My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 731: Han Version of "Revitalizing Liaodong"

As Si Tu, Zhuge Jin certainly did not have enough energy to continue to personally supervise work in areas such as marine shipbuilding technology, geographical exploration, and species exchange.

In the autumn of the 14th year of Jian'an, he only issued a general order and clarified the requirements.
Then the job was handed over to local officials in Xu and Yang states, as well as professionals in related fields, to take care of it.

Chen Deng, who was in charge of the internal affairs of Xuzhou, and Gu Yong, who had just been transferred to Yangzhou as the governor, did not dare to neglect the instructions of the prime minister. When they encountered relevant projects that required money, materials, and manpower, they all fully cooperated and dispatched.

The two states of Xu and Yang had enjoyed peace for a long time under Liu Bei's rule, and their economies had also developed very well, so the burden brought by this matter was actually not heavy.

As for more specific work, Zhuge Jin specifically asked Chen Qun to coordinate and take charge of the overall work.

Chen Qun had served as the governor of several large counties in Guangling, Donghai and other places in the past few years. When Liu Bei first gained a foothold in Guangling, he initially appointed Chen Deng as the governor of Guangling. Later, as the territory gradually expanded, Chen Deng took charge of the internal affairs of Xuzhou, and the position of the governor of Guangling became vacant, so Chen Qun took over.

Chen Qun's seniority in Liu Bei's camp was slightly less than that of Chen Deng, Mi Zhu, etc. Now that Chen Deng and Mi Zhu had both climbed to the state level, Chen Qun was only one step away.

This time, he will be the governor of a large county and also in charge of a large "special project". After he has made meritorious service, his lord Liu Bei will probably launch a northern expedition.

When the Northern Expedition conquers new areas, it will be necessary to send trusted confidants to serve as provincial governors, and Chen Qun will be able to take advantage of this wave of wealth.

Therefore, Chen Qun was very concerned about the important tasks assigned by Situ.

After receiving the task, I will do it seriously.

This kind of long-term work will not produce immediate results or positive feedback.

Chen Qun worked silently for more than half a year, until the summer of the 15th year of Jian'an, when he finally achieved some interim results, and then Si Tu personally took the time to inspect him.

……

One day in May of the fifteenth year of Jian'an, Zhuge Jin finally returned to Guangling County.

He returned to this warm land which he had not visited for ten years.

This time, he came to inspect the work.

As Zhuge Jin walked slowly down the dock from the big ship on the Yangtze River, waving a folding fan, he couldn't help feeling nostalgic.

When I first traveled through time, I started from Guangling County and helped Liu Bei's camp to change their fate.

It can be said that it was an important turning point in history. Zhuge Jin was appointed when the army was defeated and was ordered to save the Han Dynasty in the midst of danger. He saved the Han rule and reversed the abyss of the Five Barbarians' Invasion of China.

Revisiting the old place, I feel a little emotional.

Before Zhuge Jin arrived, Chen Qun had naturally already lined up at the dock with a group of local officials and technical managers to welcome him.

Before Zhuge Jin could stand firmly, Chen Qun stepped forward, gently supported Zhuge Jin's arm, and then naturally guided Zhuge Jin with gestures.

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Zhuge Jin signaled Chen Qun not to bother with the formalities and to get down to business first. After all, the shipyard was right next to the dock, so Zhuge Jin could inspect the work right from where he got off the ship.

Chen Qun no longer insisted and took Zhuge Jin to the shipyard next door. He led him to a spacious hall, took out some files, and spread them out on a wide long table.

Please ask Situ to review in paper the relevant achievements made by Guangling, Donghai and other counties in the past two years.

Zhuge Jin was not surprised by this arrangement. Laymen watch the excitement, while experts look at the doorway. If you want to review the development achievements of the maritime industry, you can't see the doorway just by looking at the big guys like new sea vessels.

Many key breakthroughs often exist in the details and in the summary of experience and rules.

For example, at this moment, after Zhuge Jin sat down, he noticed at a glance a small thing in front of him that was placed in the most conspicuous position by Chen Deng.

It was a thing with a polished transparent crystal cover, a dial and a magnetic needle underneath.

Zhuge Jin intuitively estimated that this thing should be a new and improved compass.

He was too lazy to guess, so he just asked directly.

After hearing this, Chen Qun also hurriedly said, "Situ has a good eye. This thing is exactly what our Guangling craftsmen just figured out and improved last year. It can measure the north-south angle more accurately than the original one.

The magnetic needle is not only wrapped with a smoother and lighter grease, which makes it more sensitive when floating, but also the column that supports the small hole in the middle of the magnetic needle is more flexible, and the grease is less likely to cause corrosion to the magnetic needle.

In short, with this thing, our ships can more accurately lock on to a direction when sailing at sea, and are less likely to deviate.

With the surveying and mapping of offshore charts by the fleet in the past two years, we are now able to sail thousands of miles without having to stick to the coast.”

Chen Qun first explained a bunch of general technical advantages of the new compass. He himself didn't really understand some of these things, but before Zhuge Jin came to inspect, he made a special effort to study them so that he could apply what he had learned during his report.

Zhuge Jin actually didn't care about the details that were relayed in a confusing way. He just grasped the general idea and quickly understood the benefits of this thing.

According to the navigation technology of the Eastern Han Dynasty, most voyages had to be carried out close to the coastline. If they were more than 100 miles away from the coastline, it would be easy to lose one's position.

Of course, under the butterfly effect of the Zhuge brothers, problems in this regard had already improved.

For example, Zhuge Jin asked Lu Yi to get Linyi rice a few years ago, which required sailing to Linyi. At that time, Lu Yi tried to sail directly from Zhuyazhou to the central part of Indochina Peninsula, so that he didn't have to go around the coast of Beibu Gulf in later generations.

By doing this, saving time and effort is secondary. The key is that it can bypass the territory that was still under the control of the Shi family of Jiaozhi County at that time, thus reducing many unnecessary accidents and troubles.

However, the Beibu Gulf is a bay after all, so no matter how it deviates, it will not be unable to return to the shore. It is just like during the Han Dynasty, when ships were allowed to sail freely in the Bohai Bay, and at most they could sail from Shandong to Liaodong.

But in the East China Sea, if you want to sail without docking, it is much more difficult. Because if you deviate too much and go to the Sea of Japan or the Pacific Ocean, you may die of starvation and thirst in the ocean.

For officers, merchants and crew members, there is first a layer of psychological pressure that must be overcome.

People are always afraid of unknown things. Even if Zhuge Jin could tell them clearly that they would find land if they drove northeast, the people below would still feel fear.

There is no way to rush this. We can only do it step by step, slowly accumulating experience and proving the reliability of new technologies and new operations.

More detailed nautical charts, ensuring that the distances and directions on the drawings are correct, plus better compasses and other surveying instruments, all together can make progress day by day and gradually improve comprehensive navigation technology.

After Zhuge Jin gave the task, Chen Qun spent more than half a year first improving the compass and then further surveying and optimizing the nautical chart.

At the end of last year, he took the lead in achieving a small breakthrough - letting the fleet sail directly from Donghai County to the northeast and northwest to verify whether it could go directly to Huangxian at the tip of the Donglai County Peninsula.

At that time, everyone in the expedition fleet was a little frightened, but Chen Qun analyzed the situation with them: the fleet did not need to carry any cargo, it was purely for the expedition to verify technology and experience, and the extra tonnage was used to carry water and food.

Therefore, even if they drift on the sea for three months, these crew members will not die of thirst or hunger. Even if they miss the Shandong Peninsula, the worst that can happen is that they can sail all the way to Liaodong or Lelang!

With the comfort of the Lord of the Prefecture and the reward set by Chen Qun, officials and sailors who participated in the verification of the new navigation technology were generously rewarded, and the plan was finally able to move forward.

Then, the crew relied on the new equipment and followed the new navigation operation instructions to accurately sail through the long seas and found the tip of the Shandong Peninsula.

Although there was no practical benefit in doing so, it proved the accuracy of the newly surveyed nautical chart and confirmed the relative positions of various places along the Yellow Sea coast. Then Chen Qun could gradually increase the difficulty and continue to offer rewards for people to try.

In the spring of this year, just before Zhuge Jin came to inspect, Chen Qun made another breakthrough. That is, his fleet was finally able to sail directly from the mouth of the Yangtze River to a specific direction in the open sea, and then actually reached Jeonra Island and even the Busan Basin.

In other words, this time the Han fleet sailed directly across the sea towards the tip of the Korean Peninsula without having to stay close to the shore.

This matter, in the eyes of many lay officials of Xu and Yang, was not a big deal.

However, Zhuge Jin felt quite relieved after listening to Chen Qun's report on the latest achievements.

As a modern man, he certainly understands the significance of this.

Historically, until the Tang Dynasty, Japanese envoys to the Tang Dynasty still sailed along the coast. Only the route from Kitakyushu via Tsushima Island to Busan had to cross the sea. After that, they sailed along the coast of the Korean Peninsula and the Yellow Sea.

Now Zhuge Jin has finally allowed the Han Dynasty to master the route from the east coast to the tip of the Korean Peninsula. On the one hand, it can expand trade and greatly reduce transportation costs and time - of course, these are still long-term benefits. At present, there is no real need to transport goods directly from Jiangnan to the Three Kingdoms of Korea.

On the other hand, and more importantly, with the direct cross-sea voyage, the pointed-bottom ocean-going vessels in the East China Sea can also conveniently participate in future voyages in the Sea of Japan.

As mentioned earlier, in the waters near China, since ancient times, the sea vessels used south of the Yangtze River estuary and north of the Yangtze River estuary have been different.

The Yellow Sea is shallow and silty, so flat-bottomed sand boats have been used since ancient times. They are not suitable for long-distance voyages, but can withstand undercurrents. Before the Eastern Han Dynasty, most large ships sailing on the sea were sand boats, because there was little demand for navigation in the south at that time.

In history, it took several hundred years for the south to develop gradually, and the ocean-going pointed-bottom ships such as the Fuchuan were gradually perfected and popularized. In this life, Zhuge Jin had previously asked Lu Yi and others to go to Linyi State to find double-season rice, and had also specially developed related ships.

Theoretically, these ships are not as suitable for the Yellow Sea as sand ships, but they are definitely more suitable for the Sea of Japan than sand ships.

Unfortunately, it was difficult for southern ships to reach the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula through the Yellow Sea, as pointed-bottom ships had poor seaworthiness in the middle sea area.

Now that there are direct flights, not only have we accumulated more experience and technology in long-distance sailing without staying close to the shore, but it has also made it much easier to coordinate between the large ocean ships in the south of the Yangtze River and the Korean Peninsula.

Chen Qun took this newly trained sailing team and coordinated it with the newly built and modified ships from Guangling County and Donghai County. Once the hardware and software were combined, they could immediately explore the distant coastline further northeast of the Han Dynasty.

……

Zhuge Jin spent a day inspecting and confirmed that Chen Qun had achieved these "software" results, and he was naturally quite pleased.

In the next few days, he will continue to inspect the progress of other supporting work, especially the technological advances in marine ship hardware.

And Chen Qun obviously did not disappoint Zhuge Jin in this regard.

The first few new ships, which were converted from the previous East China Sea keel large-scale ships, had just been completed in the summer of this year.

There is also a batch of completely new ships of the same model, which have already started construction and are now lying on the slipway. It is expected that they will be launched and put into use next year.

As mentioned earlier, due to the differences in sea conditions and geography between the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea, large sea vessels in the Yellow Sea are all flat-bottomed sand ships that cannot use keel structures, and the length-to-width ratio of the ships appears to be shorter and thicker.

The sea vessels used in the East China Sea all have keel structures, slender hulls, and significantly faster ocean-going speeds.

Now that these ships have been further modified and equipped with more wind- and wave-resistant stabilizing fins, and supplemented with other additional technical means to "improve seaworthiness stability and wave resistance at the expense of steering flexibility", they will be easily adapted to be used in the Sea of Japan in the future.

Especially with new navigation surveying technology and more accurate mapping and positioning, ships can sail straight and for longer distances without having to turn frequently, so sacrificing some turning flexibility does not matter.

Ships that originally sail close to the shore will need to turn more frequently. Turning flexibility has always been more important for offshore ships and less important for ocean-going ships.

These improvements can be regarded as using good steel on the blade. Many designs are not technically difficult. They are just a matter of making trade-offs to stack limited performance in the direction where it is most needed.

This is like playing a naval shipbuilding game. According to the rules set in the game, when the total amount of technical strength is certain, the indicators such as "load/speed/flexibility/wind resistance/wave resistance" are in a relationship of increase and decrease. If one of them is raised, the other will decrease.

In order to build a better ship that is more adaptable to the new environment in the absence of obvious technological breakthroughs, it is necessary to make careful calculations and choices.

A considerable part of the considerations for this research and development work supervised by Chen Qun was to follow the core indicators required by Zhuge Jin, appropriately sacrifice the rest, and just light up the technology tree as soon as possible.

This is the only way to come up with a usable version in such a short time and carry out real geographical exploration.

Zhuge Jin inspected and confirmed the condition of the ship. He also picked a day with good weather and went out to sea to experience the seaworthiness of the new ship. He was very satisfied with Chen Qun's work.
Then he officially ordered Lu Yi to lead the expedition fleet composed of new ships, first sailing directly from Guangling County to the Three Kingdoms of Korea, passing through Jeonra Island to the Busan Basin. After resting and acclimatizing, they would explore to the northeast, focusing on investigating the local customs and habits of the coastal areas, whether there were any new and unseen products, and especially looking for cold-resistant crops.

Zhuge Jin also vaguely remembered that many valuable species had been discovered in history during searches along the coast of Northeast Asia.

Because after thousands of years of development, the local indigenous people have more or less selected food varieties that are suitable for the local environment.

Zhuge Jin didn't need to worry about what species Lu Yi could bring back. As long as he found any cold-resistant and surviving ones, he would bring them back and cultivate and reproduce them slowly. Situ would personally decide which ones to develop specifically.

After issuing the order, Zhuge Jin also gave instructions to Lu Yi in person, emphasizing the significance and value of this work.

In fact, Lu Yi was already very clear about this, and without Zhuge Jin emphasizing it, he took the initiative to express that he would do his best and explore it carefully.

After all, it was Bu Zhi who went to Linyi with him and found double-season rice. How much grain output has double-season rice increased for the Han Dynasty over the years? How much has it contributed to the world?
As a party who has personally experienced the benefits, Lu Yi has formed a path dependence on it and is extremely enthusiastic.

After encouraging them, Zhuge Jin prepared the most adequate supplies for the expedition team, and also equipped them with a large number of porcelain jars loaded with pickled cabbage to ensure that there would be fresh fruits and vegetables to supplement vitamins at sea. In addition, a large amount of cheese and dried meat was also provided to ensure that the expedition team would not have to worry about the consequences.

After Lu Yi made his preparations, he took advantage of the summer to go sailing.

Zhuge Jin chose to start this project in midsummer because the south wind is strong in summer, sailing north is smooth, and ships do not need to turn to catch the wind.

After sailing and exploring for three to five months, when autumn and winter come and the north wind is strong, Lu Yi can return home. That way he will not suffer from the severe cold in the far north in winter.

Although the speed of ships during the Han Dynasty was still very slow, four months of sailing towards the northeast, stopping and starting, was enough time to explore a very long distance.

You have to know that with the new ships built by Chen Qun, it would take about half a month to sail from Guangling County to Busan. And the wind direction doesn't need to be particularly favorable, as long as it is a normal crosswind.

On the day of departure, Lu Yi, his officers, technicians, sailors and marines lined up at the Guangling dock, waiting for Zhuge Jin's final inspection.

Zhuge Jin also prepared a final batch of extra supplies for the soldiers, which were several hundred boxes of fur coats specifically for keeping warm in winter.

Zhuge Jin even took out the best one and put it on Lu Yi in public. The main part of the fur coat was bear skin, but the edges, lapels, sleeves, etc. were decorated with fox skin and mink skin.

It was still May and the weather was hot. Lu Yi felt a little uncomfortable wearing a mink coat in winter for a show in public and soon started sweating.

But of course he knew that he couldn't take it off until he got on board, and he had to pay attention to the impact. This was Situ encouraging everyone and reminding everyone to be mentally prepared for a protracted battle.

"Situ is reminding us that although it is summer, we should explore as much as we can and not avoid danger far away, and we can only return when the wind turns north in winter."

Lu Yi pondered in his heart and made up his mind that he would be able to find cold-resistant crops for General Zhao this time, so that after General Zhao conquered the Kingdom of Fuyu and destroyed the remnant of the Gongsun family, Gong Sun Kang, he could promote military farming in the hinterland of the Northeast, completely control the local area, and fully assimilate those fishing and hunting barbarians.

(End of this chapter)