In fact, Zhang Shou didn't see Song Juren at all. To find someone he knows among these dense nearly a thousand people, unless he fully knows the location of the other party, such as Lu Sanlang and the third prince who were sitting next to him before, it is simply wishful thinking.

This is also because the whole staff of the Guozijian is not gathered here today, except for the Frank Hall, the rest of the halls are on holiday, otherwise they will all be gathered together, plus the lifting of people, I am afraid that there will be no three or five thousand people. Considering that no matter how many people there were, a stampede would occur if they were not careful, so the rest of the five supervisors would give way.

But for the compensation for these prisoners who did not hear the lecture this time, it was even simpler—Zhou Xijiu conveyed the emperor's promise to let the four mountain chiefs and Dr. Zhang give a few more lectures to each hall. For the emperor, this is a matter of lip service.

The four mountain chiefs could only feel that it was a great honor...... Except that Zhang Shouhui felt that this was really a big chore. Because you can't always say the same thing every time, it's too much trouble!

No matter what he thinks in his heart, standing in this high-profile position at this moment, Zhang Shou has mixed feelings, but he can't talk about being too stunned. After all, he was not really born in the countryside at the age of seventeen, and he was used to seeing big scenes at this time, so after glancing around at everyone, he smiled kindly.

Not to mention that Song Juren thought that Zhang Shou was smiling at himself, many people mistakenly thought that this Dr. Guozi was looking at him and smiling at him.

Only a very small number of people such as Yue Shanchang, Xiao Shanchang, and Xu Shanchang knew that this kind of outsider felt that they were deliberately paying attention to their eyes and smiles, and that was necessary after a long period of practice to be able to reach such a level.

As for Hong Shanchang, everyone was sulking as soon as he got off the stage, and he didn't notice Zhang Shou's actions after he took the stage.

After greeting him, Zhang Shou said with a smile: "Just now the four mountain chiefs told you a lot, I didn't want to get an axe in front of my seniors, but since I came up, I can't just say hello and go down." As we all know, I am now presiding over the Jiuzhang Hall of the Guozijian, and I was going to tell you about the scriptures, but if those mysterious things are once preached, it is easy to extend too far. ”

"Since the reopening of the Jiuzhang Hall, some people have often asked, what is the use of arithmetic? To put it mildly, it is just to check the accounts and live within the means, and to put it mildly, it is just to unify the world's tax fields. But is that really all there is to it? ”

He paused, and his voice became sonorous: "In the era of the tribe of Ru Mao drinking blood, if you don't know the count, you can't count the prey that can fill people's stomachs for a few days, and they can't survive the long winter. In the era of barter, there seemed to be no coins that were now regarded as copper-smelling things, and everyone was self-sufficient, and the surplus was used for exchange, but people still needed to value goods in numbers. ”

After the hundred schools of thought contended, the Qin and Han dynasties were unified, whether it was the same track for cars, the same text for books, whether it was building bridges, building roads, building ships, or whether it was water control, building cities or measuring acres of land, or calendars, all of them were inseparable from arithmetic, and all of them were inseparable from that simple number. It is these simple numbers that solve many practical problems for man. ”

After saying these rules and regulations that sound very convincing, but are actually very boring, Zhang Shou changed his words and began to tell the story with a smile.

"In the early years of my dynasty, Taizu's ambition was not only to drive out the Meng Yuan and restore the world, but to the four seas, so he sent a large ship carrying envoys and merchants to sail to the west, hoping not only to draw a map of Shenzhou, but also to be able to reach the world and look at the universe."

"During the westward journey of the great ship, it arrived at countless large and small countries, some of which were only as big as a province as I am, some as large as a province of my dynasty, some of which were once vast and glorious for thousands of years, and some were once just wild lands, and then they were gradually civilized. Some of them are as religious as those Buddhists in my dynasty, and even the king respects the pope of the Papal States, and needs someone to crown him......"

Zhang Shou casually introduced the various countries in the west, and finally said: "Among the countries that the big ship passed by, there was once an ancient country called Egypt located in the far west, on the bank of a big river. This ancient kingdom prospered on the Nile, so that nine out of ten people lived on the banks of the Nile, farming the fertile land after the river flooded and receded. ”

has been with Zhu Ying for a long time, Taizu has heard a lot of secrets, and there is Zhang Kang, the uncle of Weinan, who is in charge of the Ordnance Bureau and keeps a lot of Taizu's old things, so when Zhang Shou talks about this, he is not afraid of other people's suspicions.

However, for these scholars who have the farthest footsteps below and have only stopped in Shenzhou, they did not expect Zhang Shou to suddenly describe ancient foreign countries, and they couldn't help but be surprised for a while.

Only a few well-read people who have indeed read or heard what Zhang Shou said come from, and at this time, they couldn't help but turn their heads and whisper.

And because of these well-read people, many people around quickly learned that this matter was not Zhang Shou's nonsense, but a real person. As for this record, it turned out to be a preface written by Taizu himself, a manuscript written by the envoy after returning to China - "A Brief Journey to the West".

Because of the information brought back by the envoys and merchants in the past, the ministers only felt that the whole world was the only one, and the rest of the small countries were just small lands, and they were not interested in understanding those disputes. Ordinary people are also not interested in small countries that are 108,000 miles away. But the students are different, and after four lengthy lectures, it is rare for someone to talk about something special, and many people are curious.

Lu Sanlang didn't expect Zhang Shou to suddenly talk about this. Think about it, Zhang Shoudu went to the Ordnance Bureau presided over by Zhang Kang, Bo of Weinan, and mentioned to him the ball instrument made by Emperor Taizu Mengtian, what are these foreign things?

When the third prince asked in a whisper, how did the teacher understand so much, he took advantage of the situation to praise Zhang Shou for reading a lot of books, but he was thinking in his heart that Zhang Shou helped Zhang Kang solve such a big problem, as long as Zhang Shou said a word, Zhang Kang would also take out the overseas information that was not available in "Journey to the West". It's not a secret!

And Chief Yue and Chief Xiao, who had just finished speaking, exchanged glances even more cautiously. The things that Taizu is good at writing are known to the world, and there are many works that have been used all over the world during his lifetime - but except for the most famous "Journey to the West", many other books are mostly absurd, and as for the number of times people have written prefaces to other ministers, it is even more innumerable. "Westward Journey" is even more unpopular!

It's just that even the most respectful of Taizu's readers, at most, they have read all of Taizu's works. Who would read all the books that Taizu himself wrote the preface? "Journey to the West" is such a remote book, Zhang Shou has also read it?

This is really to win the favor of the emperor who admires Taizu the most, and he has done a lot of homework!

Zhang Shou didn't know that others already thought that he was an unscrupulous guy who wanted to win the favor of the saint, of course, even if he knew, it didn't matter.

At this moment, he said with a smile: "That ancient country used to dominate the West about four or five thousand years ago, but when the envoys arrived, although they were still a big country in the region, the powerful people of the past had been reduced to the point of being ridden by the slave legions. ”

After smiling and popularizing the strange slave emperor system of the Mamluk Dynasty in Egypt at that time and the generations of slave emperors, and the most important thing is where those slave emperors came from, Zhang Shou really saw an uproar below.

After all, in the Central Plains, although it is not without an emperor who was born in the army, a son of heaven from a poor background, but a dynasty can be crowned emperor by a foreign slave, and these emperors cannot form a stable hereditary, they will be overthrown by the next slave officer with real power, and that slave officer will become the new emperor, what the hell is this?

And most importantly, what kind of people were the Mamluk legions in the so-called cradle of the emperor?

A group of descendants of the losers whose ancestors were exiled because of the defeat, just a group of slaves! Moreover, this group of slaves can trace back to their roots, and they can also be related to a certain grassland ethnic group that was dominant in the Sui and Tang dynasties for a while, and then almost extinct in the Central Plains.

Of course, the records in "Notes on Journey to the West" cannot be so detailed, and many of what Zhang Shou said at this time are the gains from reading foreign history in the past. However, he paid attention to the problem of the butterfly effect, so as to avoid selling the emperor of the dynasty who had not yet appeared in advance because he got lost for a while.

Although it doesn't matter if it is sold in advance, because it is tens of thousands of miles away and the language barrier is different, these readers can't tell who is who. What's more, which of those slave officers who could later become emperors was either strong before he came to power?

Therefore, after talking about this strange dynasty, Zhang Shou changed his words: "However, although the so-called Mamluk Dynasty is just a peculiar form of government controlled by a group of slave legions of foreign surnames, when the envoys arrived in Egypt, thousands of years in the heyday of Egypt, those rulers built towers as mausoleums, but still standing on the vast desert. ”

Among them, the envoy visited a tower that claimed to be the largest and tallest in Egypt. The towers of Egypt are not built with huge logs as beams and columns like the towers in our country, but are built with huge stones, without mortar joints, and according to legend, not a single hair can be inserted into the gaps. ”

And these towers are stacked into four cones, and the shape resembles gold characters, so Taizu called them pyramids in the preface. For those who don't understand the meaning of the four-sided cone, you can go back and look at the third volume of "Ge's Arithmetic New Edition". The tallest tower, nearly two hundred and fifty paces on each side, circled the tower, and every one thousand paces. Standing at the bottom of the tower and looking up, you can only see the sky covering the sun, majestic and majestic. ”

Speaking of this, Zhang Shou said with a smile: "When I quietly landed with the envoy and brought people to this pyramid, I met a slave officer of the Mamluk regiment. The slave-born officer, who had long forgotten his ancestors, saw that the envoy with the guide was dressed differently and behaved, so he arrogantly asked the envoy, "What country do you come from, and have you ever seen such a tower in your country?" ”

Such a question immediately aroused the curiosity of many people present, and the most important thing is that even if you have really read an extremely unpopular book like "A Little Story of the Journey to the West", you have never seen this paragraph, only Lu Sanlang vaguely remembers that Zhang Kang told him this story. It's just that he didn't know about Zhang Shou's paragraph about the strange history of the Mamluk Dynasty.

At this moment, I don't know who suddenly shouted and asked, "Then dare to ask Dr. Zhang, how did I answer the envoy?" ”

"I said to the envoy calmly that he came from China, a country to the east that was larger and more prosperous than Egypt, and because he was in the middle of the world, he was so nicknamed by the neighboring nations that he was the Celestial Empire. After he finished speaking, he also said that although this tower is high, but during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties in China, there was a book, called "Luoyang Jialanji", which recorded a higher tower than this nine hundred years ago in our country. ”

Speaking of this, Zhang Shouxin read out the original text of the paragraph about the height of the tower of Yongning Temple in "Luoyang Jialan", and then continued calmly: "Many of you here should have read "Luoyang Jialan", although the description of the height of the nine-story building plus the golden temple is really exaggerated, but with reference to the description of the Yongning Temple tower in other books, there are forty or fifty zhang. ”

"After all, two mountain chiefs who are good at building it just now mentioned that this tower is towering into the sky and is extraordinarily magnificent."

And as soon as Zhang Shou relayed this, many people only felt that the envoy really had the style of a great country, and they were naturally full of praise for a while. However, when Zhang Shou said the next confrontation, they couldn't sit still.

"Although it was my envoy who was well-informed and well-memorized, and dealt with it appropriately, the officer was arrogant and arrogant, and did not believe it at all, and even accused the envoy of being nonsense, there is no taller tower than their pyramid, and then it was even more unreasonable and difficult, you said that you have a tower that is 100 zhang high, then this tower of our country goes straight into the sky, do you know how high it is?"

Although he often sold Guanzi just now, Zhang Shou said without pause at this time: "The envoy once saw those slave officers in the port, at this time the situation is stronger than people, although the big ships in the port are strong and strong, but in other countries, outnumbered, in case the other party turns face, then there will be a loss of national body, the envoy immediately decided, to outwit the victory, wits but not strength." ”

So he looked up at the sky, and said with great certainty that it would be easy to determine how high the tower was. For in China, the king he revered had solved a similar problem when he was young. In the middle of the wilderness stood a tower in disrepair, and a rich man was curious about its height, so he put up a bounty, and his king unveiled the list. ”

The answer is simple, just measure the shadow length of the tower at the time of day when the height of the person and the length of the shadow are equal, then you can know the height of the tower. And the same is true for measuring this pyramid. ”

When the slave officer heard such an answer, he was still not convinced, and proposed to compete with the envoy in swordsmanship, but the result was another great defeat, and at last he had to send people back to the port to board the ship himself. However, when the envoy boarded the bow of the ship to set sail, he had the guide disembark and convey a message to the slave officer. ”

He told the man that measuring the pyramids with shadows was not a way he admired the wisdom of the king, but a method that had been mentioned by an ancient man in Egypt's neighboring country. The king he honored knew about Egypt, and he had said that Egypt, which had been powerful four thousand years ago, could have built such a tower, and now the tower is still there, but Egypt is left with only a military force. And China, which also has a history of 5,000 years, even if the Yongning Temple Tower is no longer there, even if the wind is always blown away by the rain, it is still a strong country in the world! ”

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