The raindrops are like thousands of silver threads falling from the sky, accumulating into water droplets on the corners of the eaves, and rolling down, as beautiful as a bead curtain.
A light mist rose from the mountains, and soon it enveloped the house. The white walls and green tiles, the verdant gates and green gardens, were hazy, ethereal, and confusing, better than a fairyland.
Countless tombstones and grave mounds stood in the rain and fog, appearing and disappearing, as if countless figures were walking around.
Will a ghost bride or a fox fairy suddenly appear from the fog?
Li Chengzhi stood on the attic, having strange thoughts in his mind.
It started raining at dawn, but it was not heavy, so the craftsmen did not stop working. The six pools had already been dug, and they were just waiting for the potters to bake the bricks and lay them.
Seven or eight carpenters, with more than 20 apprentices and laborers, are planting stakes and pillars beside the three small ponds, building gantry frames and shed poles. Some craftsmen are also smashing the partition walls between the houses in the back garden and re-erecting purlins.
Support.
After breaking down the partition wall, the craftsmen will dig deep until water is dug out. The excavated soil will be covered on the outer wall of the house. The roof will also be covered with two to three layers of wool-filled quilts. The reason for this transformation is naturally to store ice.
There is a government-run arsenal in Xiao County, Luoyang, as well as private weapons and iron workshops set up by Wang Yuanyong of Yingchuan, Wang Yuanji of Jiangyang, etc., so the iron box is not difficult to build, and it has already been ordered. It will take 90 days to assemble it by the day after tomorrow at the latest.
The iron plates in the iron boxes can be shipped back.
As expected, trial production will be ready in three days.
The progress is really fast, of course because the money has been spent: more than ten gold bars weighing a pound have been returned.
Li Xie said that if Mr. Lang had not been in such a hurry, he would have saved at least half of the money by delaying it for five or six days.
But Li Chengzhi calculated: if he sells five or six days earlier, he can earn more than ten gold bars...
"Lang Jun, it's time (six o'clock in the morning)!" Li Rui reminded below.
"Yeah!" Li Chengzhi nodded and went down to the attic.
Including Li Rui and Li Xieman, there are only twelve retainers in total. There is not enough room to handle the busy business. How can Li Chengzhi be willing to let them drive the carriage?
In addition, Li Rui and Li Xie also needed to use a car from time to time, so he simply rented one at the Tao Hui. But it was not cheap: it cost 1,500 yuan a month for the driver, the car and the horse, which is ten gold.
And Li Chengzhi, a seventh-grade Beijing official, only has a monthly salary of just over a thousand yuan, so after all, not only does he not make any money as an official, he also has to pay a lot of money...
Li Rui is carrying a food box, which is a bit like a small bedside table in later generations. It has two layers, one for rice and one for vegetables. There is also a leather bag hanging next to it, but it is not filled with wine, but tea.
The driver took the food box and leaned it against the corner of the carriage, tying it with a leather rope several times to avoid falling.
This is Li Chengzhi’s lunch. When not going to court, courtiers above the fifth rank also eat this way and need to bring their own meals.
Of course, if the conditions are good, you can go to the guild hall and Lelou to book a table. If the conditions are not good, there are also many people who eat corn and wheat cakes.
Food is the most important thing for the people, and eating is the biggest problem. Li Chengzhi pondered: "Let the masons build more stoves, pots and pans, and buy more vegetables, sauces, and grains... Well, there are also those wooden bowls
Also hurry up..."
Li Rui responded respectfully: "I know!"
Once the work starts, there will be almost hundreds of processing workers, so these details must be considered in advance. The last wooden bowl is for customers when selling smoothies...
Tianyin Road was slipping slowly, and Li Chengzhi didn't dare to delay any longer, so he gave a few hasty explanations and went out.
One mile to the south is Guangmomen. Entering the city and bypassing the palace is Tongtuo Street, which leads directly to Taichang Temple in the south of the city, which is only a little over ten miles away, which is very convenient.
In other words, Li Chengzhi didn’t have to go to court from the seventh rank, otherwise it would be closer. After all, this house is really not expensive...
Although it was his first day in office and his first day as an official, Li Chengzhi's mentality was very calm.
Looking at the ten-foot-wide Bronze Camel Street, where people were riding cars or riding horses, as well as officials and their families walking in coir raincoats, Li Chengzhi felt that he was no different from those of later generations.
Being mediocre is a lifetime, being vigorous is also a lifetime, just live comfortably.
There is nothing I can do. It’s like having a dog chase you from behind. I’ve reached this point unknowingly.
You are totally forced to do this, so you have no choice but to go down!
Li Chengzhi shook his head and retracted his thoughts, and then thought about how to make the smoothie an instant hit.
Whether the sales are good or not, publicity is the most important...so you must put more effort into research.
……
Emperor Xiaowen's stipulation was to have a court meeting every three days and a bath every five days. In addition to the last day at the end of the month, the court will also be held. Today is thirty and it is the day of the court, so Liu Fang and Cui Guang are naturally not in the eunuch.
Taishi Ling Zhao Sheng was so busy that he could not pay attention to the little Hou Xinglang. After ordering, he threw Li Chengzhi to the deputy commanding officer and asked him to look at the arrangements.
The deputy commander is not like Zhao Sheng, who always immerses himself in research and knowledge. He knows that Xinglang was called over by two lieutenants for questioning when he entered prison yesterday, so he did not dare to make arrangements without authorization, saying that he had to wait for Liu Fangcui.
Ask for instructions in the light and behind you.
Li Chengzhi is capable of everything, so he thought it would be a good time to visit various departments to see which one is suitable for him.
The deputy commander didn't have time, so he simply sent his subordinates to Li Chengzhi first.
The so-called subordinate officials are assistants, and every Hou Xinglang has one, also called Hou Buli. Li Chengzhi’s surname is Geng. According to the introduction by the deputy order, he is actually the successor to the Western Han Dynasty astronomer Geng Shouchang?
The armillary sphere was invented by Geng Shouchang, and Zhang Heng of the Eastern Han Dynasty only made improvements on it.
He also invented the Changpingcang system (Taicang of the imperial court, similar to today's Sinograin), and wrote "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic".
Speaking of this, we have to mention the "Heavenly Officials" system in Chinese history where fathers die and sons inherit.
Most people think that Sima Qian was passed down from his father as a "historian", but in fact it was a "heavenly official", which means the duties of astrology and calendar compilation, and history compilation is just incidental.
Firstly, because this profession is not boring, and secondly, it is extremely profound. With such ability and patience, how many scriptures and classics cannot be studied thoroughly? Why don't we let officials who are many times more comfortable and have much more salaries not work in this profession?
, have to deal with a bunch of boring numbers and cold stars, moons and moons?
Therefore, since the Qin Dynasty, most dynasties have had laws and regulations: Taishi Ling, Li Guan, Divination Guan, etc. must be passed down from generation to generation. They are not allowed to study other scriptures, let alone serve as other officials. And this system has continued.
By the Qing Dynasty...
This is how the Geng Chang lineage was passed down. His father Geng Yan was the Taishi Ling during the reign of Empress Dowager Feng. He was demoted because the divination words did not suit Empress Dowager Feng's wishes, and he died in depression.
Li Chengzhi was curious for a moment and asked a lot: "May I ask what hexagram your father is divining?"
Geng Chang looked at Li Chengzhi and sighed: "There are fifty ways of heaven, and one of them is the escape of the earth..."
Li Chengzhi was stunned.
This kind of chaos should not be: the Great Dao is fifty, the Heavenly Evolution is forty-nine, and people can escape one of them...
Hmm?
Empress Dowager Feng...forty-nine?
Didn’t Queen Mother Feng live forty-nine?
Li Chengzhi's eyes bulged: How could Geng Yan be so sure?
And Geng Yan is too brave, right? He really lives up to his name, and he even dares to predict the life span of Empress Dowager Feng, who is not an emperor but is more than an emperor?
If you don’t click, it’s just because Empress Dowager Feng is generous...
Muttering in his heart, Li Chengzhi asked Geng Chang to take him around various ministries.
The eunuchs divide the calendar and predict the two prime ministers, and the following are:
The 筮bu, also known as Baozhang, is used to predict good and bad luck.
The Ministry of Supervision, also known as the Ministry of Calendar, is mainly responsible for calculating the calendar.
The Houbu, also known as the Lingtai, is responsible for watching the stars and observing. This is the official title given to Li Chengzhi by the emperor, specifically for observing the laws of celestial phenomena for the two parts of the calendar and the calendar.
The Department of Calculation specializes in checking calculations and checking data for the two departments. Most of the officials are PhDs in arithmetic from Imperial College, Imperial College and other official schools. When they are too busy, students from the arithmetic department will be brought over to help.
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There is also a time department, which is responsible for the timing, the time division, the morning division, etc. (regular time, time change, alarm, morning and dusk alarm).
Li Chengzhi went to the accounting department first. He was stunned as soon as he walked in.
A large hall was nearly a thousand square meters, and he felt like he had entered a large banquet hall.
What surprised him was not the size of the hall, but the scene inside: in front of everyone there was a table bigger than a snooker table, with hundreds of tables on it. Each table was densely packed with
Calculate the chips. Some are two to three hundred, and some are dozens.
The so-called calculation chips are wooden sticks, used to replace numbers. To put it simply: if a number is 6666, a horizontal wooden stick will be placed in the ones position to represent 5, and then a horizontal wooden stick will be placed below the horizontal stick to represent 1.
The ten digits are reversed, with a solid stick on top representing 5 and a horizontal stick on the bottom representing 1... something like this: 6666:T?T?.
Of course, the other way around also works!
After such a group of numbers is laid out, the calculation will be checked. Doing simple additions and subtractions requires dozens of calculation chips, let alone more complex multi-digit operations? So everyone has such a large table in front of them. p>
And it is not an ordinary trouble to calculate, especially when carrying out multiplication or abdicating in division, my mind will be in a daze and I will forget whether the horizontal stick representing carry or abdicate represents 5 or 1, so I can only recalculate.
Li Chengzhi felt a toothache when he saw it: If this was half done, and that bastard had free hands or accidentally touched it by himself, and turned the horizontal ones into vertical ones, wouldn’t all the results of this day or even several days have been wasted? p>
Forget it, let’s not deduce the Gregorian calendar or derive any formulas first. Let’s create simple numbers first.
Otherwise, he could even stun himself.
There was nothing to see in Zhenbu, and Li Chengzhi couldn't understand it even when he went there. He asked Geng Chang to take him to Houbu to have a look, hoping to see what Hou Xinglang, whom the emperor named him, did originally. p>
This is the only department that is not located in Taichang Temple, but in Jinyong City near Mang Mountain.
Just because it’s high here.
There is a tall building in Jinyong City, called the Baichi Tower, which is almost seven or eight feet tall and is taller than the palace wall.
It was also built in the year of Emperor Wei Ming, the grandson of Cao Cao, and was originally intended for him to enjoy the stars and the moon.
Because it is too high and too close to the palace, it is guarded by a team of forbidden troops, and no officials other than eunuchs are allowed to enter.
Li Chengzhi had the token so he could pass through without any hindrance. He climbed thousands of steps and finally climbed to the observatory.
Looking at the armillary sphere below the stage and the armillary sphere on the stage, Li Chengzhi took a slight breath.
The armillary sphere is not a wheel, but an armillary image: to put it simply, it is a huge copper ball, and all the astrological phases that can be seen from the first day of the lunar month to the 30th day of the twelfth lunar month are engraved on it.
The key thing is that this thing can automatically interpret the astrology of the whole year by just relying on the gears driven by the kettle clock, and can it be accurate?
Li Chengzhi couldn't figure out how he could create such a precision instrument with ancient technology and productivity?
And it was invented during the Western Han Dynasty?
It's a pity that the spring is difficult to make, otherwise it would be easy to make a mechanical watch with this technology...
This shows how powerful the wisdom of the ancients was?
This muddy image was invented by Geng Chang's ancestors and improved by Zhang Heng of the Western Han Dynasty. He usually performs it automatically while standing in the audience, and then Hou Xinglang and Hou Buli go up and down the stage, one observes the stars and the other observes the muddy image, recording
At the same time, observe whether there are any errors in the overall appearance and the sky. This is the job that Li Chengzhi and his assistant Geng Chang were originally supposed to do.
Whenever dynasties change, this thing will be lost. In many cases, it is turned into copper by the rebels, so it can only be recast after the new dynasty is established.
Even if there are historical data for comparison, the time it takes to recast a Hunyxiang can be calculated as "ten years"...
It can be seen that all dynasties have attached great importance to the celestial phenomena and calendar, and this is why China has thousands of years of historical and cultural heritage.