Well, Li Yuan was on the tenth day after Ben Gongzi ascended the throne as emperor, and under the support of Jin Yang under a vote, he was promoted by the Duke of Tang to the king of Tang. For this news, I just laughed at it, don't say that my old man is the king, even if he is the emperor, what can he do, not to mention anything else, everything has to be divided into equal winners, at least I don't think I will lose.

While leaning around the mother-in-law and watching them bet on backgammon, his thinking developed, thinking about the various developments in the past period. At this moment, I heard the sound of quick footsteps outside the door, and stood at the door, and then Li Yuanfang's voice.

I took a sip of Yaoguang's pretty face. "Lady, you obediently play by yourself, go to deal with official business for your husband, and then come to accompany you."

"Okay, husband, go, political affairs are important, but don't come back too late." Yaoguang girl bowed considerately.

Striding out of the door, I saw Li Yuanfang standing next to the stationmaster of the carrier pigeon station, my son's heart jumped, he didn't say anything, and walked quickly towards the study, and these two people also followed closely behind me.

After entering the study, the stationmaster of the pigeon station took out a stack of translated information from his bosom and handed it to me. "Lord, here is the news from Jiaozhi and Quanzhou, they all just arrived today."

"It's a coincidence." I couldn't help but raise my eyebrows and smiled, Quanzhou Jiaozhi is thousands of miles apart, and there is definitely no way to pass the news to Chang'an invariably, but it is really rare to be together so quickly.

Spread out the information, and carefully look at it, the information of Cochin is not complicated, just three months ago, the First Expeditionary Fleet, after going through a lot of hardships, arrived at a port located south of Cochin, which was controlled by the elite troops I sent over.

They then stayed there for two months, leaving some of the ships as prototypes for the local craftsmen to build new ships, and then the team headed north again, about three months later, bypassing most of the Chinese coast and once again entering the interior through the mouth of the Yellow River to Hancheng County.

Quanzhou, the earliest seaport city in Chinese history, sent a large number of spies to Hancheng as early as the time of Hancheng, not only to recruit skilled shipbuilders here, but more importantly, to carefully collect intelligence.

Quanzhou is one of the most important starting points of the ancient Maritime Silk Road. The Maritime Silk Road was the main artery of ancient seaway traffic. Since the pre-Qin period, southern China has been the birthplace of the Austronesian race. In the pre-Qin period, it was called the Baiyue people, which is one of the most widely distributed ethnic groups in the world, they have excellent seafaring experience and adventurous spirit, and their footprints are all over the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and the prehistoric era is on the eve of the ocean, Madagascar, Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia are all distributed.

After Qin destroyed the Six Kingdoms, he began to pacify the Baiyue Land in the Lingnan region. In 219 BC, Qin Shi Huang sent Tu Sui as the main general and Zhao Tuo as the deputy general to lead an army of 500,000 to pacify Lingnan. Qin Shi Huang reappointed Ren Huan as the main general, and together with Zhao Tuo, he led a large army to the south, and after four years of hard work, completed the great cause of pacifying Lingnan in 214 BC. Qin set up three counties in Lingnan: Nanhai County, Guilin County, and Xiang County, and gradually developed a prosperous Lingnan economic circle with Nanhai County as the center. At the end of the Qin Dynasty, the northern conquest was endless, and the Lingnan region was ruled by Zhao Tuo, known as the Southern Yue Kingdom in history, which was a rare peaceful area at that time.

In 202 B.C., the Han Dynasty was established, and Han Gaozu implemented a policy of recuperation and recuperation, and negotiated peace with the Southern Yue State, and the two countries were able to develop economic and trade relations. In 195 BC, Gaozu died, and the regent of Empress Lu clashed with Nanyue, and the two sides fought fiercely in Nanling, and the battle situation was stalemate. At that time, silk textiles were mainly produced in the Lingnan region, and Zhao Tuo began to seek sea routes to Western countries to carry out trade in order to find important military supplies and iron resources. The Greek-style silver vessels unearthed from the tomb of the Nanyue King in Guangzhou and the stone Greek-style beams and columns excavated from the ruins of the palace of the Nanyue Kingdom are quite good proof, confirming that the Maritime Silk Road had been born in the late Qin and early Han dynasties, that the Lingnan region exported silk to the West in exchange for various materials, and that Greek craftsmen came to China to participate in the construction of the palace of the Nanyue King.

During the Western Han Dynasty, the sea route between the southern Guangdong Kingdom and the Indian Peninsula had been opened. After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty destroyed the Southern Yue Kingdom, he broadened the scale of maritime trade by sea routes. In the south, it was from Rinan, Xuwen, Hepu, Tongdu, Yuan, Fugandulu, Huangzhi, Pizong, and Chengbu (now Sri Lanka).

In the Eastern Han Dynasty, "in the ninth year of Emperor Huan's reign, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (161-180 AD) sent envoys from Japan to the south to offer ivory, rhino horn, and tortoiseshell. "This was the first time that history recorded the first interaction between China and the Roman Empire.

At the end of the Han Dynasty, the Three Kingdoms were in a critical period of the Maritime Silk Road's transition from land to sea. During this period, Sun Quan was in Jiangdong, taking the ancient Dayu as an example, advocating that "the country is people-oriented, and the people are food-oriented", "not more general, hindering agriculture" and tried his best to develop the economy, create a shipbuilding industry, train sailors, establish a country with a naval army, and send navigation envoys to develop the territory, communicate well with foreign countries, and make significant contributions.

Let's talk about the shipbuilding industry first, ships and ships, which are the necessary conditions and main tools for navigation. Before the Three Kingdoms, it was generally relied on sailing ships and trade winds to drift on the sea, almost adventurous, and countless people died for this. In the Three Kingdoms period, due to the needs of Sun Wu, Cao Wei and Liu Shu to fight on the Yangtze River and communicate at sea, the navy was actively developed, and the design and manufacture of ships made great progress, and the technology was advanced and the scale was also very large.

According to Zhang Dake's "History of the Three Kingdoms", Sun Wu's shipbuilding industry was particularly developed. The main shipbuilding areas in the Han Dynasty were Suzhou, Wuxi, Anqing and other places in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and most of them were flat-bottomed inland river boats. The Sun-Wu shipbuilding center was moved to the ports of Houguan of Jian'an County (in present-day Minhou, Fujian), Yongning County of Linhai County (present-day Wenzhou, Zhejiang), Hengyi Chuantun (present-day Pingyang, Zhejiang), and Panyu County (present-day Guangzhou) of Nanhai County. Sun Quan set up a captain to manage the shipyard.

The ships built by Sun Wu were mainly warships, followed by merchant ships, with a large number, large hulls and high quality keel structures. The largest warship can carry 3,000 soldiers, has five layers of upper and lower layers, carved and painted colors, very magnificent, and has a strong endurance. A sea ship carrying eighty horses is called a boat. The merchant ships sailing in the South China Sea, "the big one is more than 20 zhang long, two or three zhang high above the water, looking like an attic, carrying six or seven hundred people, and the material is out of ten thousand hu". Sun Wu's armed fleet went to sea more than 100 ships, accompanied by more than 10,000 soldiers, went north to Liaodong, Goguryeo (now Korea), south to Yizhou (now Taiwan) and Southeast Asia, now Vietnam, Cambodia and other countries, when the Wu Kingdom was destroyed, there were more than 5,000 warships and merchant ships.

From the beginning of the Jin Dynasty to the present, there are hundreds of years, however, because of the long years of conquest and civil strife, so the navigation industry has not achieved much development, and those coastal maritime merchants are more engaged in business with coastal countries.

However, to my surprise, there is a family of sea merchants surnamed Hu in Quanzhou, since the Han Dynasty, his family has been going to sea to do business for a living, to his generation, has been more than ten generations, according to the information inquired, his family's merchant ships, as far as Malacca, through Sumatra to Tianzhu.

Xiangbei also reached the Wa Kingdom, Goguryeo, and Silla Kingdoms, which shows that its predecessors spent more than ten generations, and I don't know how much effort and sweat it took to do it, and I don't know how much data it collected from the former fleet, so that it would become the largest and farthest maritime merchant in Quanzhou.

"Okay, well, after all, I didn't invest so much manpower and material resources in vain, just this one piece of news, its value is definitely not less than ten thousand gold." Ben Gongzi flicked the information in his hand very excitedly, and said happily.

"In this way, immediately summon Quanzhou, reward a cadre, etc., in addition, tell them to try to get close to the Hu family, if the Hu family is not hostile to our Chinese revival army, then it would be better, as long as we win them over, then, we are equivalent to getting the most precious chart, I don't know how much manpower and material resources can be sacrificed by Lu Dao......"

"In addition, since the expeditionary fleet has only been set off for half a month now, it should be almost two months before it arrives in Hancheng." I came to this conclusion by gauging the time it would take, and then continued: "When they arrive, they will be replaced by a new group of sailors, and then they will continue to set off for Cochin, and be sure to familiarize them with what the sea is. ”

"By the way, how many ships are there left in Cochin?"

"Hui Gongzi, there are three transport ships and six warships left in Jiaozhi, accounting for a quarter of the total number of the entire ocean-going fleet."

"Next time, bring more ships and send all the eleven new ships built at the end of the year and the beginning of this year. Strive to build a strong enough fleet in Cochin by June, so that Cochin is too guarded, and even if he does not want to submit to me, he must carefully weigh what the consequences will be if he attacks my people. ”

Great, if the route from the mainland coast to Tianzhu can be opened, then the profits of silk, porcelain and tea can at least quadruple compared with today, and they can be directly purchased from Tianzhu, the main source of spices and dyes, without being exploited by those middlemen, and the money that can naturally be made will become higher.

After reading the information and disposing of these things, I was just about to go over and squat with my mother-in-law sweetly, but I didn't want to step out of the threshold of the study just before I saw Yuan Tiangang hurrying towards my small courtyard, I couldn't help but be slightly stunned, why did this guy come to the door?

"Your Majesty, the minister has something important, so you took the liberty to come here, and I also ask Your Majesty to forgive your sins." After Yuan Tiangang saw me, he hurried a few steps in front of me and bowed for a long time.

"Yuan Qingping, what's the matter?" I waved my hand, motioned for the dude to excuse me, and asked.

"Under His Majesty, Weichen has found traces of Sun Simiao." Yuan Tiangang said quickly and quickly towards me with a hint of excitement.