Liu Zhi really didn't look down on these thank-you gifts that Otis said, and he wanted more than simple property.

However, there are some things that he will not say now, between Rome and the Han Dynasty, there has always been a common enemy, the Rest Empire.

The people of this country are cunning and insatiable, and when the Silk Road was first opened, it was they who hindered the westward expansion of the Han Dynasty.

As a result, the two superpowers, Rome and the Han Dynasty, have only been known by name for hundreds of years, but they have not been able to communicate with each other, let alone establish trade relations.

During the Eastern Han Dynasty, Gan Ying was sent to the Western Regions to reopen the long-cut Silk Road, and was determined to go to the Roman Empire, which was called the Great Qin at that time.

The king of Sabbath at that time sent people to deliberately take them to the vast sea, deceiving them that Rome was at the end of the sea.

Another 20,000 soldiers were sent to follow to prevent the Han envoys from making a detour to Rome, and in the end Gan Ying had to sigh and return disappointed.

Relying on despicable and shameless deception, the Rest Empire monopolized the transit business on both sides, making endless price differences and making a fortune without much effort.

In order to dispel the idea of the Roman Empire looking eastward for the legendary land of silk, the Rest Empire even shamelessly spread rumors, saying that the Han people were more than two meters tall and had faces like yakshas.

It is also said that the Han people have no language, do not like to interact with others, and are very unfriendly to people, and the reason why they can spin silk is because silk grows on trees.

These bizarre rumors were believed to be true by the Romans, and even recorded in the annals of history.

If Liu Zhi hadn't known the true geographical location of Rome and handed it over to Deng Yan by hand, I am afraid that the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries would still be far away.

Even the last time Deng performed as an envoy, the monarch of the rest of the country also repeated his old tricks, sending 20,000 guards to follow, and finally Deng Yan made a sound to attack the west, and then crossed the sea without concealment, and made a detour from the neighboring country, and was almost succeeded by their conspiracy.

But as Rome fell into the midst of the plague, the Empire began to have bad ideas again.

They tried their best to monopolize the roads, even sending troops to attack their neighbors, at a time when the Roman Empire was too busy to take care of itself, and the Han Dynasty was thousands of miles away.

As a result, the overland Silk Road was almost cut off by the Sabbath Empire, and even the maritime Silk Road used to stop at the Sabbath port and then enter Rome by land.

After all, there was no Suez Canal at this time, and the detour from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa was not only a long way, but also dangerous.

The operation of the Rest Empire was equivalent to direct control of the Silk Road, which caused the profits of the goods produced and trafficked by both sides to a great extent.

And the Rest Empire, which did not pay anything, profited from it, made a windfall, and became rich with direct oil.

As the emperor of the country of heaven and Han, whether it is in terms of interests or dignity, he Liu Zhi can't bear this breath.

But the two countries are too far apart, even if they send a navy to attack, the cost of defending after defeating them is too high.

But the Roman Empire and the Empire of Sabbation were neighbors, and the two countries were at odds with each other, and the war between them lasted for hundreds of years.

Although it was true that the Roman Empire was stronger than the Sabbatical Empire, and had repeatedly conquered the Persian Empire and later the Sabbatarian Empire.

But they failed to stabilize their rule, and finally withdrew.

Just like in this recent war, the Roman Empire, which was powerful in peace, went on a rampage in the Resting Empire, but was defeated by the smallpox plague.

Even so, until now, Rome has not withdrawn its troops from the occupied territories.

So Liu Zhi moved his mind and thought of a plan to kill two birds with one stone, but it was still a prototype and needed to be discussed with the ministers again.

After the Yuan-Japanese Dynasty meeting, Liu Zhi first summoned Zhang Zhi, the dean of the School of Medicine, to discuss the diagnosis and treatment of smallpox.

Since smallpox is not currently the main epidemic epidemic in Dahan, the medical school has not studied it much.

But Liu Zhi knew in his heart that if he couldn't develop a preventative cowpox, sooner or later, this fierce plague would come back and wreak havoc on the land of China.

Even in later generations, smallpox was extinguished, not because it was cured, but because of powerful and effective methods of prevention.

Cowpox is easy to say, but it is the experience of human beings for more than 1,000 years and countless doctors.

Now Liu Zhi, who is from modern times, relies on the information of later generations, but directly omits this long process.

Just to study the method of planting cowpox, it is necessary to have smallpox patients first, which is currently impossible to do in the Han Dynasty.

You have to go to the epidemic area to start your work, and this is very dangerous, and the average person will not want to go to the plague outbreak in a foreign land.

Zhang Zhi, as the dean of the medical school and the emperor's attending physician, naturally could not go.

"After the minister goes back, I will summarize the methods of pox planting, and then see which doctors can voluntarily sign up for the envoy."

Originally, Liu Zhi could have been appointed directly, but the doctors needed for this matter not only required superb medical skills to study the plague, but also medical ethics and benevolence.

If he is reluctant and protracted in his research, it will have a great impact on his future strategic policy.

There is no rush in this matter, you have to take your time, a little bit of layout, it is best to put the Rest Empire into it, either it will collapse or change the dynasty.

The specific operation depends on the situation first.

For this reason, Liu Zhi summoned a group of people one after another, from Chen Fan to Li Ying, to the Ministry of Commerce, and even some merchants who walked the Silk Road all year round.

After a lot of feedback, the plan finally took shape.

The Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the whole country celebrates together, and Luoyang, the capital division, is even more lively, and the lantern festival that makes people fascinated by the lantern festival makes the red men and green women not return all night.

However, something new happened this year, in front of the most prosperous Pingcheng Gate in Luoyang City, there were many bright lanterns as bright as day.

Hundreds of people stopped to watch, surrounded by three layers of water outside the three layers, pointing and pointing in amazement.

You know, it is definitely an extraordinary thing to surprise the well-informed people of the capital.

"It's amazing how these lanterns are so bright, it's like the day."

"Wow, if you take a closer look, you're not afraid of the wind."

"I looked closely, these lamps are made of glass, and there seem to be some glowing filaments in them."

……

First of all, glass has long existed in ancient Rome, but the purity is not high, and there are many impurities, which are generally used to make handicrafts, and they are also sold overseas.

On the Silk Road of the Western Han Dynasty, ancient Rome bought a lot of glass handicrafts from the Han Dynasty, especially some colorful glass bottles, and handmade decorations made of glass.

The beautiful name is colored glass, and it is bought and sold at a high price as a very noble product.

More than 20 years ago, when Liu Zhi was just in power, he began to try to make glass, although he could not make pure transparent glass, but this translucent multicolored glass was easy to copy.

After more than ten years of development, the process has been continuously purified and refined, and gradually it has been able to make glass with relatively high transparency, and the texture is better than before.

As a result, the Han dynasty began to popularize glass windows, first of all, all the windows in the palace were replaced with beautiful glass windows.

Immediately afterwards, the royal family of various wealthy families also followed suit, and they were all proud of the glass windows.

Of course, compared with silk windows or paper windows, the effect of wind and rain protection is many times stronger, and the most important thing is to increase the indoor lighting, so that the interior of the house is no longer dark and damp.

That alone is something to love and of course, so far, glass windows are still a luxury item for production and technology reasons, but it's not a very unusual thing.

In particular, some glass crafts and jewelry have gradually become popular, and they have become gadgets that ordinary people can own one or two.

As a result, a lantern with a glass cover appeared, which had a good effect on blocking the wind, and a candle was lit inside, so you could carry it on the road.

But these glass lamps in front of them are obviously very different from candle glass lanterns, first of all, the brightness is I don't know how many times stronger, and secondly, the light is very stable and will not flicker.

And it can be lit for several hours at a time, and it won't go out, which is really amazing.

"Have you heard, this is the electric light that His Majesty has asked the Academy of Sciences to study for more than ten years, and it is said that this thing will slowly become popular in the future and enter the homes of ordinary people."

There are well-informed people who speak vividly and proudly in the crowd.

In the past 20 years, His Majesty has taken the lead in drumming up all kinds of strange things, which are simply not too many, and they have already surprised everyone.

The biogas lamps that came out in the early days are now popular, but due to energy constraints, they cannot be supplied sufficiently.

The most widely benefited general public is cement, and houses and roads in large cities are now made of cement mortar.

This makes the house more solid, and it can withstand ordinary small earthquakes and strong winds and rains.

Of course, the invention that really made the people have enough food and clothing is a variety of hybrid food crops, which not only enriches the variety, but also greatly increases the yield, so that the people no longer starve and freeze.

In the past two decades, the population of the Han Dynasty has recovered rapidly, and in addition to the inhabitants of the conquered lands that were later conquered, there have been millions more than in those years.

Despite the abnormal weather in the past two years, we can still ensure that we have enough to eat, and those chaotic years more than 20 years ago seem to be getting more and more distant.

But they don't have enough knowledge of today's new things, they only think that they are the luxury of the nobles, and they don't think that they have anything to do with the good people.

But for Liu Zhi, this was an epoch-making watershed, marking the beginning of modern industrial development in Dahan.

The small generator, through countless upgrades, finally has a more stable version.

Of course, in the end, diesel fuel was used to make it successfully, and as for the light bulb, the tungsten filament that Edison did thousands of experiments to find in later generations came to Liu Zhi, and it was naturally effortless.

After more than ten years, from Liu Zhi drawing the first generator drawing, Dahan finally saw the dawn.

As for diesel and gasoline, he no longer worries about pollution, and environmental protection is in the hands of human beings.

If one day, human beings overharvest and destroy the Great Wall, it is also self-inflicted, and the progress of human beings is always a double-edged sword, and he can't give up food because of choking.

Although the large-scale generator has not yet been successfully manufactured, Liu Zhi believes that that day is not far off.

With electricity, the machinery manufacturing industry will advance by leaps and bounds, and correspondingly, it will bring a variety of industrial civilization creations.

He could even foresee that in one or two hundred years, the land of China would leap forward to modern civilization.

At that time, a completely crushing Han Empire that was born out of thin air will undoubtedly become the loyalty of the whole world.

After the Chinese New Year, Liu Zhi issued an edict to establish a royal power manufacturing system headed by the Academy of Sciences.

Top talents from a variety of industries, including oil mining, coal mining, metal mining, steel mills, steel manufacturing and so on.

Such a huge amount of money is precisely to prepare for the coming era of electricity.

Of course, the vast majority of the entire empire, except for himself, has not yet realized that a new era is coming.

This group was currently completely controlled by the emperor, with the Ministry of Internal Affairs as the main body, combined with a part of the personnel drawn from the Ministry of Industry.

Moreover, as the son of the Han Dynasty, his private property itself contains a large number of high-quality mines and workshops.

To set up a power manufacturing system, it is fully competent.

Although the movement was a bit large, the impact on the national industry was minimal, and the entire system operated independently of the imperial court.

Over the years, the Great Han has reached a consensus from top to bottom, no matter what inexplicable things Your Majesty is tinkering with, it must be right in the end.

Therefore, apart from the full cooperation of the relevant departments, not many people were alarmed.

After the first month, Zhang Zhi came to report that he had formed a team of expeditionary physicians in the medical school, including two professors and doctors from the medical school, as well as three senior physicians, several general physicians and some disciples of the medical school.

Liu Zhilong and Yan Dayue personally summoned all the main members of the medical team and encouraged them.

He also told them that smallpox had been raging in the West for a long time and was very harmful, and that as doctors, it was his duty to keep them out of the country and not let the plague poison the Han people.

The Han people have a very strong sense of honor, and if they only help distant friendly countries, they naturally can't be of much interest.

But if it is for the sake of their own country and to save their people from fire and water, then they will immediately be full of energy.

Of course, Liu Zhi will not just shout slogans, go to the country and leave his hometown for thousands of miles, such a spirit is not something that ordinary people can do, and material rewards must be given.

Therefore, Liu Zhi promoted all these doctors, and awarded all the disciples of those medical schools to the title of squire.

And he gave him a lot of goods, silks, and the like, as a reward.

He also promised that if they were able to defeat smallpox, they would be rewarded for their merits when they returned.

The physician expedition team was naturally happy after getting all kinds of benefits, and the dean Zhang Zhi held a grand farewell ceremony for them, and personally sent them out of Luoyang City.

This time, they will follow the official trading team of the Han Dynasty, take a merchant ship from the Grand Canal into the sea, and follow the Maritime Silk Road to ancient Egypt.