Crossing over reveals a waste's difficult journey home

Precisely because life in Daxia was much better than that of the Xiongnu, the Xiongnu were like a wolf hiding in the dark, eyes glowing with hunger, ready to grab the meat as soon as they smelled it or saw a chance.

As his current biggest opponent, Jiang Qi has carefully studied the situation of the Huns.

He was sure that the living conditions of the Xiongnu people were definitely worse than those of the Daxia people. Even many Xiongnu nobles might not have lived as well as some wealthy families in Daxia.

People's desires are endless. If they eat salt that tastes better or drink tea that makes people healthy, will they no longer want to eat or drink? Definitely not.

More importantly, what they exchanged for salt and tea were not the cattle, horses, and sheep they valued, but the wool that was less important and would grow again after being cut off.

To give an inappropriate example, it is like a starving farmer. If someone offers him grain in exchange for the grass at his doorstep, how could he be unwilling to do so?

After he changes it for the first time, he will definitely want to change it for the second and third time, and gradually he will feel that this is not a bad idea.

Just throw some grass seeds and a lot of weeds will grow. The weeds you grow can be exchanged for much more food than you grow yourself. So why plant food? Isn't it better to just plant grass?

In order to exchange for more food, the farmer will soon be dissatisfied with the small piece of grass in front of his door. He will look for a larger place to grow more grass, and his own land will become the best choice.

Plant a patch today, plant a patch tomorrow, and before you know it, the fields have become grassland.

Once the farmers' farmlands have all turned into grasslands and people who exchange grain for weeds stop doing so, the farmers will face only one outcome: starvation to death.

Similarly, when the Huns felt that exchanging wool for tea and salt was a good deal, they would make a similar choice as the farmer.

In order to exchange for more tea and delicious salt, they would collect more wool, and in order to collect more wool they would raise more sheep.

The grassland is so big and there is only so much fertile grass. If we raise more sheep, we naturally won’t be able to raise too many cattle and horses.

As a nation on horseback, when they ran out of horses, would they have enough cavalry to go south? The answer is no.

It is almost foreseeable that too many sheep will greatly weaken the fighting power of the Huns and make this now seemingly ferocious neighbor docile.

After trying to understand the reason, Jiang Qi suddenly understood what Jiang Tuan meant by "sheep eating people".

Although the situations of Bactria and the Xiongnu were very different from that of that troublemaker country, and their purposes, significance and results were also different, they were similar to some extent.

It seems that there is no bloodshed, but beneath the prosperity lies a more brutal struggle and countless bones.

Jiang Qi thought he was knowledgeable and experienced many conspiracies and intrigues when fighting for world domination. But after listening to Jiang Tuan's explanation today, he felt that he still had too little experience.

He thought that if Daxia and the Xiongnu wanted to decide the outcome, they would have to resort to war.

Now he discovered that Daxia had another way to go, and that it could weaken the Huns with just some wool, which was something he had never thought of before.

Realizing the power of wool, Jiang Qi couldn't help but smile: "If wool can really weaken the Xiongnu's strength, losing some salt and tea is acceptable."

Jiang Qi's words made Jiang Tuan stunned: "Your Majesty, you don't think that exchanging tea and salt for wool is a losing business, do you?"

"Is not it?"

"Of course not, Your Majesty, wool is very profitable. Otherwise, why do you think the nobles of that country would do such a crazy thing for this thing?"

"But the country you mentioned is obviously much better than Daxia. They can make good use of the wool, but Daxia may not. I am prepared for this."

In the past, it was always Jiang Tuan who left Jiang Qi speechless, but this time the two of them switched identities, and Jiang Qi began to leave Jiang Tuan speechless.

"Your Majesty, do you think that after we exchange the wool, we can just leave it there or throw it away? Didn't you forget that we were talking about sweaters just now?"

"I remember, but making sweaters requires a lot of cloth, right? If that's the case, it would be difficult to get the people to use it."

After listening for a long time, Jiang Tuan finally understood. It turned out that he did not explain it clearly, which made Jiang Qi think that the sweater was just like some other winter clothes made by Daxia, which was made by stuffing wool into the fabric. This was very wrong.

"Your Majesty, you don't need cloth to make a sweater. You just need to spin the wool into thread like silk, and then weave it into a sweater. No cloth is needed."

No need for any fabric! Just this one sentence immediately made Jiang Qi pay attention to wool.

In Daxia, whether it was common people or nobles, they all used cloth as currency. Why? In addition to the influence of the chaotic times, of course, it was because cloth was expensive.

In many poor families, several people in the family cannot even afford a decent set of clothes. You can imagine the scarcity and importance of cloth in people's lives.

Now that Jiang Tuan said that clothes can be made without cloth, how could Jiang Qi not take it seriously?

"So how do we do this? Is it easy?"

Jiang Tuan thought for a moment and replied honestly: "Your Majesty, wool cannot be used just by cutting it from the sheep. It needs to be processed. I am not too sure about the specific method of processing.

As for knitting, I’ve only watched others knit, but I’ve never tried it myself, so it may not be easy to make a sweater.”

It is not easy, and none of the things that Jiang Tuan mentioned that are very important to Daxia are easy to make.

Jiang Qi is now very open-minded. It is not easy to do something, as long as it can be done. If it is really difficult, isn't there a system? At worst, wait until the system has energy and then exchange the method.

When Jiang Tuan and Jiang Qi were discussing how to use the wool, cheers were heard from the Shaofu's office.

I mentioned before that there is iron in Daxia, but due to the inadequate smelting technology, the iron products produced are very brittle and will break if not handled with care.

Ever since Jiang Tuan told Jiang Qi that improving iron smelting technology could produce weapons more powerful than bronze ware, Jiang Qi gave Yu Yuan an order to develop iron ware as soon as possible.

Yu Yuan accepted the task, tried many methods, and talked with Jiang Tuan several times, but the iron products he made were always unsatisfactory.

When he didn't know what he had done wrong, Jiang Qi gave him a copy of "Steel Smelting Technology", which was like a treasure to him. He immediately improved the iron smelting method according to the contents recorded above.

After two days of sleepless work, he finally made his first qualified iron tool today!

The iron tool is a dagger, which is not too long. However, after testing, it was found that if the user has enough strength, this dagger can directly cut off a bronze dagger of the same thickness and length.