My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 722: Withstand the pressure and prove yourself

The fifteenth year of Jian'an, June 20th.

It was also the seventh day after the celebration banquet in Chengdu.

Fa Zheng, who was in Jingdu County, Yuexi Commandery, finally received a reply from Zhuge Lingjun.

Along with the reply, there were several letters from other Shu civil officials to Zhuge Liang, all of which provided suggestions on the governance of Yuexi.

Zhuge Liang also sent these things to Fa Zheng, apparently following the example of Wei Wenhou.

"There are so many people in the back who are pointing fingers at your behavior and think you are unscrupulous, but I have suppressed them. Just do your own thing without worry."

Fa Zheng felt a great deal of trust and felt more and more motivated.

Lingjun was so open and frank, obviously paving the way for the personnel arrangement in the future Northern Expedition. I thought that by then, Zhang Song and himself, the two confidants who were secretly recruited at the beginning, would be able to get the high position of governor of a state.

The lord has now partially reformed the official system and split the three envoys in most states.

Only in a very small number of states with historical problems can the previously appointed governors continue to serve as governors because they are too powerful and trusted.

Except for those few individual cases, other states had to split the three envoys: the governor, the defense commissioner, and the inspector.

Now, under Liu Bei's command, there are only three people who are qualified to serve as governors and hold all the power when they are transferred to the local areas. They are the Zhuge brothers and Guan Yu.

Even Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun are slightly inferior and do not have the qualifications.

At most, they could only serve as defense envoys for one more state, that is, they served as defense envoys for two states. However, the states they served as defense envoys for were basically those that Liu Bei's camp had not yet completely recovered, so their actual power was not great.

For example, Zhang Fei followed Liu Bei to Nanyang. According to his current job, he was the defense envoy of Jingzhou, but in fact, he could also serve as the defense envoy of Yuzhou next door. However, most of Yuzhou was still in Cao Cao's hands, and Liu Bei only seized a small area in Runan County, so he let Zhang Fei serve as the defense envoy.

Zhao Yun's situation was similar. While he was defending Youzhou, Liu Bei also occupied Bohai County in Jizhou, so Zhao Yun was appointed as the Defense Envoy of Jizhou. In fact, he was just coordinating the defense of one more county. Zhou Yu's authority was the governor of Bohai, and the two did not conflict.

Therefore, according to the current situation, Fa Zheng speculated that in one or two years, when Zhuge Liang left Sichuan, he himself would serve as the governor of Yizhou in charge of civil affairs, Zhang Song would be the governor in charge of supervision, and a great general would be the defense commander in charge of military affairs. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
"We must quickly revamp Yuexi and other places, and get rid of those clowns who secretly oppose your strategy. When winter comes, we can fully cooperate with you in pacifying Jianning and other places."

Fa Zheng put down the letter and thought so in his heart.

In the letter Zhuge Liang wrote to him, he also hinted that "as long as you can govern Yuexi well and produce obvious political achievements that can be seen with the naked eye in a short period of time, I can take advantage of the situation to remove the corrupt Confucian families such as Du and Qiao who have been forced to make a bet."

This was a pleasant surprise for Fa Zheng, and also added an extra element to his mission.

As long as you do a good job, not only will you be rewarded, but you can also bring down a few colleagues who usually say weird things to you. Why not kill two birds with one stone?
So the day after receiving Zhuge Liang's letter, Fa Zheng was more motivated to inspect the local areas every day.

Focus on restoring production, winning over the barbarian generals, and rectifying military discipline, and then mobilize combat troops to carry out some infrastructure construction in their spare time.

……

On June 22, two days after receiving the letter, Fa Zheng took the trouble to go south again from Jingdu to Huiwu for inspection.

By the way, we also checked the places along the newly cleared Yak Highway to see whether business and travel were smooth and the roads were easy to travel.

Whatever problems we encountered along the way, we worked on the spot to resolve them as quickly as possible and provide solutions.

Just after leaving Jingdu County, Fa Zheng and his party arrived at the banks of the Sunshui River and rode south along the river valley.

Along the way, you can see countless newly opened paddy fields planted with green seedlings on the fertile river valley plains on both sides of the river.

In the paddy fields, countless farmers are working against time. It is crowded and very hard.

In previous years, such scenes were almost never seen in Yuexi County at this season - because at this time of year, the locals were basically idle, making a living by logging, fishing and hunting, and waiting for the autumn harvest.

Judging from their attire, about two to three out of ten people in each field were dressed as Han people, and the remaining seven to eight out of ten were local southern barbarians.

The Han farmers were all strong men without exception, and they looked well-nourished and in good shape. A considerable number of them were probably soldiers who had laid down their weapons, or auxiliary soldiers who were originally responsible for transporting food and logistics, and were temporarily transferred to military settlements, where they farmed together with the locals and passed on advanced farming techniques to the locals.

Historically, the Han Dynasty under Zhuge Liang was very good at this kind of long-term farming where the military and civilians lived together. For example, when Zhuge Liang went to Qishan for the last six times, he was in a long stalemate with Sima Yi in Weinan, and he was able to "let the military and civilians live together in farming, and the military and civilians lived in peace, as a long-term strategy."

This kind of thing may seem ordinary, but if you look into it in detail, you will find that it is really not easy.

How to distribute the harvest when the army and local farmers work together? The land is originally owned by the local people, and the army is only there to provide extra labor. How to ensure that the local people are still satisfied after a considerable portion of the harvest is taken away? And they must be able to survive.

There is a lot of management knowledge involved. This has a lot to do with Zhuge Liang's extraordinary administrative and people-pacifying abilities, as well as his fair and impartial personality, which made the people and soldiers trust his way of distribution.

The short four words "military and civilians living in peace" in history books are actually quite difficult when we dig deeper.

Fa Zheng certainly didn't have this skill, and his personal morality wasn't very good either. But during this expedition, he received many instructions from Zhuge Liang, who taught him how to govern and appease the local people after conquering Yuexi.

Fa Zheng was a man of quick wits. If someone gave him some warnings, he could act out the scene in a short period of time and perform it to a degree similar to that of a real person. This was the only way to push forward the work of cultivating land among the Han and barbarians in a safe and peaceful manner.

Compared with the Han farmers who were all strong and healthy soldiers, the newly surrendered southern barbarians in the fields now included both men and women, young and old, but of course the proportion of elderly people was very small.

Both the Biographies of the Southwestern Barbarians in the Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han recorded the miserable living conditions of the local southern barbarians during the Han Dynasty.

The local agricultural technology is not very developed, and most people just leave the crops alone after sowing, and only cut them when it is time to harvest. There are almost no production links such as irrigation, fertilization, and pest control.

Thanks to the frequent rainfall in the South Central region, there is no severe winter all year round, so natural rain is enough without irrigation. As for fertilizer, the Han people did not apply fertilizer frequently during this era, and South Central China rains a lot, so fertilizer would be washed away, so they simply ignored it.

Those who have traveled to Yunnan in later generations should be familiar with the red soil in Yunnan. That is because too much rain washed away the humus and other nutrients in the soil, leaving only the soil with more iron oxide precipitation, which turned red in color.

However, the natural population growth was too fast, so during the Han Dynasty, the area of South China was often under tremendous pressure of population explosion.

For the elderly, especially those with reduced working ability, once a famine year comes, they will be consumed by the civil wars between the southern barbarians. Over time, the local population structure has become very young.

It is precisely because Nanzhong has been under population pressure for many years that the local people have almost no aversion to killing and have long been accustomed to it. Anyway, even if there is no conflict with the Han people, the various tribes of the southern barbarians will kill each other for land and food, and they kill each other every year.

If the Han people could find a way out for them, teach them to farm well and increase food production, provide them with military pay and food, and recruit brave warriors to join the army, countless people would respond.

……

Fa Zheng and his party walked along the Sun River for more than ten miles and saw several teams of bamboo rafts passing by on the river.

Some of these bamboo rafts are quite large, made by simply tying together hundreds of thick and hard bamboos, and they surge downstream to Huiwu County downstream.

Once these bamboos arrive at the local area, they will be used to repair and expand the docks and build shipyards in preparation for crossing the Jinsha River in the future and entering the Nanzhong hinterland south of the Yangtze River.

Before the technology of rafting was developed, it was almost impossible to transport large quantities of bamboo and wood from the deep mountains of Yuexi to the river at low cost. That is why industries such as shipbuilding and transportation were so backward when the local area was ruled by barbarians.

In addition to these large bamboo rafts, there are some passing bamboo rafts that appear to be slightly smaller, made up of only a hundred or so bamboos, but they have side boats tied around them, on which are piled seedlings with soil, and a few are loaded with grain. They are obviously bamboo rafts used for transporting goods.

Fa Zheng was very pleased to see these cargo rafts. This trick was related to Zhuge Lingjun's teachings before he went on the expedition. Now that he had actually put it into practice, he did not expect that it would really help the people's livelihood in Yuexi County to recover quickly.

Under normal climatic conditions, to promote the double-season planting of Linyi rice, it is necessary to start raising late rice seedlings in March and then transplant them to the fields in May.

This year, Fa Zheng launched military operations against Yuexi County, but the battle started after the busy spring farming season. By the time the battle was over, it was almost the end of May, and it would definitely be too late to urgently plant late rice.

However, Yuexi County is relatively southerly, and the weather there is already subtropical, close to the tropical winterless environment, so planting is a month or so later than in Shu County in the north, and harvesting will also be a month or so later, which is not a big problem.

In Shu County, it is impossible to grow rice until October before harvesting it, as the temperature is too low and the rice will freeze to death. In Yuexi, even if the harvest is delayed until October, the crops can still be harvested.

However, the problem of "growing rice seedlings on the spot in Yuexi" is definitely impossible to solve this year. So before leaving for the expedition, Fa Zheng also asked Zhuge Liang if it was possible to "conquer Yuexi this year and start a trial of late rice in Yuexi this year."

The final result of the discussion was that it was theoretically possible, that is, to grow seedlings densely in small fields near Yaoniu County in Nan'an County in advance. When it was time to transplant them to large fields, the root soil in the small fields would be dug up, transported hundreds of miles with water to preserve moisture, and planted in large fields in places such as Qiongdu and Huiwu.

Doing so is actually very costly, because when transporting grain seeds locally, only the grains need to be transported. However, after they grow into young seedlings, they have to be transported together with the roots and soil, and the volume and weight increase by at least dozens of times, so the transportation cost is too wasteful.

However, considering that this thing can be piloted on a small scale first, just for the purpose of rapid dissemination and technical refinement, as long as the scale is controlled, even if there is a loss, it will not be much.

After these seedlings are transplanted to the local fields, they can be harvested in less than 100 days, that is, two to three months. Compared with the yield harvested after maturity, the cost of transporting the seedlings is almost the same.

In other words, Zhuge Liang and Fa Zheng did not expect to make a profit from this wave of transportation this year, but the army had to stay in Yuexi for half a year, so they had to transport food there continuously to last until winter when they could cross the Lu River to the south and attack Jianning.

Since we have to transport it anyway, let's try to see if we can transport the seedlings. This will help us verify some techniques and accumulate technical experience.

Secondly, it can also promote the mixed farming of Han and barbarians in advance, and teach the local people how to raise, transplant and broadcast seedlings one year in advance, so that the locals can master the relevant agricultural techniques and run in the same practice in advance.

Finally, we can find something to do for the surplus soldiers and laborers so that they can get used to military settlements in Yuexi in advance.

In short, Zhuge Liang and Fa Zheng were very cautious when they decided to implement this move. The scale of the deployment is not large, only tens of thousands of people at most.

Because of the limited scale, this qualification of "being the first to experience the double-season rice planting technology" was also regarded by Fa Zheng as a "reward for the Yishuai tribe with a good cooperative attitude", maximizing the value of mediation.

Whoever is most loyal to the court and cooperates most with the court's actions can obtain double-season rice technology one year earlier than other tribes, thereby gaining an extra advantage in the competition between tribes.

In such an atmosphere, Fa Zheng got the chance to experience the double-season rice technology in advance, which brought together a wave of people from Yuexi County and selected the vassal tribes who were more willing to be sinicized.

Later, during the implementation process, Fa Zheng gradually discovered that the cost of this operation was not as high as he had initially expected. The expected losses could also be suppressed.

This is mainly because, after Fa Zheng took office in Yuexi, he found that the local transportation environment could be greatly improved, thus reducing transportation costs.

As mentioned earlier, the "Yak Avenue" located in the Daliang Mountain area in later generations is actually not a pure land valley.

Although it is impossible to have water access throughout the Yak Trail, at least 80 percent of the mileage is accessible by river.

A tributary of the Lushui River and the Sunshui River flow southward along the Yak Avenue Valley and eventually merge into the Jinsha River in Huiwu County, Panzhihua in later times. This tributary of the Lushui River is the Yalong River in later times. The Sunshui River is the Anning River in later times, connecting Xichang to Panzhihua in later times.

From Yaoniu County on the banks of the Dadu River to Chan County at the source of the Sun River, only a hundred miles of the road between the two places must be traveled through the valley, and the rest can be traveled by water.

However, the local barbarians in Yuexi had very poor development in water transportation in the past.

On the one hand, there were no good boats, and on the other hand, the dangerous shoals and reefs in the Sun River were not effectively managed, or the barbarians never had the technology and manpower to manage them. As a result, the waterways in the Sun River were still in a completely natural state without any infrastructure.

After Fa Zheng arrived, he promoted the transportation of late rice seedlings with grain and soil, and piloted the promotion of late rice transplanting technology.

At the same time, we are also trying to regulate shipping.

Because Zhuge Liang had taught him the technique of "rafting" before he came here, Fa Zheng organized the local Nanman to cut down a large number of bamboos, and then tied them into giant bamboo rafts and rushed downstream.

There are shallow sandbanks or small reefs with weak foundations in the Sun River. As long as the bottom is not connected with the riverbed and rocks, they will basically be swept away by the giant raft made of thousands of giant bamboos tied together.

After the rafts are released, small bamboo rafts and boats can be used to transport goods downstream, which can immediately improve the safety factor. Even if there are difficult and complicated obstacles that have not been cleared, the amount of work can be reduced by at least 70% by assigning people to focus on the construction.

As for the bamboos being broken and smashed when the rafts are floating downstream, it doesn't matter. There are bamboos everywhere in Yuexi, and they are worthless. You can cut as many as you want.

As long as the government pays a little money, or even nothing at all and just provides food, they can find countless hungry barbarians willing to work by cutting bamboo and making bamboo rafts.

The local barbarians would kill each other to reduce the number of mouths to feed due to lack of food and land in peacetime. Now that someone is providing them with food, why don’t they work?
Of all these jobs, rafting is probably the most dangerous.

Especially those who use large bamboo rafts made of thousands of bamboos tied together to transport bamboo directly downstream.

Even in the 20th century, if a raft accidentally hit the shore or a reef, the people on the raft could fall into the water and be swept away.

What's more, Fa Zheng now asked people to release the rafts for the purpose of exploring the way and clearing obstacles.

Fa Zheng himself did not know how bad the waterway here was. There had been no maps drawn and no hydrological data, so it was all up to the explorers to figure it out first.

If the large bamboo raft hits a reef or sweeps away the reef, the probability of casualties among the raft workers will be much higher than in later generations.

However, this problem, which was quite thorny in the later humanitarian era, was not a problem at all in South China in the early 3rd century.

Fa Zheng directly offered a reward to recruit southern barbarian warriors who knew a little about water. He would put them in a queue for five months. If they were still alive when the army crossed the river in winter this year, they would be directly recruited as naval officers. They could start as sergeants, and if they performed well, they could be promoted to team leaders or even village chiefs.

If there were casualties during the rafting, they would also be compensated. Those who drowned would be given ten silver coins and ten rolls of Shu cloth, which was considered as money to buy their lives. In addition, their families could receive priority training from the Han government and learn the technology of planting double-season rice. For the injured, the compensation would be reduced according to the severity of the injury.

In the South Central region of this era, human life was worthless. Usually, people fought for the fruit trees in the mountains and forests, the hunting grounds in the fields, and killed each other until their brains were almost bruised. When the Han government came, they offered a large reward for their lives. There were many people willing to sell their lives, and they even rushed to apply to learn the skills of rafting.

Finally, Fa Zheng had to impose a quota and required that only one person in each household could engage in related work.

It was through the careful planning of this series of policy operations that Yuexi County achieved significant development in a short period of time.

The people who were originally idle and had nothing to do have found a way to vent their efforts by working.

Those who should learn farming techniques learned farming techniques, those who should cut wood and bamboo cut wood and bamboo, and those who should manage waterways and build new docks and shipyards all had their own work to do.

Fa Zheng traveled south from Jingdu to Huiwu County, and traveled hundreds of miles along the Sun River. All he saw were farmlands. Logging mills were frantically cutting down trees to build farmland, and at the same time, huge amounts of bamboo and wood were transported downstream along the Sun River.

When Fa Zheng arrived at Huiwu County, he saw that at the mouth of the Sun River where it merged into the Lu River (Jinsha River), a simple ferry had already taken shape. The trestle facilities at the ferry were all temporarily built with bamboo.

One by one, the thick, knotty bamboos were wedged into the river water and rammed into the shallow mud on the river bank until they touched the solid rock ground.

On top of the bamboo piles, bamboo tubes are laid flat to build the bridge deck. Finally, a layer of mud is spread and compacted, and then non-slip hay is placed on it. The bamboo bridge body is tied and wrapped to prevent it from falling off.

This construction method can save countless hours and manpower compared to cutting wood from large trees and then building it.

Although the durability of bamboo docks is relatively low, they may decay after a few years.

But the bamboo has more nodes than other ordinary bamboos and is tougher.

What Zhuge Liang wanted now was just a river crossing pier that could be used to deal with Jianning County this winter. As for whether the pier would decay in a few years, it was completely irrelevant.

Anyway, after the first dock is built, the transportation of other goods, especially building materials, will become convenient, and it will be easy to build a better one in the future.

Similarly, at this moment, not far from this bamboo pier which was just taking shape, Fa Zheng also saw a shipyard which was also under planning and had only a bamboo structure.

A group of shipbuilding craftsmen who had just been transferred from Shu County were figuring out how to use bamboo to quickly build low-cost large ships - not bamboo rafts, but proper transport ships.

Of course, it didn't have to be built too well, because Zhuge Liang had no intention of fighting a naval battle with the southern barbarians on the Jinsha River. He just had to make sure the ship was big and stable enough to carry the army across the river safely, and to continue to provide transportation for rations and other military supplies in the future.

As for the durability of the ship, whether it can be used for many years is also not important. When South China is pacified and the infrastructure is better, there will be plenty of time to slowly iterate.

……

Fa Zheng worked diligently and conscientiously, and in Yuexi County he tried to teach the double-season rice technology, using it as bait to lure the various barbarian leaders to compete to become the Han Dynasty's dogs.

On the one hand, they recruited barbarians to cut down bamboo and wood, dredge rivers, and build shipyards and docks.

The southern barbarian people, who had originally had nothing to do, now found things to do and no longer resorted to killing each other when there was not enough food to relieve population pressure.

Of course, during the slack season in the south, people would rely on lying down to rest to reduce calorie consumption and ensure they could survive by eating less.

After the Han government came, the labor intensity increased a lot, and the local people of Yuexi also needed more food to survive.

This fundamental contradiction cannot be avoided. It must be alleviated by concrete measures to improve agricultural productivity, and the results must be fast enough.

Fortunately, after Fa Zheng personally investigated the area, he found that there was a way to solve this problem - even if the effect of growing late rice this year was too slow and the cost was high, so it could only be used as a pilot and could not be mass-produced, Zhuge Lingjun had another technical means to quickly increase food production.

That method is not uncommon in the Han area. It first appeared fourteen years ago and was improved twelve years ago.

However, this technology had never been promoted in the counties of southern China before - that was the drift net fishing technology invented by Zhuge Jin in Guangling County.

Don’t think that South China is isolated from information. They still don’t know about the fishery production technology that the outside world had twelve years ago.

Who made the vast majority of the people in Nanzhong unable to read a single word? Ninety-nine percent of them are illiterate, and some have never left the county or village in their entire lives.

After Fa Zheng arrived, he started massive construction and military farming. However, after only two months, when the autumn harvest had not yet arrived, he discovered that the local people's original grain reserves were no longer enough to eat due to the general increase in labor intensity among the people.

At that time, Fa Zheng ordered the military craftsmen to teach the people of Yuexi how to make bamboo gill nets, and then set the gill nets directly in the Sun River and Lu River to intercept the river water in shallow areas to catch fish.

As for the production process of bamboo barbed wire, it is not difficult at all. There are so many bamboo and carpenters and woodcutters in the local area. Just a little training will be enough.

If fixed gillnets are not enough, then use hemp fiber fishing nets, add weights and bamboo thorns, and then use two boats to trawle.

The local shipbuilding technology was very crude, and bamboo rafts were originally used. After Fa Zheng had people build a small bamboo boat, he immediately equipped it with a simple single mast and a primitive winch with a not-so-complex mechanical structure.

The cooperation of two boats can achieve high-efficiency fishing that is unimaginable to the locals.

One day in late July, the first set of trawlers produced by Fazheng were officially put on trial fishing in the Sun River. People from several nearby tribes came to watch from both sides of the river.

The trawling operation lasted for several hours. The fishing boat went back and forth upstream in the river for a long time, but in the end it seemed to be almost standing still - because the speed of the boat sailing upstream basically offset the speed of the water flow in the mountainous area.

This seemingly calm operation also made countless ignorant southern barbarian people suspicious. Even some tribal generals and nobles began to worry that Lord Fa might have miscalculated.

Fortunately, Fa Zheng did not make them wait too long. Two hours later, the trawler came ashore. When the barbarian commanders and many civilians saw that the boat had hauled over a dozen stones of live fish of various kinds, the crowd immediately became excited.

"If we had known that the Han people caught so many fish, we wouldn't have worried about not having enough food. We can just trade our food with the Han people for fish. We can get by for a year or two."

Originally due to the trend of food shortage, some Yi generals and local nobles began to control the sale of grain. Now, seeing that the Han government had abundant other sources of food, they no longer hoarded grain and were reluctant to sell it. Instead, they came to cooperate with Fa Zheng.

The Han and the barbarians exchanged what they had, and if everyone slightly adjusted their diet, there would be no famine. Various projects could still be carried out without worrying that the labor intensity would cause the people to eat more.

Only Fa Zheng himself knew that such a high yield was the result of this fishing technique appearing for the first time in Sunshui and Lushui rivers, which was why such good results were achieved.

Because the fish in the river have already overflowed, and there are so many of them that they are in large schools. After a few years of heavy fishing, the density of the fish will naturally decrease, and the natural bonus will not be so obvious.

However, that would be at least a few years or even longer. During this time, I helped Zhuge Lingjun prepare military supplies for the further southern expedition, which would definitely be enough.

Under Fa Zheng's multi-pronged governance, the hearts of the people in Yuexi became increasingly loyal to him.

Everyone wanted to be the Han Dynasty's dog and tried every possible way to please the court.

As a result, Gao Ding, who fled to the Ten Thousand Mountains in the west, became a popular target that the various barbarian leaders vied for.

One day at the end of August, Gao Ding's head was sent to Fa Zheng by a group of barbarian commanders.

The tribe that offered Gao Ding's head did not make any excessive demands. They just hoped that Lord Fafu would be clear about rewards and punishments and go to Lord Zhuge to ask for a formal position for their leader.

Then we licensed and taught them the manufacturing technology of trawlers, and let them fish exclusively on the Sun and Lu rivers for one or two years. Other double-season rice planting technologies should also be promoted to their tribe first.

For this kind of request, Fa Zheng could certainly agree to it out of consideration of appeasing the people.

"Come here, deliver Gao Ding's head to your lord, and write a letter for me, detailing the achievements of this administration. Say that the various tribes in Yuexi are now vying to serve the court."

(End of this chapter)