300,000 at most, and Xiang Zhuang categorically looks down on it.

Jiangdong's Zhangjun and Huiji counties combined, the population is more than two million, and basically not damaged by the war, that is the foundation that Xiangzhuang really wants, Xiangzhuang only completely occupies the entire Jiangdong, it is possible to occupy the Central Plains of the Liang King, occupy the Qi King and occupy the Guanzhong Bashu Han King for a long time.

As for why the Chu army wanted to stay in Jiangbei, Li Zuoche didn't know.

However, it was precisely because of this consideration that Li Zuoche gave up Liyang.

If Li Zuoche really made up his mind to defend Liyang, he would definitely be able to defend it, but with the strong city wall of Liyang, it was still not a problem to hit the Chu army hard, and Li Zuoche still had this confidence.

………………

Xiang Zhuang really didn't have the intention of capturing the entire Jiujiang.

In terms of population alone, only Qidi, Guanzhong, Zhaodi, and Jiangdong can be the foundation of the king's hegemony, and the Central Plains can barely do it, and the rest of Jingchu, Huaisi, Yandi, and Bashu have too few populations to achieve great things.

Qi Di and Guanzhong don't need to think about it, the current Liu Bang and Han Xin are by no means something that Xiang Zhuang can provoke.

Although the population of Zhao Di is sufficient, it is sandwiched between Liu Bang, Han Xin, and Mao Dun, and it is by no means a good land.

Although the Central Plains can barely dominate, it is also sandwiched between Liu Bang and Han Xin, and it also has to face Peng Yue's army of 100,000 tigers and wolves, with the current strength of the Chu army, it is definitely not the opponent of the Liang army.

Then, only Jiangdong remains, which is also a major reason why the Chu army returned to Jiangdong thousands of miles away.

As for the other reason, it is naturally because Jiangdong is the birthplace of the Xiang clan, although the current Jiangdong factions are numerous and the dark tide is surging, but once Xiang Zhuang can control the overall situation and get the full support of the Xiang clan, the major Chu clans and the local clans in Jiangdong, then he will immediately be able to coerce the people and material resources of Jiangdong and go north to the Central Plains to compete for power!

Of course, it is not easy for Xiang Zhuang to control the overall situation of Jiangdong and get the support of the clans, scholars and clans.

But no matter how difficult the process is, Xiang Zhuang must try, in any case, it is better to receive a relatively intact Jiangdong than to receive a dilapidated Jiangdong, the destruction of the people's livelihood in a place is beyond imagination, once there is a large loss of population, don't think about recovering in a short time.

Moreover, the current complex situation in Jiangdong is not an opportunity for Xiang Zhuang?

This is indeed an opportunity, an opportunity to make Xiang Zhuang's political skills old and mature!

The reason why Wei Yi asked Xiang Zhuang not to do anything, say less, and watch more after crossing the river, and also told Xiang Zhuang that when he was not sure about a matter, he would rather wait and see than make a rash decision, that is, he hoped that Xiang Zhuang could also become mature when dealing with political struggles, and that military struggles and political and metallurgical struggles were like left and right fists, and neither was indispensable!

In the final analysis, the power struggle in Jiangdong is only a dispute within the Chu State, if Xiang Zhuang wants to ascend to the throne, he must learn to deal with internal disputes through political means, a king who only knows how to solve internal disputes through military means is unqualified and doomed to defeat, for example, Xiang Yu is a good example.

Therefore, Xiang Zhuang strictly implemented Wei Yu's plan and postponed the crossing of the river.

………………

However, during this time, Xiang Zhuang was not idle, using more than 2,000 years of knowledge, guiding the bus to improve and even invent some equipment, the most important of which are two, one is the stone mill, the other is the bellows! Don't underestimate these two inconspicuous pieces of equipment1, gadgets can come in handy when you have time!

For example, the improvement of the stone mill greatly improved the food of the Chu army.

Speaking of stone mills, the earliest was invented by the ancestor of the bus bus, but the stone mill invented by the bus bus is not mature, and its fan surface is composed of pits of different sizes, circles or squares, so the grains and wheat millet that are ground are very rough, and the cake baked or cooked rice has a very poor taste and is difficult to digest. ..., when the Chu army was in Dabie Mountain, the reason why they could only fry the grain was because the stone mill was not good.

If the Chu army had the stone mill of later generations, the Chu army could have ground wheat into flour, rice into rice flour, and then bean into tofu, and then branded, steamed, fried, and baked into buns.

Cooked foods such as cakes, cakes, and dried tofu not only taste better, but also easier to digest, and can better protect the physical fitness of the soldiers of the Chu army.

Therefore, don't underestimate this small stone mill!

According to the memory of the previous life, Xiang Zhuang improved the fan surface of the stone mill, and the stonemason chiseled out eight sectors on the upper and lower fan surfaces, and each sector chiseled out uniform stripes, so that the flour and rice flour that were ground out were very fine, and the baked cake or cooked rice tasted very good, and it was easy to digest, and the improved stone mill even ground out the beans.

In the Chinese food culture, the emergence of tofu is a milestone!

Before the appearance of tofu, people just cooked the tofu, and then put it together with other grains to stir it up and eat, not to mention the taste, the nutritional value is also very low, but once ground into tofu, not only the taste is good, the nutritional value is also improved, more importantly, there are a variety of ways to eat boiled tofu, fried tofu, dried tofu, tofu rǔ and so on.

It is foreseeable that in the near future, the dry food bags of the officers and soldiers of the Chu army will become more popular.

As for the bellows, the role is not to mention, it is a national weapon that can make a leap in iron-smelting technology!

Before the bellows appeared, the smelting furnace could only smelt white iron, that is, pig iron called in the later world, pig iron could not be directly processed, only repeated annealing, repeated charcoal penetration, in order to make white iron into fine iron, into fine iron in order to carry out the next step of forging.

However, after the appearance of the bellows, due to the increase in furnace temperature, the smelting furnace will be able to directly smelt refined iron (gray cast iron)!

Moreover, the quality of refined iron directly smelted by the smelting furnace is higher than that of refined iron obtained by repeated refurnace annealing and repeated charcoal penetration of white iron! This greatly improves the smelting efficiency and makes the mass production of ring head knives possible!

Of course, Xiang Zhuang didn't know that the bellows would have such a big effect, he just remembered that when he was a child, the blacksmith in the village did not seem to use a bellow, but a square wooden box, Xiang Zhuang also studied this box, knew its structure, I have to say that the principle of the bellows is really simple, children can understand.

According to the ideas provided by Xiang Zhuang, the first bellows built by the bus car quickly took shape.

The whole bellows is rectangular in shape, three feet high and three feet wide, five feet long, one-way valves are opened at the front and rear ends, there is a screen in the middle of the box, which is decorated with feathers, the bus is pulled and pushed, the air in the bellows is compressed and pushed out of the exhaust vent, and the whirring blue flame comes out of the blacksmith's furnace outside the tuyere, but on the other side, a dozen strong men desperately agitate a dozen sheepskin bags, but the blacksmith's furnace is still a yellow flame.

Obviously, the efficiency of this little bellows is significantly more than a dozen sheepskin bags!

When the father and daughter of the bus were cheering, and more than a dozen strong men were dumbfounded, Xiang Zhuang's mind had already shifted to another invention, that is~

Paper!

The four major inventions of China, the compass, papermaking, gunpowder, movable type printing, the compass is not used now, because it is not yet the time to build the navy, gunpowder is a good thing, but Xiang Zhuang did not study well in his previous life, and later although he played with firearms for more than ten years, he did not know what gunpowder was, so he just wanted to make it and couldn't make it.

However, Xiang Zhuang still knows about papermaking, I remember reading a villain book when I was a child, Xiang Zhuang was very impressed, which tells the story of Cai Lun's papermaking, as if it is a bark, fishing net,

The sundries of wheat straw and reeds are broken, boiled and stirred again, and then a thin layer of thick pulp is fished out with a bamboo curtain and dried, which seems to be paper.

Xiang Zhuang knows that real papermaking will not be so simple, but the idea should be like this!

With the practical spirit of the bus car, coupled with the eccentricity of the bus and Xiang Zhuang's thinking, I can always make paper after a few more attempts.

However, Xiang Zhuang is now in a hurry to make paper, but he has ulterior motives.

Because Xiang Zhuang plans to give a heavy gift to the clans, scholars, and clans in Jiangdong, what kind of heavy gift? Book! And not one or two books, but hundreds, if not thousands! ..., the origin of these books is not small, they are all in the collection of the National Library of the Great Qin Empire!

There has always been a misunderstanding about the first emperor in the history books of China, that is, burning books and pit Confucianism.

In fact, the First Emperor did not really burn the subset of the scriptures and histories of the Six Kingdoms of the Kwantung Kingdom, but left all the copies and collected them in the National Library of the Great Qin Empire.

After Liu Bang entered the customs, Xiao He protected these subsets of scriptures and histories.

Later, Xiang Yu entered the customs, although a fire burned down the Qin Palace, but the tens of thousands of scriptures and histories collected in the Qin Palace, but because of Xiao He's protection, escaped, however, when Xiang Zhuang took the Chu army into Xianyang for the second time, Xiao He had no time to transfer again, and these books all fell into Xiang Zhuang's hands.

Later, the Chu army left Jiuyuan, Xiang Zhuang burned a lot of excess food, threw away a large number of cat heavy ordnance, and abandoned countless silk and silk and gold and silver jewelry, but these hundreds of thousands of books were taken away without landing, as a traverser, Xiang Zhuang knew that it was terrible to be uneducated.

Now, these books have to do their job.

The reason why the Shi people are Shi people is because they have read books and are more educated than the Shu people!

The reason why the family is a family is because they have passed down their poems and books, and the Bishi family has a heritage!

In this era when transportation is inconvenient and the dissemination of books relies heavily on hand-copying, Xiang Zhuang is very sure that these books are absolutely an irresistible gift to the clans, scholars and clans in Jiangdong! (To be continued!)