Chapter 538: Rites, Music, and Tributary Subjects

Liu Chengzong could always come up with ideas that were effective but bizarre.

Take the rail wagon, for instance — but how exactly do you build the rails? Liu the Lion had no clue, so this heavy task landed squarely on Liu Chengyun's shoulders.

This really tormented Chengyun's poor little brain — he understood even less than his second brother!

After a thousand years, who could know what the Qin dynasty's rails were like? But by Liu the Lion's conservative estimate, with this rail line running through Hehuang, their grain transport losses should drop by half.

Chengyun laughed when he heard this. He said, Second Brother, you're being far too conservative. If you want to solve the transport loss problem in Hehuang, even without this rail line, you could still cut the losses by half.

Chengyun had always been in charge of grain levies, grain transport, and production and construction across the five garrison towns of Hehuang. No one in the entire Marshal's headquarters understood the problems of the Hehuang Valley better than he did.

By now, the equal-field grain purchase policy in the Hehuang Valley had become permanent practice, and the land's productive capacity had been fully developed. Snowmelt from the mountains ensured stable harvests regardless of drought or flood. The annual grain intake had settled into a fixed quota — under the most ideal conditions, it could reach two hundred fifty thousand shi of processed grain.

If raw grain were levied, it would be three hundred seventy thousand shi.

Of that, two hundred eighty thousand shi was fixed, coming from the eight thousand qing of prime farmland in the Hehuang Valley; the remaining ninety thousand shi came from the thirty thousand qing of fields in the Hehuang highlands.

Although more and more of the native people living in the highlands were being registered into households, the mountain land's yield was inherently low, and even less could be spared as marketable grain to exchange for daily necessities. Thus, despite having more land, the output was lower. On the other hand, the mountain folk faced no restrictions on what crops they planted, so the highlands were also an important source of horse fodder, medicinal herbs, timber, and other supplies for the Marshal's headquarters.

During the process of levying this grain into the granaries and processing it into military rations, there was enormous wastage — a historical problem left behind by Liu Chengzong and his men.

The Marshal's headquarters had originated as a lone army that wandered into Qinghai, occupying barren wasteland with nothing to its name and facing an environment where every neighbor was a foe. Everything had to be planned from scratch.

Under the circumstances they faced back then, cost was simply not a factor they needed to consider. The bedrock of all production, construction, and planning was security.

The government offices and markets of New City, the Sun-Moon Mountain Ironworks, the Hundred Crafts Bureau at Ju'erwan that served as the handicraft base, the New City Academy, the granaries in Xining City, and the naval headquarters' ration-processing plant on the northern shore of Qinghai Lake — all of these critical military sites were built at the far western end of the Hehuang Valley.

After all, at that time, no one dared to put a granary on the banks of the Yellow River at Lanzhou, or at Nianbo Fortress, which was not even under their control.

The entire equal-field grain purchase policy across the Hehuang Valley revolved around these places. Silver came from the Marshal's headquarters office, daily necessities were produced at the Hundred Crafts Bureau, and these goods were escorted eastward each year to the relay stations of the five Hehuang garrison towns. At the same time, each township and village in the five towns delivered its grain, and transporting this grain and fodder to the five towns already incurred a small transport loss.

The five towns then transported the grain and the silver from distributing the Hundred Crafts Bureau's daily goods back to the Xining granaries for storage, and Xining then sent it on to Qinghai Lake for processing. This had not been a big problem before — once the military rations reached the naval headquarters, the army was either marching to the Heka Grasslands or heading east to fight in Hehuang, so the grain hauls were short either way.

But now things were different. West of Xining, no grain needed to be transported. Even if they were to mount a distant expedition against Yarkand or support the Tianshan front, it would not fall to them to transport the grain — the Marshal's headquarters simply did not have that transport capacity. And to the east, the front line of the war was at Lintao and Gongchang, nearly a thousand li from Qinghai Lake.

Take Dongguan Town, at the easternmost edge of Hehuang, as an example. A load of grain transported from there to the naval headquarters was five hundred li. The naval headquarters would process it into military rations, then ship it back to Lanzhou — another five hundred li. Without doing anything at all, a thousand li had already been covered.

This was also why Chengyun only spoke of building roads in Hehuang and made no mention of Qinghai Lake. He suggested that Liu Chengzong split up the naval headquarters, leaving only a department for processing salted fish and smoked fish, while moving all the personnel and techniques for processing military rations eastward.

Liu Chengzong considered this suggestion very carefully. His proposal to build the Xining-Lanzhou rail line had indeed been partly a spur-of-the-moment impulse, but after hearing Chengyun's analysis of the transport losses in Hehuang, his determination to build the rail line actually solidified.

The administrative structure of the Marshal's headquarters would inevitably have to move to Lanzhou. Some things — like government clerks and official documents and archives — were easy to move. But other things, such as the ironworks, mines, and the Armory Bureau, were not easy to move.

Yet if these departments did not move east, all of the Marshal's Army's military supplies would have to be shipped from a thousand li away — the cost would be far too high.

But once the determination to build the rail line was truly set, nothing but difficulties lay ahead.

The rails aside, even if the Marshal's headquarters built the rail line, apart from the cannon carts, no other vehicle could run on it.

Because Liu Chengzong was a scavenger. Whether war chariots or supply wagons, military or civilian, aside from the cannon carts, every single vehicle he had was picked up.

Only the carts for the thousand-catty cannons were made by the Marshal's headquarters themselves. But even for the cannon carts, the axle width, wheel width, and load capacity had no unified specifications.

Truly, a journey of a thousand li begins with a single step. Liu Chengzong had not expected that his casual mention of building a rail line would require starting from the step of designing a vehicle. This was a matter that tested professional expertise heavily. Liu Chengzong did not dare take it all upon himself and directly sent someone to invite Shi Chengwo over.

Both he and Shi Chengwo were laymen when it came to wagon design, but what they shared was the understanding that, in the realm of manufacturing, design was paramount.

Liu Chengzong was a man skilled with the blade, and also one fond of collecting blades. After nearly every battle, he would select a few fine swords from the spoils and have them sent to be stored at the Marshal's headquarters office.

Yet the saber he wore at his side, though fitted with better mountings, always had a blade of ordinary material — a standard-issue goose-quill official's saber.

The quality of the standard-issue blade was quite mediocre, and the treatment of the edge and body was also very ordinary. But it had one advantage that craftsmanship and material could never replace: its design was sound.

The most critical thing in a weapon is its balance point. Only when the balance is right does it feel good in the hand; only when it feels good in the hand can it kill; and to kill, you only need one stroke.

A good wagon is like a good blade. Materials matter, but design matters more. Good design spares the horse unnecessary burden, allowing it to run faster and farther. Only once this step is done right is one qualified to talk about materials and quality.

When Shi Chengwo heard about designing a universal two-wheeled wagon chassis, he was overjoyed — thank heavens Liu Chengzong had brought it up early!

The Armory Bureau under the Marshal's headquarters' Works Department was already doing this work. Ever since receiving word that the Oirat trade caravan dispatched from the Tianshan Mountains was already on the road, Shi Chengwo had been hearing complaints from Liu Chengyun and others about the headquarters' insufficient vehicle reserves.

The Marshal's headquarters was deploying troops on all fronts and had a very high level of mule-and-horse mobilization, yet it did not build its own wagons and relied solely on captures — it would be a miracle if the vehicles were sufficient!

Not to mention that before Liu Chengzong's distant campaign in Gansu, he had also given the Works Department an order to mount the rocket-propelled arrow boxes onto war chariots, saying they were to be issued to the entire army. Over a hundred sets had already been built, but because Chengyun needed them to haul cargo, the rocket launch boxes were taken off and sent away to haul goods.

Shi Chengwo had originally wanted to design a two-wheeled wagon that could mount wall guns, transport cannons, carry rockets, haul supplies, and even be fitted with armor plates in the field to be temporarily converted into simple fortifications.

Now that Liu Chengzong brought the matter up, it was really just a matter of needing a number for the wheel width and axle length. For Shi Chengwo, this was something he could rattle off without thinking: "Replying to the Grand Marshal, the Works Department is already working on it. The axle is four chi and three cun. The only issue right now is that the wheels are not uniform — some are wooden wheels, some iron; some have wooden axles, some iron. We can absolutely set a standard for the wheels as well."

As for iron axles versus wooden axles, iron wheels versus wooden wheels — Liu Chengzong did know about these. They were all prepared for the thousand-catty cannons.

The iron axle was a forged iron axle, but the iron wheel was not pure iron — it was a wheel wrapped with a layer of iron on the outside. At present, the weight of their thousand-catty cannons did not yet require wheels forged entirely from pure iron.

Liu Chengzong nodded and said, "That simplifies things considerably. Once we establish wheel-width standards suitable for various situations, we can begin testing the rails for operational use. A single-horse wagon carrying six hundred to one thousand two hundred catties, a double-horse wagon carrying eight hundred to one thousand six hundred catties."

Hearing these figures, both Chengyun and Shi Chengwo could not help but furrow their brows slightly.

Chengyun spoke up and asked, "Brother, that's the maximum it can carry?"

In truth, these figures were not small at all. A six-hundred-catty load for a single-horse wagon was the stipulated cargo weight for the Marshal's headquarters' active single-horse wagons. Of course, they could carry more — the supply soldiers driving the wagons would often sit on top — but the horse would certainly be more tired.

And as for the one-thousand-six-hundred-catty load for a double-horse wagon that Liu Chengzong mentioned, aside from hauling cannons, the Marshal's headquarters' wagons normally never carried such heavy cargo.

The reason Chengyun thought Liu Chengzong's numbers were low was that these figures were the cargo loads for wagons traveling on dirt roads and grasslands.

He did not understand rail wagons, but he understood wagons very well. The weight a horse could pull was not a fixed constant — it had a great deal to do with the vehicle being towed, the distance traveled, and the road conditions.

On a long-distance march through the wilds, traveling day after day without rest, a horse- or mule-drawn wagon hauling five hundred catties was already a lot. Especially on a forced march, loading three hundred catties onto a wagon was considered heavy duty. But for short-distance freight, pulling six hundred catties was considered heavy duty. This was the situation on wild grasslands and dirt terrain.

If the surface were switched to a hard road, though it was bad for the horses' hooves, the wagon would jolt less and travel more lightly, and could actually pull heavier cargo and go farther.

In Xining's prefectural seat, there was a section of gravel road. On a smooth surface like that, never mind horses — the native soldiers of Chieftain Chen Shiwen of Eight Corner City, with one man strapped into a harness pulling a flatbed cart, could haul seven or eight hundred catties of grain running all over the place. But switch to a dirt road, and it would take three men pushing and pulling together just to barely drag it back to the chieftain's territory.

Now, the wooden rail line they were going to build was, in Chengyun's understanding, a way of using limited cost to improve the road conditions for wagon travel to the absolute best, following the wheel ruts — once they laid down elm rails, how smooth it would be.

Never mind a flat wooden surface — even on an official highway, there were still potholes and all sorts of little dirt mounds and pits. Traveling out in the world, where could you ever find a level road?

In Chengyun's understanding, once this kind of road surface was laid, a single Hexi great horse ought to be able to pull a load of two thousand catties and go.

"Of course it's low."

Liu Chengzong smiled and explained, "If our rail line were only a dozen or so li long, and we wrapped it in iron, I reckon even a single horse pulling three thousand catties would be fine. But it has to be built for four hundred li. Even with a single wagon at one thousand two hundred catties, the horse will be exhausted after running for an hour and a half. Once it's exhausted, you have to change horses."

"This rail line is for transporting military supplies. If we carry less, we can just build more wagons. We're not short on horses or wagons. But if the transport is slow, that won't do."

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong swept his hand eastward across the map: "Once war breaks out over there, the goods still have to travel another four or five hundred li after crossing the Yellow River, all heavy wagons. What do we do when there aren't enough vehicles at the front?"

Chengyun suddenly saw the light. He had not considered the war aspect at all, only thinking about hauling cargo. But then he asked again, "In that case, we should build docks on both banks of the Yellow River at the same time. Once the rail line is built and cargo moves faster, the current small docks won't be enough."

He tilted his head as he spoke. "Should we build carts over on the Lanzhou side too? If not, we could build heavy carts west of the river and haul freight on the rails, and build light carts east of the river to supply the army. The cargo has to be unloaded and loaded onto boats at the shore anyway — how about two separate sets of standards?"

"You have a point."

Liu Chengzong nodded slowly, but then shook his head and rejected the suggestion, laughing. "One set of standards. If the rails in Hehuang work well, then wherever we fight our way to in the future, we'll lay rails there! By the time Hehuang truly becomes the rear area, it won't be too late to build heavy carts under a different set of standards."

"That would be no small expense."

Chengyun clicked his tongue inwardly, pulled out a small abacus from his waist, and started working the beads as he spoke. "Four hundred li, two lines running north-south — one from west to east, one from east to west, otherwise the carts will crash into each other. Linking cast iron piece by piece — the Sun-Moon Mountain Ironworks does have that capability, but right now iron stock has too many uses; we can't afford to lay it on the ground."

"Just the elm rails Second Brother mentioned — figuring one cai per square zhang, eighteen cai per li — over four hundred li of road that's seventy-two hundred cai. The stone for reinforcement, figure the same amount. The timber also needs waterproofing and rot-proofing. That's just materials and labor. Add in food for the workers... a project this big, I'd estimate four hundred thousand man-days."

Four hundred thousand man-days. Liu Chengzong mused, "The total's manageable. How did you calculate it?"

One worker working one day counted as one man-day. Four hundred thousand man-days sounded enormous, but when you broke it down over a year, the food and wage costs were about the same as the upkeep for a thousand-man headquarters unit.

But in reality, Liu Chengzong's Marshal's Manor had no soldiers that cheap to keep — hired laborers, after all, didn't need warhorses. To Liu Chengzong, there was no expense in the world more costly than maintaining a massive army.

Of course, the cost of keeping troops had never come out of his own pocket. The wool came from the sheep's back — at most, he was just the sheep's brain. The troops were kept by the nearly million common folk of the two prefectures of Xikang. What the Marshal's Manor's officers and soldiers ate and used was all the fat and blood of the people.

Chengyun ran through the abacus one last time, confirmed the calculation was accurate, and said with full confidence, "Five hundred men, four hundred li, two days per li."

"A bit slow. It needs to be faster."

Liu Chengzong did his own mental calculation. At this pace, the road would take over two years to build. Since the total amount of work was the same, he spread his hands and said, "Two thousand men, four hundred li, two li per day."

"Farming in Hehuang is heavy work, and winter is far too cold. The whole road starts at Xining and ends at Hekou, divided into twelve sections in the middle. Set up ten post stations across the five garrison towns of Hehuang. They'll handle horse changes and cart repairs, and also serve as market hubs for the twenty townships and wards of the five garrisons."

A wooden cart rail — though its load capacity was nowhere near requiring sleepers, it also couldn't be a single four-hundred-li unbroken line. After all, a four-legged engine wasn't a steam engine. A steam engine could run continuously, but a horse got tired.

For one thing, horses needed changing. For another, there had to be time and space for loading, unloading, and clearing the rails. So no matter the total length, the rail line would inevitably be built in sections.

"Even with two thousand men, this road definitely won't be usable until next year's winter or even the spring of the year after."

Saying this, Chengyun sighed. "Right now, the Marshal's Manor's stockpiled materials are insufficient. We can only build a section of twenty or thirty li first and test things out."

"Also, Brother, I think we still need to find a dedicated person for this. I manage the Revenue Office — this is a matter for the Works Office. Better to set up a dedicated bureau under the Works Office and appoint a director."

Liu Chengzong pondered and nodded slowly, then spoke. "In that case, let's do as you say. Establish a Road Administration Bureau under the Works Office. Pick someone reliable from among those government students who worked on the reservoir to take charge of this."

At this, Liu Chengzong suddenly grew interested and said to Chengyun and Shi Chengwo, "Now that Elder Brother has gone to the Tianshan Mountains, the Military Office has no one managing it for the time being. On top of that, we're still missing someone for the Rites Office. Think it over — who would be suitable for this director?"

Shi Chengwo thought through everyone he knew and couldn't come up with a suitable candidate, until he caught the look Liu Chengzong was giving him and asked, "Marshal, what about that Bai Yiqing from Gansu?"

"That fellow's chanting sutras in the great temple at Ganzhou. His talent and ability are certainly sufficient, but if we make him director of the Rites Office now, it's fine for internal Marshal's Manor affairs. But when it comes to the imperial court, he'd be a one-time-use asset — he'd slip away at the first opportunity, and might even write a book in Beijing called 'A Narrow Escape from the Tiger's Jaws.'"

Liu Chengzong finished and quickly waved his hand. "No, no. Think of someone else. Someone who can receive tributary envoys from vassals, manage internal and external rites and music, and understand both court and peasant army affairs... Hmm?"

Before he could finish, Chengyun said, "Brother, I've thought of someone. See if he'll do."

"Who?"

"Zhang Xianzhong."

Good afternoon!