My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 310: When the other party is about to develop it, we will start selling it

As Bu Zhi took over the negotiations, he kept saying "this is just my personal opinion" in his words and deeds, which made Xin Pi very uncomfortable.

Many clauses that betrayed Yuan Tan's interests had to be agreed to one by one.

Once this gap is opened, the subsequent flow of people will continue unstoppable.

Xin Pi had thought about refusing, but after refusing, he would find that Zhuge Jin had many other legitimate reasons to delay the negotiations and delay reinforcements - on the surface, it seemed that it had nothing to do with Xin Pi's rejection of Bu Zhi, and that he refused for other reasons.

But as long as Xin Pi changes his mind and agrees to Bu Zhi's request, those "other reasons" will soon no longer be a problem due to various mysterious forces.

After testing him twice, Xin Pi knew Bu Zhi's power, so he had no choice but to surrender.

During this time, Xin Pi had only one request: he still hoped that Zhuge Jin would let him go to Jiangxia Wuchang as soon as possible to meet Liu Bei in person, and it would be best if Bu Zhi could accompany him. In this way, he could negotiate while traveling, and maybe he could go faster in the end.

Xin Pi knew very well that if he continued to exploit people at all levels like this, things would become troublesome.

Fortunately, Zhuge Jin was not a greedy person and agreed to this very readily. He also said that this was a serious matter and he should go to Wuchang to report to his lord, and it would be a good opportunity for him to accompany Xin Pi to Wuchang.

Xin Pi smiled bitterly in his heart: With someone as powerful and pampered as Zhuge Jin joining us, the team will definitely not be able to move fast, and can only travel a hundred miles a day at most.

He couldn't force Zhuge Jin to ride a horse in disgrace, could he? He would have to take a boat on the Yangtze River the whole way.

Unlike him, who could travel 200 miles a day without any problem when traveling alone, but he had to bow his head when he was under someone else's roof.

……

It took the group three days to get back to Moling from Qiantang, and then they changed to a large ship on the Yangtze River and went upstream. It was estimated that it would take ten days to reach Wuchang.

Along the way, Bu Zhi also roughly agreed on most of the aid conditions with Xin Pi.

On the one hand, Xin Pi agreed to persuade Yuan Tan to cede actual control of more than one county of land.

At least the two counties in Langya County, as well as Buqi County (Qingdao) and Dongmu (Yantai and Weihai) in Donglai County should be handed over first to ensure that all the good ports in Shandong Peninsula are under the jurisdiction of Liu Bei's army.

As for the rest of Donglai County, Xin Pi could not make the decision directly. He said that he would try his best to persuade Yuan Tan after returning, and then he also hoped that after seeing Liu Bei's sincerity in reinforcement, he would deliver them in batches.

He also told Bu Zhi the truth. Yuan Tan was not in such a critical situation at the moment. It would be too difficult for him to cede the entire county. The follow-up would definitely depend on the progress of the war. The more Cao Cao pushed Yuan Tan, the more Yuan Shao was unwilling to pass the throne to Yuan Tan directly, and the more Yuan Tan would have to rely on Liu Bei.

Xin Pi had said so much and was frank enough, so Bu Zhi would not push too hard.

What Liu Bei's army should provide to Yuan Tan was basically agreed upon along the way.

Zhuge Jin's idea was still very clear, which was to only provide military assistance, but would not promise that Liu Bei's army would immediately go to war with Cao Cao.

At present, in the first batch, Bu Zhi promised to give Yuan Tan one thousand sets of finished steel-filled lamellar armor, three thousand steel-filled horse-slashing swords, and a batch of long spears made of steel-filled to increase Yuan Tan's armaments. Zhuge Jin would definitely not provide the production method and technology of the steel-filled method.

If only the finished product is given, there will be no technical leakage. After all, one less piece will be used, and the other party will not be able to tell how it is produced from the finished product.

Zhuge Jin had a very thorough understanding of the principles of technology diffusion. He knew very well that mechanical structures were the easiest to diffuse, and as long as the other party saw the finished product, they could reverse engineer it.

The formula type is more difficult to spread than the mechanical structure type. When the other party sees the final product, they don’t know how to produce it, but at least it will remind the other party that this thing is feasible and someone has already made it. If combined with a large number of experiments and some speculation, the formula type may also be reverse-engineered, but it may take several years.

The most difficult to spread and the most confidential are the "process" technologies, that is, the final products are already seen by people before, there is nothing new, but the production process has mysteries, which can improve quality, reduce costs, and shorten manufacturing time. And these clues may not be seen even after ten or eight years just by looking at the finished products.

In the fierce battlefield competition environment at the end of the Han Dynasty, Zhuge Jin felt that the normal speed of technology diffusion was that "mechanical structure" should be kept secret for two years after its debut, the formula could be kept secret for more than five years, and the process could be kept secret for ten years.

Of course, Yuan Tan is now an ally. After Yuan Shao's death in the future, the situation will deteriorate further and he may even become Liu Bei's vassal. Therefore, the confidentiality of Yuan Tan's technology can be relaxed a little, and some technologies that have already shown a trend of spreading or can reduce Yuan Tan's armament costs can be gradually released to the other party.

For example, Zhuge Jin already knew that Zhou Yu had figured out how to imitate the Ge Gongche that was very similar to the original, and had also learned the main tactics to restrain the Ge Gongche. He had passed it on to Cao Cao before the Battle of Guandu, and Cao Cao had also used it.

Now, only Yuan Shao's camp has not completely understood these technologies. Since the enemy knows them but the friendly forces don't, there is no need to keep them secret. This time, Zhuge Jin directly handed over the method of making the Ge Gongche, the preliminary improvement of the catapult, and the rope-tethered crossbow plus the pulley system to break the Ge Gongche's city defense equipment to the Xinpi delegation, so that Yuan Tan's ability in this area would at least be the same as Cao Cao's. In this way, he would not suffer any loss in the subsequent defense of the city.

This approach is somewhat similar to the "technical coordination" of the Americans in later generations. As early as the 1950s, the Americans had the "CoCom", or Paris Coordinating Committee, to coordinate "which technological products can be exported to the enemy camp and which cannot."

Under technical coordination, in order to prevent the spread of technology, not all high-tech products are prohibited from being sold, but we must consider investigating the enemy's scientific research progress.

When the enemy is about to make a breakthrough through independent research and development, suddenly relaxing controls and allowing sales of previously scarce and expensive products can sometimes undermine the enemy's confidence in independent research and make it impossible for their independent research to pay for itself. After this happens several times, it can actually train the enemy to "buy rather than make", interrupting the feedback of its scientific research system.

It is like the era when the Chinese could not build tunnel boring machines, but Germany's Herrenknecht could sell you one for hundreds of millions of US dollars. When the Chinese were about to build it, it directly reduced the price to tens of millions, which was an order of magnitude lower, just to undermine their own research and development.

Yuan Tan is in the same situation now. Since even Cao Cao already has a certain technology, Zhuge Jin directly gives it to Yuan Tan and cultivates Yuan Tan's dependence on it.

In the future, Yuan Tan will have less and less motivation to conduct self-research. Once he can't bear it anymore, he will only think of asking Uncle Liu for help directly, and he will be close to becoming a complete puppet.

Just like Japan and South Korea in the 20th century, they gave up independent military scientific research and ended up serving as dogs for their American father/grandfather.

Zhuge Jin's coordination of Yuan Tan's technology does not only include the idea of "giving ready-made products if they are about to be successfully developed." Zhuge Jin can also give Yuan Tan some small gadgets that Yuan Tan would never think of developing on his own, but which would not improve Yuan Tan's combat effectiveness and would only reduce Yuan Tan's armament costs.

For example, this time, Zhuge Jin brought a "big gift package" and wanted to give Yuan Tan the primitive hand-cranked wood lathe for turning wooden sticks/bamboo poles that had just been developed by his own camp, to help Yuan Tan mass-produce gun and arrow shafts at low cost.

In this way, some transportation capacity can be saved for subsequent military aid to Yuan Tan. When mass-producing steel-filled halberds, only the steel blade part needs to be transported to Shandong, and Yuan Tan can make the gun barrel himself.

But after thinking it over again and again, Zhuge Jin felt that directly giving a lathe for turning wooden sticks would require a bit too much technical improvement, so he finally gave a cut-down version, which is a thing similar to the pencil sharpener used by elementary school students in later generations to sharpen pencils.

The only difference is that its size is many times larger than that of a pencil sharpener, and the inclination angle of the blade is also adjustable, so it can be used to sharpen tapered bamboo and wood tips as well as parallel rods.

After watching the actual demonstration given to him by Bu Zhi, Xin Pi was also shocked. He did not expect that the process of carving gun and arrow shafts could be simplified to such an extent that one could just twist the wood a few times and it would be done.

With such a large number of ready-made steel-filled military aid weapons, plus the original Ge Gongche manufacturing technology and city defense restraint technology, as well as the technology of chariots, guns, and arrows, Xin Pi felt that he could at least give an explanation to Yuan Tan.

The first batch of so many things was exchanged for Yuan Tan giving up some of the management rights of the territory and making Yuan Tan promise to expand the scale of the trade of war horses to the south in the future. Otherwise, Yuan Tan would have lost more if he could not withstand the offensive of Cao's army.

It does not seem so unacceptable that Liu Bei is unwilling to attack Cao Cao directly this year.

Moreover, Bu Zhi also hinted that these aids would be accompanied by several craftsmen, who would teach them and provide follow-up technical support. For example, if Yuan Tan wanted to learn how to restrain Ge Gongche from attacking the city, he would learn the various applications of "pulley blocks/labor-saving pulleys" when making the corresponding equipment.

If Yuan Tan's subordinates had some patience and learned from the experience, and had thoroughly understood the "pulley principle", they could have made various fine-tuning and improvements in other handicraft fields, thus achieving a slight improvement in the efficiency of the handicraft industry under Yuan Tan's rule.

The improvement of these basic physical cognitions will help society in all aspects and in a subtle and effective way.

……

It took more than ten days along the way to negotiate all the details such as military aid, ceding administrative rights, and expanding the war horse trade. Xin Pi and others also successfully arrived in Jiangxia County and landed at Wuchang Port.

Zhuge Jin had already sent a patrol boat to inform in advance. When Liu Bei heard that Ziyu was coming in person with Yuan Tan's envoy, he attached great importance to it and naturally went to the dock to greet them. Liu Bei was giving face to Zhuge Jin, not to Xin Pi, as Xin Pi was not worthy of it given his current status.

Liu Bei also learned from Zhuge Jin's notification in advance that he did not need to play the villain this time, nor did he need to personally threaten and pressure Yuan Tan's envoy to make conditions, so Liu Bei naturally seemed very relaxed and could continue to play his role of great benevolence and righteousness.

The gentleman talked about righteousness rather than profit throughout the whole process, and Bu Zhi had already served as a mouthpiece for those villains.

As soon as the two sides met, Liu Bei came up and took Zhuge Jin's hand and patted him a few times: "Zi Yu! It's a rare trip back to Wuchang. I remember that when Huang Zu was defeated, you returned to the east. This time it's a good opportunity to reunite with your brother and stay for a few more days.

This must be Mr. George, I have also heard Yuan Shixiong mention him before."

Xin Pi had been completely docile after being tossed around all the way, and he quickly came up and simply bowed: "Greetings to the General of Chariots and Cavalry!"

(End of this chapter)