This legal document from the former Qing Dynasty is a very clear hint to Macartney -

After his audience with the Chinese Emperor, the Chinese would probably not discuss the issue of trade, but would discuss the issue of opium with him.

Staunton picked up another paperwork, frowned, and sat down beside Macartney.

It was a beautifully printed booklet, with a diagram of the poppy plant printed on smooth paper, followed by a long line in English, summarizing the medicinal effects and clinical reactions of the plant and its berry extracts in a rude, straightforward style.

“...... Opium can cause nerve paralysis, shortness of breath and bradycardia, and create a strong dependence. So, what is the Chinese court trying to tell us?"

Macartney looked meaningfully at Staunton and replied, "Tell us that the Emperor of China considers part of the East India Company's trade to be illegitimate. Certain goods from India cannot enter this country. And I, as the special envoy of His Majesty the Plenipotentiary on behalf of the King, must give the Emperor of China a satisfactory answer in this regard. ”

"This is a misconception. Staunton shook his head and said, "It makes no sense to talk about the toxicity of a drug regardless of the dose. Of all the known plant extracts, there is no better panacea in the world than opium. Chinese people should not classify it as a toxic substance because of the harm it causes after taking an overdose. What would the Chinese court think if London decided that tea was also a toxic and addictive drug and banned the purchase of Chinese tea?"

"But all British people can't do without tea, my friend, even the inferior English teas that have been dyed with patina and ferric sulphate and smell of sheep dung. Macartney replied with a condescending pity for the English inferior: "And then there are the Jews, who collect the tea residues that have been brewed, stir and dry them in Prussian blue, and then mix them with the leaves of hawthorn, blackthorn, and elderberry, and they become the imported Wuyi tea that the inferior people enjoy." This shows that it is difficult for us to escape the magic of this plant, and the East India Company will not agree to stop the tea trade with China, which is a reality we have to face today. ”

At this point, Macartney took the pamphlet in Staunton's hand and said with emotion: "The Chinese have proved that they are still ahead of Europe in many technologies, and that the temperament of this country is more exaggerated than that of Catherine's Russia. Like a bear that wakes up from hibernation, tough and hungry, it's not necessarily a good thing to associate with such a country......"

......

.........

In Tianjin, more than 2,400 kilometers away from Guangzhou, the members of the Red Bronze Crown who remained behind in the Senior Administration Yuan simply threw aside the contact of the Macartney Mission.

As for the arrival of the British mission, the things to be talked about are the few things to be discussed, such as trade, tariffs, the protection of overseas Chinese in South and Southeast Asia, and the opium trade that the East India Company gradually proliferated.

These questions are important, but they are not something that can be solved overnight. Compared with them, there are several other things that the Senior Administration Yuan has to deal with at the moment that are more troublesome -

"This thing is fresh!" Flipping through the files confiscated today, someone slapped the table and almost scolded: "The book jointly signed by Hangzhou Mansion and Pinghu County in Zhejiang Province said that there were three women in the Pinghu Lu clan who wanted to respond to the Daohai Zongyuan's Taoism, and the Lu clan always sank all the people in the name of 'insulting the family style and insulting the lintel'!"

He slapped the table here and scolded, and someone on the side had already come over curiously, took the notebook and flipped it over: "Pinghu Lu's family, which Pinghu Lu family?"

At that moment, someone who presided over the money to help the general affairs came out and explained: "The Pinghu Lu family is a Zhejiang clan in the former Qing Dynasty, and the ancestor is the family of the physicist Lu Longqi who was ordered by Qianlong to accompany the Confucian Temple, and has always been known as the righteous family. If it weren't for this kind of poetry heirloom, who would dare to lynch himself under pressure?"

"Now the Taoist officials of Daohai Zongyuan have taken the people who are in charge of several houses of the Lu family, even the old and the young, to Hangzhou to accuse them of 'lynching and murder'. You say, 'What should we do about this?'

"What else can be done, killing people to pay off debts and paying money, who gave the order, who moved the hand, find out the whereabouts together. If we don't do it, we will alarm the one who sits in Guangzhou, and he will send a few more Taoist officials to Pinghu to fight the local tyrants and divide the fields, and then move some people from the two lakes and Guangzhou, and then move some people from the two lakes and two Guangzhous to mix sand, at least Pinghu County will not be in our hands!"

Speaking of this, several civil officials were all headaches: "Daohai Zongyuan's trick of 'vacating the cage for birds' is really a tight game, how much of the old religion and Protestantism in Gansu and Shaanxi were destroyed by him at the moment of quelling the chaos? I have to say that Daohai Zongyuan's order of 'punishing its monarch and destroying its culture and education' is not without references. The black Yi of Liangshan and the toast of the river have been knocked out a lot. ”

"What's the use of feeling emotional? The Lu family's case, handle it quickly, handle it quickly, these righteous families, whether it is the Haining Chen family, the Pinghu Lu family, or the Pujiang Zheng family, staying here is a scourge. I heard that in the Jiaxing and Xiaoshan generations, these righteous families all set up what kind of Zhenqing Society, specifically managed the local widows from remarrying, and forced people to die? Anyone involved in these cases will be dispersed and sent out, and Anxi, Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai, Dayuan, Qiongya, the three eastern provinces and North Korea will all lack manpower -- the country and the dynasty will not be able to make a fool of themselves, and they will spend all their efforts to advocate what kind of village sages and righteous men!"

After discussing this case, another volume of documents was sent straight to everyone's desks: "Heilongjiang has discovered the movement of the undead tide trying to go south!"

"What do the Daohai Sect Origin Sect people stationed over there say? Monitoring the tide of the undead and arranging a defensive magic array is originally the responsibility of the Daohai Sect Origin! Whether it is to overkill these undead creatures, purify them, or drive them to the side of Tsarist Russia, in short, they cannot be allowed to continue to linger in the three eastern provinces!"

"It's still the same over there, I don't see a rabbit and don't scatter an eagle, and I don't have enough materials for the spell sacrifice to arrange the five directions of the fire array, so I can only protect the immigration development point, and I want to defend the entire tundra, please allocate funds as soon as possible. Otherwise, please increase our efforts to explore and excavate the 'lightless hidden treasure' in Zhili Province!"

"What's the? The mutated creatures that have no light have been growing in geometric numbers, and some weak goblins, slimes, and the like have begun to multiply in the surrounding states and counties. Daohai Zongyuan's straw cloth was banned, and as a result, others were in Zhu Mingshan's house, saying that they wanted to monitor the spread of mutated organisms in the direction of the South China Sea, and if they were idle, they would do their best to engage in some pilot education, scientific research and improvement, and other pastemakers' things!"

"It can't be said that in the future, whether it is a violent soldier or a climbing technology tree, how can there be enough cannon fodder and technicians to cultivate enough qualified spellcasters, and only through the popularization of education and the expansion of the base in the academy can we have more high-quality human resources? ”

Speaking of which, Murong Ge ...... No, what about Murong Parrot's team leader?"

"Juyong Pass has discovered a new mutant creature over there, and it just so happens that he is over there to accept the actual combat effect of Daohai Zongyuan's new weapon, so people will go over first!"

......

.........

The collapse of the Great Tomb of Nasalik did not make the situation in the northern part of East Asia any better, on the contrary, with the Wei Wildfire refining Zhenwen and Dingyuan Heaven and Earth, Zhili Province, as the location of the Lightless Hidden Treasure, became the first place to bear the brunt of this space-time disaster.

Although Wei Ye suppressed the possibility of all kinds of monsters that had been born from the Void Hidden Treasure with the Shenyue Suppression Method, all kinds of supernatural creatures were mutating out of the large number of lands infected by the laws of the Otherworld.

Weak monsters like goblins and slimes are better to say, and they can easily be wiped out before they can multiply. However, with the fusion of the remaining laws of different worlds, in addition to this kind of alien species that are not adapted to water and soil, more local spirits have appeared with abnormal changes.

In the records of Daohai Sect Origin and Red Copper Crown, there are several mutated creatures that have been captured:

The iron incense burner of Yunju Temple in Fangshan felt that it had become a spirit, and turned into an iron ox from the pack furnace at night, attacking the village.

In Baoding, there is an old house spirit similar to the British house-elves, who often break pots and bowls, making the city unpeaceful.

At the boundary of Cangzhou, it is suspected that there is a green lang and red lady who collects the essence of men and women in a dream - this kind of ghost should have been a legend in Guangzhou, but somehow, it spread to Cangzhou!

No wonder someone pretends not to know everything, the cat runs a school and conducts the imperial examination in Guangzhou, but leaves this bunch of public security problems to the red copper crown to deal with!

Although one by one is not a big deal, it is really annoying to have dozens of pieces every day.

The casters cultivated by the red copper crown have only graduated a few hundred so far. The so-called graduation counts as long as you can use three spells. As for the Daohai Sect Yuanmen's Taoist officials, since the prestige envoy, there are only more than 1,000 people so far. Among them, like Song Ning in the Xisha Coast Guard, less than half of them have cultivated the art of imperial qi service. Most people have only reached the point where their true qi is released and they sense their spiritual power, although they are stronger than the good hands of ordinary martial arts, but when it comes to Taoism, they are only first-class in writing talismans and spelling water, impeaching demons and ghosts, and they can give the six armor arrows within ten zhang, which is a bit reluctant.

Such a team of spellcasters is quite effective in maintaining law and order, but a large number of monsters have mutated, and this manpower can only be exhausted.

As for the development of "Huanxu Hidden Mansion, Hidden without Light", it is even more nonsense, although everyone knows that it has become a base for a large number of supernatural mineral deposits, but there must be no piles of all kinds of monsters in it, so that we can talk about development!

The left-behind personnel of the Senior Administration Yuan were full of complaints, and as the leader of the red bronze crown team, Murong Yu was not much relaxed at the moment.

The black and shiny double-barreled spear and the dark round head scattered bullets, such a ratio faintly carries a cold beauty.

This is the new equipment jointly developed by Daohai Zongyuan and the red copper crown, the "Flowing Fire Rifle No. 2", which is still made according to the principle of flintlock pistol. However, in order to enhance the large-area lethality, the stray rifle uses a double-barreled shotgun mode, which has a much lower range compared to the flintlock rifle.

In front of these musketeers led by Murong Parrot, there were large groups of skeletons, slowly retreating towards them.

They couldn't help but not retreat, these skeletons who broke into Juyong Pass from the Inner Mongolia grassland had just encountered Murong Parrot's team, and they immediately experienced a rain of scattered bullets. The lead bullets fired by the stray rifle turned into patches of red flames and turned into a rain of sparks, and in the blink of an eye, the forward troops of this group of skeletons were wiped out!

Now in front of Murong Parrot, there are several corpses that have long been torn apart by the skeleton and cannot see their faces clearly.

The only thing that is intact is a volume of documents tightly held in the arms of the leader, and when I unfold it, I see that the glyphs on it are all strange characters gathered together by radicals.

It's not a Korean proverb used for phonetics, it's not katakana and hiragana, but looking at the glyphs on it, it looks like ......

"Khitan?"

Through the translation of the adventurer's terminal, Murong Parrot groaned: "Where did the Khitan language come from in this time and space?"

But he still read it slowly, and saw that this document was an edict:

"The Mandate of Heaven is great, and it cannot be returned, and the artifact is the most public, and it is not heard of to outwit. The conclusion of ancient and modern times, the number of years is difficult to change, and it is a saint who abstains from theft. Therefore, Ye Luchun, the king of the Qin and Jin Dynasties, was promoted to the honor of his uncle within the nine clans, and among the hundred officials, there was no important minister. Tend not to worship, the text is not named, taste the seal book, don't issue gold coupons, the day is long, I really respect, all are republican, and there is no disappointment. Because of the chaos, he wantonly spied on it! The outer disciples have the etiquette of Zhou Gong, and the inner ones have the evil of the Minoru Zi. Regardless of the righteousness, he wanted to repay his original intention, appointed villains, sought danger and great treasures, pretended to be emperors, privately awarded heavenly officials, reprimanded public opinion, forged talisman treasures, lightly issued texts, and wantonly pardoned and changed the yuan. With the slaughter merchant Jia as the minister of Yi Dai, he was responsible for clearing the secrets with flattery and sniping. Within a few months, he went to the step of the prison to be indiscriminate, the discipline was disordered, the soldiers were indulged, and the state city was plundered, causing my Yan people to fall into misery. Heaven repents, God does not help the adulterer, the eyes are stealing, before the hundred days, the body is destroyed, the heir is overthrown, the people and ghosts are gone, and the world is ridiculed...... According to Yeluchun, he was very unreasonable, betrayed his righteousness, and was betrayed by his ancestors, and I did not dare to forgive him. should be awarded the title of official title, and his wife Xiao was also reduced to a concubine, and his surname was still changed to Yu. According to the emperor's uncle and concubine, it doesn't matter, let alone implement it, and everything is still the same. Looking up at the will of heaven, bowing to public opinion, and reluctantly doing it, I can't bear it. And Zhong Ni is the Spring and Autumn Period, the chaotic ministers and thieves are afraid, and those who are the courtiers after are not careful!"

In front of Murong Parrot, the adventurer's terminal had already sounded, "Emperor Liao Tianzuo heard that Yelu Chun of Xuanzong of Northern Liao had died, and asked Empress Xiao Pu for his edict. ”