Volume 4 is in the ascendant Chapter 494: Big Order
"Girls should also read more. Mr. Wang should set an example for his granddaughter ." Bai Tu continued.
"Thank you for your concern, Your Majesty. This is what I and your son were thinking."
"Have you chosen a name yet?"
"She was only given a nickname, 'Yuan Yuan.'" Wang Lang was somewhat puzzled when he saw Bai Tu showing concern for his granddaughter who had just been born, but he responded quickly.
Bai Tu nodded upon hearing this, and then said, "When Qing'er reaches school age, let Yuanyuan come along, so that she can have a companion..."
It sounded as if he was just making an appointment with the younger generation to go to school together, but Bai Tu's tone was serious.
Wang Lang was also stunned when he heard this, and then he understood what Bai Tu meant. He couldn't help but said with red eyes: "Thank you, Your Majesty... The Wang family will continue to share your worries for generations!"
That’s right, Bai Tu’s hint was very clear—he wanted to match his eldest son with Wang Lang’s granddaughter!
It’s just because, firstly, the child is still young, and secondly, the Chu government does not encourage these things, so it certainly cannot be said openly.
Bai Tu also made up his mind to let Bai Qing take care of it for once...
Originally, Bai Tu did not want to arrange any marriage, and he still thinks so until now. The reason why he wanted to "arrange" it was not to win over Wang Lang and Wang Su, but to compensate and to show support!
Wang Lang did the job that earned him the most criticism, while Wang Su was prepared to be infamous for eternity in the future - what is fake will never be real, and it will be discovered sooner or later.
However, as long as they could conceal the truth for a while and allow the old Confucianism to merge with Baixue, the goal of the State of Chu would be achieved.
As for later finding out it was fake...
That's Wang Su's own problem! What does it have to do with my Great Chu, Confucianism, and Baixue?
However, Bai Tu felt that one should not bully "honest people" like this. Wang Su had already taken the blame, and Wang Lang had been blamed countless times a long time ago, so he should also express his opinion.
Promotions and titles no longer mean anything. After all, if "Wang School" were to collapse during the next generation or the next, it would be a fatal blow to the Wang family.
Besides, it is not appropriate to promote someone for no reason...
Historically, the impact of Wang Su's fraud was not that great, mainly because the exposure of the fraud came more than a thousand years late, and "Wangxue" had already been widely accepted. Countless schools of thought had also extended Wangxue over the past thousand years. Even if it was discovered that he was a fraud, the impact on academia would be limited. It would be impossible to correct the mistake more than a thousand years ago, and the impact on Wang's descendants would be almost non-existent.
Just like in history, after the Bamboo Annals was discovered, it was not officially adopted. We can't start from the Spring and Autumn Annals and rebuild the ideological foundation, right?
However, with the current speed of development of Chu's humanities and technology, how could it be possible that it was not discovered until more than a thousand years later as originally described in history?
Therefore, Bai Tu used a more direct method to assure Wang Lang and Wang Su of the future of the Wang family!
When Bai Tu had this idea, he also wondered if Sima had the same idea at the beginning?
After all, the beneficiaries of Wang Su’s “academic fraud” at the time were the aristocratic families headed by the Sima family.
…
The news that Wang Lang's granddaughter "Yuanyuan" was chosen by Bai Tu to be the prince's tutor in the future was deliberately spread.
For a moment, everyone who looked at Wang Lang had some sourness in their eyes, knowing that Wang Lang's status in the future would be further improved - not to mention anything else, at least Ni Heng would not argue with him anymore, this was the face!
Naturally, the work of the Ministry of Justice can be carried out much more smoothly.
Many important officials also felt that Bai Tu was too hasty in making the decision. After all, it would be a matter of more than ten years later. If the prince was to set an example of late marriage and late childbearing, it might even be a matter of twenty years later. Why decide now?
But thinking about what Wang Lang's Ministry of Justice had done and Wang Su's tacit behavior, everyone felt relieved .
Although they feel jealous, they ask themselves if it were them, they might not be willing to "trade".
To some extent, this is also a symbol that the king really remembers the contributions of every hero... Thinking of this way, I feel a lot more balanced.
Another major event in the State of Chu recently is that several official workshops of the Ministry of Works and a large number of private workshops, including many "semi-official workshops" in which the King of Chu has invested, have suddenly received "super orders". Many workshops have even been busy with this big order in the past two or three years!
Greatly promoted the development of the workshop...
After all, the production capacity of a large number of workshops has been occupied by this "super order", which has freed up space for more workshops and will also require more pure workshop population!
Many workshops even accept excess orders, which means they need to open a large number of new workshops and increase production capacity within a year to meet order requirements!
This big order in particular was closely related to steel, and it helped boost the price of steel, which was becoming increasingly cheap in the State of Chu.
Because most of the upstream technological workshops were confidential official workshops monopolized by the Chu State, and some of the core workshops were even located in Yizhou overseas, so in theory the final results of the order were kept confidential.
But if we roughly estimate, the amount of steel needed is probably tens of thousands of tons...
Some people originally thought that once there were enough farm tools and weapons, the price of steel would plummet. Now they are all dumbfounded - in fact, the previous "conclusion" was dumbfounding enough. How could there be an era when steel is worthless?
Indeed, with the emergence of auxiliary mining equipment such as the "True Qi Rock Drill" developed by the Ministry of Industry, the diggable reserves of iron ore and the mining speed have increased dramatically.
Now even the iron mines in Liaodong that were contracted to Chu are about to start using these equipment...
Therefore, the price of steel has been falling!
After that... this super order pushed the price up so high that it wouldn't come down for years. In the next few years, most of the production capacity of many iron and steel workshops was booked.
At the same time, the final product of this "super order" has also attracted countless speculations.
Some said that the King of Chu wanted to build a steel palace, some said that the State of Chu wanted to build a steel fortress, some said that it wanted to create a secret weapon to arm a million-strong army, and some even said that the State of Chu wanted to build giant steel ships and steel roads!
Outside the State of Chu, the third theory was naturally the most widely accepted.
One ton of steel in Chu State weighs ten thousand kilograms. Tens of thousands of tons of steel, if averaged out to an army of one million, would weigh hundreds of kilograms for each soldier!
Enough for a million troops to wear full plate armor...
Of course, the Chu State did not have a million-strong army, nor could it have a million war horses, so it is puzzling what the dozens or hundreds of kilograms of steel per person were used for.
However, within the State of Chu, the fourth statement was very popular - after all, the people of Chu also knew that the imperial court attached great importance to sea ships and warships.
But...the matter of the iron battleship is equally incomprehensible.
Although now if someone questions "how can an iron ship float", there may be "smart people" around to explain to him the basic principles of buoyancy. After all, the popularization of science by the Chu State was not in vain. However... even so, it cannot explain why we need steel battleships!
When it comes to naval warfare, whether on rivers or in the oceans, the State of Chu should have been invincible.
Other princes who imported weapons, farm tools and other steel products from the Chu State were already jumping up and down - isn't it enough that you let the people practice martial arts to drive up food prices, now you are inexplicably "consuming" tens of thousands of tons of steel to drive up steel prices?
Do you still have a conscience, Mr. Bai? Are you wasting food and steel just to raise the price?
As expected, you are just trying to make trouble. For us, you have to pay more when trading!
As for the first and second guesses, they don't have much market. Although Wei and Han would go against their conscience and spread the news to the people that Bai Tu would use thousands of tons of steel, as well as the gold, silver and copper traded from their own homes, to build a palace for himself, which was extremely extravagant and outrageous...but in fact, they themselves did not believe that Bai Tu would do this.
And spending so much effort on defensive bunkers was obviously not the style of the Chu State.
Of course, in the real core circle of the Chu State, such a huge project involving countless workshops, even if the final core assembly site was placed in Yizhou, could not be concealed from everyone - it was indeed a shipbuilding project!
As for paving the road...
It sounds incredible, but it is true to some extent.
In fact, in order to convince everyone, Bai Tu had even brought a dozen of the Chu's core officials to experience the True Qi Ship...
It is a small wooden infuriating boat.
Although the "Pan-Qi Project" has not yet reached the stage where it can harvest fruits in large quantities, the Qi machines that power small wooden ships that can accommodate dozens of people are now fully capable of being put into use.
Just like before when he summoned a dozen important military generals to test guns and artillery, this time he wanted these core members of the administration to test the Qi ship!
When the ship without sails and oars moved smoothly and even turned flexibly in an environment without wind or waves, the results of the Ministry of Works once again shocked people.
However, compared to the Qi Boat, there is another "Qi Train" that is more convincing to everyone - although as a test product, it only made a circle on the site of the Ministry of Industry.
However, as for the load capacity and speed of the Qi Train, the ministers who had some macro-concept in their minds could all imagine how much benefit this "Qi Train" would bring to the State of Chu if it became popular.
In terms of consumption of the "Chi Train", it is actually even greater than that of the "Chi Boat"!
Although one Zhenqi battleship consumes thousands of tons of steel, it is at least a one-time deal. Unless it is built in large quantities, the consumption will be in small quantities of "a few ships".
The track of the Qi Train consumes one Chu ton of steel per kilometer - this is for today's trains, which are relatively "small" themselves, so the track is much more "economical" than that of later generations, and can be dealt with by using steel-clad wood first. Otherwise, adding another zero would not be enough!
Although having a hard drive with a blank map can help us avoid many detours, firstly, the information is incomplete, and secondly... there are some differences between Qi power and steam power, so development still needs to be done step by step.
As for the visit of Qin Mi from Yizhou...
It was not a big deal in the State of Chu. After arriving in Jinling, he was just ignored and no one wanted to pay attention to him.
