The winter of the sixth year of Wanli is worth remembering, and two major events occurred inside and outside the Forbidden City in this winter.

First, the nominal supreme ruler of the empire, the Wanli Emperor, drove the Jinyi Guard in the Forbidden City to hunt down the eunuchs who accepted bribes, and personally opened the edict to try the case, which began with a corruption case involving a total of ten taels, and finally at the end of the winter, Xu Jue, who was in charge of the Nanzhen Fusi, lived up to the emperor's expectations, handled 473 cases, harvested more than 10,000 taels of stolen silver, and the palace stolen treasures were not recovered.

In the imperial court at that time, most of the young emperors were regarded as playing for themselves, and most of the corrupt eunuchs were sent to Nanjing to become a pure army, except for a few who were really guilty of the most heinous crimes and had no one to protect them.

The emperor allowed them to be organized into the Dongyang Jing Military Camp after two years of training, and to follow the Beiyang Eighth Banner Army to go to sea at the same time to make meritorious contributions.

But in fact, this great trial in the palace had a great impact on the young Wanli Emperor's eyes on the world.

The second incident took place outside the Forbidden City.

The cabinet in charge of the center of the empire submitted an official document called "Six Matters of Solidifying the Country" to the celebrant for approval, and then officially issued it to the Ministry of Industry.

This official document determined the focus of the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Industry in the next three years in the conscription and garrison of troops and the launch of conscription, and Zhang Juzheng drew two lines on the vast territory of the empire.

The northern line crossed Jiuliancheng and North Korea, and began to go all the way east along the coast from Shuangchengwei, the hometown of Nurkan Dusi, and more than ten guards such as Muyang Hewei and Lost Liwei were restarted, with a total length of more than 2,000 li.

The southern route starts from Yao'an Mansion in Yunnan, passes through the mountains and dense forests, follows the march route of the Battle of Ping-Burma in previous years, passes through more than ten ancient battlefields, and extends all the way to the ancient city of Baigu, where Chen Mu, the right guard of Myanmar, once fought.

These are two telegraph routes, the north and south lines are under the actual control of the Ming Dynasty, and in the future, troops will be added to build fortifications to protect the line, and the power tentacles of the empire will also extend with the wire to every corner of the way.

The ultimate goal of the imperial court was to extend the northern line to Wangxia Prefecture and the southern line to the port of Goa, and establish the cabinet's timely feedback, assistance, control and control over the military government of the East and West.

Along with these two most important events, there are also the construction of ditches, the reclamation of farmland, and the resumption of occupied military land and farmland in the early years after the use of clear acres of land.

The most important thing is to set up a government-run money and grain department under the Department of Household Officials in Liangjing and 13 provinces, which is dedicated to exchanging the taxable silver for the people to pay taxes according to the average price of grain production in each province every year.

The main purpose of this organization is to take care of the situation that the peasant households in the northwest are difficult to pay taxes after the implementation of a whip law, and at the same time use the exchanged grain to prepare the reserve warehouse, so as to prevent the grain from hurting the peasants and the grain from hurting the people.

It was also in this particularly cold winter that in Nanjing, Yangzhou, Guangzhou, and Tianjin, some young and middle-aged people who had received many educations stepped onto the streets.

The fireworks on the banks of the Qinhuai River are still the same, but this year's idle and panicked rich and noble sons have new interests.

The painting boat was staggered, but people's eyes were focused on the shore, and someone held a wine glass and chuckled: "I heard that a ship from the Nanyang Army came over today." ”

"Hey! Your news is outdated, there was a letter at the mouth of the Yangtze River two days ago, the ship of the Beiyang Army has been parked there for several days, it is a real Liujia battleship, 32 guns on both sides of the ship are lined up, and the flag army on the ship is standing upright on the side of the ship, motionless, waiting for the graduation of the craftsman. ”

Two years ago, many professional schools sprung up in various parts of the Ming Dynasty, a large part of which had finished their courses this winter, and the craftsmen and students had graduated, and they had become the talk of many prosperous commercial cities, from pawns and peddlers to government magnates, and the upper and lower classes of the Ming Dynasty had never paid such a consistent attention to the same thing.

The so-called craftsmanship refers to a series of folk schools founded by an enlightened person who has a long-term vision or has a wide range of family titles and martial arts halls and the tail of the academy to strengthen the family's reputation after Zhang Juzheng ordered the closure of the academies.

However, craftsmanship is inclusive of all things, not only teaching craftsman skills, such as dancers, servants, storytellers, fortune tellers, teaching agriculture, and weaving, including all walks of life and allocating everything.

The rich and noble scholars on the painting boat talked about each other, during which they toasted each other, and the sons of merchants talked about the business at home, and most of them had plans to hire craftsmen and students in their hearts - for example, they became interested in the craftsmen from the painting boat of the Qinhuai River.

The most famous on the Qinhuai River is the craftsman called the Mandarin Duck Academy, which graduated a large number of outstanding practitioners this year, which attracted their attention the most.

Some people even think that craftsmanship is only a place to teach these things, so some people ask: "What does it have to do with the graduation of craftsmanship, and they even sent a military ship to come, could it be that the military ship is too lonely?" ”

This caused everyone at the table to laugh.

Only between the portholes of the two painting boats, the middle-aged man in the blue robe with the buttressed window followed the direction of the sound with a worried face, lifted the wine jug by the window and poured it down, then turned his head and said, "Did you all hear it?" This generation is extremely ignorant, and you have a great future, so don't take it to heart. ”

His name is Fang Xuechuan, and this name means a lot of things, for example, he is a native of Tongcheng and studied under the right capital of Nanjing, Yu Shi Geng, but his appearance at this time has nothing to do with these identities.

If you follow the normal trajectory of life, a scholar like him should become an official, and then when his career reaches a certain level, he will return to the countryside to lecture and help students, and become a famous squire.

However, during his study tour, he learned Spanish at the Wutang in Guangzhou, and his later life trajectory deviated from the path that orthodox scholars should follow.

By coincidence, he translated the "Complete Book of Mining and Metallurgy", and although he did not know much about this technology, he still became the winner of the Wanli Five-Year Science and Technology Award.

After that, he was invited by Li Shizhen to stay at the Beiyang Research Institute for a while, and then went to Zunhua to teach miners to identify ore veins, and returned to Nanfang to stay in Nanjing to teach knowledge to the miners and mountain masters of the three craftsmen.

He called the battleship that stopped at the mouth of the Yangtze River in Beiyang, and at this time he was drinking with seven craftsmen and students. As an excellent lecturer of craftsmanship, Fang Xue gradually paid out of his own pocket to take his students who had never seen the world to the painting boat to drink flower wine.

"I have been telling you to learn Spanish well, because I didn't understand many things about mining and metallurgy when translating the "Complete Book of Mining and Metallurgy", until I went to Beiyang Zunhua Iron Works to see the practicality, then I knew which was better and which was inferior, if it was you who translated the book at that time, maybe this book would be better than now."

"The blast and blast furnace of the Westerners are not worth mentioning, and the craftsmanship of smelting gold, silver, copper and iron is not even as good as that of ancient times. However, there are also merits in the details, such as the identification of ores, which record the color, softness and hardness, wealth and poverty of various ores, which is really refreshing to my generation. ”

"In addition, there is also its separation of gold and silver amalgamation method, strong water method, for my Heavenly Dynasty unheard of, you wait for me to be recommended into the Beiyang Military Government, in the future may contact more Western books, must be compiled as soon as possible to compile the book of the universe, by that time the country has a real "Mining and Metallurgical Book", you can also live up to my lifelong learning!"

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