Guo Rong didn’t show the same urgency as Feng Liao, casually discussing over tea the customs and notable figures of Yangzhou, Taizhou, and other places.

Born into poverty in his youth, he had been castrated and entered the service of the Guangling Regional Military Commissioner’sMansioninner household. He learned to read and write there, then later accompanied Empress Dowager Xu when she married into the Yang family. He could be said to be a direct trusted confidant of the Anning Palace. In his early years, when he accompanied the Third Prince upon leaving the palace to establish his own residence, this was also to monitor on behalf of Empress Dowager Xu.

Though Guo Rong’s parents had died early, he still had two elder brothers who were alive.

Although Guo Rong had served in the palace for many years without returning to his old Yangzhou residence for over ten years, correspondence with his brothers’ families had never ceased.

Unfortunately, the offspring of both elder brothers were all worthless, yet each wanted to have a son adopted by him to gain an official position through nepotism. Guo Rong had refused them all, and relations had grown somewhat distant afterward.

During these three or four years of turmoil, when Guo Rong himself could barely ensure his own survival from one day to the next, contact had been completely lost.

Guo Rong’s old residence was located in a village northeast of Shaobo Lake, a region that had suffered the most severe flooding in northern Yangzhou since summer began. Guo Rong had no idea how his two elder brothers’ families were faring.

Though he had been following Han Qian through Jianghuai during this time, even spending a period less than a hundred li from his old home, he’d never had an opportunity to make contact. He thought perhaps they had fled with their families and become disaster refugees in Yangzhou city by now.

“When I return to Yangzhou, I’ll have people find Lord Guo’s two elder brothers’ families and send them to Tangyi to reunite with Lord Guo,” Wang Jun said.

Currently Huaidong controlled the large-scale entry of refugees into Tangyi—this was definitely not something Wang Jun could oppose—but sending Guo Rong’s two elder brothers’ families to Tangyi, as long as Huaidong and Tangyi hadn’t completely broken relations, no one would deliberately obstruct this.

Guo Rong was naturally extremely grateful.

As the evening grew cooler and less unbearably hot, Guo Rong, Feng Liao, and Feng Yi took their leave.

That night no sudden matters disturbed everyone, making for a tranquil and leisurely evening.

Xi Ren had maidservants bring hot water for Wang Jun and her servant to wash.

Waking in the early morning, rain pattered outside the window. Maidservant Xiangyun was still deeply asleep. Hearing the courtyard was still completely quiet, Wang Jun didn’t know if Han Qian and the others had risen yet, so she didn’t hurry to leave the room. After washing, she opened the back window to watch the rain curtain hang from the rear eaves, dripping onto the brick and stone of the back alley passage. With no one walking past, it made one think they were living in an empty city.

Then Wang Jun smiled to herself, thinking that since this was Han Qian’s residence, the surrounding guards were certainly tight—how could there be crowds of people?

After a while, hearing sounds from the adjacent side room, Wang Jun opened her door and tiptoed to the corridor. Looking through the window, she saw the next room was a library. She didn’t know when Han Qian had already risen—he was now standing inside leafing through something.

Hearing sounds from the corridor, Han Qian saw Wang Jun wearing a long robe with her raven-black hair hanging loose, making her face appear as white and translucent as fresh snow. Her long eyebrows swept toward her temples, and her eyes like clear deep springs looked toward him. He smiled and asked, “Did I wake you?”

“I just woke up and heard sounds over here. How long has it been raining?” Wang Jun asked.

Han Qian looked out at the rain curtain from the corridor, saying, “Over an hour now. Looking at how steady this rainfall is, it’ll probably rain all day.”

Seeing Han Qian come over to open the door for her, Wang Jun hopped inside on one foot, saw Han Qian holding a large volume of diagrams, tilted her head to look closer, and asked in surprise, “Are these the diagrams for the new water-powered spinning wheels manufactured in Xuzhou?”

“…” Han Qian handed the volume to Wang Jun, telling her, “Last night I thought of a place that might be improved somewhat. Afterward I couldn’t sleep soundly, so I got up early to come look at the diagrams, but I’m thinking my nighttime idea might not be useful…”

“Can I look at all these?” Wang Jun asked.

After standing a while she felt somewhat strained, leaning her body against the bookshelf behind her. On this row of shelves along the east wall were placed almost exclusively books on weaving methods—forty or fifty volumes in all.

By comparison, the Weaving Compendium she had obtained from Han Qian over two years ago, though seemingly quite thick, had still been condensed and edited.

“The more you look at, the better excuse I have to detain you,” Han Qian said with a smile, looking at Wang Jun’s deep beautiful eyes concealed by long lashes, his heart seeming to ripple with clear wavelets.

“That’s only if I can understand it all,” Wang Jun said softly, slightly raising her eyelids to glance at Han Qian.

Just then a guard came from the front courtyard—there was an urgent matter requiring Han Qian to immediately go to the front offices. Han Qian told Wang Jun, then left the residence first.

Wang Jun had long been curious about the construction methods for water-powered spinning wheels. Since the thick volume was somewhat awkward to hold, seeing a desk by the window, she hopped over to move all the books related to weaving there before sitting down to carefully read them, passing the rainy day’s time.

Only then did she realize these forty or fifty books essentially recorded the complete picture of Xuzhou’s vigorous development of cotton weaving in all its aspects.

The history of processing hemp and weaving silk could be traced back two or three thousand years. The southwestern tribal peoples had several hundred years’ history of cotton weaving. The hand-cranked cotton spinning wheels and looms used in earlier years were all improved versions following hemp spinning wheels and hemp looms. Since the Qin and Han dynasties, the Central Plains had history of using water-powered trip hammers and water-powered pestles.

Using water flow to drive wheel axles to operate spinning wheels or looms was theoretically unproblematic.

However, compared to water pestles and trip hammers, water-powered spinning wheels were far more complex and intricate in their components.

Starting from the Qiuhu Mountain period, a water-powered spinning wheel could be said to be the culmination of Han Qian’s nearly seven or eight years developing manufacturing methods.

After arriving in Xuzhou, from vigorously promoting cotton field cultivation and cotton cloth weaving, Han Qian had wanted to create water-powered spinning machines and water-powered looms. But only last year had the Engineering Academy successfully built the first water-powered spinning wheel that could reliably harness water flow to drive wheel axles—and water-powered looms were still immature.

That Huaidong’s spies hadn’t seen actual samples of the water-powered spinning wheels wasn’t because Han Qian deliberately demanded secrecy. Rather, they had been in the experimental stage for so long that only at year’s end last year were six large water-powered spinning wheels built, capable of driving nearly five hundred spindles total, which were only put to trial use in weaving workshops directly under the Manufacturing Bureau.

Reading this, Wang Jun was greatly shocked.

She had high expectations for water-powered spinning wheels, but never imagined a single water-powered spinning wheel could drive nearly one hundred spindles—equivalent to several people operating one water-powered spinning wheel accomplishing the work of one hundred household spinning workers.

The components of water-powered spinning wheels were too complex. After Wang Jun skimmed through once, she first turned to look at other books and archived correspondence.

From the many letters, she could see Han Qian had long planned that as soon as water-powered spinning wheels could operate stably, he wouldn’t refuse to sell them to other private weaving workshops and factories just for technological secrecy.

Even without memories from the dream world, the current Han Qian’s understanding of cotton cloth, salt, and iron—three commodities that could form primary industrial systems under contemporary conditions—was far more profound than the talented figures of this era.

Salt operated under a monopoly system. Currently Xuzhou could grasp the channel for transporting salt through the Qianjiang passage to Qianzhong, Nanzhao and other places—this was already extremely difficult, and they couldn’t hope for too much in the short term.

Though Xuzhou’s iron smelting techniques were also a cut above contemporary methods, the problem was that powerful clans controlling local areas mostly owned their own iron smelting workshops, basically monopolizing local metallurgy and casting industries.

At the same time, because powerful clans could force extremely cheap and numerous slaves to work, when costs were spread out, Xuzhou couldn’t occupy an absolute advantage cost-wise.

Only with cotton cloth, which had tremendous performance advantages over hemp cloth and kudzu garments, was cotton weaving the field where Xuzhou could most easily form a primary industrial system—also something Han Qian had spared no effort promoting in Xuzhou these past years.

Xuzhou’s climate was mild and humid, with mostly sloped terraced fields, also more suitable for rotating cotton and wheat crops. Currently, before Liyang and Tangyi completed large-scale reclamation of low-lying lands to expand rice paddy cultivation in easily irrigated areas not fearing summer flooding, large areas of old fields at higher elevations were more suitable for rotating cotton with bean and wheat crops.

Besides cotton cultivation and weaving methods, these books also discussed various production organization methods for cotton cultivation and cloth weaving, and treatises on cotton cloth sales in Jianghuai, Hunan, Jingxiang, Sichuan-Shu and other regions. They made Wang Jun realize her experimental planting of three to five hundred mu of cotton fields at the foot of Jian Garden these past two years could only be considered playing house.

In the contemporary era, planting one mu of cotton fields yielded about eighty jin of seed cotton by autumn, which could be woven into nearly twenty bolts of coarse cotton cloth.

Initially, Jianghuai cotton cloth prices equaled silk, selling for over a thousand qian per bolt, meaning one mu of cotton fields could produce output valued as high as twenty thousand qian. Even after several price suppressions, with current Jianghuai cotton cloth prices falling to a barely affordable four to five hundred qian per bolt for commoners, one mu of cotton fields from planting through weaving and sale could still yield ten thousand qian.

Calculated at Jianghuai’s currently high grain prices, even with polished rice costing as much as two thousand strings of cash per shi, the output from one mu of cotton fields could match two and a half mu of rice paddies in Jianghuai. Calculated at the grain prices of Hunan, Jiangxi and Sichuan-Shu, one mu of cotton fields in Xuzhou could match the output of five mu of rice paddies.

The output here was quite astonishing. If Jianghuai rice prices fell, Qianyang cloth would have considerable room for further price reductions.

However, the problem was that even using the new methods Han Qian had implemented in his first two years after arriving in Xuzhou—also the processes and spinning wheels and looms recorded in the Weaving Compendium Han Qian had given Wang Jun two years ago—from cotton field cultivation to spinning and weaving, the labor input was still too great.

According to the methods recorded in the Weaving Compendium, a household with three to four female weavers, taking turns operating one spinning wheel and one loom day and night without rest, could only weave thirty to forty bolts of cloth per year.

In other words, besides farming, one household weaving worker could only weave ten bolts of cloth per year. Without continuous improvements to spinning wheels and looms, a household on average could at most support planting two or three mu of cotton fields.

In the past, Xuzhou’s manpower had been barely sufficient. After all, the cotton field planting area in Xuzhou and surrounding prefectures had gradually grown from six to seven thousand mu six or seven years ago. Even on the eve of the Jinling Incident, cotton field planting area in Xuzhou and surrounding prefectures had only just exceeded one hundred thousand mu.

However, over the following two years, as Han Qian’s control of Xuzhou deepened further, with large-scale reclamation of sloped terraced fields suitable for cotton cultivation, cotton planting scale expanded by leaps—reaching its peak last year at over five hundred thousand mu.

This year, because large quantities of cotton seeds, farm tools, and cotton farmers and weavers had to rush to support Tangyi, cotton planting area in Xuzhou and surrounding prefectures hadn’t continued growing.

Even so, the seed cotton harvested after last autumn—even using only half to weave into cotton cloth—required about two to three hundred thousand household weavers working day and night, investing seventy to eighty thousand spinning wheels and looms to consume it all.

In reality, Xuzhou’s total population was less than two hundred fifty thousand—how could it possibly have that many household weavers?

Since establishing a primary industrial system in Xuzhou, Han Qian—even before the campaign to eliminate vassal kingdoms, when Xuzhou’s cotton planting area was only twenty to thirty thousand mu—had vigorously encouraged wealthy households with surplus money and grain to recruit weavers and establish weaving workshops or even larger-scale factories beyond the weaving workshops belonging to the Han family, to consume the increasingly expanding cotton field cultivation.

What Han Qian needed to do in Xuzhou was continuously advance technological progress to form cotton weaving industrial scale in the shortest time possible, rather than thinking of ways to maintain secrecy at all costs.

For every new improvement to spinning wheels and looms by Xuzhou’s Manufacturing Bureau, besides first trials in directly controlled weaving workshops for a period, they would also be made available as quickly as possible for private weaving workshops and factories to purchase.

Besides four weaving workshops directly controlled by the Manufacturing Bureau, by the end of last year Xuzhou’s seven counties and fifty-nine townships had established over one hundred forty small and medium-sized weaving workshops in total, employing seventeen to eighteen thousand weavers throughout the prefecture—five times the number employed by the Manufacturing Bureau.

The Manufacturing Bureau and weaving workshops throughout Xuzhou’s counties and townships had universally adopted six to eight-thread spinning wheels and larger looms. One employed weaver could roughly match the output of three to four household weavers.

The difference in corvée labor rates was where workshops and factories made their profits.

A weaving workshop employing over a hundred workers could earn annually no less than a small-scale estate.

Combined with the fact that considerable amounts of seed cotton would be directly used to stuff winter clothing and bedding or for other purposes, plus thousands upon ten thousands of household spinning wheels and looms also operating, only then could Xuzhou’s cotton weaving industry barely manage to consume all the output from the local area and surrounding prefectures’ total five hundred thousand mu of cotton fields last year.

Even with only half the cotton fields’ output woven into cloth, Xuzhou could weave approximately five million bolts of cotton cloth before this autumn’s new seed cotton harvest.

From the development process of Xuzhou’s cotton weaving industry, one could also see cotton cloth’s natural advantages for primary industry. At the same time, after substantial price reductions, due to being softer, warmer, and more durable than hemp cloth in all aspects, as long as it could enter prefectures and counties, it would be greatly welcomed—just that the step of entering prefectures and counties wasn’t easy, as contemporary society wasn’t one where goods could circulate freely.

The outside world hadn’t realized this mainly because Xuzhou’s cotton weaving industry development was leaping forward—scale in previous years had been extremely limited.

Even two years ago, the year just after the Jinling Incident, which was the first year of Yanyou era, cotton planting area in Xuzhou and surrounding prefectures was only two hundred thousand mu.

The seed cotton produced two years ago was only harvested at the end of September, then woven into cloth, which was delayed until last year for gradual transport and sale to various places.

Deducting local weaver households’ own consumption and large-scale military requisitions, cotton cloth exported last year was only one million three to four hundred thousand bolts. Cotton cloth exported two years ago was merely five to six hundred thousand bolts.

Therefore, it hadn’t been particularly conspicuous.

However, the seed cotton produced last year, gradually woven into cloth this year, suddenly increased the total volume Xuzhou needed to export to four million bolts—this was somewhat staggering.

At this point, even exporting just one-third of it into Jinling already temporarily exceeded the capital region prefectures’ carrying capacity.

Prefecture and county areas were heavily controlled by local powerful clans. Besides Hunan, the capital region, and sales to Sichuan-Shu through Marquis Changxiang Wang Yong, currently only Jiangzhou and Guangde Prefecture didn’t restrict imports of Qianyang cloth produced in Xuzhou.

After roughly browsing through the many books, Wang Jun rubbed her swollen temples, understanding more clearly why Han Qian was so eager to cooperate with Yang Zhitang, and why, with cooperation with Yang Zhitang temporarily encountering obstacles at Shen Yang’s end, Feng Liao and Guo Rong would impatiently bring up her and Han Qian’s betrothal.

Previously, besides needing to recruit landless poor and refugees from Jiangdong prefectures to supplement Tangyi’s severe labor shortage—in Han Qian’s books, whether refugees or landless poor, they all shared a common term: labor force—Han Qian more urgently needed Jiangdong prefectures to open channels for transporting cotton cloth from Xuzhou and Tangyi there.

Never mind Xuzhou—currently Han Qian had reclaimed three hundred thousand mu of cotton fields in Tangyi all at once. In another month they would enter harvest period, when they could harvest around twenty million jin of seed cotton.

With Tangyi’s only one hundred twenty to thirty thousand military and civilian population, calculating summer and autumn clothing and bedding and everything included, consuming three million jin of seed cotton annually on average was the limit. The remaining seed cotton—whether directly, or spun into yarn, or directly woven into cloth—all had to be successfully exported to Jiangdong prefectures to exchange for various materials Tangyi urgently lacked.

Jiangnan East Circuit had fifteen prefectures total, with a prosperous population totaling six to seven million.

If Qianyang cloth could be transported smoothly and without obstruction to Jiangdong’s prefectures and counties, the volume of Qianyang cloth that could be exported in Jiangdong alone would be over double that of Hunan’s prefectures.

With cooperation with Yang Zhitang temporarily obstructed by Shen Yang and Jiangdong powerful clan forces’ interference, to a certain extent Tangyi also needed reconciliation with Huaidong even more…

“Eh, Han Qian doesn’t forbid you from entering this room—he’s determined to detain you!” Xi Ren had gone out on business early in the morning and only returned near midday. Seeing Wang Jun sitting by the window stretching, she furled her oiled paper umbrella, walked to the corridor, and spoke to Wang Jun through the window.

Maidservant Xiangyun stood aggrieved in the corridor.

She had risen and washed early in the morning, seeing Wang Jun sitting in this adjacent room reading documents. She had also wanted to follow inside, but unexpectedly was stopped by guards on duty in the courtyard.

This courtyard involved too many military secrets of Xuzhou and Tangyi. Not only was she strictly forbidden from entering, she was also forbidden from moving freely in this courtyard—wherever she went, a female attendant watched her. Yet Wang Jun had no restrictions. She felt depressed.

Wang Jun raised her head, seeing Xi Ren’s temple hair wet with rain, yet clutching a stack of correspondence under her arm. Not knowing where she had gone so early—even earlier than Han Qian’s departure—Wang Jun didn’t respond to her teasing, but asked about Tang Shiyu and the others’ whereabouts.

After she came over with Han Qian last night, Tang Shiyu and the two guards escorting her hadn’t reappeared. She couldn’t fail to ask at all.

“Keeping you here as a guest, they were sent back—Tang Shiyu has already departed with the fleet to return to Yangzhou. Your two guards are still staying at an inn in the south lanes. If you need anything, just have someone go tell them,” Xi Ren said.

They trusted Wang Jun, but whether people around Wang Wenqian were trustworthy was another matter.

Tang Shiyu himself was a spy chief from Yangzhou. Having let them stay overnight in camp last night, they were sent out of camp early this morning—there was no way they could be given freedom to move about in camp.

After a while, Han Qian also returned carrying an umbrella. Only then did Wang Jun realize it was already midday—Han Qian and Xi Ren had both returned to the rear residence to dine with her.

During the meal, Xi Ren handed him the correspondence she’d brought back. Only then did Wang Jun learn it was an operational plan for the navy to raid the western and northern shores of Chao Lake.

No matter what, Han Qian wouldn’t abandon Tangyi navy’s advantage in warships to continuously strike the Shouzhou forces garrisoning Chaozhou. He also didn’t think doing so would let the Huaixi Imperial Guards, who should mainly be responsible for military pressure against Chaozhou enemies, benefit instead.

Besides, the navy’s raids on Chao Lake’s western and northern shores were mainly to rush over and plunder crops and livestock from the fields with autumn harvest imminent. Even if they wouldn’t indiscriminately kill innocents, they would try as much as possible to force more civilians to migrate to Tangyi.

Military stalemate and standoff were just this tedious.

Without capability to tear open the opponent’s defensive line in one stroke to gain strategic advantage, besides defending one’s own lines securely, one still had to think of every method to continuously infiltrate the enemy’s territory, doing everything possible to damage and raid enemy agricultural production.

Kong Xirong leading guerrilla forces based at Five Peak Mountain raiding westward mainly executed this strategy. Over these three or four months, over two thousand elite troops in the mountains relied on forcible requisitions from enemy-occupied areas for supplies, even sending over four thousand captured civilians for resettlement south of the Chu River.

With autumn harvest soon approaching, even unable to bear the casualties of forcefully attacking fortified cities and strongholds, after four or five months of rest, Tangyi forces should take turns sallying forth from camp to exercise their muscles.

This plan was merely a draft formulated by the Military Intelligence Advisory Office. Han Qian, sitting at the dining table, reviewed it once, wrote down several opinions with an ink-dipped brush, then instructed Xi Ren to pass it to others for review.

After lunch, Han Qian didn’t rush to the front offices. He first stayed in the courtyard to write a letter, then found a newly built four-wheeled carriage to carry Wang Jun, Xi Ren and others, while he wore a rain cape and rode with Han Donghu and various guards to Liyang City.

Over the past two or three years, though Liyang City had changed hands several times, it had been very fortunate not to suffer much devastation from war.

When Li Zhigao abandoned Liyang City, considering that Shouzhou forces would mainly use it for garrisoning troops after seizing it, destroying the city walls and burning structures in the city would have been meaningless, so he surrendered Liyang City intact.

When Zhou Chu led forces to besiege the city, the defending forces finally chose to surrender, allowing this city rebuilt before Emperor Tianyou’s founding to be preserved intact.

Honestly speaking, if it weren’t for the high terrain here making it impossible to dig a canal forming a channel for thousand-shi vessels to enter even with excavation, Liyang City surrounded by mountains and easy to defend but hard to attack would be extremely suitable as Tangyi’s military and political center.

Just that lacking river transport was the greatest defect Han Qian couldn’t tolerate, also destining it to become merely a foil to the future East Lake City.

However, when Wang Jun rode the carriage into current Liyang City, she had a different feeling.

Liyang City was over a thousand paces deep—not very large in scale. The carriage passed through the city gate onto the main street paved with bluestone slabs worn smooth. Both sides of the street were planted with rows of camphor trees, verdant and shady. Raindrops blocked by the leaves had become sparse, yet their traces appeared more distinct.

Behind the camphor trees, buildings stood closely arranged and neatly ordered, with thick moss growing on foundation stones and steps, doors with peeling paint, and courtyard walls covered with verdant climbing vines interspersed with scattered delicate red buds.

The buildings on both sides didn’t appear inhabited either. On the main street only sparse pedestrians walked in the rain. Wang Jun had heard Tang Shiyu say that after seizing Liyang City, Han Qian had only relocated very few civilian households into Liyang City for resettlement—most buildings in Liyang City were still empty.

Walking into such a city, Wang Jun felt as if she had returned to some corner of Yangzhou city.

“Who do you think I should ask to go to Yangzhou to propose marriage so your father will readily agree to let you marry me?” Han Qian tugged the reins in his hand, leaning his body toward the carriage, asking Wang Jun.

“Ah?” Wang Jun had been thinking about what sorrows and joys had once occurred in the houses with tightly closed doors on both sides of the street. Hearing Han Qian’s words, she even doubted she’d heard wrong. Turning her head, her clear eyes stared blankly at Han Qian, speechless for a long while…