As the saying goes, the horses are dead when you look at the mountain. Although Jishishan Longyi Pass is only fifty miles away from the main lake of Qinghai Lake, it is only twenty miles away from the pure white salt lake sub-lakes beside Qinghai Lake.

It took Li Su and his party a full half a day to walk the twenty-mile downhill section. When they arrived next to the salt lake, it was already dark and they could only camp on the spot and could not see anything.

However, Li Su did not rest early. On the way down the mountain, he slept in a caravan for a while. After dark, he started to become a night owl, asked the maid to light enough candles, and then wrote at his desk to write the draft reform of the "Rent and Institutional Transfer Method" he had prepared into a memorial, and he would send it back to Liu Bei tomorrow and hand it over to other ministers in the court for discussion.

Because he really felt that he was inspired these days, and the bill he had figured out was very useful for scheduling national resources in remote areas, and could greatly curb the arbitrary nature of exploitation of the people, so as to avoid the consequences of Qin Shihuang and Emperor Yang of Sui after too much farming and construction in the future.

Moreover, this matter is very urgent, because maybe it will be helpful to the logistics planning of the battle of Ma Chao and Zhang Fei chasing the Hetao Hulu that may happen in a few months. On the grassland, thousands of miles of land transport grain raids have always been a logistical disaster.

When Emperor Wu of Han recovered Hetao, the logistics almost forced the world to be in a state of great force. If the officials were not restrained and the opportunity to report the troubled accounts, Emperor Wu of Han could also become the fate of Emperor Qin Shihuang and Emperor Yang of Sui at any time.

On the other hand, Li Su's memorial is also a driving force for the reform and shipbuilding industry in Jiaozhou that will be ushered in the second half of the year:

For example, if the "rental and transfer" reform is implemented, the official guide price of sea freight can be set, and sea ship transportation can be allowed to give a standard price to deduct taxes and labor according to the unit weight of the unit, the incentive effect is simply unimaginable. The direct policy step to the level of encouragement of "grain transportation to sea" in the Qing Dynasty, maybe from then on, Jiaozhou materials will be shipped to the court for shipping.

Of course, this is just a step-by-step policy dividend tendency, and does not mean that objective shipbuilding technology is in place.

Liu Miao and Zhou Ying saw Li Subingzhu at their desk until midnight, and felt a little distressed. Liu Miao came over two or three times to persuade him to rest: "What are you anxious? You can write something when you think of something, so why bother to hurry? If you write it urgently, you are not afraid of making mistakes."

Li Su patted her slender hands and comforted her warmly: "I will rest for you tomorrow and don't rush to travel, so I'm not afraid of being tired, so I will finish the memorial at night. This is not a final draft. After sending it to Chang'an, Gongda Yuan Changzichu must discuss some days first. Maybe we will wait until we go back before finally making the final decision."

Liu Miao didn't say much, and added candles to his simple sleeves to write with him, and he would not stop in the middle of the night.

...

The next morning, Li Su woke up from the girls' exclamations.

"This... this salt lake is indeed as my husband said on the way down the mountain yesterday. When he approached, he looked like a mirror in the sky!"

Zhou Ying didn't want to disturb Li Su too early, so she just got up first, then cleaned up, and waited for Li Su to wake up naturally before serving him to wash up. Unfortunately, no woman could withstand the shock of the sky, so she exclaimed one after another, woke up one by one, and then ran to the salt lake excitedly.

This salt lake is not the "Chaka Salt Lake" of later generations, but there are several salt lakes like Qinghai in the late Han Dynasty, and the scenery quality is similar. They are all part of Qinghai Lake. Later, as the water level of the main lake dropped, some of the edge lake areas were stranded and isolated from the main lake area. They were exposed to the sun and almost dried up, so much saturated salt was precipitated, and the scenery was magnificent and magical.

After all, Liu Miao is a cultivator, and her shoes are light, comfortable and not gorgeous, and they are not worth much. Seeing that the lake water on the shore is relatively shallow and the slope is very low, she couldn't help but take off her shoes and socks and walk into the lake barefoot.

Seeing Liu Miao take the lead, Zhou Ying and other girls couldn't help but walk down the lake. The transparent and white water reflected the clouds in the sky and the mountains surrounding Qinghai Lake in the distance.

Moreover, the weather on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in summer is also very good. The sky is very blue and the clouds are not large. It just looks like a long white ribbon, reflecting the sky. The wind is also relatively weak. Except for the occasional rippling waves, the water surface is completely still at the rest, which is really like a mirror.

"It's so beautiful... There is such a state of heaven and man in the world, and this is the state of cultivation of immortals." Liu Miao didn't care about getting wet her clothes, and suddenly knelt in the lake water weakly, holding her hands in the water, staring at the water surface in a daze.

Zhou Ying and other women also came forward to pick up the white salt deposited at the bottom of the lake, held it up and raised it up, then piously raised it to the height of the eyebrows in front of him, and then scattered it one after another.

Li Su woke up a little while in the girls' surprise, and then asked Zhou Ying to serve him and wash up.

Then Li Su asked the guards to set up several half-circle curtains with a diameter of five meters in diving on the shore, covering their backs and opening to the side of the lake. After finishing, the guards scattered far away, at least a hundred meters away from them and were not allowed to spy on them.

Li Su took Liu Miaozhou Ying and his maid to occupy one of the curtains and held a large umbrella that looked like a cover in the shallow water. Then Li Su asked the maids to dig salt under the umbrella and form a small hill in the lake water. Then he laid his upper body on the pile of salt and his lower body soaked in the salt lake, just like on the beach by the sea.

These days, Li Su had no chance to take a bath in the hardships of the plateau. He had heavy moisture on his body and his athlete's foot had all attacks. It was rare that one day the sun was good, soaking salt water to dry and killing sterilization. The altitude was not more than 3,000 meters. The air was refreshing and there was no altitude reaction. Not to mention that he was so refreshed.

Of course, before enjoying and taking a bath to the end, Li Su did not delay the serious business. That morning, a small team of soldiers served as messengers and set off to send his memorial to Liu Bei back.

After soaking for a while, after seeing Li Su's enjoyment, Liu Miaozhou Ying couldn't help it anymore, so she also soaked it with her, without any worries about dehydration and turning into cured meat. In the end, Li Su couldn't bear it anymore and reminded them to pay attention to controlling the time. After soaking, they should rinse it with fresh water, and they should not soak it in other parts of their feet for too long.

In another curtain beside him, there were officials such as Zhuge Liang and Dian Wei who were bathing in the sun. After all, Li Su could not let them peek at his female relatives.

Zhuge Liang had never seen the sea in his life, but today he enjoyed the sunbathing of white sand beaches formed by white salt. He also deeply felt the vastness of the universe, the magnificence of the world, and the stunning scenery of the world beyond imagination.

...

The group took a few days off on the shore of Qinghai Salt Lake, so they soaked in the white salt beach to sunbathe, and inspected the progress of the corvee-serving people urging Wang Ping's troops to build a salt field.

A few days later, it was already mid-May, and Li Su was tired of playing. He also inspected the lakeside hill with the best view. He also ordered Wang Ping's corvee team to help him build a resort villa in that place, and Li Su would give him money.

Then, Li Su and his party set off again, abandoned their carriage and rode north, crossed the Qilian Mountains from Dadoubagu, entered the source of the weak water, and then went downstream to Zhangye and Jiuquan.

After more than a month of trip to the Western Regions, I finally walked outside Yumen Pass. I also took Zhuge Liang to see the customs and customs of the Western Regions, met Hu Ji, and also met the blond and white man with a high nose and deep nose.

At Yumen Pass, Li Su personally found Ma Tie (Ma Chao's younger brother), the newly appointed Jiuquan County Governor, this year. Ma Tie also treated Li Su and his party very thoughtfully.

Ma Teng was persuaded by Liu Bei to take a idle position in Beijing, but as a transition, Liu Bei allowed Ma Teng to leave another son in charge of Jiuquan, symbolically leaving a prefect for the Ma family in the northwest, which was also for the local stability transition.

During the inspection of Ma Tie's work, Li Su paid special attention to asking, "Since the promotion of caravans and allowed them to be sold to Hu merchants in the Western Regions last fall, and the organization of cotton planting here this year, has the business travelers from the Western Regions recovered?"

Ma Tie gave a pretty positive answer, saying that he had been focusing on recruiting merchants from the Western Regions since the end of spring this year. Any Hu merchant who was willing to resume business in the Han Dynasty would be treated with certain kindness, so there were many merchants coming.

Not only were the Cheshi, Gaochang, Kucha, Shanshan, Jingjue, Shache and Shule, who were originally under the jurisdiction of the Western Regions Protectorate, resumed trade.

There are also Wusun, Kushan, and Rest merchants who are neighboring countries.

Among them, the Wusun people and the Kushan people, Ma Tie, and some of the Han people outside Yumen Pass also understood their language. It is said that the Anshen people had not come for many years, and Ma Tie had never heard of them, but the folk still found the translation and finally they could recognize their country.

Unfortunately, Li Su was not very interested in the Kushans and the Sakuras. After all, these two countries are equal to the Naduo Stan and Iran-Iraq respectively, and later generations are not very civilized and well-developed countries.

Li Su originally expected to completely pacify the Xiliang and Qiang rebellions and restore trade with greater interests after checking, but after checking, he found that it was all small fish and shrimps. He couldn't help but ask Ma Tie:

"Are there no one from the Roman country from the extreme west of the business trip? Oh, the pronunciation may be Rome, or the ones called the Qin Dynasty by the ancients were all white and curly. These business trips came here, and they should have bought silk.

By the way, how is the Shu brocade, which was prepared in advance to restore trade in the Western Regions, now sells? Are there any market conditions in various parts of the Western Regions that our own merchants are asking for information?"

Unfortunately, Ma Tie really wanted to help Li Su get things done, but there was no result and he couldn't force it. After repeated investigations, Ma Tie could only tell the truth:

"I have never heard of any business travelers from Rom or Daqin from the west... The price of Shujin from various countries to the west has also been investigated. Just say that at this Ruoshui Wharf in Jiuquan County, one horse is now 8,500 yuan, and the number of land transported to Yumen Pass is 9,000 yuan, plus the tax on getting out of the customs is 10,000 yuan.

The seven states of the Western Regions have a price of 12,000 to 14,000 yuan per piece. The Wusun has a price of 15,000 yuan, and the Kushan country has a price of more than 20,000 yuan. I heard that it has not increased much, but the goods are getting smaller and smaller, and no one will sell them specially."

Li Su was a little unwilling to accept it, but seeing the data given by Ma Tie was quite convincing, he could only accept this result after investigating it himself.

He also basically believed in his heart that the academic views of the "Silk Road" formed by later German archaeologist Richthofen were most likely to be wrong.

During the Han Dynasty, there was no real trade route to Rome directly from the East Asian Games silk.

Some people only use silk as general equivalents, and randomly trade in medium and short distances to West Flowers as money. Therefore, no one specially transported 10,000 or 20,000 miles to Rome. Occasionally spread to Rome is also an accident, which is the same as the spread of Western gold coins to the East.

Although the Romans occasionally wore precious silk, many of them were counterfeit goods such as Damascus brocade and Persian taffeta. (Damascus brocade accounted for 85% of the silk unearthed from Eastern Rome during the Tang Dynasty, Postaffeta accounted for 14%, and less than five thousand of the silk produced in the Tang Dynasty.)

Li Su also wanted to help Ma Tie come up with some ideas to optimize investment promotion, but unfortunately he could not violate the natural law of extremely high long-distance transportation costs by land, so he could only give up the idea of ​​letting the Romans buy silk with a lot of money.

It seems that I was wrong. To really open up the real Silk Road, I still have to rely on the navigation industry. Land transportation can only do business with Central Asian countries.

Of course, the markets of Central Asian countries are also valuable, so whether they can go to Rome or not, Li Su will encourage Ma Tie and other local officials to continue to promote caravans and optimize local trade and transportation.

...

After all the inspections, it was already early July, but because the weather was still very hot, it was not suitable for long-distance travel, Li Su and his party repaired for a few more days, and they only started returning in mid-July, returned to Lanzhou County in early August, and returned to Chang'an in late August.

Li Su once thought that the battle between Ma Chao and Zhang Fei and Hu Chuquan attacked the Hetao Zhuhu had been completed, or at least it had been a long time since the battle started, but he did not expect that he still misjudged the progress of time, and Ma Chao had not started yet.

It seems that because of the weather this year, the ripening season of autumn harvest near Yinchuan County came relatively late, and the Human Kings such as Bugendu and Hetao originally wanted to take advantage of the autumn harvest to rob and fight back against Ma Chao and regain the lost land. If the autumn harvest is late, it will naturally be too late to fight back.

In this case, after Li Su returned to Chang'an, he had time to discuss the pilot program of the renting and mediocre transfer method with Liu Bei, Xun You, Zhong Yao and Liu Ba, and apply it in time to this year's Guanzhong and Hedong tax and corvee collection work, and actually experience how obvious this new system is to save the efficiency of the army's logistics reform.

On August 26, the day after Li Su returned to Chang'an, Liu Bei summoned four major confidant civil servants who knew about financial scheduling in Weiyang Palace, and finally decided on Li Su's proposal.

Of course, Li Su is very confident in the policy strategy he has summarized in the past six months based on the actual situation in remote areas, and does not feel that it will be difficult to pass.

So, on the day of the discussion, he entered the palace to pay tribute. Outside the palace gate, he happened to meet Zhong Yao, and Zhong Yao said helplessly to Li Su:

"Boya, you have made another big move that hurts the bones. If this method is implemented, although it can be settled, it is a time of chaos that will cause the lesser court to collect a lot of benefits from the people.

Moreover, regardless of whether we implement it or not, the strategy we discussed has spread throughout the court. After all, the king cannot carry out reforms privately on his Majesty's back and without saying a word. Regardless of whether we use the new law or not, the princes of Kanto sneered at him after hearing about the direction of the king's reform.

Yuan Shao definitely won’t use his territory. His territory is fertile land on the Hebei plain, with dense population and land, and easy transportation. In Yuan Shao’s view, it is irrelevant to let the people transport more grain and transport more distances, which can be vaguely treated."

Li Su thanked Zhong Yao for his reminder: "Whether Yuan Shao is involved in our business? The king's territory is large or sparsely populated, or the mountains are high and steep, so such reforms are needed. Yuan Shao can't stop us from reforming."

Today I will update, my pot needs compression and adjustment, and fast forward a lot of plots. After all, farming lacks conflict.

In addition, it is not that Zhuge Zhi is rude, but that I need to speed up the plot and lead to this reform, which leads to difficulty in arranging mild conflicts.

I also thought about letting the protagonist think about everything directly and omnisciently, but this does not conform to the character design. The protagonist only understands historical experience or diplomacy in game theory. There are no answers to copy in history, and there are professional and inappropriate things, so the protagonist can only not understand them.

But I understand.

So this is a writer on the sixth level. He wanted to write a protagonist on the fifth level. He was inspired to think of reform strategies on the sixth level. But because the progress was too rough, he made a mistake... If you don't like the previous ones, just ignore them and skip them.
Chapter completed!