Datang: Rebirth of Li Chengqian, the beginning of the treason interrogation

Chapter 90 Two Kinds of Divine Objects
The spring breeze blew, and the river surface sparkled and ripples spread out. The breeze brushed across Li Chengqian's handsome face, blowing his hair and dispelling the last trace of coldness, and spring returned to the earth.

"Your Highness, can this iron lump really go into the water?"

Yan Lide asked doubtfully. As a shipbuilder, he had been dealing with ships all his life, but this was his first attempt at building an iron ship.

Yan Lide was born into a family of craftsmen. His father, Yan Pi, was responsible for important projects such as building the Great Wall and digging the Grand Canal during the Sui Dynasty.

Today, Yan Lide has inherited the family tradition and has become an outstanding craftsman, serving as the chief craftsman of the Ministry of Works. He has superb skills, and the warship he is responsible for guiding the construction of this time is also his masterpiece.

"Yes, do you remember the principle I told you?"

Li Chengqian asked back.

"Remember, the weight is equal to the displacement. As long as the space designed for the boat is larger than the displacement, it will float."

Yan Lide repeated that he had certainly studied it thoroughly, but whether he could verify it successfully depended on whether the iron ship could float.

However, in his subjective consciousness, he still felt that this was impossible. Iron tools were too heavy and would sink once placed in water.

The three months' effort wasted, and what's even more regrettable is that the fine iron will be lost in the sea.

As soon as he arrived in Laizhou, Li Chengqian asked his soldiers to collect iron tools to build warships.

"That's all right, you will see a miracle."

Li Chengqian's eyes were focused on the beach, where more than a thousand people were dragging a huge iron ship towards the lake.

The huge and ferocious beast was also slowly moving forward.

Wow! Wow!
The lake water was surging, splashing waves.

Suddenly, huge waves appeared on the water surface, and the entire iron ship was suddenly plunging into the river.

Unlike what they imagined, the iron ship shook slightly and then stood steadily on the lake.

The soldiers cheered and witnessed the miracle of this moment.

"Incredible! Iron can really float on the water."

Yan Lide murmured foolishly, and this first iron ship was built by him, so he will definitely go down in history.

"There's nothing incredible!" Li Chengqian patted Yan Lide on the shoulder.

This man is truly skilled, restoring the huge battleship in his mind into reality.

"The navy is invincible!"

Liu Rengui was inspired and thought that if this warship rammed into it, it would be a dimensionality reduction attack.

"I don't use him to fight."

Li Chengqian shook his head. Building such an iron ship would consume almost all the ironware in Laizhou. Judging from the current smelting technology, it does not support the large-scale production of iron ships.

"Not for war?"

Several people were shocked. Could it be that this was done just for show?

"Its mission is extremely sacred. General Liu, you must select the best sailors from the navy. I want to form a traveling iron army."

Li Chengqian looked into the distance, as if there was something at the end of the earth that could attract him.

"Yes!" Liu Rengui took note of it.

"Here are some paper drawings. Give them to those 1,000 soldiers to identify."

After Li Chengqian finished speaking, Lin Zhi walked out and handed a stack of drawings to Liu Rengui.

"what is this?"

Liu Rengui flipped through a few drawings, which seemed to be drawings of a certain crop. "The one in the front is a picture of sweet potatoes, and the one in the back is a picture of potatoes."

Li Chengqian glanced at it and explained patiently.

"Sweet potatoes, potatoes?"

Liu Rengui, Yan Lide and others looked at it carefully and shook their heads, saying they had no impression of it.

Neither crop was native to the country, so of course they had no memory of it.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes were introduced to China during the Ming Dynasty, which is directly related to the Maritime Silk Road opened by the Ming Dynasty.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes are both crops from the Americas. They have to be transported many times before they can enter the country, especially sweet potatoes, which are hard to come by.

Sweet potatoes were not imported into China normally; to be more precise, they were stolen.

Because sweet potatoes have a high yield and are sweet, they were once strictly prohibited from export by the Spanish.

Chen Zhenlong, a merchant from the Ming Dynasty, risked his life and spent a huge amount of money to buy a piece of rattan, hid it in the boat, wet it with water, and finally arrived in Fuzhou after several days of sailing.

Chen Zhenlong made great contributions to the population growth of the Chinese nation and the explosive growth of the population in the Qing Dynasty. He also made great contributions to the inheritance of the entire Chinese civilization.

In order to commemorate his achievements, later generations built the Xianshu Pavilion.

Potatoes are different. They were traded during the Ming Dynasty, but they did not become popular. Instead, they became a court dish and were hidden by the royal family. Their maximum production efficiency was not reflected.

Compared with them, the yield of wheat and rice is like a grandson meeting his grandfather, there is a generation difference.

Before the Qing Dynasty, it was difficult for China to have a population of over 100 million because it could not produce enough food.

As long as we find sweet potatoes and potatoes, many social conflicts will be easily solved.

Li Chengqian had already made plans for potatoes and sweet potatoes. These two crops were brought from South America to all parts of the world during the Spanish colonization.

What Li Chengqian is doing now is to open up the Maritime Silk Road, open up the road to South America, and introduce potatoes and sweet potatoes, two kinds of heaven-defying things.

"These two are sacred objects. Tell the soldiers who are traveling that if they can bring these two objects back to the Tang Dynasty alive, I will petition His Majesty to confer hereditary titles on each of them, and pass them down to future generations."

Li Chengqian made a solemn promise.

This made Liu Rengui very excited. No matter how hard you work, you will not have a chance to become a hereditary marquis. Only if there is another Xuanwu Gate coup will you have a chance to obtain the hereditary title.

"This map, could it be..."

Liu Rengui flipped the page again and saw a map with the route marked.

"You're right. Outside of the Tang Dynasty, there are still many places we haven't explored yet, both east and west."

Li Chengqian nodded. When he was in junior high school, the geography teacher used a ruler to force every student to close their books and draw a world map.

Otherwise he would not have described it in such detail, because this one map condensed all the geographical knowledge he had learned.

Monsoon climate, rainfall, mountainous terrain, the world's most famous geographical features, etc.

In the past, it was just for coping with exams, but now they have all been transformed into practical weapons.

"I never thought that the outside world is still so vast. It is far from being conquered by one generation."

Liu Rengui looked at the Tang character area on the map and fell into deep thought.

No wonder the territory of the Tang Dynasty was so vast. It turns out that these ancestors were thinking about these things in their minds.

If you disagree, you have to sing - conquer.

(End of this chapter)