The 427th edge of the wood for fish

In the real world, after the Zhu Ming Dynasty came into contact with Portugal, he ordered people to imitate arquebuses, and Huaguo had the idea of a bird gun. However, in this time and space, the evolution of the primordial firecracker to the bird's beak gun was surprisingly completed in the territory of the Weixia Empire, and the mature bird's beak gun was born in Henan Province in the Central Plains.

During the 13-year war of Weihui Luoyang, there were constant wars in northern China, and Henan Province, which was known as the Central Plains and won the world, was the area with the most frequent small wars. Under the guidance of the needs of the war, the craft of the firecracker developed rapidly with each passing day, and finally completed the innovation of the bird's beak gun in the territory of Lu. And because of the fierce competition among the vassal states, not only the northern vassal states quickly introduced the bird's beak gun, but also the Yue State and the Wei State, which came later in the south, also hired craftsmen from the Central Plains region with high salaries for the first time, and the bird's beak gun triggered a military revolution in the vassal states of the Wei Xia Empire in a very short time.

By 1483, even the borders of the empire were equipped with beaks.

Witnessing the rows of soldiers holding bird's beak guns, Wei Dongsheng understood more and more the comprehensive strength of Wei Guo and Yue Guo, and why Wei Guo was able to stop the Portuguese expedition ship in West Africa. Wei Guo said that it was a province, but in fact it was like Portugal to Europe, representing all the rising power of the Wei and Xia Twenty Domains. If the 20 vassal states of the Wei Xia Emperor continued to compete so actively, even if the Industrial Revolution broke out in the Central Plains, it would be an understandable miracle.

The regional nature of the soldier is also very interesting.

Jiaozhi is in the south, but the Wu family's guards are stuffed with soldiers with northern Chinese accents, especially Henan accents.

Why?

It's interesting to say, but the clan concept in the Yue and Wei countries is extremely strong, and clan-sized forces abound, but it is quite difficult to establish an organization with a larger population beyond the clan limit. The maritime merchants of the Yue Kingdom and the Patriotic Kingdom were probably unable to become bigger and stronger because of clan constraints, but there was a strong demand for human resources in the era of geographical discovery. In order to break through the clan barrier and quickly alleviate the crisis of human resource shortage, mercenaries gradually became popular in both countries.

At the same time, Wei Hui's thirteen-year war in Luoyang seriously dragged down the economy of the north, and farmers and professional soldiers on the verge of bankruptcy had to look for living space in the north and south. There were many people in the north and poor, and the Viet Wei people were few and rich, so the peasants and soldiers in the north flocked to the two countries in the form of mercenaries. Among them, the chaos of the four earls of Henan was repeated, and the Lu state did its best to squeeze its territory in Henan Province, which in turn led to Henan Province becoming a contemporary population export center.

Although Henan Province is located in the inland of the Central Plains without a seaport, the local people were able to serve as mercenaries and cannon fodder, and under the leadership of the maritime merchants of the two countries, they spilled their blood all over the world.

Are these evolutions, which are very different from the real world, fortunate or unfortunate?

Different people may have different opinions.

Ansuo Garden is a Zhuxia style garden, and the artificial island in the artificial lake gathered four or five hundred people who came to the royal capital to participate in the examination of the national prince. Wei Dongsheng followed Shi Liang and asked as he walked, and it took about half an hour to find Shiyan with difficulty.

Wei Dongsheng sat down to have a drink with Shiyan's Juzi friends.

The banquet was coming to an end, and the organizer Wu Huaqi showed his face late to explain his purpose.

The reason is on the new route.

There are some differences between Wei Xia's Great Voyage and the Great Voyage of the real world.

In the great voyage of the real world, Europe was in dire need of spices, silk, porcelain, cane sugar and other goods, and the Zhu Ming Empire could earn countless amounts of gold and silver by guarding their doorstep. In this world, the Wei Xia Empire is more vast than the Zhu Ming Empire, and there is no shortage of spices, sugar, silk, and porcelain, so it has also formed a trade black hole that is far superior to the Zhu Ming Empire countless times. Shiploads of fine goods sailed out of the port, ships of gold and silver sailed back to the port, and the world's precious metals were concentrated on the Wei Xia Empire.

As the value of gold and silver continued to depreciate, the two countries became richer and the other vassal states became poorer. Taking land price as an example, in Jiangsu Province, which is directly under the jurisdiction of the royal family, one acre of land in the coastal counties is worth about seven taels of silver. After the opening of the new route, the maritime merchants, sailors, mercenaries, etc., who became rich overnight, successively brought gold and silver home to buy land, and in just ten years, the land price has skyrocketed to ten taels of silver per mu, and the future trend may continue to rise. The maritime merchants of the two countries, who enjoyed the benefits of maritime trade, wielded gold and silver to enclose land, while the people of other vassal states made it extremely difficult to make money.

The entire Weixia Empire was undergoing a price revolution, and Jiaozhi, which was close to the Yue Kingdom, was no exception.

The Cochin Domain was very eye-catching to the profits of the Red Sea Trade.

However, because Jiaozhi was just established, he had neither shipbuilding technology nor enough talents, so it was impossible to compete with the two countries.

The reformists, represented by the Wu family, were eager to get a piece of the pie and were ready to send a group of elites to Vietnam to learn the latest sailing technology. Wu Huaqi did not dare to expect the students of Guozi Prison to give up their bureaucratic future, change their studies halfway to unreliable navigation, and retreat to the next best place to target those who were about to fall off the list. Wu Huaqi generously guaranteed the future of the people, and all the unfortunate ones who failed the list, as long as the results of the relevant subjects were not so bad that they could not be seen miserably, the Wu family was willing to recommend them to go to Yue Guozi to study Haike.

In short, the Wu family wanted to organize a group of foreign students to go to Vietnam to learn navigation technology semi-officially and semi-non-governmentally.

Wu Huaqi's invitation was quite attractive. The competition in the examination is extremely fierce, compared with the imperial examination of the Song and Tang dynasties, even if it is lucky to be admitted to the Guozijian and get the reputation of Xiucai, it is only the first step of the long march. Because the twenty feudal kingdoms of Wei and Xia were permeated with aristocratic priority values, it was always easier for the shadow eunuchs and tribute eunuchs to seize the "opportunity" than the eunuchs to raise the eunuchs. If a certain person fails to make the list year after year and completely loses hope, it is not a way out to go to Yue to study the most popular Haike at the moment.

Of course, the number of motivational movers is very limited.

In the Wei Xia Empire in 1483, full-time study and going to Beijing to take the exam were extremely expensive ways to rise to the class. According to the survey of the details of each session, at least 90 out of 100 people were born in landlord families, and there are very few poor scholars in the real sense. Unless they have dreams of crisscrossing the seas, why would they give up the elegant life in the countryside and risk their lives to venture into the sea.

Shi Liang's elder brother Shi Yan was dismissive of Wu Huaqi's proposal to study abroad.

Shiyan attaches great importance to the profits of maritime trade but has no interest in making a living at sea, and disdainfully says: "A maritime merchant is a maritime merchant, arrogant and narrow-minded." Hehe, when have you ever seen a rich family go to the sea to beg for a living? The Yue Kingdom dismantled the Guozijian to set up a Haike branch, and had to lower the threshold to recruit the sons of fishermen, but Wu Huaqi wanted to recruit sailors from the juzi, which was really a fish for a fish. ”

Shi Liang also has the same attitude: "There is a specialization in the art industry, and the son has his own studies, how can he swarm to pursue the trend?" ”

Other lifters echoed Shiyan and Shiliang brothers.

This is the general attitude of the lifters.

The Southern Song Dynasty attached great importance to sea trade, and the Meng Yuan never ignored it, and the Shunta Kingdom, the predecessor of the Wei Xia Empire, also started with sea trade. In all this, the twenty vassal states of Wei and Xia all attached great importance to maritime trade, and even the inland vassal states such as the Ming Kingdom, the Han Kingdom, the Tang Kingdom, the Zhou Kingdom, the Jin State, and the Wei State also diligently pursued access to the sea.

However, just as the national policy of valuing agriculture and suppressing commerce in the past was not to value farmers, the current state attaches importance to maritime trade and does not value sailors. The agricultural thinking is respected by the landlord, and the maritime trade thinking is respected by the chamber of commerce, and countless leaders of the chamber of commerce advocate the marine business to be done on land. Even if they were determined to trade by sea, they would also aspire to be "maritime business on land", and then condescendingly looked down on the sailors who begged for a living at sea.

Of course, there is also an element of the high mortality rate at sea.

The moats of the sea and the diseases of the harbor are always the ghosts that hover the heads of the sea knights. Not to mention those sailors who died in obscurity, many maritime heroes who were famous in the Yue Kingdom, the Wei Kingdom and even the Wei Xia Twenty Domains could not escape the regretful fate of returning to the sea at a young age. For example, the captain of the ship who discovered Brazil in South America contracted a local disease in West Africa last year, and died at the age of 44. Another example is the founder of the Wu family, when he led a group of maritime merchants who were also merchants and thieves to rampant in West Asia and the Middle East, and the great credit was made by the king of Yue to make an exception and be promoted to a territorial baron, but he died of illness in India before the age of 50.

The risk of navigation is too high.

Only those who have fallen into decay and the poor boys who are eager to get rich overnight will use the ocean as a fast way to change their fate.

Wu Qihua longs for a group of lifters to learn sailing skills, and he is really obsessed with dreams.

However, Wei Dongsheng is not an ordinary prisoner.

Wei Dongsheng was the first emperor who founded the Wei Xia Dynasty, the second was the king of the Jin Kingdom, and the third was the general who assisted Wei Liangjun in quelling the rebellion of the Jiaozhi natives. The family background that Shi Liang and other prisoners are proud of, and the fame and fortune that ordinary prisoners tirelessly pursue, are not worth mentioning in Wei Dongsheng's eyes. To put it mildly, Emperor Wei Xia is a descendant of Wei Dongsheng's bloodline, and fifteen of the twenty feudal states are also descendants of Wei Dongsheng's bloodline, and the Wei family founded by Wei Dongsheng is the world's most wealthy family.

No matter how hard Wei Dongsheng works hard in the future, he will only repeat his past successes again and again.

Compared with fame and fortune, Wei Dongsheng preferred to observe the evolution of the Wei Xia Empire up close as the son of the prefect of the fourth generation.

The great geographical discoveries of Wei and Yue were a surprise given to Wei Dongsheng by the Wei Xia Dynasty. Compared with the two countries, Vietnam's comprehensive strength is better than that of the country. At this moment, even if it is not the world's first ocean city, the Yue Wangdu is also the first ocean city in East Asia, which is worth visiting by Wei Dongsheng himself. Besides, the Age of Geographical Discoveries, which is only the only surviving pile of old papers in the real world, was fortunate to be reproduced in another form by the inferior Tomorrow Ring and the Wei Xia Empire, and Wei Dongsheng very much hoped that he could personally experience the charm of the Age of Discovery.

Only by integrating into the times can we better feel the atmosphere of the times.

Other people were reluctant to learn sailing, but Wei Dongsheng was willing to witness the Age of Discovery of the Wei Xia Empire.

At the end of the banquet, Wei Dongsheng actively responded to Wu Qihua's warm invitation: "I want to study in Vietnam, do you want to be a prisoner?" ”