The flow of history quietly crossed into the eighth year of Yanyou, and the Great Chu state’s founding also entered its twenty-fifth year.

Ordinary people would not concern themselves with the Mongols’ strength and their wanton slaughter in the He-Huai region, nor would they worry about deeper internal troubles and external threats. In the eighth year of Yanyou under the joint governance of His Majesty and the Empress Dowager, Great Chu presented quite the appearance of a prosperous peaceful era.

Seven years had passed since the Jinling rebellion. The inner and outer city walls of Jinling had been renovated anew. Boats gathered like clouds on the Qiupu River and Jiang Marsh inlet. Goods from the three mountains and five seas entering Jinling city were dazzling and piled like mountains. Jinling city once again displayed its former prosperous scenery.

Externally, they had recovered the old territories of western Huai, forced the Liang state to negotiate peace, while the Shu state paid tribute as a vassal and ceded the lands of Xia and Liang. To the south, they captured Gui, Liu, Yong, Qin and other prefectures, seizing nearly one-third of the Qingyuan Military Commissioner’s territory, expanding the empire’s domain nearly a thousand li southward.

Thinking this way, the disastrous defeat of the main water forces on Hongze Lake during the third and fourth years of Yanyou became insignificant.

Just after New Spring, before the weather had warmed, western Huai experienced another heavy snowfall.

When Han Qian woke in the early morning and saw Lian Garden covered in silver, it was quite regrettable—the accumulated snow in the courtyards before and after the study was trampled beyond recognition in no time by the early-rising Wenxin leading Wenyuan.

Only after Wenxin was caught by guards and taken to the academy to study did things become slightly quieter.

Han Qian held his daughter Wenyuan on his lap while reviewing official documents.

During this New Year festival, no urgent events occurred. Han Qian had rarely taken several days off without handling affairs. Today being the fifth day of the new year, this was his first time entering Weiyu Pavilion, his dedicated administrative study in Liyang’s Lian Garden, only to find documents piled high on the desk waiting for his review.

Now Zhao Ting’er focused more attention on building and perfecting Liyang Academy, while Wang Jun had finally confirmed her pregnancy before the year’s end. Han Qian did not feel there was anything surprising about this, but everyone advised that during the period of protecting and nurturing the pregnancy, Wang Jun could not be allowed to engage in mentally exhausting matters.

After several admonishments, Wang Jun had barely come to Weiyu Pavilion these years.

Han Qian had no way to be lazy about many things.

For routine affairs, regulations had been drafted. Before any major changes, the General Administration Bureau, Capital Office Bureau, Works Ministry, and Military Intelligence Staff Bureau all handled matters according to regulations, only needing to report to Han Qian.

However, the environment and situation facing Tang Yi internally and externally were extremely complex, changing by the moment. A large number of non-routine matters required Han Qian’s decision before actions could be taken.

This workload was enormous.

On Han Qian’s first day at Weiyu Pavilion after the new year, he quickly reviewed the reported documents in the early morning, then held his daughter Wenyuan while having breakfast in Weiyu Pavilion’s side room. After the sun climbed above the treetops, Feng Liao, Yuan Guowei, Ji Xiyao, Gao Shao, Zhao Qi, Chen Jitang, Wen Bo, Tan Yuliang, Xi Xunqiao, Zhao Wuji and others successively came over carrying piles of non-routine matters pending discussion and decision.

Han Qian then held Wenyuan while discussing affairs with everyone.

“After over a year of construction and trial production, Datong Ridge Coal Mine will be able to dump coal on a larger scale into the capital region after the new year. As Tang Yi’s currently largest shallow-layer coal field under construction, the initial construction investment costs were enormous, but current estimates show it can produce up to one million dan of coal annually. At this production capacity scale, as long as sales channels can be guaranteed, even reducing coal prices by thirty percent can ensure investment costs are amortized within three years.”

Ji Xiyao, who concurrently led the Works Ministry, currently oversaw all water conservancy roads, city wall repairs, works construction, coal and iron mine exploitation, and Works Bureau affairs for the Commissioner’s Office.

Datong Ridge Coal Mine was a key project the Commissioner’s Office pushed forward at the end of the year before last, even previously going so far as to forcefully demand Shiliang County from Huaidong first.

Coal mining, especially shallow coal exploitation, was not difficult. The key was the rail track laying from Datong Ridge Coal Mine exiting the mountains to Shiliang River docks, construction of Puyang River coal transport docks, and excavation of the Yongyang Canal connecting Puyang River and Shiliang River—this series of supporting projects were successively completed before the year’s end, making large-scale export from Datong Ridge Coal Mine possible.

With Datong Ridge Coal Mine’s completion, western Huai’s annual coal extraction suddenly surged from six hundred thousand dan to one million six hundred thousand dan. At this point, they necessarily had to capture the entire capital region market—also the coal-using market Han Qian had earliest cultivated—to possibly consume such large-scale production.

For coal supply to the capital region, whether to reduce prices by thirty percent or directly reduce by fifty percent to completely crush nearby coal fields—Feng Liao and Ji Xiyao who headed the Works Ministry along with other relevant officials had discussed this for a long time without reaching a decision.

Besides this, the Works Ministry had surveyed large reserves of high-quality iron ore at Dayao Peak fifteen or sixteen li south of Datong Ridge. How to develop and utilize this iron ore caused significant controversy within the Works Ministry.

On one hand, after all the iron smelting furnaces invested in these two years reached full production, Tang Yi’s annual iron smelting scale would reach one hundred sixty thousand dan—a figure roughly equivalent to the total production of official smelting during the previous dynasty’s middle period.

Many worried that demand for iron materials in the Jiang-Huai region was not as enormous as imagined, advocating that at Dayao Peak, following old precedents, Yongyang County or Chuzhou Prefecture should be responsible for building an iron smelting facility with annual production capacity of ten thousand dan.

While others believed that simultaneously discovering high-quality coal and iron reserves in such close proximity was extremely rare, and not building a large iron smelting facility would be too wasteful.

The southern side of Dayao Peak’s Millstone Valley had relatively flat, open land where a large iron smelting facility could be built. Coming from Datong Ridge, they only needed to add nine li of rail track to the currently constructed rail route to transport coal to the iron smelting facility planned for Millstone Valley. They advocated the Commissioner’s Office directly undertake construction of a large iron smelting facility with annual production of fifty thousand dan or even larger scale.

This matter was reported to Han Qian at the end of last year.

Han Qian had turned it over to Feng Liao and others for further research on whether it might be possible to combine construction of Yongyang County’s new city with investment in a large iron smelting facility.

Of course, most officials in the General Administration Bureau still worried that one iron smelting facility would add fifty thousand or even one hundred thousand dan of production capacity, while seven other already-built iron smelting facilities would continue expanding production capacity in the future. Could they really sell over three hundred thousand dan of iron materials annually going forward?

After all, the currently largest-scale Longya Mountain Iron Smelting Facility only produced forty thousand dan of pig iron and refined iron annually.

With high-quality coal and iron reserves adjacent to each other, plus extremely convenient water and land transport conditions, the larger the iron smelting facility’s scale, the lower costs could be spread. Not to mention that new iron smelting technology still had extremely broad space for development in the contemporary world.

In fact, as long as costs were low enough, refined iron castings’ performance far exceeded traditional timber, with extremely broad future application scenarios. Han Qian would not worry that demand would be a problem.

In fact, the iron usage for a single ordinary iron beam bridge was unimaginably high. Even smelting three to four hundred thousand dan of iron materials annually might only be enough for the Jiang-Huai region to build thirty to forty medium-scale iron bridges.

This kind of demand for iron materials was beyond what contemporary officials—whose vision still mainly stayed on iron products being limited to tools, farm implements, armor and other limited scenarios—could imagine.

Han Qian currently cared more about what the average cost could be spread to when the new iron smelting facility’s production capacity was set at fifty thousand or one hundred thousand dan, while also caring whether the current Engineer Academy’s technical level had the capability to construct larger-scale iron smelting blast furnaces.

This was also the key reason Han Qian had sent the Works Ministry’s documents back before the year’s end for further discussion and research.

Particularly whether blast furnace technology could successfully achieve breakthroughs was key to further significant reductions in iron smelting costs.

Additionally, the Engineer Academy had long confirmed that using high-quality lump smoldering coal to fill furnace chambers, the furnace temperature’s level had direct relationships with structural data like the furnace chamber’s extension length.

If they could further construct large blast furnaces with sufficiently reliable stability, they might well achieve furnace temperatures capable of melting river sand—this would be key to whether they could successfully fire glass.

Currently, crystalline bodies similar to glazed tile but cleaner had been discovered in the furnace slag at Longya Mountain Iron Smelting Facility.

This showed Longya Mountain’s iron smelting furnaces could barely reach temperatures for melting river sand and firing glass, but to stably fire glass, the combustion furnace structure required further optimization.

Han Qian reviewed the discussion conclusions from the General Administration Bureau and Works Ministry during this period. The Engineer Academy was still in the research phase for new blast furnaces and had not yet begun constructing the first experimental furnace at any iron smelting facility for verification.

After discussing with everyone for a moment, Han Qian decided to first build an experimental blast furnace at Dayao Mountain. After observing the experimental furnace’s operational status, they would then decide on Yongyang New City’s construction and Dayao Mountain Iron Smelting Facility’s final construction scale.

There was another matter requiring immediate decision.

Over these two years, western Huai had successively recovered Hao, Shou, Guang, Huo and other prefectures. The counties under the Commissioner’s Office increased from the initial fourteen counties (including Xuzhou) to forty-two counties. Township offices increased from ninety-six to two hundred seventy-four.

After over a year and a half of sorting and digesting, the newly recovered and newly established counties and township offices had all generally stabilized in various aspects. Follow-up would require further in-depth construction and management.

Before the year’s end, they had decided to establish elementary schools in these newly added township offices, while at the county level they would add middle-level schools.

Elementary schools had two-year programs. For ordinary people, this could only satisfy basic literacy needs. The graduation standard merely required recognizing one thousand Chinese characters, being able to read simple articles, and mastering basic arithmetic, while also teaching some fundamental agricultural techniques.

Middle-level schools taught deeper and more extensive content, including law, mathematics, geography, surveying, natural philosophy, basic military studies, while also ensuring continuing education for local officials and engineers. Military officers’ literacy education and training would also be undertaken by each county’s middle-level schools.

Combined with comprehensive academies, this could preliminarily complete the Commissioner’s Office’s government-run education system.

The problem was that adding nearly two hundred elementary and middle-level schools all at once—currently Liyang Academy’s Teacher College, formally established just three years ago, could only provide fewer than one hundred teaching staff this year. Transferring from other schools totaled fewer than two hundred people.

They could not possibly support a school by dispatching just one instructor, could they?

Currently, schools already established in counties and township offices allocated two to five instructors based on the scale of enrolled students.

Even so, existing school instructors remained in extremely short supply. Elementary schools run by township offices could only guarantee about twenty percent of local youths received the most basic literacy education.

For quite a long time in the future, the Commissioner’s Office’s government-run education goal in western Huai was merely to guarantee a twenty percent literacy rate among new population additions—they could not hope for higher in the short term.

Even so, if western Huai’s population scale remained at current levels, elementary schools’ annual enrollment scale would reach fifty to sixty thousand people. Among these, only twenty to thirty percent could receive middle-level and higher comprehensive academy education.

Being able to achieve this point, Tang Yi could thoroughly resolve the abuses of aristocratic clans and military families monopolizing education and thereby monopolizing local administrative affairs and military matters, while also providing necessary human resources for prefecture, county, and township offices’ local governance and current industrial, mining, and manufacturing development.

But immediately needing to add over two hundred elementary and middle-level schools required finding ways to transfer four to six hundred teaching staff from various places.

Where would these people be transferred from?

Do not think Tang Yi had trained many usable people these years—the undertakings had expanded even more.

Previously in Xuzhou, there were only two levels: elementary schools and professional schools. To ensure training quality for engineer and physician apprentices, Han Qian subsequently extended the programs at Chenzhong and Liyang Academies to generally three to four years, with the Physician College’s program extended to as long as five years at maximum.

This meant the three academies could stably provide only around one thousand qualified graduates annually, but these one thousand people were competed for everywhere.

Feng Liao wanted to recruit six hundred more graduates this year regardless of category to establish schools in newly added township offices. Some people practically wanted to spit in his face. With no alternative, he could only leave it to Han Qian to decide.

Prefecture, county, and township office clerks were also in short supply, with all tasks being heavy. Han Qian took the list of this year’s graduates from Liyang Academy that Feng Liao handed over, scanned it once, and said: “Children of the Han family and Chen, Qiao and other families should all be sent down first to fill elementary school vacancies…”

“This…” Hearing Han Qian’s decision, Feng Liao was quite hesitant.

After Tang Yi forces first established defensive lines along the Chu River and Fucha Mountain, then achieved the great victory at Wujin Ridge and gained the advantage in suppressing the Shouzhou army in western Huai, Chen Qiao and other aristocratic clans from Xuan, Chi and other prefectures with marriage and old friendships with the Han family suddenly accelerated their integration into Tang Yi.

At that time, there were two main symbolic measures.

First, besides these marriage-related clans taking the lead in voluntarily stopping slave trading in Xuan, Chi and other areas and entering East Lake to open workshops and plant medicinal fields, more importantly they transferred clan properties on a large scale into the Official Money Bureau to support Tang Yi forces’ military expenses and western Huai local construction. Three years ago, the Official Money Bureau received nearly one million eight hundred thousand strings of capital from Xuan and Chi prefectures and local powers with marriage and old friendships with the Han family.

This was also key to the Official Money Bureau’s total capital consecutively crossing the four million and five million string thresholds.

Second, these marriage-related clans successively sent five hundred direct and collateral descendants with certain family scholarly foundations into Liyang Academy to receive new learning cultivation.

The first batch of Han clan marriage-related descendants entering the academy numbered the most—nearly three hundred twenty-plus people. After all, the marriage-related clans in Xuan, Chi and other areas had a large group of youths from twelve to thirteen years old and young people up to twenty-three or twenty-four with no prospects, all entering Liyang Academy together, just in time to graduate after the new year.

Although elementary school instructors in township offices were included among clerks in the Commissioner’s Office with salaries allocated by prefectures and counties, current conditions in township offices could be described as quite difficult—obviously creating quite a gap with the psychological expectations of Chen, Qiao and other clan descendants who wanted to serve as clerks in prefecture and county offices.

If they transferred people from Liyang Academy’s various departments according to fixed proportions, inevitably some marriage-related clan descendants would be officially assigned to township schools. Feng Liao naturally did not fear being cursed to his face.

Now this was great—sending all marriage-related clan descendants, especially several direct descendants of Chen, Qiao and other families who were already in their early twenties when entering the academy and held expectations of serving as clerks in Tang Yi, to serve as instructors in the most difficult township elementary schools and deal with commoner children—never mind Chen, Qiao and other families being dissatisfied, would these graduates not cause an uproar?

“If anyone questions this, directly say it’s my decision. Clan descendants’ arrogant and extravagant tendencies are hard to remove. Only by going to township offices and township schools to truly contact grassroots poor people’s lives can they possibly grow into pillars of talent,” Han Qian said. “This should become a rule from now on. Those who truly want to serve in prefecture and county administrative affairs must have grassroots work experience. The Chen, Qiao, and Feng families are no exception. The Han and Wen families cannot be exceptions either. Your nephews and descendants must all be like this in the future. Anyone whose mind cannot turn this corner should be left in township offices for life anyway—they are not useful anyway.”

Seeing Han Qian say this, everyone remained silent.

“With this explanation from you, I can also use it to block everyone’s mouths,” Feng Liao said with a bitter smile.

After discussing various matters, before they knew it, it was almost noon.

The festival had not yet passed. Han Qian had the residence arrange a lunch banquet to keep everyone for a meal at Lian Garden. But before they moved from Weiyu Pavilion toward the dining hall, they saw Wang Jun with her already showing pregnant belly walking in with Xiangyun, saying: “Carrier pigeon transmission from Yingzhou has returned…”

Breeding, raising, and training messenger pigeons were all delicate tasks that ordinary laborers could not do. To form an emergency communication system not only required simultaneous breeding at multiple locations but also training large batches of messenger pigeons, requiring considerable manpower—without social division of labor reaching a certain degree or lacking a sufficiently large clerks workforce, this was not something ordinary powers could undertake.

Fortunately, Tang Yi had traditions of employing female workers and female clerks. Families of various officials and clerks’ dependents also lacked the habit of being raised in inner chambers stirring up household affairs—the social atmosphere was much more open than contemporary times and previous dynasties.

For messenger pigeon breeding, training, rotating guard duty at pigeon lofts and other matters, Han Qian specially opened a new department in the Military Intelligence Staff Bureau, led by Xiangyun, exclusively employing female clerks.

Yingzhou currently was the focal area where He-Huai Liang forces confronted and contested with Weizhou rebel forces and Mongols. To grasp changes in Yingzhou’s battle situation at any time, the Military Intelligence Staff Bureau dispatched multiple secret agents to Yingzhou.

Even without urgent information, to ensure pigeons’ homing attributes would not deteriorate due to long-term stays outside, they would regularly send new batches of messenger pigeons to Yingzhou, allowing previous batches to fly back to lofts—the cost was extremely high.

Unless it was an emergency, Xiangyun would not directly deliver transmissions. Han Qian received the already-opened wax paper secret message and already decoded note, frowning deeply as he sat there for a moment not knowing what to say, cold air straight up his spine.

Feng Liao took the note, frowning slightly and saying: “Weizhou rebel forces are now digging open the Yu River (Yellow River) southern bank embankment northeast of Yingyang? Are they waiting for when the Yellow River ice layer melts to direct ice flood waters to attack areas east and south of Yingyang city?”

After a moment, Han Qian looked around. Seeing everyone had guessed what Liang Shixiong’s intentions at Yingyang were, but obviously everyone had not yet realized the seriousness of this matter in the rush.

Four to five hundred years ago, forest coverage in the Guanzhong region was still extremely dense, but two consecutive Central Plains dynasties both established capitals on the Wei River banks, subjecting ecological carrying capacity to extremely severe tests.

The old dynasty’s capital region centered on Yongzhou (Jingzhao Prefecture) had over two million civilian households during the previous dynasty’s peak.

If these were ordinary civilian households it would be fine, but among this population, many were imperial clan meritorious nobles’ descendants living extremely luxuriously. The Guanzhong region continuously built palace halls, residences, and buildings for hundreds of years. During cold winter seasons, all felled trees and burned charcoal for heating. The firewood used for cooking was even more terrifying, quickly cutting down all forest timber in the surrounding hills and peaks.

By roughly the previous dynasty’s middle period, when Guanzhong wanted to repair great halls, never mind the northern hills—even the northern slopes of the Qinling Mountains to the south could not find a single large timber suitable as roof beams or foundation pillars. They needed to transport them from more distant places to Guanzhong regardless of manpower or material costs.

This ecological environment change—the Yellow River water turning from clear to turbid during the previous dynasty’s middle period—was already clearly recorded in historical books. Also during this time, among common people, the name Yellow River gradually replaced the old name Yu River.

Afterward came two hundred years of silt accumulation.

Even though Han Qian could not confirm whether the Yellow River at this time had thoroughly become an above-ground suspended river, from the Yellow River’s several breaches over the past hundred years—each more severe than the last—and the increasingly tall embankments on both Yellow River banks, he was extremely worried.

At the previous dynasty’s end, although the He-Huai region experienced continuous warfare, the He-Huai region had always been occupied by extremely powerful military commissioner forces, so each Yellow River breach could be quickly blocked.

Another reason was that over the past hundred years, even when harmed by ice floods, the vast majority of Yellow River breach openings were in the downstream areas between Lu and Yu or from Weibo and other areas flooding northward into He-Shuo regions—relatively easier to seal breach openings with broader flood acceptance areas—having lighter impact on the He-Huai region south of the Yellow River.

Weizhou rebel forces digging open the Yellow River embankment in Yingyang territory—their intention might simply be to block passage for He-Huai Liang forces approaching Yingyang city, the eastern gateway to Heluo. But the position northeast of Yingyang city was too critical.

Han Qian did not know whether Liang Shixiong had specifically chosen this position to dig the embankment or if all this was just coincidence.

Han Qian spread out a map, marking the rebel forces’ embankment digging point on the map. It was indeed west of the Jialu River great lock, meaning if the embankment at this position was broken open, Yellow River flood waters would rush out from the riverbed that in reality had extremely likely risen higher than the flat ground on both sides, following the terrain to pour mightily into the Jialu River (Honggou Ditch), then invade southward into the Sha-Ying River.

In February and March when river waters were lean, the problem would not be major. But entering April, as various areas entered rainy seasons and northwestern plateau peaks’ glacial meltwater greatly increased, the water volume from the upper Yellow River entering Jialu River and Sha-Ying River would become heart-stoppingly enormous.

These two rivers had shallow, narrow channels that could not accommodate such great water volume, necessarily causing Xu, Ying, Chen, Song and other prefectures on both banks of Jialu River and Sha-Ying River to become vast seas, directly affecting Ying and Qiao prefectures on the Huai River’s north bank.

After Yellow River waters flowed through Sha-Ying River into the Huai River, if prefectures and counties along the middle and lower Huai River and Hongze Lake shores encountered last year’s rainfall levels again, the two superimposed would necessarily cause heaven-reaching floods. Chu, Si, Chu, Yang and other areas would suffer great disasters. Shouspring and Haozhou territory would also be hard to spare.

This was man-made “seizing the Huai to enter the sea”—man-made creation of large-scale Yellow River flood zones across the He-Huai territories.