Chapter Thirty-Two: Making Things Difficult for Foreign Guests

  Song Jiuxu returned home drunk, almost at the third watch. Without a word, over ten people forced him to drink excessively. Although Song Jiuxu could hold his liquor, he couldn't withstand the combined efforts of so many people. Before long, he pretended to pass out, vomiting and feigning drunkenness. The group of people burst into laughter and spared him. This was their way of acknowledging him, an acknowledgment bestowed by Zhao Kuangyin.

  Taizu invited Song Jing to drink tea and chat, they talked for a long time. Zhao Kuangyi deliberately brought up the story of Song De, because he was a close guard of the former Zhou Dynasty's Emperor Taizong, nobody dared to say anything about it. The emperor and his younger brother were in agreement that their fathers were not only underlings of Zhao Kuangyin but also underlings of Emperor Taizong, so they also acknowledged Song Jing as one of their own people, he couldn't be considered a commoner.

  Song Ji didn't dare to mention the gambling agreement, only saying that the emperor agreed to let him use a few hectares of land on the river island as a trial point, and he would pay a certain amount of money and silk every year. More than ten people listened unclearly, although they were curious, but temporarily didn't take it seriously. However, "the first drink" was necessary, after getting Song Ji drunk, they started to get Xiao Cao Can drunk, who was only 14 years old, and he fell down after a few drinks. Pan Wei De sent someone to send Cao Can back, Song Ji didn't know if Cao Bin would scold Cao Can's butt or not, but he came again. Seeing Song Ji come out, they continued to get him drunk. It wasn't over until he fell down. But an unpleasant incident happened during the banquet, Zhang Qiong's son was also young and got Xiao Cao Can drunk, everyone wanted to get Zhang Qiong's son Zhang Lin drunk, but for some reason, Zhang Lin quarreled with Fu Zhao Shou, almost turning red in the face.

  At that time, Song Jiu had almost finished drinking and also persuaded a few more sentences. This fuss did not end in joy, and Song Jiu returned home in a daze.

  The main gate of the house was still open, Zhu San sat in the living room waiting for him, along with others, ten students, Liu Gonggong, and many pieces of cloth were placed in the corner of the hall. From beginning to end, the Song Dynasty lacked copper coins, so they had to use cloth as a substitute for money, or some remote areas used bartering.

  The copper coins were very heavy, and at this time the Song Dynasty itself began to cast coins, but not many, sometimes casting tens of thousands of strings a year, and sometimes only casting a few thousand strings. Most of them used the copper coins from previous dynasties, even the copper coins from the Sui Dynasty, if well preserved, were still in circulation. On average, one string of coins weighed more than seven catties. That is to say, a big man carrying fifteen strings of copper coins would be exhausted after walking less than ten miles. But silk fabrics were even more troublesome, with one piece of silk worth over one hundred coins, and one piece of silk being ten zhang long, so ten pieces of silk would be one hundred zhang long, which was even heavier and more cumbersome.

  The results of the competition came out a bit late, with several households having many accounts, and it wasn't until nightfall that they were all counted. In the meantime, some disputes arose, with the scholars saying I was right and the accountants saying I was right, so they had to recheck and recalculate. This dragged on until nearly two o'clock in the morning.

  Fortunately, Zhao Kuangyin had foresight and sent guards to watch, otherwise those account masters in anger might have let the shop assistants beat these scholars.

  The results are out, eight students won and two failed. No one's family was quick, mainly because the other family had settled their accounts earlier and the students were calculating unfamiliar single-entry bookkeeping accounts, and some characters were not recognized, so they fell behind.

  Liu Gonggong presented the results to the palace for reporting.

  Pan's residence is not far from the imperial palace, so Zhao Kuangyin rewarded each scholar with ten taels of silver and ten bolts of silk. But he had Liu Gonggong bring a few words to the Song family.

  Song Jiuxu was about to pour tea for Duke Liu, but Duke Liu held him back: "Ninth Master, let me do it instead."

  He didn't even let him come over, Zhu San rushed over and replaced Song Jiu to make strong tea to sober him up.

  Song Jiuyi pointed at the ten students with his hand: "What's your outcome?"

  As a result, Song Jiu summoned the two defeated students and scolded them loudly. Not to mention arithmetic, with an abacus, with a counting rod, with mental calculations, relying on this alone, they were more than ten times faster than those accountants in calculating accounts. How could they lose?

  Two scholars were about the same age as Song Jiu, but they had knowledge and could discuss with the emperor in a carefree manner. Moreover, they were knowledgeable and were their teachers, so they could only acknowledge their mistakes with humility.

  Liu Gonggong stopped him: "Jiulang, that's enough. The officials in the palace were all shocked when they heard the result."

  Song Jiu was still furious, and punished the two students to go to the back and calculate for half an hour before they were allowed to return home. Play is play, and trouble is trouble, but learning should be learned, this is a very progressive education method, unfortunately no one noticed. Only Liu Gonggong slightly licked his tongue, it turned out that Song Jiu's education was also quite strict.

  Mr. Liu took out a small green robe, white silk single dress, white silk pants, white gauze square heart-shaped collar, and a two-ridge crown, which was Song Jiu's official uniform and hat, as well as the inner garment. This small official would not attend court sessions or speak on matters, but he had to attend major sacrificial ceremonies, where he would wear this attire. However, it was precisely this official uniform that made Zhu San's eyes gleam with envy, his face filled with admiration. In this era, the idea of officials being superior to scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants was too deeply ingrained.

  Song Jiu said: "Thank you, Your Majesty."

  Mr. Liu hinted to Zhu San to pour tea for Song Chao, and after drinking a little tea to clear his head, Mr. Liu said: "Ninth Master, His Majesty says you won, but three years will pass quickly, His Majesty doesn't care how you manage, just don't violate the laws of Song, otherwise, severe punishment will be meted out without delay."

  Song Jiu said that the three pictures were just a guess, Zhao Kuangyin thought 99% was a random guess, an incorrect idea, and only 1% suspected, but there was no believing component. But for Song Jiu's bet, he had about 1% belief. Only 1%.

  A small, insignificant river island can produce 100,000 strings of cash per year. If the entire capital city can do this, wouldn't it be able to produce at least 10 million strings of cash per year? The Song Dynasty as a whole should then be able to produce 100 million strings of cash per year.

  During the height of Wang Anshi's reforms and taxation, he was able to collect over 1.8 billion strings of cash in one year. This includes items such as jian, dan, shu, pi, liang, and guan, which when averaged out still exceeds 1 billion, more than seven times the highest national annual income during the Tang Dynasty.

  If the capital city were to seriously collect taxes, and all the wealthy officials' households were law-abiding citizens, the capital city alone would be able to collect over 20 million strings of cash per year. This number is so high that even if you killed the Zhao brothers, they still wouldn't believe it.

  Zhao Kuangyin was worried that Song Jiu would take advantage of the bet to swindle, but he didn't mind too much. It's okay to cheat a few tens of thousands of yuan, can you cheat hundreds of millions? The court doesn't have that skill! So just let Liu Gonggong warn slightly.

  In reality, Zhao Kuangyin did not expect that in the next fifty years, Song would be able to collect more than 4 million guan and reach a quarter of it. If this bet was won by the court, it would have gained an enormous advantage.

  Let him struggle for now, after all, he's only in his thirties and can see that he won't be able to do it himself later on. But Zhao Kuangyin didn't know that the eight characters hadn't been written yet, and Song Jiu had already incurred a debt of over 10,000 yuan.

  "Lord Liu, rest assured, I will not violate the laws of Song."

  "That's good. His Majesty also instructed me to bring a decree for you."

  "Please instruct."

  "His Majesty has instructed me to inform you that the answers to those three questions cannot be leaked, as the imperial court will have other uses for them."

  "What for?"

  South.

  Song Jiuzi drank a cup of strong tea, his mind slightly cleared up, and he came to his senses. The Song Dynasty was very rich, especially the Northern Song, and several emperors were not cruel, but Zhao Kuang's father and son could not be counted. However, they were extremely soft on the outside, and a country that was afraid of death and rich was undoubtedly a super-fat sheep. Then, the annual tribute to the Liao Dynasty was 800,000, including tea, silk, and silver. The Song Dynasty's silver was very valuable, with one tael of silver worth two guan of money, and good-quality silk could be transported to the border at a cost of nearly two guan as well. In other words, more than 100 million guan were spent each year to buy peace for almost a hundred years.

  Now the Southern Tang is a miniature version of the Northern Song, which also attaches importance to internal governance. The lives of its people are not too bitter, at least due to geographical and climatic reasons, crop yields are high, making them richer than the people of the Song Dynasty. As for literature, it's even more unnecessary to mention that the Northern Song is a giant in martial arts but a dwarf in literature. The Song Dynasty attaches importance to literary governance, but in terms of literary governance, they are far inferior to this foreign country in the south. This makes the rulers and officials of the Song Dynasty feel ashamed, so they come up with these three questions to make things difficult for Southern Tang.

  It's none of Song Jiu's business how it's done.

  Song Jiuyi thought for a moment and said, "No, Liu Gonggong, I've heard many people in the capital discussing that I'm intentionally making things difficult for others, it's simply an unsolvable math problem. The deadline is just one month away, I must announce its solution. However, if the imperial court wants more questions, I can come up with three even more difficult ones."

  "This is great, the harder the better."

  "But I drank a bit too much today, you can come and get the questions tomorrow."

  After sending Liu Gonggong away, Song Jiu fell asleep. The next day when he woke up, it was Zhu San who reminded him of this matter. Difficult math problems shouldn't be too easy to come out with. But they also can't be so difficult that most high school students can't solve them, at least not now. It seems like there's no practical use for them. Like when someone comes up with a complex geometric function, people often don't know what to say and can't even understand it, how can you make people convinced?

  Just like Han Yu, even if he were to translate Shi Gu Wen, it's not necessarily that anyone would acknowledge it, why should what you say count!

  Song Jiuzi wrote down the first question, Chang Shi Qingyu River, the amount of silt needs 200 vehicles for 24 days and nights to pull out, the government has 250 vehicles, now there is one vehicle available, every two hours can extract one vehicle, how many days will it take to pull away the silt?

  Song Jiuxu was writing, while Zhu San stood beside him, looking on. After a moment's thought, his head felt somewhat dizzy.

  Song Jiuxian wrote down the second question, a large iron ball with a diameter of 1500 pounds of paint, sixty-four identical small iron balls melted into a giant ball, how much paint is needed for the giant ball?

  Zhu San raised an eyebrow and asked, "What's with the huge iron ball?"

  "Prevent someone from casting in the same mold and then measuring rather than calculating."

  Zhu San didn't even know the formula for the volume of a sphere, and thinking about it again made him feel bewildered.

  Song Jiuyou wrote down the third question: A certain workshop's output increases evenly, doubling in ten years. What is the annual growth rate?

  "This is fine."

  "Brother Zhu, you're really good at math, come and calculate it?"

  If it's said that every year increases by 10%, after ten years, how much will increase, some people can calculate it out, but now it's the tenth root, seemingly simple, yet becomes a difficult problem.

  These three questions are typical application questions, and they won't be completely used in reality, but if you can solve them, you will encounter many similar practical math problems. Song Jiuyi put it down and started making breakfast with Zhu San, after finishing breakfast, students came to class, but the two doctors had not arrived yet.

  Song Jiudao said: "Zhu brother, you go first, I'll be right back."

  Slowly arrived at Bei Wazi, want to see Yu Ping. In the future of He Zhou's painting, this beautiful and clever girl is also an important chess piece.

  Yu Ping hadn't gotten up yet, and after waiting for a while, she finally got dressed and made herself look presentable before letting Song Jiu in.

  Cui'er poured tea, and Yu Ping said: "Jiu Lang, those few short songs you sang yesterday were very beautiful."

  The tone is somewhat sour.

  Song Jiuzi pinched his nose and said: "If Yu'niangzi likes it, I'll compose two short lyrics for you another day."

  "I'm so lucky to have him in my life."

  "Jade girl, I don't have that kind of thought, don't think wildly, I came to find you just because I want to join hands with you to do something important."

  "My talent is too shallow..."

  "Let's skip the formalities, are you willing?"

  "What's wrong?"

  Song Jiuxu did not answer directly, but instead asked: "Yuniangzi, when a guest asks you to sing once, how much money do they give you?"

  The speaker was unintentional, but the listener had a mind of his own, and Yu Ping's face turned pale.