Black clouds were swaying, and the sky and earth were dark, with strong winds blowing, and lightning and thunder. But a lightning strikes the tall Yueyang Tower, and the dazzling lines were deeply imprinted in Yuwen Wen's eyes.

In his opinion, it seemed that a monk was passing the tribulation in Yueyang Tower. After he withstood the Nine Heavens Divine Thunder, he could be reborn and ascend to heaven.

But this is impossible, so Yuwen Wen’s focus is whether Yueyang Tower will catch fire after being struck by lightning and whether it will collapse in the fire.

However, this is unlikely, because there is a lightning rod installed on the Yueyang Tower. Lightning strikes the lightning rod, connects the "world line", and the current goes to the ground along the lightning rod, and does not cause any obvious damage to the Yueyang Tower.

At least in Yuwen Wen's opinion, it was fine, because he had been waiting for almost half an hour and witnessed the Yueyang Tower being hit by lightning three times, but no fire flashed in the building. It can be seen that the lightning rod did work.

After nearly twenty years of continuous improvement, lightning rod technology can now protect high-rise buildings from lightning. Among these high-rise buildings, most of them are chimneys, city gate towers and various high-rise (high platform) buildings, and Yueyang Tower is one of them.

Yueyang Tower is located on the west gate of Yueyang City. The word "Yueyang Tower" should not have appeared in this era, but the building has existed for a long time. It is not called Yueyang Tower, but is called "Baling Tower".

Baling is the old name of Yueyang. It was originally the prefecture of Bazhou. The city tower located on the west gate of Baling City, abbreviated as "Baling City Tower", is a special noun.

It is said that the Baling City Tower was found in the late Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms. By the time of the Liu Song Dynasty, the poet Yan Yanzhi passed by Baling and wrote the poem "Written by the capital of Shi'an County and Zhang Xiangzhou to climb the Baling City Tower". The poem contains the sentence "The Qing atmosphere clears Yueyang". The name "Yueyang" was first seen in poetry and prose.

In the Middle Tang Dynasty, after the poet Li Bai wrote a poem, he was called "Yueyang Tower". At this time, Baling City had been changed to Yueyang City, and Baling City Tower was also called Yueyang Tower.

Now, Baling has been renamed Yueyang in advance, so Baling City Tower has also been renamed Yueyang Tower in advance. Yuwen Wen, who went on a tour to Yueyang, originally wanted to choose a sunny day to climb Yueyang Tower and experience the scenery with his family, but it has been raining these days, so he could only watch Yueyang Tower being struck by lightning in disappointment.

From sightseeing to on-site inspection of whether the lightning protection facilities in Yueyang Tower are effective.

The rain was getting heavier and heavier. Yu Wenwen turned back to his room, sat next to the desk, and looked at the latest news delivered to Guangling.

The Persian envoy (professed to himself) who arrived in Panyu, Guangzhou, accepted an inquiry from Yousi. All signs indicate that the identities of these people do not seem to be forged, but they cannot prove the other party's true identity from a third party's perspective.

In this era, countries will not set up ambassadors or embassies between each other. Due to communication technology, it is impossible for the interviewed states to verify the identity of the envoy with the other party. Therefore, it is difficult for a country's envoy to have too many reliable ways to identify the authenticity of the envoy.

So Yuwen Wen still said the same thing about this news. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and screams like a duck, then it must be a duck.

These Persian envoys are typical Persians, dressed, spoke in Persian, and wrote in Persian. The gifts they carried were indeed Persian. The seals on the national letters and various identity certificates they held were confirmed by Persian merchants in Panyu and Guangling. They were indeed seals on Persian domestic ones.

Therefore, even if you are not sure, Zhou State can confirm that these people are really envoys sent by Persia, setting sail thousands of miles to the distant east to meet the Emperor of Zhou State.

Yuwen Wen felt that it was impolite to come and go. Persia traveled thousands of miles to send envoys to the Central Plains, so he should also consider sending envoys to Persia to bring his greetings to Kusa, the king of kings.

Considering the reality, the messenger must take the sea route when traveling, and when traveling, you have to look at the hyacinth. If the messenger of the Zhou Kingdom wants to set out, he must go to the South Ocean by taking advantage of the north wind, and then sail westward with the help of the monsoon, and arrive in Persia along the already mature Maritime Silk Road.

So who should I send? Should I go through the motions or...

As he thought about it, Yuwen Wen turned his gaze out the window again and looked at Yueyang Tower in the heavy rain.

The message he received was sent from Guangling four days ago and arrived in Yueyang today. It was impossible to achieve it in such a short time spanning a thousand miles away according to the normal way of message delivery.

But in fact, what is it done?

New communication methods.

A new "message transfer station" equipped with optical flag language devices is laid along the Yangtze River, connecting Jiangling to the west and Guangling to the east. The entire journey is more than 2,400 miles and has been connected into a long "optical communication line".

The transfer stations are connected to the optical flag-language device (teleoscope and blocking light source) to transmit messages, so the message transmission speed is very fast. The staff of the transfer stations along the way are well-trained and relay each other day and night to quickly transmit the messages sent by Guangling to Yueyang, two thousand miles away.

Such communication methods originally appeared in "modern" Europe, and there were not many technical difficulties. As long as the energy production telescope is reliable and the construction of sufficient transit stations can be achieved.

Now Yuwen Wen has done this. The optical communication line connecting Jiangling and Guangling can stabilize the spreading speed of the message at "600 miles a day". Although the postman can travel 600 miles a day, it can only give you the speed that cannot be maintained normally.

Of course, the new communication method is not without its shortcomings, such as being easily affected by weather (heavy fog, heavy rain or heavy snow causes a decrease in visibility), or an error occurs in the middle of the message "transfer" and then make a mistake to the end.

Everything has its pros and cons. As the emperor, Yuwen Wen must ensure that the central court's control over the local area continues to increase, so even if it costs a lot of money, he gritted his teeth and mobilized manpower and material resources to build an optical communication line along the Yangtze River.

First, Guangling and Jiangling achieved "connection". Next, the fork appeared at Xiakou, Ezhou, of this line, and the new optical communication line walked northwest along the Hanshui Road, passing Wuguan Road to Chang'an.

After such a communication line is established, the daily maintenance costs are not small, which will definitely cause a considerable financial burden, but Yuwen Wen believes it is worth it.

The development of communication technology has the most direct impact on the size of the territory that the country can maintain. Yuwen Wen must find a way to solve this problem no matter what, and ensure that the central court's control over the local area will reach a new level.

However, optical communication is always not as good as wired telegraph communication.

As he thought about it, Yuwen Wen was a little lost. He continued to invest manpower, material resources and financial resources, trying to make cable telegraphs practical and make the communication technology of this era a qualitative leap, but it was really difficult to break through.

The technical principle of wired telegraph is very simple, but it is somewhat troublesome to be practical. First, it is the cost issue, and then there is a serious delay in signal during long-distance communication. At the same time, the effective transmission and reception problems between telegraph devices along the line (multipoint to multipoint) must also be solved.

With today's technical level, it is impossible to realize wired telegraph communication from Chang'an to Guangling. With the current national strength of Zhou State, it cannot afford the wired telegraph line erection project from Chang'an to Guangling.

The cable telegraph was difficult to produce, not to mention the wireless telegraph. Yu Wen Wen quickly cheered up as he thought about it.

Long-distance (thousand-mile level) wired telegram communication (multi-point-to-mile communication) cannot be implemented at present, but short-distance (thousand-mile level) wired telegram communication (point-to-mile communication) is not something that can’t be tried.

"Crack!"

Another lightning flash fell, which hit Yueyang Tower. Yuwen Wen looked at the safe and sound Yueyang Tower outside the window and looked at a report on the case in the room.

The report shows that the wired telegraph lines along the Guanghuang Railway have been put into commercial operation for three months and have achieved very good results.
Chapter completed!