Chapter 872: Great Fortune for the Great Zhou, Great Fortune for All Under Heaven

The place where Zhao Hutou and the others were building New Ye City should be near what later generations would call Mexico City.

The wheel of history is truly wondrous. In the original timeline, the first great city built by the Aztecs, Tenochtitlan, stood right here.

Of course, there were practical reasons for this, because the Valley of Anahuac, where Mexico City lies, has a mild climate suited to human habitation.

And because it is a valley, it is easy to defend and hard to attack. The small island in Lake Texcoco in particular had uniquely advantageous natural defenses, making it excellent for repelling enemies.

At the same time, around Lake Texcoco there was also a very large alluvial plain with fertile soil.

The rivers flowing into Lake Texcoco also brought an ample water supply, which aided agriculture while making transport very convenient.

To put it in Chinese terms, this was a Hanzhong Plain at a slightly higher elevation.

That was why an experienced yabing officer like Zhao Sisi spotted it at a glance.

And the powerful civilization to the southeast that Zhao Hutou and Zhao Sisi had discovered was, barring surprises, surely the Maya civilization of the Yucatan Peninsula.

However, the current point in this timeline was precisely the crucial period when Maya civilization was transitioning from the middle Classical period to the post-Classical period.

The famous city of Chichen Itza would enjoy its final glory in the decades to come, then rapidly decline.

On the whole, the Maya city-states at this time were sinking into a period of decline and chaos, while a new glory was still brewing.

Correspondingly, if crops like maize, sweet potato, potato, tomato, pumpkin, chili pepper, and cotton were heaven's gift to the natives of the Americas, even a form of favoritism,

then syphilis, called the "waxberry festering sores," was the curse heaven gave the American natives to balance that favoritism.

This wretched thing is quite notorious in human history, mainly because of its mode of transmission. In an age without condoms, it was virtually impossible to guard against.

Not only was its transmission relatively covert, but when it first appeared, its symptoms were not as violent as cholera, plague, or smallpox. By the time you realized you were sick, you had no idea how many people it had already spread to.

At the same time, in its later stages this wretched thing's outward signs were very severe: sores all over the body, rotting pus, blindness, hair loss, and the like.

Never mind the suffering the disease itself brought; the outward appearance alone was enough to make a person socially dead, even lose the will to live.

So toward this thing, I, Sage Zhang, was on alert to the ten-thousandth degree, terrified that it might spread to the Central Plains at this time.

Especially whenever he thought of the word "syphilis," Sage Zhang would recall a certain time before his transmigration, when he had encountered a seven-out-of-ten little beauty.

At the time he thought himself blessed with good fortune, but after several rounds of enthusiastic competition in skills, he suddenly learned from someone else that this lady had spent several years working hard in Dongguan.

Oh, the terror!

After a bout of frantic Baidu searching, he was nearly scared into losing function on the spot, and he spent a full month and more in constant dread.

This disease is just too damn hateful!

So when Zhao Hutou set out, Sage Zhang gave him a thousand warnings and ten thousand instructions. He not only personally drew sketches teaching him how to recognize it, explained the symptoms and how it spread, but also ordered Zhao Hutou to strictly control the crotches of the expeditionary warriors under his command.

It was not that he forbade relations with the natives, because that was impossible. But all chosen native partners had to be carefully examined beforehand for any problems of this sort.

Once confirmed clean, they also had to keep their circles fixed: they were not to go out and fool around themselves, nor allow the native women to fool around. Whoever caught it could just stay in Purvavideha; there was no need to come back.

In truth, Sage Zhang was overreacting a bit, because syphilis at this time was not as terrifying as in later ages.

The reason it became so terrifying in later ages, enough to lay low the French army invading Italy, owed much to the "fine" living habits of the white masters of that time.

That lot never could keep their crotches under control. From kings and queens to street peddlers and farm laborers, their private lives were all a mess.

So much so that syphilis, a disease whose spread among American natives only rated as a mid-level boss, traveled faster once it reached Europe than the plague the damn Mongols flung over with trebuchets.

Second, the sanitary conditions in Europe at the time were, if not a public toilet, then a great cesspit. As for knowledge of hygiene, they had none at all and did not care.

In such a filthy environment, once syphilis, this foreign dragon, reached Europe, it very likely quickly consolidated resources with the local snakes.

As the saying goes: I'll grab an AK, you grab a rifle, build it big and strong, and create glory anew.

Finally, bed politics were very much in vogue among European royalty at the time. It was normal for an average European noble to have dozens of bed partners, and on top of that they often held orgies.

This geometric exponential cross-arrangement and combination quickly allowed syphilis to complete its final evolution in Europe.

Of course, this is not to say that syphilis at present was not dangerous.

At least among the Maya natives now, the constant disappearance of city-states was due not only to war, water sources, and desertification caused by poor farming techniques, but syphilis also accounted for a very large proportion.

The natives of early slave society had no notions of morality or propriety. Even though the primitive syphilis of this time was not ferocious, after decades, even centuries of spread, the sick in towns multiplied, the healthy fled in panic, and then an external invasion arrived. That completed the set, and the town could basically just wait to be abandoned.

Under the dim yellow sun, Zhao Hutou was seizing the time to write furiously.

Hmm, this Purvavideha was still too backward; lighting at night basically depended on torches, so Zhao Hutou generally finished his work before dark.

Zhao Hutou was writing a memorial to Zhang Zhao, because they had been in Purvavideha for over a year now and had basically come to understand the situation.

It was now time to let a group of voyagers attempt to return to the Central Plains via the Canglang Waters, the North Equatorial Current.

"Your servant, of the second class of the Longtao Academy, graduated in the seventh year of Shenghuang's Shaoming era, disciple Zhao Yihu, from New Ye City in Purvavideha ten thousand li away, reports to the Sage:

In the fourth month of the tenth year of Shaoming, your disciple set out from Sendai City in Sendai Prefecture, Chaori Province of the Yan Kingdom, and sailed southeast onto the Cangming Waters, heading east in search of Purvavideha.

By the Sage's guidance and wholly relying on Your Majesty's protection, though the winds were fierce and the waves high, the sea and sky dark and bright, and eight in ten of our men were lost, with the warships nearly all destroyed, in the end we reached Purvavideha, and soon encountered the monk Yanshou, who had set sail in the seventh year of Shaoming.

After your disciple arrived in the eastern continent, Purvavideha, I cut down the rebellious, opened fields and farmed, recruited brave men, and opened up the land in all directions. It has now been eighteen months.

The Sage instructed that we must find the supreme treasures of the eastern continent, and your disciple has basically accomplished this.

The first is called maize. There are four subspecies, and it is the staple grain on which the natives of the eastern continent depend for survival.

Its grain yield is roughly comparable to Champa rice. Whether on slopes or dry fields, rich or poor soil, it tolerates heat and drought. Even in snowy Andong or the scorching heat of Lingnan, it can be grown. It likes water but does not tolerate waterlogging.

In Master Yanshou's four years in the eastern continent, he planted a total of 634,000 mu.

Of these, 90,000 mu were top-grade fields, averaging 611 jin per mu.

350,000 mu were middle-grade fields, averaging 493 jin per mu.

190,000 mu were low-grade fields, averaging 327 jin per mu.

Besides its high grain yield, its stalks and cobs are both of great use. Your disciple once tried boiling them. They were slightly bitter but edible. Though poor at filling the belly, they were still far better than wild grass or tree bark.

Since people can stomach it, it should be excellent for feeding livestock. Therefore your disciple believes that, all things considered, the yield per mu can be increased by about fifty jin more.

Seen in this light, the Sage's words that this thing can relieve the hunger of the common people are truly no empty claim.

I expect that when maize reaches the Central Plains, it will completely replace millet, broomcorn millet, black millet, and the like, and become a pillar of the state."

Writing up to this point, Zhao Yihu, the disciple of the Son of Heaven whose childhood name was Zhao Hutou, set down his brush with a sigh.

Comparing maize's overall yield with the Central Plains, an average of 460 jin per mu could easily crush the 230 jin of Helong, Ningxia, and Hedong, and the 270 jin of Guanzhong.

It also far surpasses the three hundred jin of Shu and Henan, and the three hundred twenty jin of the Jianghuai region.

Even compared to Champa rice, it yields twenty or thirty jin more, and unlike Champa rice, it does not so easily exhaust the fertility of the soil, while its taste is far superior as well.

In this way, once maize reaches the Central Plains, it will essentially be like adding a third more land to the Great Zhou out of thin air.

At this thought, Zhao Hutou was so excited his hands began to tremble. He imagined that in days to come, in some small village temple, there ought to be a spirit tablet reserved for him, Zhao Hutou.

Of course, Zhao Hutou did not yet know that maize was a thing of extraordinary potential. In later ages, yields of two thousand jin per mu would be no problem, and at the very least it could produce fourteen or fifteen hundred jin.

Now that it had arrived early in the hands of the Chinese, a people gifted at cultivation, the speed of its yield increases should be faster than in history.

After being excited for a while, Zhao Hutou picked up his brush again and continued writing:

"The sweet potato spoken of by the Sage, your disciple has also found. Although its yield per mu is even higher than maize, the descendants of the Yin people here rarely use it as a staple food, mostly using it to boil sugar.

Upon careful inspection, your disciple found that although this thing is delicious, and its stems and leaves make a fine vegetable, it does not stave off hunger.

At the end of the shen hour (five in the afternoon), I ate more than fifteen of them, a full two huge bowls, yet by dawn I was certain to be so hungry my heart panicked. I imagine this is the reason the Yin descendants of the Eastern Continent do not use it as a staple.

But with such an enormous yield, even if it does not satisfy hunger, it is still an extremely useful food. Though it is a chicken rib in years of plenty, in years of famine it is a life-saving grain."

Hmm, Zhao Hutou had not yet realized that the greatest use of sweet potatoes was not feeding people in years of plenty, but feeding pigs.

When there were stems and leaves, eat the stems and leaves; when there were no stems and leaves, eat the fruit. Only with this thing did pigs gain the qualification to become the foremost of the six domestic animals.

For in ancient times, few people raised pigs. The most important reason was not that castration surgery was unknown, nor that they were dirty and full of parasites—pigs actually love cleanliness.

In the final analysis, it was because pigs, in their diet, conflicted with humans.

The things pigs could eat, liked to eat, and grew meat from eating—such as radishes, various vegetables, millet and the like—were generally also things people loved to eat.

And in these times, how precious the things people could eat were goes without saying. How could anyone bear to give them to pigs?

But if you did not give pigs these things, and instead let them eat grass like cattle and sheep—well, then you would find that after raising a pig with great effort for three or four years, it was still only sixty or seventy, or seventy or eighty jin, a complete waste of manpower spent cutting grass and herding it.

Therefore, before crops like sweet potatoes existed, pigs were creatures you kept in good years to get a bit of meat, and slaughtered quickly in famine years.

Only with an ample supply of sweet potatoes, giving pigs a stable and relatively nutritious food source, could they grow fat and plump in a relatively short time.

Rather than as now, when they generally grew to only sixty or seventy jin, skinny and scrawny with not two ounces of meat on them.

"As for the other crops, your disciple has also found them. The taste of this chili pepper...

" Zhao Hutou wrote up to here, then stopped his brush and smacked his lips, as if that fiery, lip-numbing, painful sensation had crawled back onto his mouth again.

Had the Sage not repeatedly instructed him to bring the chili pepper back, and explained it in detail, Zhao Hutou would certainly have thought the thing was poison. He did not know why the Sage was so utterly obsessed with it.

"The tomato is sweet-sour and juicy. Your disciple considers it superior to the ringo apple, yellow apricot, and other fruits, and it can also be used in cooking. Whether stewed with meat or made into soup, it is of the highest quality.

Peanuts, when stir-fried or deep-fried, can compare with walnuts, and can also be pressed for oil. Truly they are an excellent supplement after meals and with tea.

In addition, your disciple has found an enormous barbarian gourd (pumpkin). When fully grown, it is green at first and later turns orange-red. Eaten, it has a faint sweetness. Raw, the taste is poor; steamed or boiled, it is also merely ordinary.

But it does not occupy arable land, and its yield is quite abundant. It too is a supreme treasure that benefits the nation and the people.

Thinking of the scene when these six supreme crops arrive in the Middle Kingdom, your disciple offers congratulations to the Sage.

Although the potato has not yet been found, the above items alone are enough to bless all the people under heaven, far surpassing the golden ages of Han and Tang, and to make our Great Zhou's dynastic fortune endure for ten thousand times ten thousand years.

Besides these precious crops, your disciple has also thoroughly investigated the situation of the Yin descendants of the Eastern Continent, and now presents it for the Sage's review.

In customs, these barbarians can only be compared to the wild men north of the Great Xianbei Mountains in Andong, or those south of the dense forests of the Chu fief in Yunnan.

In appearance, they resemble the wild Shiwei and the raw Jurchen near the Outer Xianbei Mountains. They do not look like people of the Middle Kingdom, yet neither are they like the Kunlun slaves or the golden-haired barbarians.

These Yin descendants now mainly dwell southeast of Shengzhou in the Eastern Victory Body Continent. Their farming techniques are extremely backward; they cannot work iron, and have a small amount of copper implements, obtained by chance from nature rather than through large-scale smelting.

They are even completely ignorant of animal husbandry, having no cattle, horses, sheep, or other livestock. Thus in war they have no cavalry, in farming no oxen to pull plows, and the common people are impoverished.

When they travel, they have no carts or carriages, for—most strangely—they do not know how to make wheels. Their boats are also basically hollowed out from giant logs and capsize very easily.

These people are fierce and brave, often daring to fight bloody battles, but they have no armor, no iron weapons, and no warhorses—only wooden clubs and bows and arrows.

Their warriors polish ten-victory stone (obsidian) until sharp, then fix it onto clubs to make stone axes, stone spears, and stone daggers.

Such weapons are extremely sharp against the unarmored, but they cannot pierce our Great Zhou's armor, and therefore are all utterly worthless.

According to the information your disciple has obtained, the Yin descendants have dozens of regional states here. Originally governed by a royal clan, power seems to have fallen from their hands, and now the various states attack one another, much like the situation after King Ping moved east.

Among the various states, the small ones have a thousand or so households and around ten thousand people; the large ones have twenty or thirty thousand households and nearly two hundred thousand people. Your disciple estimates there are in total one hundred fifty thousand households and more than eight hundred thousand people.

They share the same language and have close dealings with one another. They have spirit shamans and also martial nobles, and their hierarchy is strict.

Your disciple hereby reports to Your Majesty: though their military preparations are utterly worthless, their numbers are great, and therefore your disciple has not rashly attacked.

One should follow the strategy of distant alliances and nearby attacks from the pre-Qin era, not lightly revealing our indestructible iron weapons and impenetrable armor. Wait until the Sage's next supply shipment arrives, with three to five hundred armored soldiers, and then utterly defeat and conquer them.

Therefore, your disciple requests that when the Sage dispatches the third fleet, it carry five hundred refined iron spearheads, one hundred sets of lamellar armor, one hundred sets of ring-linked mail, three hundred fierce warriors, and fifty households each of stonemasons and carpenters.

With this, your disciple estimates that within ten years, he can conquer this land of the Yin descendants for our Great Zhou.

Two or three hundred years from now, when the art of navigation reaches full maturity, the Eastern Victory Body Continent, though ten thousand li away, may become a paradise for our descendants to live and work in peace.

If so, your disciple will not have failed the Sage's careful cultivation, nor failed to have walked through this world in vain. Great fortune for the Great Zhou, great fortune for our people, great fortune for all under heaven!"

When Zhao Hutou wrote this final character, his mood was profoundly stirred.

Compared to the Middle Kingdom, the Eastern Victory Body Continent—apart from a less scorching climate and fewer miasmas and plagues—was inferior even to the Rinan marquisate that the Nong clan held in Guangnan.

A disciple of the Son of Heaven like Zhao Hutou, and one of the most favored disciples at that, even if he were to go out to rule barbarians as a Xia lord, whether to Great King Murong's Yan fief or to the Chu fief of the eldest imperial son Zhang Xiancun, they would have fought to break their heads over snatching him.

Lelang, Joseon, Chaoxian, Penglai, Yunnan—any of those places was a hundred times better than the Eastern Victory Body Continent.

But Zhao Hutou was willing to stay in this place. It was not for the glory and wealth before his eyes, but to use all he had learned in his life to accomplish the great work the Sage had entrusted to them: ruling barbarians as Xia lords, colonizing the whole world, and securing blessings for future generations.

He imagined that a hundred or two hundred years from now, his descendants would be able to ride tall horses, wear silks and satins, hold peerless beauties in their arms, and say with extraordinary pride:

"Suffering? Sorry, but back in my great-great-grandfather's generation, our Zhao family already ate up all the suffering for the next several hundred years!

The fact that you can now live and work in peace in the Eastern Continent—you all ought to kowtow to my great-great-grandfather!"

"General, the Tuitaka barbarian king Yividimo has sent people again. They hope we can send five hundred warriors to join them in raiding the villages near Chichen Itza."

Just as Zhao Hutou's mood was surging, a guard came to report.

The Tuitaka people the guard mentioned were the Toltec kingdom of history, and Yividimo was the second king of the Toltecs, Ivitimal.

Historically, before the Aztecs took control of the Maya cultural region, it was the Toltecs who first entered the Maya cultural area.

They occupied Chichen Itza, reviving the declining classical Maya civilization once more, and exerted considerable influence on both Maya and Aztec culture.

And this event would take place about thirty years later, so at this time the Tutec people did not yet have the ability to enter the core region of Maya culture — they were still northern barbarians.

So then, this northern barbarian, lacking the strength on his own, began to have the idea of inviting even more northern barbarians to launch raids together with him.

Zhao Hutou chuckled. "The Tutec people stand between us and the Maya. Even if we send troops, all the gains would have to be transported back through Tutec territory. Whether we'd end up losing both the men and the goods is hard to say.

This is Yuan Benchu inviting Gongsun Zan to join forces and attack Jizhou — ahahaha!"

At these words, everyone present burst out laughing. Having a deep sense of history is a fine thing — no need for lengthy explanations; just pull out any example and everyone understands what is happening.

"Secretly send someone to Chichen Itza and report the situation to the Maya king." Zhao Hutou said to the monk Yanshou beside him:

"Befriend the distant and attack the near. Once this Yuan Benchu of a Tutec falls, the weak and incompetent Han Fu of Jizhou will be nothing but fat meat at our lips, ready for us to handle as we please."

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