This made Li Shimin anxious, and he wanted to trade one for one with me.

Seeing the questioning look in Li Shimin's eyes, Cheng Jun patiently explained:

"Please take a closer look at this outfit, Your Majesty."

Upon hearing this, Li Shimin reached out and picked up the sweater and long trousers, examining them closely. When he discovered that the sweater and trousers were completely different from the clothing he knew, he exclaimed in surprise:

"Why are these clothes so strange?"

Fang Xuanling leaned closer, examined it carefully, and said, "It looks like it's woven."

Cheng Jun said, "To be precise, it was knitted."

Li Shimin looked up in confusion and asked, "Knitting?"

Cheng Jun explained, "You can think of it as a garment woven with two chopsticks."

Weaving clothes with chopsticks? That's ridiculous... Everyone looked at him suspiciously.

But seeing the sweater and long trousers that Li Shimin was carrying in his hands, everyone had no choice but to believe it.

Can you do this?

In their minds, clothes are made of either cloth or animal fur.

But this outfit doesn't look like it was made from fabric at all.

It is clearly made of individual threads woven together.

Not only had Li Shimin never seen it, but none of the officials had ever heard of it either.

Cheng Jun was not surprised. After all, as far as he knew, this knitting technique had not yet appeared in the world. Right now, he was the only one in the world who knew it.

Seeing Li Shimin's curious expression, he said, "Your Majesty, why don't you try it on and see?"

Li Shimin's heart skipped a beat, but he was also a little embarrassed to put it on in front of so many people, so he turned to look at the civil and military officials.

Ultimately, he chose the most suitable candidate.

"Auxiliary machine, you give it a try!"

Changsun Wuji was sitting in the innermost seat of the first row, and had remained silent since entering.

He didn't want to come, but Li Shimin sent someone to tell him to come yesterday, so he had no choice but to come and listen to the lecture.

He had assumed that the only people from the court who came to listen to the lecture today were Li Shimin and himself.

To my utter surprise, all the officials came.

He kept his head down and didn't say a word, treating himself as if he were invisible, and hoping that others would treat him as if he were invisible as well.

Upon hearing Li Shimin's voice, Changsun Wuji abruptly looked up, his eyes widening as he stared at him. "Me?"

Li Shimin handed him the sweater and long trousers directly, saying, "Hurry up and put them on, try them on and see how they are."

"..."

Changsun Wuji, clutching his sweater and trousers, looked around and saw that all the civil and military officials present, as well as the students outside the door, were staring at him. He almost lost his composure.

Are you telling me to just take my clothes off right here?

"Hurry up, don't waste everyone's time."

Li Shimin urged in his voice.

Changsun Wuji had no choice but to bite the bullet and take off his purple robe. Just as he was about to put it on, Cheng Jun's voice drifted over.

“Minister Changsun, these are your undergarments. You should take them off completely before wearing them.”

Changsun Wuji's face flushed red, but under Li Shimin's watchful gaze, he had no choice but to do as Cheng Jun instructed, putting on a sweater with his shirt off, and then turning his back to everyone to change into long trousers.

Li Shimin noticed that the sweater and long trousers were a size too big for him, but he didn't pay much attention to it and asked directly, "How do you feel wearing them?"

Changsun Wuji said, "It's a little prickly... but it's very warm."

The moment the word "warm" was uttered, everyone exchanged glances and extracted the key word.

Li Shimin nodded slightly, gestured for Changsun Wuji to take off his clothes, and then asked Cheng Jun:

What kind of thread is used for these clothes?

Cheng Jun said, "Yarn."

Then he added, "It's made of wool."

Li Shimin pondered these two words, then turned to look at the crowd, "Have you heard of them?"

Everyone shook their heads, and Fang Xuanling said, "I have only heard of felt, but I have never heard of it being made into such clothes."

He then looked at Cheng Jun with a puzzled expression and asked, "What does this have to do with the Turks?"

Everyone looked at Cheng Jun; indeed, had he gone off-topic...?

Cheng Jun said seriously, "If you want more wool clothing, you need wool. Wool comes from sheep, so where are there many sheep farms?"

Fang Xuanling subconsciously replied, "The Turks..."

Cheng Jun laughed and said, "Does this have anything to do with the Turks?"

Li Shimin asked curiously, "You mean, buy wool from the Turks?"

Cheng Jun nodded and said, "You could say that."

Li Shimin frowned and said, "Isn't this doing business? What does it have to do with governing the Turks?"

Cheng Jun took the sweater and woolen pants handed to him by Changsun Wuji. While watching Changsun Wuji quickly put on the clothes with his bare chest, he said, "A set of woolen clothes like this will probably require about three pounds of wool."

“In our Great Tang Dynasty, the price of a piece of clothing is several tens of coins for the cheaper ones, and several hundred coins for the better ones.”

“If we import wool from the Turks, and if we can buy it for one coin per pound, then the cost of a garment will be very low.”

Cheng Jun said in a deep voice, "If we can turn the wool into yarn and then weave it into a knitted garment to sell, we can make at least ten times the profit."

Of course, there are labor costs involved, but that's in modern terms. In the Tang Dynasty, a single government decree could save a lot of labor costs.

The Tang Dynasty currently implements a system of rent, labor service, and taxation.

The "Rent, Labor, and Tax" system stipulated that the system was based on the number of people in the household. Regardless of how much land or property one owned, one had to pay an equal amount of silk and millet based on the number of people in the household.

The term "丁" refers to men and women aged 21 and above.

During the Tang Dynasty, it was stipulated that newborn boys and girls were called "Huang" (黄), four years old was "Xiao" (小), sixteen years old was "Zhong" (中), twenty-one years old was "Ding" (丁), and sixty years old was "Lao" (老).

In other words, men and women over the age of 21 and under the age of 60 were required to contribute to the country through the "rent, labor, and tax" system.

Therefore, as long as the Tang Dynasty imports wool, the wool can be transformed into yarn and then into knitted fabrics, without the court spending a single penny.

The imperial court only needs to pay for the transportation.

However, the transportation costs were also covered by the corvée system, which allowed the imperial court to force commoners to perform unpaid labor.

In other words, wool was imported from the Turkic people to the Tang Dynasty, woven into knitted fabrics, and sold, generating real profits.

As soon as Cheng Jun finished speaking, the Justice Hall fell silent.

The officials looked at each other, feeling as if a new world had been opened up for them. Could this really be possible?

Li Shimin's eyes welled up with tears. "Pacifying the Turks has such great benefits?"

Cheng Jun smiled and said, "The benefits are certainly not limited to these."

"If we pacify the Turks, the Turks who submit to our Great Tang can provide our Great Tang with a continuous supply of wool."

“We only need to spend a small amount of money to enable the Turks to live and work in peace.”

"With wool, we can make sweaters, wool pants, wool socks and other warm clothing, as well as knit bags, scarves, hats, gloves and even cushions."