Guiyi Fei Tang

Chapter 300: Peace before the Rain
"Wow……"

On the last day of October, when the baby's crying sounded, Liu Jilong also welcomed his second child.

The one who gave birth to this child was still Liu Jilong’s first wife Feng Hui.

Although it was her second pregnancy, Feng Hui still spent a lot of time and effort to give birth to the child.

"How is it? Are you feeling unwell?"

“Never…never…”

Liu Jilong walked to the bedside, squatted down and held her hand after the nurses carried Feng Hui back to the bed.

She was covered in sweat, her lips were pale, and her eyes were blinking violently, as if she would fall asleep at any second.

"Jie Marshal, it's a young man!"

Mrs. Zhang carried the cleaned child to the bed and handed it to Liu Jilong carefully.

Liu Jilong took it and took a look, and sure enough, he was as ugly as Liu Bilie when he was just born.

"Take a look..."

He held the child and leaned towards Feng Hui. Feng Hui moved his tired eyes to the child, smiled, and reached out to touch the child's hand.

"Give him a name, my dear..."

Feng Hui looked at Liu Jilong, and Liu Jilong said calmly, "Let's call him Liu Muzhen. You can choose the nickname."

When he said the name Liu Muzhen, he thought that since he had come here, it would be impossible for this group of people to come and take him away in the future.

This is another way to continue these names...

Liu Jilong couldn't help laughing, and Feng Hui thought he was thinking about a nickname, so he laughed so happily.

Although he was exhausted, Feng Hui still thought about it carefully, and finally said: "This child is sturdy, why not call him Tietou?"

"Iron Head?" Liu Jilong was a little surprised.

Liu Bilie was called Hutou, Liu Muzhen was called Tietou, so his third child wouldn’t be named Mutou or Datou, right?

"As long as you like it..."

He was a little embarrassed, but still accepted the nickname.

After all, tiger head and iron head sound much better than piglet and black buttocks...

"Aye, can I see my brother?"

The hem of his clothes was carefully pulled, and Liu Jilong looked down, and indeed saw Liu Bilie's timid look.

"Come and see."

Liu Jilong turned sideways to let him see clearly, and his face wrinkled: "My brother is so ugly..."

"Hahahaha!"

Liu Jilong was amused and quickly joked, "When you were just born, you looked similar to your brother now."

"No!" Liu Bilie said firmly: "I am prettier than my brother."

Seeing him like this, Liu Jilong did not argue with him, but just smiled and teased him. Seeing that Feng Hui had fallen asleep at some point, he tiptoed out of the bed and handed Liu Muzhen to Mrs. Zhang.

Mrs. Zhang took Liu Muzhen to lie on his side, while Liu Jilong picked up Liu Bilie and strode out.

"Your mother is tired, let her have a good rest."

"Ok!"

The father and son walked out of the inner hall and quickened their pace towards the central hall.

When they arrived, Gao Jinda, Cui Shu, Zhang Chang, Cao Mao and others who were guarding here breathed a sigh of relief.

Seeing that the father and son are like this, I guess nothing happened to the mistress.

"Mother and child are safe."

Liu Jilong looked at the nervous expressions of the four people, told them the result with a smile, and at the same time sat in the main seat while holding Liu Bilie.

"General Jie, this is the news just sent by Xichuan Sanxianlou."

Cui Shu stood up and handed over a letter. Liu Jilong put Liu Bilie down, took the letter and read it.

The content of the letter was about the policies Cui Xuan implemented after arriving in Chengdu. Among them, the one that affected Longyou was the news that Cui Xuan recruited 30,000 soldiers.

The military pay of the Xichuan soldiers was enough to barely support a family of five.

Therefore, Cui Xuan's recruitment of 30,000 soldiers actually affected more than 100,000 people.

It is foreseeable that in the next few months, the number of people fleeing from Xichuan to Longyou will decrease.

However, as long as the imperial court does not cut taxes, people will continue to flee to Longyou, it is just a matter of how many.

"No problem, we also need to digest it."

Liu Jilong put down the letter, and Cui Shu continued:

"Shang Moyan has taken over Daowucheng, Dajianlu and other important roads."

"With Dali taking over the land south of the Dadu River, Shangmoyan is now adjacent to Dali, and there are also two trade routes."

"Shang Moyan did not send a letter, but sent someone to ask you carefully whether you want to join forces with Nanzhao to attack Xichuan..."

"Not for now." Liu Jilong rejected the suggestion and explained:
"Over the past three years, hundreds of thousands of people have fled to Longyou and still don't have their own farmland. Besides, we don't have enough copper coins."

"If Shang Moyan joins forces with the Nanman to attack Xichuan now, even if we want to share Xichuan, we don't have such a big appetite."

"Tell Shang Moyan to pacify the people under his command first, and let those who need to graze and farm do so."

"For now, he can communicate and trade with Dali, but he cannot form an alliance, let alone send troops to Xichuan."

Liu Jilong calculated the time and estimated that in two years, the amount of arable land in Longyou should exceed 10 million mu.

Not only that, the grain in the government warehouse can be stored at around three million shi.

The gold, silver and money in the treasury are almost enough for Longyou to deal with some major events.

When all these are ready, that will be the best time for Longyou to enter Sichuan and plunder population resources.

And because of the alliance between Dali and Tubo, the Tang court would not deal with him rashly, so he would be able to develop peacefully for a few years.

At my age, I am almost 29 years old, so I can definitely wait a few more years.

When Liu Bang was his age, he was still traveling with Zhang Er as a knight-errant.

"Marshal Jie, the second batch of students in Linzhou are about to graduate. Do you think they will continue to go to the countryside to open up wasteland, or do they have other arrangements?"

Cao Mao's voice woke Liu Jilong up, and Liu Jilong subconsciously looked at him.

"Going to the countryside to reclaim wasteland is a must, and this cannot be changed."

“I have said before that this system should not only be retained but also spread to various universities.”

"Next year, college students from other states will begin to graduate. They learned culture in college, so can't they do the work of land reclamation?"

Liu Jilong was a little angry, but he quickly calmed down:

"But other universities certainly can't let students from Linzhou go through six years of pioneering, serving as officials, and serving as soldiers."

"How about this. After the students from other universities graduate, the Protectorate will send people to the universities in each state to inquire about their situation."

"If you want to be an official, then you should follow the process of Linzhou students. You must open up wasteland, serve as an official, and serve as a soldier."

"If you want to be a teacher, you only need to participate in the land reclamation for two years and serve as a soldier for one year."

"But we can't let them work for nothing. We will pay them salaries as usual if they are transferred from clerks to soldiers, and we will pay them 300 coins per month for the work they do in clearing wasteland."

After all, students are different from the common people who open up the wasteland. The common people who open up the wasteland will share the public land equally in the local area, but the students still have to leave.

After much thought, Liu Jilong finally decided to set a salary for the students so as not to dampen their enthusiasm.

Three hundred coins per month equals three thousand six hundred coins per year, which can buy eight dan of grain, equivalent to the output of fourteen acres of land after paying taxes.

Such income is not considered low in Longyou. After all, three hundred coins are enough to buy a piece of linen or more than ten kilograms of meat in Longyou.

During the period of land reclamation, students were provided with five dou of free food every month.

These three hundred coins can be used to buy clothes and meat to nourish yourself.

"General Jie, isn't three hundred coins too much?"

Gao Jinda couldn't help but speak, you know, a strong man can normally only reclaim two or three acres of wasteland.

This is still the case when the conditions for land reclamation are relatively good. If the conditions for land reclamation are too bad, at most one or two acres can be reclaimed a year.

“That’s not much.”

Liu Jilong waved his hand to appease him, and then continued: "They also contributed to the reclamation of wasteland, and when the time comes to leave, they will not be able to get a share of the land."

"This money is to compensate them for the unfair conditions of land reclamation."

"I'm not worried about that." Gao Jinda frowned and said:
"I am worried that when there are more students in the university in the future, this plate will be too big to handle."

Gao Jinda's worries were not unreasonable. Liu Jilong naturally thought of this problem, so he smiled and said:

"We don't have much land suitable for reclamation, but Longyou is vast and sparsely populated, so there is more land for reclamation."

"If we continue at the current pace, I estimate that in a dozen years or so, most of the land in Longyou will be reclaimed."

"When the time comes, there will be no need to open up wasteland. We can just let the students go to the countryside to help the villagers plant crops and lower the standards."

"By the way, we will also give money to those students who participated in the land reclamation first, and make up for what they were owed before."

"Reclaiming wasteland is to let them know that food is hard to come by, and distributing money is to let them know that making money is not easy."

"Besides, the New Year is coming soon, and they are out there clearing land and can't go home."

"The household registration office must distribute the money before the winter solstice. At the same time, each person will be given a set of ready-made clothes and three pounds of oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea so that they can have a good new year." After Liu Jilong finished speaking, Gao Jinda finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Seeing that there were no government affairs issues, Liu Jilong began to talk about things in the south.

"Gao Pian in the south just bought so many horses from us. Judging from his methods, it won't be that difficult to deal with Dali."

"He is fighting a stupid war now to show the court. I guess he is planning to seek the position of Xichuan Jiedushi."

"It is not appropriate for us to interfere in Xichuan's affairs at the moment, but we cannot let him serve as Xichuan's governor either."

"If he governs Xichuan, some of our plans will be useless."

"Although Cui Xuan's military strategy is mediocre, he is still better than Xiahou Zi, Cui Shenyou and others."

"He has now recruited 30,000 soldiers. He only has the soldiers and horses, but he still lacks draft horses and riding horses."

"If nothing unexpected happens, he should come to see us before the New Year."

"Tell Hu Siguang and Wang Sifeng in the south that military horses are not for sale, but riding horses can be sold at discretion, and draft horses can be sold at will."

It has to be said that selling horses is still profitable. Longyou made a profit of 300,000 strings of cash just from trade with Dongchuan.

After deducting the cost of raising horses and commercial goods, the net profit was 180,000 strings of cash.

Although trading horses in this situation might be suspected of aiding the enemy, horses were consumables. Given the intensity of the war between Dali and Datang, how likely were these castrated riding and draft horses to survive three or four years?

Thinking of this, Liu Jilong looked at Zhang Chang and asked, "Have all our elite cavalry been assigned horses?"

Seeing Liu Jilong asking him a question, Zhang Chang bowed and replied, "All of them have been allocated. For the entire army of 8,000 elite cavalry, each has one military horse and one riding horse."

"In addition, there are more than 3,000 military horses and more than 9,000 riding horses in the military horse farm."

"The number of military horses produced each year is about 2,000, and the number of riding horses is about 3,000."

"In addition, in recent years, the people have returned a lot of draft horses and oxen. Every year, more than 2,000 oxen and more than 7,000 draft horses are returned to the ranch."

"The number of oxen and draft horses sold at the ranch each year is basically no less than 30,000."

Needless to say, the ranches in Longyou can provide a large number of draft horses and oxen every year.

Because of this, the people who moved to Longyou were basically able to obtain oxen or draft horses as livestock.

Although they need to repay the money later, which makes the system seem a bit harsh, sometimes people's problems are more important than system problems.

At least when Liu Jilian was in power, the people did not think there was anything wrong with this system because the officials did not dare to openly exploit them.

Most systems are good at the beginning, but the people who implement them go astray.

Longyou is not a big area, and Liu Jilian can still take care of it, so the "pastoral administration system" in Longyou is very good.

But when the plate gets bigger and the area he needs to take care of becomes larger and larger, he will enter a stage where accidents occur frequently.

By that time, it would be necessary to change the system or replace certain officials.

While Liu Jilong was thinking, Gao Jinda's voice also reached his ears.

"The population of Longyou reached over 723,000 at the beginning of the month. Although Cui Xuan's recruitment will have an impact, it should be able to steadily reach 750,000 by this time next year."

"The population of Liangzhou has reached 180,000. If more people move in, we will have to transport grain from Lanzhou, Hezhou, and Linzhou to ensure the stability of local grain prices."

"May I ask the commander-in-chief whether the Protectorate will suspend the migration of people from Liangzhou?"

"Stop for now." Liu Jilong answered without hesitation, and then ordered:

"Except for Dangzhou, immigrants can be relocated to other states. Dangzhou is still too small. If it weren't for the wrong timing, I would have abolished it as a county and placed it under the jurisdiction of Wuzhou."

The military location of Dangzhou was very important, so the Tang court established a state here.

However, judging from the local environment, the area is indeed not suitable for population influx, and maintaining the status quo is quite good.

"I obey your order." Gao Jinda responded without hesitation, and Liu Jilong also retracted his gaze.

"Okay, go back to your respective government affairs."

"I am resigning..."

At his signal, everyone left the central hall one after another, and Liu Jilong himself returned to the inner courtyard.

At the same time he walked into the inner courtyard, Bai Minzhong, who was far away in Chang'an, encountered a bad thing.

His cold did not subside as expected, but instead worsened as winter approached. He had a high fever several times and everyone in the prime minister's mansion was in a panic because of his illness.

Even so, Emperor Li Yi was not sure and still sent eunuchs to ask for his opinions on government affairs.

"Prince Bai, Lingxi requires 30,000 garrison troops. Will this be granted?"

Tian Lingzi stood in front of Bai Minzhong's bed and asked, while Bai Minzhong was dizzy due to high fever at this time.

He didn't hear Tian Lingzi's question clearly.

"What's the matter..."

Bai Minzhong continued to ask in a daze. Tian Lingzi was a little impatient, but for the sake of his own future, he still patiently bowed and asked:

"Lingxi requires 30,000 garrison troops. Will this be granted?"

"Thirty thousand..." Bai Minzhong seemed to want to open his eyes, but he couldn't. He could only answer confusedly: "Send troops..."

"Thank you, Prime Minister Bai, for your guidance." Tian Lingzi breathed a sigh of relief and then asked:

"Everyone asks Prime Minister Bai, if Prime Minister Bai retires, who will take over as Prime Minister?"

"Phase?" Bai Minzhong was in a daze, sometimes conscious and sometimes fainting.

Tian Lingzi asked three times without getting tired of it, but Bai Minzhong did not give an answer and fainted completely.

Seeing this, Tian Lingzi secretly cursed his realistic acting skills, then returned to the palace and told Li Yi who was listening to the music.

After hearing this, Li Yi frowned and asked, "What is Bai Xiang's condition like?"

Although he was suspicious, he also knew Bai Minzhong's character.

If Bai Minzhong was just pretending to be sick, he would definitely not evade the issue of conscription of garrison troops.

"This……"

Tian Lingzi was a little at a loss. Although he felt that Bai Minzhong's acting was realistic, if he was really sick, wouldn't he be guilty of deceiving the emperor?
Thinking of this, Tian Lingzi could only respond ambiguously: "Mr. Bai's illness doesn't seem to be fake, but..."

"That's enough!" Li Yi waved his hand impatiently, and Tian Lingzi kowtowed quickly.

Seeing that he was so useless, Li Yi looked at Tian Yun and said, "Let him go back to work at the pony house. Don't tell him about these things in the future."

"I obey your command..." Tian Yun sighed secretly, thinking that he could not help his adopted son.

Tian Lingzi, who was kneeling and kowtowing, felt as if the sky had fallen. Even though the treatment of the Xiaomafang Envoy was much better than what he had been treated before, it was still not as good as the favorite of the emperor.

But he also knew that forcing it was useless, so he stood up and retreated obediently.

Seeing him leave, Li Yi thought for a while, and then said: "Appoint Li Fu, the assistant minister of the Ministry of Justice, as the governor of Xuanwu Army, and Bi Zhen, the former governor of Xuanwu Army, as the minister of rites and co-prime minister, and they will enter the court as prime minister today."

"I obey your command." Tian Yun responded quickly.

Li Yi wanted to say something, but at this moment, a voice of courtesy came from outside the palace: "Princess Tongchang requests to see Your Majesty..."

"Let our daughter in!" Upon hearing that his beloved daughter was coming, Li Yi quickly stood up and looked towards the palace door happily, while glancing at the actors and musicians.

"What are you looking at? Get out of here!"

The actors and musicians who were usually favored by Li Yi did not dare to refute and hurriedly left Xianning Palace with their musical instruments.

After they left, the thirteen-year-old Princess Tongchang also walked into the palace.

At the age of thirteen, she became more and more beautiful, and when Li Yi saw her, she happily jumped down from the golden platform and walked towards him quickly in three steps.

"Let me see if my daughter has grown taller recently."

He pretended to compare his height with his daughter's, but Princess Tongchang laughed at him and said, "Father, you are so old, yet you still want to compare your daughter's height."

"You are the apple of Aye's eye. Aye must know any changes in you."

Li Yi was not angry when his daughter complained about him. Instead, he smiled and measured the height difference between father and daughter.

"Well, it's still not as good as Aye."

Li Yi said this with a smile. Princess Tongchang was annoyed, but she hugged Li Yi's hand and pulled him to look at the Xianning Palace which was in a mess because of the actors and musicians.

"What's so good about this actor? You haven't been with me for a long time."

Princess Tongchang was talking seriously, but Li Yi was speechless and said, "Didn't you ask Aye not to come to you for half a month last time?"

"I told you not to go, so you really don't want to go?" Princess Tongchang became even more angry, pointing at the mess and saying:
"Then listen to me and don't watch actors anymore!"

"This..." Li Yi was speechless, while Tian Yun was secretly shocked.

You should know that since Li Yi ascended the throne, there have been officials who reported to the emperor that he favored actors.

However, the fate of those officials was either exile or dismissal.

Throughout the court and the country, only this princess dares to command the current supreme ruler so arrogantly.

"You are not allowed to watch the actors for a month. You have to play with me this month."

Seeing that her father was in a dilemma, Princess Tongchang could only step back and give instructions with a little pride.

If someone else did this, Li Yi would definitely have someone drag him away and beat him to death, but facing his own thorn in his side, he smiled and nodded: "Okay, I'll listen to Nannan."

"Then Aye, accompany me to the garden now."

Princess Tongchang dragged Li Yi away, but Li Yi's face did not show any anger, instead he was full of happiness.

Looking at their backs, Tian Yun shook his head, thinking that he was happy now, but would be sad when his daughter got married...

(End of this chapter)