The construction of the first cement road in the Ming Dynasty was completed. Although there was no too grand scene, many of the people watching the ceremony were usually dignitaries wearing scarlet robes.

Its influence is naturally not small, and the miraculous effect of cement has caused many ignorant people to call it a miracle. Some even brought incense burners and knelt down after receiving the news.

Especially the handprints and footprints left by Zhu Gaochi and Zhu Zhanji on the cement road.

It has not become an internet celebrity check-in destination as Zhu Zhanji expected, but many people who learned about it directly imprinted the handprints and footprints of Zhu Zhanji and Zhu Gaochi on paper, and then took them home to keep for the future. worship.

Zhu Zhanji was a little bit dumbfounded when he got the news. After all, it was just a whim, and he didn't expect it to be treated as a treasure, but thinking about it, he wasn't surprised.

After all, if you and your silly father become emperors in the future, these will be the handprints and footprints left by two generations of emperors, and they will be filled with dragon energy.

The Daming Daily in Yingtian was also not idle. As the cement road from Yifengmen to Yangtze River Pier appeared, the newspaper's reporters immediately took action.

With Zhu Zhanji's several suggestions from Zhu Gaochi, and the recent expansion, today's newspaper is no longer the grass-roots team it was when it was first built, but has become a veritable regular newspaper.

There are various positions with clear division of labor, front-line reporters, and editors responsible for writing and revising articles. The Yingtian newspaper headquarters alone has no less than a hundred people.

In addition, there are more than a dozen editors in charge, several chief editors, as well as logistics personnel, and after expansion, the printing plant will have almost fifty printing stations.

The total number of employees in the entire newspaper office is almost 300, and the number of newspapers printed every day alone is no less than 500,000.

A large number of newspapers appeared. In addition to adding necessary newsboys, Yingtian also added hundreds of fixed newsstands.

These newsstands are supervised by dedicated personnel and are specifically designed to deal with some people who like to stay and sell newspapers.

This matter was what Zhu Zhanji came up with after Zhu Gaochi told Zhu Zhanji that some people blocked the door of the newspaper office in order to buy newspapers as quickly as possible.

These newsstands are at fixed locations, and every day before the newspaper office opens, the day's newspapers will be delivered to the newsstands in advance.

In terms of time, it will not arrive faster than blocking the door of the newspaper office. At the same time, these news kiosks are located in places where people are concentrated. Compared with walking farther to block the newspaper office, these news kiosks are extremely popular once they appear. Every day Almost as soon as it opens, there will be a large number of people coming to buy newspapers for themselves or for the masters behind them.

The appearance of cement roads naturally attracted many newspaper reporters immediately.

Although these reporters all belong to newspapers, it does not mean that there is no competition. Although each reporter records similar things, different people sometimes record in different directions, and the readability of newspapers is naturally different.

In addition, every time an article is selected for publication in a newspaper, the name or pen name of the original author will also be noted.

In this way, even if it is the same thing, there will naturally be a large number of reporters competing with each other.

After all, it is not a rare thing for literati to look down on each other since ancient times. Competition and comparison will naturally be absent. If the record of the same thing is published, it will naturally appear that one's literary talent is even better.

In fact, this is because Zhu Zhanji wants these reporters to record the facts truthfully and not make them up. After all, there are many people recording. If they make up things randomly, some articles will definitely appear different.

As reporters rushed there, dozens of articles about cement roads appeared in newspapers overnight.

Some of these articles were similar, and some were extremely novel. After screening, and with the confirmation of the editor-in-chief Zhu Gaochi, the new day's Daming Daily was finally officially published.

Before dawn the next day, horse-drawn carriages and horse-drawn newspapers were delivered to various newsstands in Yingtian.

"Sell newspapers, sell newspapers, Daming Daily. The first cement road in history was officially opened yesterday. It is 1,357 steps in total, more than four miles in total. It is as hard as a rock. It only takes more than a moment for a carriage to come back and forth."

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It was just dawn, and the roosters fed by some people had just crowed. In Yingtian City, a newsboy wearing a small cotton-padded jacket and carrying a satchel with the special royal logo on his shoulder began his day's work.

As newspapers have been around for a long time, people in Yingtian have gradually become familiar with and accustomed to these newspaper boys who start walking around the streets early in the winter.

Especially since some royal guards would appear around these newsboys from time to time to protect them, and after some of the local ruffians were sent to prison and never came out.

Although everyone doesn't respect these paperboys who look a little thin, they basically won't abuse or bully them.

In addition, newspapers are cheap, costing only a penny each. Some people who do not have time to go to the newsstand to buy newspapers will even say hello to some newsboys in advance, pay an extra penny or give some other benefits, and let the newsboys deliver the newspapers directly.

Delivered to your home.

Over time, Yingtian's newsboy has almost become a special landscape. In addition, it is dawn every day, and it rings on time, almost like an alarm clock, which has become a habit.

Early in the morning, as new newspapers appear, some people habitually get dressed in a hurry, without even bothering to wash up, and immediately run out to buy a newspaper.

Those who are more particular will first listen to what the newsboy is shouting, and if there is anything they are interested in, they will speed up the washing process.

If he doesn't hear anyone he's interested in, he'll appear to be in a hurry. He'll wait until he's finished washing up, then walk out the door, stop the newsboy from afar, take out a copper plate he's prepared a long time ago, and toss it to the newsboy casually.

After catching it, he took the newspaper from the newsboy's hand.

After doing this, these people stood still and opened the newspaper, scanning the titles first to see the general content.

Then close the newspaper, and those who are convenient will buy breakfast or morning tea, and then find a quiet place slowly, either alone or in groups of three or three, silently

Open the newspaper again, then find the section you care about and read it carefully.

These things seem to be contagious. With the appearance of newspapers, it seems that drinking morning tea while reading newspapers has quickly become a habit for most people in Yingtian.

At first it was some officials who would find a teahouse to watch for a while before going to work, and then there were scholars who had more time and would watch it early in the morning, while watching and discussing.

Finally, there are some arty businessmen, as well as ordinary people with nothing to do and a few coppers in their pockets, or traffickers. These people may not pay much attention to newspapers, but they will also yearn for the things that these scholars like.

And it was the same today. When they heard the newsboy calling, some people started to get up, wash up, go out to buy newspapers, then find a teahouse and buy some morning tea. The richer people would also order some refreshments.

Either a tea shed on the street, a small Western-style building, or your own courtyard.

Opening the newspaper, these people were immediately shocked by the rows of bold and enlarged headlines on the front page of the government news:

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and the foundation of all eternity ends with one step!"

These words are very important. No matter whether they are thousands of miles away or eternity, these are extremely powerful words.

The contents of the newspaper made a large group of people who had never heard of cement almost spit out the morning tea they drank in their mouths.

Many people simply put aside the tea bowl they originally held in their hands. After reading it, they worried that they were dazzled and read it again.

There is only one headline on the front page of this issue of the newspaper, and that is news about cement roads.

Moreover, the entire article was integrated from articles by several reporters, and the editor re-edited the integrated manuscript.

Every reporter has a different style. Some like to record the opinions of bystanders, some like to write about their own experiences, and still others like to find some great scholars to make comments.

But without exception, they all mentioned how cement turned from some gray powder into a hard boulder in just a few days.

It also records how the Ministry of Industry built this cement road that is four miles long and nearly seven feet wide in just a few days.

In particular, it describes in great detail the hardness of the cement road after it is built, and its overall appearance like a boulder.

Some even took out the tests used by the Ministry of Industry to inspect cement roads and conducted a comparison with the original old roads. The results highlighted the speed and convenience of cement roads.

Whether it is the method of using cement to solidify sand into stone in the newspaper, or the construction of this four-mile-long cement road in just a few days, it is undoubtedly extremely incredible to these people.

Some people who didn't have anything important to do were no longer in a hurry to continue reading the newspaper or drinking morning tea. They got up and walked towards Yifeng Gate.

There were many of these people, and they came very early, but even so, at dawn, the concrete road from Yifengmen to Yangtze River Pier was still crowded with people coming to ask questions.

After receiving the news, Yin Guzuo of Yingtian Mansion had to send a large number of government officials to maintain order.

Now both the prince and the grandson attach great importance to this cement road. As the Yin of Yingtian Prefecture, Gu Zuo naturally dare not relax. If anything happens to the cement road, then the prince or the superintendent of the country will

The first person Sun definitely looked for was Ying Tianfu Yin.

The cement road has been opened to traffic after acceptance by the Ministry of Industry yesterday.

Early in the morning, before midnight, carriages could already be seen quickly starting to pass on the cement road.

Many of these carriages are used to unload cargo at the Yangtze River Terminal. The advantages of cement roads are still extremely obvious when transporting cargo.

On a hard road surface, as long as the carriage starts moving, under the action of inertia, the subsequent horses pulling the carriage can easily drag the carriage with almost no effort.

Unlike other road surfaces, due to the subsidence of the ground, the inertial effect is lost by the road surface, and it must be dragged hard almost all the time.

As more and more people discovered this, the carriages running on the concrete road became more and more cheerful.

Many people are actually very curious about what it feels like to run a horse or drive a carriage on a complete boulder.

Especially those who came after seeing the newspaper were even more surprised when they saw such a long road like a huge stone slab in front of them.

As the number of spectators increased and carriages came and went, troubles followed.

It is easy to increase the speed of a carriage on cement roads, but slowing down is also more troublesome. Unlike other roads, when the horse almost stops pulling, the carriage will lose its inertia and then naturally stop immediately.

But the cement road is different. Once the speed increases, it is impossible to stop in a short time just relying on the friction between the trailing edge and the ground.

Coupled with the chaos at the scene, an ancient version of a car accident inevitably occurred.

In the Qianqing Palace, Zhu Zhanji is handling today's government affairs. Of course, it is similar to the previous days. Sanyang handles it and then checks it.

Simple and easy, not too much trouble.

Not only can it ensure that there will be no problems in handling these government affairs, it will not make the cabinet's power too great, and it can also free him from complicated government affairs.

What Zhu Zhanji is now reading are several information about the Northern Expedition. The preparation for the Northern Expedition has been almost a month, and basically everything that needs to be prepared has been prepared.

Originally, the preparation time for these things should be set before next spring.

A large part of the reason why it is so far in advance is because the Ministry of Household Affairs is extremely wealthy this year.

A lot of money was spent, and the results were naturally immediate.

Compared with the original gathering of supplies before spring, it was almost a month or two ahead of schedule.

And not only that, compared to the originally planned materials, the materials prepared by the Ministry of Revenue this time are undoubtedly much richer.

This was also the richest war that General Zhengbei fought since he came to the throne.

However, the trouble that followed was that General Zhengbei was a little dissatisfied with the current trivial fight. A few days ago, he had just sent back to Yingtian a decree asking the Ministry of War to discuss increasing the number of troops.

"Your Highness Taisun, I think we should submit a letter to postpone the increase of troops. It is the New Year's Day soon. If a large number of troops are increased at this time, it will inevitably lead to the deployment of a large number of strong laborers. When spring begins, it will inevitably affect the next spring plowing."
To be continued...