Chapter 56: Dark Forest Law, Comprehensive Industrialization Across the Ages

Three hundred milliliters of Iron Powder fans, the latest chapter of "Sickly Little Sizi Knocks on the Door, I Became the God of Ten Thousand Dynasties" has been released!

The TV screen dims. Reading novels on TTKS. tw is super convenient anytime.

The living room returns to silence.

Lin Xuan stands up and walks into the bathroom to turn on the faucet.

He tears off a clean towel, soaks it in warm water, and wrings out the moisture.

Walking back to the living room, Xiao Sizi is still sitting on the carpet.

Her arms are wrapped tightly around her knees. A tear track hangs from the corner of her eye.

Lin Xuan squats down.

The warm towel covers the little girl's cheeks, gently wiping away tears and snot.

"Hoo—!"

Xiao Sizi exhales a long breath, her emotions calming slightly.

"Lin Xuan, the Great Tang also had ten thousand nations paying homage."

"Those foreign chieftains all marveled at Tang customs and revered Tang laws."

"Why do the Westerners of later generations, untaught by civilization, know only plunder?"

With the understanding of a four-and-a-half-year-old, she tries to comprehend that great fire spanning civilizations.

Lin Xuan puts away the towel and drapes it over the edge of the coffee table.

He turns and walks to the bookshelf, using both hands to take down the half-meter-diameter Globe.

Xiao Sizi leans forward.

Lin Xuan's index finger spins the sphere.

Blue oceans and colorful lands flash by in alternation.

"This is called Earth, the world we live in." Lin Xuan's fingertip stops on the Asian plate. "This area is Huaxia; the Great Tang is here."

His finger sweeps across the deep blue ocean, landing on a landmass of not large area.

"Those who sailed Ironclad Ships and burned the Old Summer Palace came from here."

Xiao Sizi stares at the sphere.

"Separated by ten thousand li?"

"Yes." Lin Xuan's palm presses down on the Globe, stopping the sphere.

"You ask why they are untaught by civilization? Because you have mistaken one thing."

"The Earth is this big; the coal and iron ore buried underground..."

"The grain growing from the soil is all a fixed number."

"This world is a Dark Forest."

"Every nation, every civilization, is a hunter with a gun in this dark forest."

"Whoever discovers the other first will try to swallow the other."

"To fight for those limited resources and survive."

Xiao Sizi's lips part slightly.

"Cannot win them over with virtue? Educate them with essays?"

Lin Xuan lets out a cold laugh.

"Win them over with virtue? That is a lie scholars made up to fool themselves after eating and drinking their fill."

"The Great Tang having ten thousand nations pay homage is not because your poems are well-written or your silk is beautifully woven."

"It is because the knife in your father's hand is sharp enough! It is because the hooves of the Xuanjia Army can crush their bones!"

"When civilizations collide, strip away that veil of etiquette."

"Essentially, it is a showdown between industry and firepower."

Lin Xuan points to the black screen of the television.

"Others have sturdy ships and powerful cannons; you only have the Four Books and Five Classics. That brilliant culture of yours, in their eyes, is merely the fattest fat on a lamb waiting to be slaughtered."

"Will a starving wolf reason with you when it sees mutton? It will only pounce and chew you up, skin and bones."

"Without a powerful industrial foundation to support it, without national defense firepower sweeping the world to protect it..."

"All cultural prosperity is a castle in the air."

"Others can burn it if they want, plunder it if they want."

Lin Xuan speaks another famous saying: "Truth is forever established within the range of artillery."

Above the Sky Screen, Lin Xuan's voice spreads across Jiuzhou.

This analysis of macro-geopolitics, every word dripping with blood.

Directly tears apart the Confucian fantasy of "all seas submit, win over with virtue" that ancient emperors believed in for thousands of years.

Great Qin, Xianyang Palace.

Ying Zheng stands before the main hall door.

The night wind whips his black dragon robe.

"Dark Forest... a lamb waiting to be slaughtered."

Ying Zheng chews on these words, extreme fanaticism blazing in his eyes.

He turns, looking at the ministers trembling below the steps.

"Li Si!" Ying Zheng waves his wide sleeve.

"Your subject is here." Li Si quickly steps out of the line and prostrates himself, bowing his head to the ground.

"Transmit my imperial decree: stop construction of Epang Palace!"

"Seal the earth and halt work on Lishan Mausoleum immediately!"

At these words, the ministers erupted in uproar.

"Your Majesty!" a Censor-in-Chief crawled forward on his knees, "The mausoleum is the very foundation of the Great Qin's prestige; how can it be lightly abandoned!"

Ying Zheng sneered, "Prestige?"

"Is the Old Summer Palace of later generations not grand enough?"

"Once the enemy's cannons fire, will it not turn to ash just the same!"

He drew his sword, descended the steps, and closed in on that Censor-in-Chief.

"If the Great Qin is shattered by those later generations' sturdy ships and powerful cannons."

"Shall I, lying in Lishan, wait to have my grave dug up and my corpse exposed!"

Ying Zheng kicked the Censor-in-Chief over with one foot.

"The seventy hundred thousand convict laborers and craftsmen building palaces and tombs. All of them are to be exiled to Longxi and Bashu!"

"Go dig iron ore! Go dig coal mines!"

"Later generations can build iron-clad monster ships."

"The Great Qin must forge iron harder than theirs! Build a thousand furnaces, burning day and night without extinguishing."

"The Great Qin's realm shall be defended with iron!"

Great Han, Weiyang Palace.

Liu Che lifted the jade cup from the table and drained the warm wine.

"Suppressing the hundred schools and honoring only Confucianism. I issued this decree too early."

Liu Che's eyes were bloodshot red.

On both sides of the great hall.

Several great Confucian scholars who advocated transforming people through virtue broke out in cold sweat, bowing their heads repeatedly.

"You speak of benevolence and righteousness to me day after day, speak of the Mandate of Heaven, speak of propriety, justice, and shame."

Liu Che bent down, staring into his eyes.

"Can those things block the explosive shells that blast open city walls? Can they pierce the ironclad ships that spew black smoke on the seas?"

The great scholar's lips turned white; he could not utter a single word.

"Get out of the court! Go teach at the Imperial Academy; do not hinder my state affairs in this great hall!"

He turned his head to look at Wei Qing.

"Grand General."

"Your subject is here." Wei Qing stepped out of the ranks.

"Send spies, issue proclamations, and offer a reward of ten thousand gold across all prefectures and commanderies of the realm!"

"Find a stone called sulfur, find a white powder called saltpeter."

"I do not seek immortality; I want to exhaust the Great Han's national strength to forcibly extract the gunpowder formula capable of destroying thousands of troops!"

Great Tang, Taiji Palace.

Night deepened; the Imperial Study was brightly lit.

Li Shimin sat upright behind the vast imperial desk, his expression strangely calm.

After extreme fear came the resolve to find life after being placed in a position of certain death.

Zhangsun Wuji, Fang Xuanling, Du Ruhui, Wei Zheng. Several core ministers of the Great Tang stood on both sides.

"Since the founding of the Great Tang, we have prioritized agriculture and suppressed commerce." Li Shimin broke the silence, his voice hoarse.

"Merchants hold low status; all craftsmen and artisans are regarded as the odd skills and frivolous arts of the lowest nine ranks."

Li Shimin looked directly at these confidants.

"From this day forward, this rule is abolished."

Wei Zheng's heart trembled; he stepped forward.

"Your Majesty, merchants pursue profit."

"If the laws suppressing commerce are abolished, the foundation of agriculture will shake, and the people will abandon farming to engage in trade."

"I fear chaos will arise."

"Chaos?" Li Shimin retorted, his tone extremely cold, "Is chaos greater than the destruction of the nation and the extinction of the race? Greater than the three days and three nights of fire at the Old Summer Palace?"

He stood up and walked out from behind the desk.

"When foreign cannons are mounted on the walls of Chang'an, even if you grow mountains of grain, you cannot save the Great Tang's life!"

Li Shimin looked at Zhangsun Wuji.

"Fujji."

"Your subject is here." Zhangsun Wuji bowed deeply.

"The court shall immediately establish a new office, named the Military Industry Supervision Office."

Li Shimin presented the plan: "This office shall be directly under my jurisdiction, not subject to the control of the Three Departments and Six Ministries."

"The required funds shall come from my private treasury in the Imperial Household Department."

Li Shimin paused for a moment.

"Issue a proclamation to the realm and summon all the finest blacksmiths and carpenters of the Great Tang to Chang'an."

"Grant them official positions and generous salaries!"

Wei Zheng stepped back into the ranks.

He knew in his heart that His Majesty's mind was already set.

Li Shimin walked back to the imperial desk, picked up a blank Memorial, and tossed it to Fang Xuanling.

"Lin Xuan once mentioned the words 'Lathe' during idle chat inside the Sky Screen."

"He mentioned Blast Furnace Steelmaking, mentioned the Steam Engine."

Li Shimin's eyes lit up — that was an extreme craving for heavy industry.

"You and Fuji take men and transcribe, word for word, everything spoken in the Sky Screen, and puzzle it out."

"Even if it's guessing, even if it's the blind men feeling the elephant, you must piece together for me the rough shape of steel smelting!"

"The Great Tang will absolutely never be that lamb waiting to be slaughtered!"

Zhangsun Wuji and Fang Xuanling answered in unison, "We obey the decree!"

……

That night.

An unprecedented frenzy spread across the land of Jiuzhou.

It was the will to survive forced out by the rumbling cannon fire.

For thousands of years.

The ancients held to following the Mandate of Heaven, revering the gods.

They believed that relying on moral essays could bring peace to the realm.

Now, the altar had been toppled by the Sky Screen.

The bloody law of the jungle was laid out before their eyes.

They no longer superstitiously believed in that ethereal Mandate of Heaven.

They looked toward the burning furnace, toward the black coal and iron ore buried deep underground.

The crash of the great hammer striking the anvil was about to replace the chanting voices of Confucian scholars in the academies.

A "passive Industrial Revolution" spanning several dynasties.

Accompanied by a fierce sense of national survival crisis, it thunderously raised its curtain.