At night, Yuwen Wen, who was drunk, talked to his sons. In addition to the prince, the prince Yuwen Weiping and Yuwen Weixing were also present. Although the alcohol was a bit indecent, time was tight, and Yuwen Wen didn't care about so much. He wanted to make good use of every day and not to waste his time.

As soon as the spring of this year, Yuwen Wen was very busy. The imperial examination was held in Chang'an. When the palace examination was over, the new top scorer was named. The Yellow River thawed, he rushed to Hetao, patrolled the border and comforted the soldiers guarding the border.

By the way, I went to Wuchuan to meet Shibi Khan.

After finishing this incident, Yuwen Weiping, who was nearly 20 years old, and Yuwen Weigui, came out of the town, one served as the general manager of Yizhou and the other served as the general manager of Xiangzhou.

Leaving the town means leaving Chang'an, his son can no longer receive teachings by his side, so Yuwen Wen has to seize the time to teach his sons and talk about current affairs.

Now that the Turkic Khan is visiting Wuchuan, the content of the father-son conversation is related to the Turkic customs, including their customs. Yuwen Wen wants his sons to familiarize themselves with the Khanate and not to have any misunderstandings or prejudices.

He wanted his sons to know that the civilization composed of nomadic peoples is different from the civilization of the farming peoples, whether it is life customs, culture, religious beliefs and social forms. All of this depends on lifestyle and is difficult to reconcile.

"Everyone has noticed that Shibi Khan and his younger brothers had a faint scar on their faces, and there was more than one. Of course, this was not an accident, but a custom called "后后后后..."

"What does yaki mean? That means cutting faces with a knife... Do you think it's fun to cut faces with a knife?"

Faced with his father's problem, the princes shook their heads one or two like rattles: Isn't this self-injury?

Seeing this, Yuwen Wen continued: "We think it is difficult to accept the behavior of the face, but for the nomadic tribes on the grassland, this is a custom, and it is the most common thing, which has existed since the Huns during the Han Dynasty."

The face is cut with a knife. It has been a grassland custom since the Huns and is common in funerals. Nowadays, the funeral custom of the Turks has the face.

The deceased stayed in the tent, and the descendants and relatives, men and women killed sheep and horses, and displayed them in front of the tent to pay tribute. After that, the relatives rode horses around the tent seven times, and one or several of them came to the tent, slapped with swords, cried, and communicated with blood and tears. This was stopped at the seventh power to show mourning and memorial to the deceased.

In addition, if you want to bid farewell to your loved ones or show your determination, you will also have bad behavior.

When Qimin Khan passed away, Shibi Khan and his younger brothers, as the sons of Shibi Khan, had to pay tribute to their deceased father solemnly. It was normal to cut faces with a knife.

However, personal constitutions are different. Some people may not be able to see after the knife wound heals, while others may leave faint scars on their faces.

In fact, this custom has influenced the Central Plains, especially in the northern region, Qishuo, Longyou and Guanzhong areas. In order to show their determination, people will face the lawsuits in the government. Local officials are not surprised by this.

The prince Yuwen Weicheng governor Longyou knew this custom. The King of Yan and Wei Wang guarded Youyan and Shishuo, of course, also knew it, but Yuwen Weiping and Yuwen Weixing who are present here do not know it.

These two people are not sure what measures the court should take to effectively solve the huge threat problem of the grassland.

The threat of grassland must be solved, but it is difficult to cure it completely. This is because the living environment is completely different, and the economic foundation of the grassland area is completely different from that of the Central Plains.

The economic foundation determines the superstructure. In areas where farming cannot be cultivated, the lifestyle can only be nomadic "living with water and grass". The Central Plains imperial court used the management of agricultural areas to manage grasslands, which would only result with twice the effort and would not last long.

Since the Han Dynasty, overlords on the grassland have appeared one by one and can never be defeated. When the Central Plains court has strong national strength, it can still take the initiative to attack. When the national strength declines, it can only retreat.

If there is civil turmoil in the Central Plains, people will take advantage of the situation and enter.

Not to mention the distant future, just say that Zhou and Qi fought against each other, and the Turks became the target of the two countries' competition, so they set off and had the best of both sides.

So much so that the Tuobo Khan at that time was very proud: "But I am filial to the two sons in the south (referring to Zhou and Qi), why worry about nothing."

Times have changed, and the Zhou Kingdom is now in a strong position, but if you want to solve the Turks (Eastern and Western Turks), you cannot succeed overnight, let alone destroying the Turks, and the imperial court cannot actually control the grassland for too long.

There will inevitably be a new overlord on the grassland, which is certain.

The strategy adopted by Yuwen Wen, just like the later Tsarist Russia annexed Central Asia, intends to use fortress advance tactics to erode the grassland, which requires a lot of manpower and material investment, as well as a long time.

It took a hundred years for Tsarist Russia to annex Central Asia. Yuwen himself could not live that long, so he could only hope that his son could continue his career after he succeeded to the throne in the future.

However, death is like a lamp extinguishing. Now his son, who is full of promises, will he take the instructions of the "old man" seriously after ascending the throne in the future? Yuwen Wen, who has become a "portrait", will not be able to control it.

He could only make arrangements as much as possible and "brainwash" his sons.

Let the sons realize that there was a new way to solve the grassland problem, without being led by conservative bureaucrats. In order to save money, they shrink their defense line and even lost the Hetao area. In the end, they wanted to save money but spent more money.

The fortification tactics are extremely costly. With the income from landing and shepherds in various fortress areas, it is impossible to fill in the huge financial expenditure caused by the construction and maintaining the fortress group.

But overall, as long as the southern desert area (called Qinan at this time, which Qinan means desert) is firmly controlled, the border defense situation can be fundamentally improved, and the savings will actually be much more than the expenditure.

The defense line is actively expanded, and the bottom line is the line of the Yinshan Mountains (Hetao area). It is best to reach the southern edge of the desert (Dirty). Then the prefectures and counties south of the Yinshan Mountains will not suffer heavy personnel and property losses every year due to foreign invasions.

If the defense line is shrinked to the front line of Shuozhou (Qi State Great Wall), then the annual expenses of border troops and the losses of border prefectures and counties will add up to an incredible number.

This is the difference between offensive defense and passive defense. As a ruler, you must see far. Of course, the premise is that national strength can support it.

In this kind of ruling education, only the prince needed to participate, but Yuwen Wen allowed his sons to receive necessary education just in case, so as not to have an accident one day and the "substitute" had to be re-trained.

Yuwen Wen was talking, and he talked for more than half an hour inadvertently. Seeing that it was getting late, he asked his sons to go back to rest, but the prince stayed.

Because he had something to talk to the prince alone.

Yuwen Weicheng took out a steam unit model and explained to his father the latest development progress of the propeller propulsion device.

Propeller propulsion is an inevitable development trend for ship mechanical propulsion, but with the current technical level, it is difficult to make it practical - there must be a steam engine with strong enough power and durable power as the power source to drive the propeller.

It is necessary to have a durable, low-cost (relatively speaking) gear set, with several suitable gear ratios (speed transmission devices), "enlarge" the speed of the steam engine output, so that the propeller rotates faster and generates greater thrust.

There must also be a durable spindle to ensure stable and reliable transmission of power to the propeller.

The spindle connecting the gear device at one end will pass through the hull from the cabin to the outside of the ship to connect the propeller, which will inevitably cause water leakage.

Although there was a human-driven propeller propulsion device more than 20 years ago, the spindle leak problem was solved simultaneously, but the spindle driven by the steam engine would rotate faster, and the original sealing device could not function.

Therefore, there must be practical sealing devices to ensure that when the spindle rotates at high speed, there will be no large amount of river water entering the cabin along the spindle.

This series of technical problems is difficult. After solving it, the propeller propulsion of the ship can be practical. In order to avoid working behind closed doors and to brainstorm, someone needs to take the lead and concentrate a large number of technical personnel on technical research.

Yuwen Wen handed over this important task to Prince Yuwen Weicheng. At this moment, Yuwen Weicheng introduced the development progress to his father.

If someone else is present and sees such a scene, I can't always mutter in my heart: The crown prince of a country does not care about major affairs in the world, does not learn how to deal with government affairs, but instead makes trouble for the strange tricks and tricks. Will this move be distracted?

For Yuwen Wen, this is an inevitable arrangement. He is young and strong, and he is healthy, and should be able to live for many years. So a very serious problem follows:

"How could there be a prince for forty years in ancient times?"
Chapter completed!