After the Tatars withdrew westward, the Tang Empire quickly accepted the large grasslands left behind by the Tatars, and built cities and fortresses in some important strategic areas, and established new state capitals.

For example, after Daning, Kaiping, and Quanping in the pre-Ming Dynasty were also recovered, the empire set up Kaiping Mansion here and built Kaiping City. After recovering the Taepyeong area, Taepyeong Mansion was established and Taepyeong Castle was built.

In the Hetao and Fengzhou area, it is to the west, to the north to continue to extend, built a large number of fortresses, the northernmost fort, has been built more than 400 kilometers away from the city of Fengzhou, and in the northwest of the Hetao, is to build the strategic city of Montenegro City, continue to build the fortress in the northwest direction, but also extend out for hundreds of kilometers.

The cavalry activity range of the Tang Army is actually larger, and there are even small-scale cavalry units that have run to the vicinity of Shuangquanhai.

Since the Tatars left, except for some uncivilized indigenous tribes further north, in fact, the entire steppe, from the Hetao to Lake Belga, there were actually no large-scale nomadic tribes, thus forming a power vacuum.

This kind of vacuum, if the Tang Empire does not fill it in time, will prosper for many decades, and a new Tatar will appear in this grassland, and this situation is naturally not allowed by the Tang Empire.

Although it is unlikely that the Tang Empire will repair the city all the way now, and then actually control and develop all the huge grasslands, the cavalry of the Tang Empire has been active in the vast grasslands to fight against any other tribes that intervene in this area.

This kind of behavior of resettlement and development in the vast grassland area and maintaining military deterrence is very difficult for the traditional increase of dynasties, and the consumption of national strength is very large, but for the Tang Empire, this pressure is not too great.

Because the traditional feudal dynasty, the actual control of the Hetao area and more grassland areas is basically limited to military control, at most it is to migrate some of the people to reclaim, but most of the materials consumed still need to be transported from the rear, and the cost of this transportation is very high.

However, for the current Tang Empire, because of the large number of heavy four-wheeled carriages used in flat terrain, especially in the grassland area, not only the transportation volume is large, but also the cost will be lower.

Not to mention, preparations are still underway for the construction of the Hetao Railway, and after the railway is opened, the cost of transporting materials will be surprisingly low.

Railways are the key to the empire's future control of the vast grasslands, not just relying on immigrants or garrisons.

The three main railway lines, plus the Hetao Railway and the Northeast Railway, two relatively large branch lines, the above five railway lines are the railway lines that the Tang Empire is currently planning and building.

In addition to these five railway lines, although there are many others, even dozens of railway lines, but most of them are short and medium-distance railways, but also dozens of kilometers of short-distance railways, these railways, either belong to the mining area railway, or belong to the intercity railway, and the main purpose of building these short-distance railways is to make money and make profits, so the construction of these short-distance railways, in addition to the mining area railway, most of them are more economically developed areas, such as the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta region.

This situation is naturally not possible, and the railway network of the empire needs to cover the whole country, which is also the main starting point of Liu Bagou's proposal to build the southern railway trunk line.

In order to facilitate the transportation of people and goods from the north and south, and to enable the imperial army to reach the southern provinces from Jinling City in a short time, especially the economic center of Guangdong, it became necessary to continue to build the railway line to the south.

Considering that many southern provinces are hilly and mountainous terrain, and it is difficult to build railways in most areas, in the selection of railway lines, Datang Railway Corporation has proposed a plan for the extension of the Jiangnan Railway.

Because of Poyang Lake and the Yangtze River, the terminal station of the Jiangnan Railway in Jiujiang is not actually set up in Jiujiang City, but at the mouth of Jiujiang Prefecture located on the east bank of Poyang Lake and the intersection of the Yangtze River.

Therefore, the starting point of the Jiangnan Railway Extension Line is not the focus of the Jiangnan Railway: Jiujiang Jiangkou Station, but a new Jiujiang Dehua Station will be set up in Jiujiang City, and the connection between the two stations is to prepare to use special steam ferries to transport passengers and goods.

Starting from Jiujiang, passing through Lechang, Nanchang, Linjiang and then entering Yuanzhou Mansion, why do you have to come here, because there is a Pingxiang coal mine here, and there is a section of mining railway here for tens of kilometers.

The railway line then entered Hunan, then turned south, and then went south into Zhaoqing, Guangdong, passing through Zhaoqing, one of the three major capitals of the Tang Empire and the provincial capital of Guangdong Province, and then went to Guangzhou, connecting with the local railway network in Guangzhou, connecting Shunde, Huizhou and other places, continuing south, and finally arriving at the Hong Kong Naval Base.

This entire railway line is called the Southern Railway.

Of course, Liu Bagou's plan is not only such a railway line, but also a railway line from Jiujiang to the west to Wuchang, Hubei, in addition to a railway line from Kaifeng to Wuchang, a railway line from Wuchang to Changsha, and so on.

Li Xuan looked at the planning plan of this railway network, so he basically knew that they were actually just holding a pen, and then directly drawing lines in major cities, and then making such a national railway network.

However, this is also a reality, after all, the railway network is just to facilitate transportation links around the country, and naturally it has to pass through some important cities.

Liu Bagou took the lead and made a break, and the others were not to be left behind, and soon some people proposed a plan to dredge the country's rivers, and some people proposed a plan to expand the official roads.

Some of the main roads of the existing official roads will be widened and the roads will be leveled, and the construction of standard official roads will be carried out in some places where there are no standard official roads.

Although most of the plans were nonsense, Li Xuan was still very relieved, at least they knew how to do it.

As for whether it is done correctly or not, this is not important, anyway, the real road planning and construction is impossible for these important ministers to make a decision with just two strokes, and it is necessary to let the technical personnel and other professionals in the Datang Railway Corporation carry out on-site survey and planning.

Li Xuan and many ministers are just making a statement, and it is still many middle and lower-level officials and many technical personnel who are really doing things.

In order to further expand public opinion and form a nationwide transportation construction, the Department of the Tang Dynasty Rite Department officially reported a series of reports on the transportation construction in the latest issue of the newspaper.

This is to convey a message to the people of the whole country, that is, the empire is ready to carry out large-scale transportation construction throughout the country, and the local yamen must actively carry out transportation construction, and many enterprises are also seizing the opportunity, making relevant preparations, and seizing the opportunity, then it will break out overnight, and if you can't seize the opportunity, you will go bankrupt!

Just like the last water conservancy construction, the empire also carried out public opinion propaganda on a national scale, and the resulting water conservancy facilities were not only fully constructed, but also led to the majestic development of steel, cement and many other industries.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, in the past few years, under the favorable influence of the construction of water conservancy facilities and the development of domestic industry and commerce, the development of the cement industry cannot be described as rapid, but should be described as explosive.

In the eighteenth year of Xuanping, there were already more than 150 cement enterprises in the country, but by the nineteenth year of Xuanping, the number of cement enterprises in the country had reached more than 400, and by the twenty years of Xuanping, there were more than 700 cement enterprises nationwide.

The branch is located in every state capital across the country, and basically every state capital will have a cement factory.

Of course, most of these cement companies are small cement factories of small scale, and there are not many large cement factories, because the technical content of the cement industry is not large, even if it is only a few thousand yuan of capital, it can also build a cement factory, and after the construction is basically not worried.

Water conservancy facilities in various places have lasted for many years, and in addition to the construction of water conservancy facilities, cement is now gradually being used in other construction industries, especially because a large number of cement factories have been built, and under the competition with each other, the production cost and selling price of cement have fallen sharply.

Today's cement has become an ordinary building material, even if ordinary people build houses, they can buy cement and then use it for the construction of houses, instead of being a high-end building material like a few years ago, ordinary people can't afford it.

In the past few years, the water conservancy construction has directly led to the explosive development of the cement industry, and the current proposed transportation construction will also have this effect, and even drive the effect of industrial development will be even greater.

Transportation construction is not just about building a few railways, cleaning up a few rivers, and building a few official roads, which will bring about a series of reactions.

To build a railway, it requires a lot of building materials such as cement, steel, wood, and stone.

The train itself requires a lot of steam engines, locomotives, carriages, etc.

The same is true for shipping, which requires a large number of steamships.

The construction of official roads will also require more carriages.

These needs will be directly reflected in industrial development.

This is still directly driven, and more importantly, the transportation cost will be cheaper, which will greatly promote the prosperity of domestic industry and commerce.

With better transportation, raw materials that could not be shipped out in the past can be shipped out, and the transportation cost is lower, which means that the cost of obtaining raw materials for enterprises is also lower, and the transportation cost of their goods is also lower.

The reduction of the cost of goods will also reduce the selling price, and then it can be consumed by more people, which will lead to larger-scale industrial production and form a virtuous circle!

Therefore, transportation construction is not only to build so many roads, but also to make the domestic industrial and commercial development more dynamic!

If you want to get rich, you must first build roads, this sentence is not just a false slogan used for propaganda, but it really has such an effect.