Volume 5: Overlord of the Sea Chapter 539: Diverting Attention
The seventh year of the Chu calendar.
According to the best expectations, Gan Ning and the sailing navy should have returned last year, but there is still no news.
Not only in Bai Tu and the court, but even among the people there were repeated voices of concern, and... under the guidance of those with ulterior motives, while they were worried, their reactions were also strange.
Although no one dared to hold Bai Tu directly accountable, after all, he would not be able to keep up the pace and might be easily kidnapped and sent to the government, but voices such as "the Privy Councilor should step down" and "dismiss Lu Zhutou" gradually emerged.
After all, the navy is also under the Privy Council, and since the pioneering army needs to train many civilian development skills, half of it belongs to the civilian department.
Now the blame for the navy’s loss of contact is being put on Lu Bu and Lu Su.
Lu Su even discussed with Bai Tu in private that if necessary, he could "retire" for half a year to avoid the limelight and vent the people's grievances.
Previously, the glory and merits of the navy and the pioneering army had been publicized. Now that 20,000 navy troops and tens of thousands of pioneering troops were "gone in an instant", it naturally caused a shock among the people.
To some extent, this can also be regarded as "consistency of power and responsibility" - other princes never associated the army with glory in the eyes of the people, so naturally even if they were wiped out, only the families of the generals would be agitated. But for the State of Chu, once there was any major policy or war failure, the people would feel the same as soon as they heard about it.
Even though this kind of "empathy" sometimes develops in a direction that the court does not want to see, and is sometimes even exploited, but... this is still an advantage of the Chu State, or even one of its greatest advantages.
Compared with other princes, or compared with the military and political construction in the feudal era, it is undoubtedly a more modern system that effectively mobilizes the enthusiasm of the people and makes them share the honor with the army and the court.
It can not only solidify the morale of the army, but also truly stabilize the people's hearts, rather than using the hearts of the gentry to represent the people's hearts.
This is why Gu Yanwu of the late Ming Dynasty shouted "Every man has his share of responsibility for the fate of his country", but his mobilization of the people was still very limited. After the Qing army entered the pass, the people's resistance was not fierce - after all, the gentry took the lead in surrendering, and ordinary people didn't care which court it was, and it didn't matter who they farmed for...
On the contrary, later generations have highly recognized this statement!
The true will of the people cannot be aroused by shouting slogans or expressing feelings at the last minute, but must be accumulated day by day in normal times...
The State of Chu now has the confidence to say "Every man is responsible for the rise and fall of his country", and it is the only state that has the confidence. If the war situation deteriorates and other princes attack and seize cities and territories, the common people in the state, although not all of them will die, will still be loyal to the State of Chu and will still be loyal to the princes who want to restore Chu.
However, Bai Tu rejected Lu Su's resignation - after all, it was obvious that someone had bad intentions, so there was no need to choose the simplest and most brutal method.
Instead, they arranged a wave of official reports to correct the irresponsible statement that "the navy did not return as scheduled"...
Soon, some educated people on the streets of Jinling began to spontaneously debunk the rumors.
"What do you mean Governor Gan didn't come back? Don't take my words out of context. The two years the Navy mentioned was the 'best case scenario', which not only includes personnel, but also weather, ocean exploration results and other factors... In fact, two to five years is normal. If there are emergencies, such as discovering an important target, it may even be later!
"Yes, it's only been over two years now, there's no need to worry too much."
"Huh? It turns out that the Hanshui Weir is almost finished, and the water storage inspection can be done this year?"
"I heard that the Han River Weir is like a thousand-foot-high mountain. I wonder if it's true or not..."
"This is a good thing for Zhang Lu in Hanzhong. Tsk tsk, I heard that when our Chu State wanted to build a dam, they were very dissatisfied!"
While refuting the rumors, Bai Tu also tried his best to divert people's attention to the Hanshui Weir which would be completed this year. Compared with the navy which had no news, the Hanshui Weir would definitely be completed this year.
The dam body has been filled and the sluice gates are ready. All that is left is to fill in the guide holes and channels that were previously opened to facilitate the project, allowing the Han River to return to its original path and start storing water. The results will be visible soon.
In terms of project scale alone, the Han River Weir is even larger than the Dujiangyan Irrigation System. After all, this is a "masterpiece" that took four or five years to complete, despite having cement, concrete, and enough steel production to "waste" and recruiting a large number of workers!
Li Yan plans to conduct a water storage inspection during the summer flood season. If the main body of the Han River Weir and the branch weirs on several tributaries can still bear and play a role in raising the water level when the water flow is the largest in the year, it can basically be declared a success.
The State of Chu took this matter as the main civilian guidance for the first half of the year...
Anyway, if something goes wrong with this matter, Li Yan can be directly executed. It will not be unfair to him. Moreover, judging from Li Yan’s report, he is still very confident in the Han River Dam!
In addition, over the past few years, most of the laborers sent by Zhang Lu to help build the dam had already "believed" in Chu learning and had no intention of returning.
Some of the Tianshidao believers who originally came to look for Huang Tianji also switched to Chuxue, and some even... voluntarily joined the Enlightenment Department and were willing to continue as Tianshidao believers, pretending to return to Hanzhong to report!
At this time, the Han River Weir had been built, but Huang Tianji was still nowhere to be found. Not only Hanzhong, but even the State of Chu had not discovered her.
Shortly after the New Year, after Bai Tu received letters from Cao Cao and Liu Bei, he first formulated a further strategy against the Marquis of Shu , and then... Lu Bu specially chose a good day to come and drink with Bai Tu.
Bai Tu naturally opened the palace gates to welcome Lu Bu, but at the same time... Bai Tu was a little confused: his adoptive father's invitation was very sudden, as if something was going on?
"Has godfather encountered any difficulties recently?" Bai Tu first asked Lu Lingqi.
"I didn't notice. Auntie seems to be in a good mood recently..." Lu Lingqi seemed to be more "familiar" with Diao Chan, and then seemed to remember something and continued: "By the way! General Zhang seems to have visited my godfather several times recently, and once I saw that my aunt didn't have a good face towards him... Ahem, maybe my aunt is not feeling well." Lu Lingqi said halfway when she remembered that Bai Tu's "secretary" was still there.
"General Zhang" naturally refers to Zhang Yang...
After all, Zhang Yang was Zhang Chunhua's uncle, so Lu Lingqi couldn't say anything . However, everyone knew that Zhang Yang was Lu Bu's "relative".
After Zhang Chunhua heard that the matter of the Privy Councilor might be related to her uncle, there was no sign of abnormality on her face, and she didn't even stop writing. However, she felt some doubts and... a bad premonition!
