All Heavens and Worlds Modified History System

Chapter 2: How can we save you from such a rotten Ming Dynasty?

"Don't add so much water, it's not like you're cooking porridge."

"Don't add so much firewood, or there will be crusty rice underneath."

In the simple kitchen, several soldiers were cooking rice under the command of Chen Ran.

Although the north produces rice, the output is not high, but the Ming Dynasty has water transport.

The vast amount of grain transported from the south was mainly rice.

These rice are usually used to distribute military pay and to provide salaries to ministers and nobles.

Chen Ran didn't pay any attention to Zhao Lujiao or the angels. He took out rice from the space and called the soldiers in to cook and eat together.

The feeling of being hungry is really terrible.

"It's almost done." Chen Ran, holding a plate of pickles in his hand, called out to everyone, "Let's eat."

When he put the fragrant rice into his mouth, tears came to his eyes.

I never thought that the rice that I didn’t even bother to look at when I was at home could be so delicious.

It was a big ceramic bowl, and I ate two whole bowls, with only a few bites of pickles as a side dish.

This was not the most amazing thing. Chen Ran saw with his own eyes the soldiers nearby eating up a whole pot of cooked rice.

"I heard that ancient people could eat a pound of rice in one meal, but I didn't believe it."

"In an era without oil and water, the intake of carbohydrates is indeed very high."

After eating and drinking, Chen Ran gave each soldier a bag of food to send back home. Then he put on his mandarin duck battle jacket, took his goose feather sword, carried a flagpole on his back, and held a flagpole spear in his hand and went to the parade ground.

All the branches and posts of the headquarters were gathering on the training ground. Teams of soldiers were coming over, numbering several thousand people.

There are more than ten thousand soldiers enrolled in Jizhen headquarters, but due to the unique national conditions of the Ming Dynasty, there are only so many who can be assembled now.

If nothing else, it's spectacular at first glance.

Chen Ran was familiar with the positioning, after all, he had practiced here before.

It stands to reason that soldiers should be trained once every ten days, but in the current situation of the Ming army, no one except the servants can do this.

Thousands of people lined up in a busy and bustling manner, and it was not as chaotic as imagined.

After all, in the era of cold weapons, the most important formation has always been the top priority of training.

The clanging sounds of armor plates colliding continued to be heard, and a group of Zhao family servants in distinctive armor entered the training ground.

They were in good spirits, tall, strong and sturdy, and there was a hidden formation as they marched.

"This is the butler."

Looking at the Zhao family servants in front of him wearing heavy iron armor, Chen Ran's first reaction was, "If the millions of soldiers of the Ming Dynasty were all like this, my job would be easy to accomplish."

Unfortunately, this kind of thing can only be thought about, because the civil servants will be the first to disagree.

If they didn't swallow up the soldiers' wages and rations, how would they get the money to live in luxurious houses, support beautiful wives, eat delicious food, and drink fine wine?
The family has thousands of acres of fertile land, and everyone can prosper.

It all depends on corruption.

Zhao Lujiao was wearing a suit of armor with mountain patterns, a goose-feather sword on his waist, and a thick beard on his face. He looked very majestic at first glance.

In order to subdue the Jizhen soldiers, Zhao Luejiao brought hundreds of his own servants over, and lined up in bright armor on the parade ground, which was indeed very oppressive.

After he stepped onto the podium and looked around at everyone, an angel from the palace read out the imperial edict.

"The Emperor, by the Will of Heaven, proclaims:"

When the angel from the palace read out the imperial edict in a shrill voice, two lines of golden subtitles appeared in front of Chen Ran's eyes again.

'Zhao Rujiao subdued Jizhen and dismissed many officers. In order to win over the soldiers of the garrison, he promoted a group of low-level officers. You will be promoted to a general.'

'Note: You can modify one of the words.'

"Here it comes!" Chen Ran clenched his fists, and the flag on his back shook.

It would take a long time to accumulate strength bit by bit to save the Ming Dynasty.

With the help of the system, this process will be greatly advanced.

"It's all up to you to get home."

"To save the Ming Dynasty, you need strength. Bai Zong is nothing."

The Ming army used the battalion as its basic tactical unit.

Below the battalion, there are five levels of organization: department, division, bureau, flag, and team.

Theoretically, each bureau has one centurion and 111 officers and soldiers.

The so-called hundred generals only have a hundred people under their command.

Most of the positions that Zhao Luejiao removed on the pretext of military pay would be filled by his own servants. This was the main means of controlling the troops.

In order to appease the military, it is necessary to promote a group of people from the original troops.

Chen Ran, who did not participate in the riot over military pay, also has this qualification.

After thinking for a moment, Chen Ran erased the word "Bai" in "Bai Zong" and replaced it with "Ba".

The organization above the bureau is the department, which has four bureaus under its jurisdiction, and theoretically has 448 soldiers.

The head of a department is called a battalion commander, who is considered a middle-level officer in the army and is qualified to share some leftover soup.

The Ming Dynasty spent a lot on military supplies and wages, but unfortunately 30% of them were lost before leaving the capital.

Once you reach the front line or a local area, you still have to drift for another 30%.

The rest floated away layer by layer starting from the general, and by the time it reached the captain, there was only a mouthful of soup left.

Compared with the previous poverty, it is a world of difference now.

"What a pity! It would be great if I could be promoted directly to general." Chen Ran was not very satisfied. He urgently wanted to improve the strength in his hands.

Not only to get the job done and go home, but also to increase the chances of survival.

The next year would see the Jisi Rebellion, in which the Later Jin would break through the border and wreak havoc on the capital.

In history, even Zhao Lushio died in battle. Chen Ran was not even a general. What should we do if he died in such a dangerous battle?

The only way is to increase the number of people under your command as much as possible and improve their equipment and training, which means increasing the cost of saving your life.

At this point in the general's platform, the angel from the palace had finished reading the imperial edict, but the parade ground was completely silent.

The soldiers in Jizhen were somewhat unbelievable that the emperor actually said that he would pay three years of unpaid wages all at once!

Everyone thought they had heard it wrong, and no one spoke for a moment.

There is no way. Life was so hard in the past. If a gold ingot suddenly fell from the sky and hit you on the head, anyone would be stunned.

Chen Ran, who was in a trance, looked around and saw the silence, his eyes moved slightly.

He took a deep breath, raised his arms and shouted "Long live the Holy Son of Heaven~~~"

The people around were stunned at first, but when Chen Ran shouted the second time, they came to their senses and shouted in unison, "Long live the Holy Son of Heaven~~~"

The entire Jizhen parade ground seemed to come alive, and thousands of Jizhen soldiers began to roar and cheer, "Long live the Holy Emperor~~~"

The soldiers in Jizhen were really grateful to the Holy Emperor for paying three years' unpaid wages at once, which really made them excited.

Chen Ran shouted at the top of his lungs, his heart churning, 'The civil officials used the method of flattery to make Chongzhen go around in circles, what about the court being full of justice. I can also flatter the emperor, I can also love my country. Oh, I love the Holy Son of Heaven!' On the stage, the angel who had a grim face before, heard the cheers like a tsunami, and suddenly smiled.

When I return to the palace and tell the emperor this, he will surely be very pleased.

What is this? This is the army’s support for the emperor!
Zhao Rujiao's eyes fell on Chen Ran, who was the first to lead the cheering. After a moment, he asked the Jizhen Army general beside him, "Who is that?"

"Under the command of Vice General Zhu of the Central Association of this headquarters, the flag commander of the third bureau of the first division of the left sentry, Chen Ran."

"Chen Ran." Zhao Lujiao nodded and took note of this person.

The angel who was listening closely not far away also silently remembered the name in his heart. "When I go back to see the emperor, I will definitely tell him about this person who led the cheering."

A few days later, Chen Ran, who was officially promoted to captain, saw two lines of subtitles appear in front of him.

'The modification of history has been completed, and the reward will be issued.'

'Ninety dan of rice was distributed as salary, and thirty-six bolts of cotton cloth were converted into salary notes.'

Looking at the cotton cloth in the storage space, Chen Ran was so angry that he laughed, "This is a trick."

The salary in the Ming Dynasty was very low, and Chen Ran, who became a captain, had a full-time position of the seventh rank.

The rice allowance is easy to talk about. The several million shi of rice allowance every year is basically used to pay salaries.

But the salary of a seventh-rank official was eight cents of rice and two cents of silver.

That is to say, for a salary of one hundred taels of silver, the rice was worth eighty taels, and the remaining twenty taels of silver.

However, the Ming Dynasty was short of money and could not come up with so much silver, so it came up with the idea of ​​a discount.

That is, changing the salary into other things for payment, the most common one being cotton cloth which has already been widely popularized.

This is actually still good, because in the past, most of the discounts were given to Ming Dynasty treasure notes!

The Ming Dynasty's treasure notes were even despised when used as toilet paper.

"I want silver." Chen Ran was furious. "Why do you need so much cotton cloth?"

"Captain Chen." The clerk in charge of the headquarters' warehouse stepped forward and handed him an account book. "The wages owed by the First Division of the Left Patrol have all been delivered."

Chen Ran's gaze then fell on the trucks filled with various supplies.

The Ming Dynasty had an army of one million, but most of them were garrison troops composed mainly of military households, so they can be simply ignored.

The real combat soldiers are all field troops, who are recruited, and their treatment is theoretically very high.

The highest income was for the Liaozhen soldiers. Theoretically, a soldier's annual income could be as high as twenty-four taels.

The next are the Jizhen soldiers, who earn about 18 taels a year.

"I thought it was all silver." Looking at the piles of various materials being transported from the carriages, Chen Ran was stunned, and then he laughed, "As expected of a civil servant from the Ming Dynasty, he has many clever ideas."

The money that Emperor Chongzhen issued from the treasury was all pure silver. Everyone knew that it was the military pay for suppressing the mutiny, so it was not easy to tamper with the amount, but it did not pose a problem for the civil servants.

The first thing is food. According to the system, if a soldier has more than four people, he will be given one stone of food per month.

The three years of unpaid wages should have been fifty-four taels of silver, but thirty-six taels of it had not even left the capital and had disappeared after going through the accounts of several major grain merchants.

What Chen Ran got in return was piles of food that had been transported from somewhere unknown.

After opening a bag of grain, a faint musty smell soon filled Chen Ran's nostrils. "Stale grain, how dare you take it out?"

"What good food!" The Jizhen soldiers gathered around him and praised him repeatedly, "It's really good food."

Chen Ran blinked and said, "Is there something wrong with your eyes and noses? This is also good food?"

"Master Captain." An old soldier beside him grinned, "This is really good food. The rations we used to carry when we went on the expedition were just like this. As for the monthly rations, don't even mention it. I once received a whole bag of monthly rations that was filled with dirt and gravel."

Even though he had been mentally prepared, Chen Ran was still shocked by the poor treatment of the Ming soldiers.

What are the civil servants thinking when they treat the military so harshly?

No wonder there is a famous saying in later generations: "The Ming army is not fully paid, and it is invincible when it is fully paid!"

Food is the biggest expense, and there is a food shortage in the north. Although the food price in Jizhen is not as high as that in Liaozhen, it is not cheap either.

The monthly rations that were issued to make up for the unpaid wages were of good quality and even cheaper than the market price, so the soldiers in Jizhen felt satisfied.

Life is too hard and it is too easy to be satisfied.

Aged grain is considered good grain.

Chen Ran stood up and continued to check the unpaid wages and supplies issued to him, the First Division of the Left Sentinel.

The salt in bags comes from the official salt from Changlu Salt Field.

"Hey." Seeing the official salt, Chen Ran immediately understood the trick.

Sure enough, when he cut open a bag of salt, he found it was filled with a lot of mud and impurities, the so-called official salt that made people feel sick just by looking at it.

Shaking his head, Chen Ran continued to look through the various strange and bizarre materials.

Musty rain hats and felt jackets, cotton, linen and ramie cloth eaten by insects and bitten by rats, sprouted soybeans, soy sauce and vinegar that make people nauseous at the first sniff, etc.

If these things can be barely considered useful, then the pile of useless things that follow is really jaw-dropping.

Knife-shaped paper, smoked fish harder than stone, coarse porcelain from who knows where, bags of charcoal, even glazed tiles, wooden barrels, candles, paper money, and so on.

Chen Ran really couldn't understand where these things came from, so he simply asked the old soldier, "Where did these come from?"

The old soldier was obviously well-informed. He laughed and said, "Captain General, these are from the storehouses of various county governments. They are used to cover up the unpaid wages."

When the Ming Dynasty tax collectors collected taxes, they required everything from silver to hay.

The county government's warehouse has all kinds of things.

Most of the silver that Emperor Chongzhen gave to the Jizhen soldiers quietly went into the homes of the officials, and in return they received these miscellaneous things.

In the end, the amount of silver that fell into the hands of the Jizhen soldiers was only a few taels per person.

Chen Ran, with a smile on his face, called on the soldiers of the First Division to come and collect their owed wages.

What I was thinking was, "How can I save the Ming Dynasty?"

Chen Ran handed over the unpaid wages to the soldiers who came to collect them. Looking at their smiling faces, he felt a little numb in his heart.

"Everyone in the Ming Dynasty is used to this kind of operation. We can't just kill them all."

In Chen Ran's opinion, these so-called supplies are not worth looking at.

In the modern world, even donating money will be looked down upon.

But the soldiers in front of him all had satisfied looks on their faces.

"The Ming Dynasty is so rotten, how can we save it?"

Chen Ran was scratching his head, feeling that his journey home was a long way off, when the golden subtitles appeared before his eyes again.

'Zhao Luejiao, the governor of the Five Military Commandery, was rewarded for his contribution in quelling the rebellion and was appointed the commander-in-chief of Jimen, stationed in Yongping and Jizhou, and commanded the troops of Masong, Dashi, Caoqiang and other eight routes.'

'Note: You can modify one of the words.'

"Did Lao Zhao get promoted?"

Chen Ran frowned, then suddenly realized, "This famous general who died for his country is a good hand at saving the Ming Dynasty. We have to help him, even if it means increasing the general's reward."

With a decision made in his mind, he raised his hand and erased the word "Men" in Jimen, and then wrote the word "Zhen" instead!

(End of this chapter)