Three Kingdoms: A Million Soldiers Grown from the Fields

Chapter 178 Farming
"Well, this arrangement is about right. Lan Di, you and Huwa will still need to maintain order at the gathering point for a while. But now that the weather is getting warmer, we can arrange for people to work on the construction."

"The terrain in this area is quite good; otherwise, it wouldn't be possible to gather tens of thousands of people to rest here. We should level the land around the area and build a better road to connect it to Weize Pass. In this way, it won't be a waste of money to support them."

At the meeting point, Zhang Xian and several others were discussing matters.

The new road to Jingjing has been completed, and people will be transferred to Bingzhou in batches from now on.

Along the way, he had already planned to emulate the new post station system of Taiyuan Prefecture and repair the post stations along the route.

However, the post stations here may not be able to assign postmasters in the short term, and can only be used to settle refugees.

The practice of establishing military farms and maintaining roads meant that a post station every thirty or forty li was essentially equivalent to having an additional village every thirty or forty li.

Once the reserve of officials in Taiyuan Prefecture increases again, people can be directly sent to garrison the prefecture and a postal system can be formed.

The old well road was over 300 li long, while the improved new well road shortened the distance by nearly one-third, to only 200 li. In other words, as long as a post station-style village is built 30 li around the new road, the entire 217 li long new road can be completely covered by only six to seven post station-style villages.

That's what they were discussing.

Taking advantage of the large number of displaced people gathered now, the project can be completed without delay by transferring people and carrying out repairs at the same time.

A journey of over two hundred li, especially along mountain roads, sounds difficult, but breaking that journey into sections of thirty li each makes it feel much easier.

"By the way, remember to remind the prospectors to take into account factors such as flash floods and mudslides when selecting sites, and to give priority to locations near water or not far from water sources," Zhang Xian instructed again.

Xiahou Lan nodded: "Understood, Brother Xian, I will make the arrangements."

"Hmm," Zhang Xian nodded with satisfaction. He had been in charge of Taoyuan for nearly a year, maintaining the lives and order of thousands of people. In fact, Xiahou Lan was more like a civil official than a military general.

He is at least a talent worthy of a county.

This is a good thing; those who are both literate and martial will have more opportunities to be placed in the future.

"Brother Xian." Xiahou Lan suddenly called out after receiving the order.

"Hmm, what's wrong?" Zhang Xian looked up at him in confusion.

Xiahou Lan asked softly, with some emotion, "Then will those Yellow Turbans succeed?"

The dramatic changes in Jizhou, compared to the vision Zhang Xian had described to him a year ago, inevitably led him to this question.

Zhang Xian paused for a moment, then sighed and shook his head: "It won't work. At the earliest this year, or at the latest next year, this turmoil will be quelled."

"Why? When Zhang Jiao started his uprising, seven or eight of the thirteen provinces of the Han Dynasty responded at the same time. Why did such a large-scale uprising end so quickly?"

Zhang Xian stood up, put his hands behind his back, walked to the front of the tent, and looked at the clear sky.

He answered after a few breaths.

"Lan Di, this is what I haven't even started teaching yet, about systems and beliefs. Do you really want to hear it?"

Xiahou Lan paused for a moment, then nodded firmly: "I want to hear it, Brother Xian."

"Alright, let's not talk about what we said today with outsiders for now."

Zhang Xian waved his hand, and a squad of soldiers guarding the entrance to the main tent saluted and withdrew.

He remained standing at the doorway and spoke to Xiahou Lan behind him.

"Brother Lan, what do you think an uprising is?"

"Do those who can't survive unite to resist their oppressors?"

Xiahou Lan hesitated.

Zhang Xian nodded: "That's right, that's how the earliest uprisings were. Starting with Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, it was an action of the lower class rebelling against the upper class, and that's what an uprising is."

"The uprisings were mostly composed of poor peasants, and at the beginning they were like a raging fire that could burn and scorch and sweep across a wide area."

"Then they gained land, food, and even rights, but it was at this point that the fire would be extinguished instantly, as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over it."

Zhang Xian turned slightly, half of his body outside the tent and half inside.

"In the end, peasant uprisings are not based on a grand goal. In such uprisings, everyone involved fights for their own selfish interests."

"Once they have obtained what they want, their will will be quickly broken, because they have already gotten what they wanted: land, food, even if only temporarily."

Zhang Xian tilted his head and looked at Xiahou Lan.

"This is the main reason why most rebel armies are initially strong, but then their fighting capacity declines rapidly."

"An uprising without firm conviction will ultimately end in failure; this is the outcome for most rebel armies."

"Let me tell you about the second type, which relies on uprisings by powerful and influential people, or rather, rebellions that involve the redistribution of resources."

"The current emperor, Emperor Guangwu, followed this path, relying on the resources and power of powerful clans to change dynasties and then redistribute the spoils."

"Including the Yellow Turban Rebellion, it is still the same in the end. Even if they win the final victory, when resources are redistributed, the bottom people will still be the bottom people, and they will not get much."

"This is a problem with the system. If the system is not reformed, no matter how many uprisings occur on this land, it will only be a recurrence of history."

Zhang Xian looked at Xiahou Lan, whose eyes were already slightly dazed, and patted him on the shoulder: "The only lesson people can learn from history is to repeat it."

"You can't digest too much information if I tell you all at once. If you're still interested later, you can come to me and I'll explain it to you slowly."

"So what should we do next?" Xiahou Lan's mind was a bit confused. His brother Xian's few words had made his brain feel blocked.

"Next"

Zhang Xian glanced outside the tent again, where groups of refugees and prisoners were already lining up and starting to work.

"After this chaos, things should stabilize for a few years. We need to carry out comprehensive literacy campaigns, strengthen the army's belief in what it fights for, distribute land equally, accumulate more strength, and wait for the dynasty to fall."

Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet.

Many wild geese and ducks have landed on both banks of the Fen River and the Hutuo River.

After a quiet winter, Taiyuan County has entered the busy spring planting season.

The winter wheat planted last winter has sprouted clumps of grass that look like weeds. In the next two or three months, these winter wheat will enter a period of rapid growth and will be harvested at the end of April.

Jinyang, Yuci, Yangqu, Mengxian, and Lüchi counties all began reclaiming wasteland for farming.

Wheat, beans, millet, pumpkin, and other crops all went through the soil-planting and seedling stages depending on the planting time.

With the introduction of new agricultural tools into the fields, officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs also set up offices in various counties to guide farmers on scientific crop cultivation methods and the use of new agricultural machinery.

With the example of Luqi County, literacy night schools were set up in various counties and beyond.

These night schools had four or five teachers at most, and two or three at least, depending on the number of people in the surrounding area. Last year, Lüqi contributed nearly six hundred reserve officials to Taiyuan County. This was after careful selection; otherwise, all the astrologers and legal officials in Taiyuan County would have come from Lüqi County.

If this is the case in one place, and if all counties can follow suit this year, then Zhang Xian will no longer be short of officials.

Improving the training system for officials and optimizing the technological roadmap will be Zhang Xian's core focus in the coming years.

It was not yet time to rise up in rebellion, and the legitimacy of imperial power could not be completely suppressed by force.

The power of scholars, powerful families, and nobles remains immense. Before a talent cultivation system that can rival them is established, it would be an extremely foolish decision to rashly change the world.

The land and population of the northern and western grasslands are also a potential problem.

Zhang Xian wouldn't act recklessly until he had subdued the entire Bingzhou region.

Fortunately, last year we stabilized Taiyuan Prefecture, stabilized the bureaucracy, and stabilized the powerful clans, so we can do more this year than last year.

The ingenuity experiment camps, which were set up before the beginning of winter last year and before the beginning of spring this year, were also prepared by Zhang Xianzai for climbing technology.

There are so many things that can be improved in this era. One solution to the problem of uneven resource distribution is to increase productivity. But how do we increase productivity?

That's technology!

The research path of cultivating the system is also one of Zhang Xian's goals.

Just like the renovation of the Taihang Mountain trails, if we could have developed primitive gunpowder earlier, the tunnel excavation would have been much simpler.

And tires—if we could develop rubber tires, the convenience of land transportation would undoubtedly be greatly improved.

Having already tasted success with the new agricultural machinery, it would undoubtedly be much easier for Zhang Xian to raise the status of craftsmen in Taiyuan County.

A new day dawns with bright sunshine and fresh air.

But for the officials of Baijingbao, today will not be an easy day.

The makeshift shelters on the vast open space reflected the countless heads of people. These were the first batch of refugees transferred from Jizhou, numbering three thousand. The government order from Weize Pass had arrived a few days earlier, and Han Ji had arranged for nearly three hundred and fifty officials throughout the fortress to work quickly.

He even pulled the postmaster of the nearest post station over.

After all, many of these refugees would settle down and cultivate land near the post stations.

The voices of the nearby postmaster and clerks were already hoarse, and they ran around and shouted at the edge of the crowd.

"Line up! Line up! Those who have had their fingerprints taken, come here! Elderly and children, go to the east shed, there's hot soup! Young and strong men, bring your belongings, listen to the clerk call your names! Don't make a mess!"

Fortunately, after the control measures implemented at the gathering point outside Weize Pass, these migrants were very cooperative.

"Grandpa...I'm cold...hungry..." A little girl, so thin she was just skin and bones, was wrapped in a tattered cloth whose color was almost unrecognizable, and curled up in the arms of an old man with gray hair, her voice as faint as a whisper.

The old man and his grandson hugged their granddaughter tightly, their cloudy old eyes looking around blankly.

Behind him were his equally emaciated son and daughter-in-law, with his daughter-in-law holding a faintly breathing infant in her arms.

They were farmers from Shahezhuang in Zhongshan County. When Zhang Jiao started his rebellion, the government troops surrounded and suppressed them, and the flames of war turned their homes into dust like a plowshare.

If it weren't for that Magistrate Zhang reaching out, they would probably have already turned into skeletons by now.

Touching his granddaughter's increasingly cold little hand, and having sensed the differences between the officials and soldiers of Bingzhou along the way, he mustered his courage and tremblingly asked a nearby official for help.

"Sir, please have mercy on my poor granddaughter, she...she..."

Perhaps due to nervousness, or perhaps because he had never experienced the kindness of officials before, Old Sun stammered.

However, the clerk quickly ran over, glanced at the little girl in Old Sun's arms, and then quickly shouted to another clerk.

"Have the doctor prepare; there's someone here who's caught a cold!"

"Check everyone for any illnesses and have them treated by a doctor!"

After saying that, he stretched out his hand towards Old Sun: "Do you have any other relatives?"

Old Sun nodded hurriedly, pointing to his son and daughter-in-law behind him: "My son and daughter-in-law are both here."

The clerk placed his hand on Old Sun's granddaughter's clothes: "Have your son come with me. You two go ahead and register your household. I'll take her to the clinic."

After saying this, the official hugged the little girl and called out to Old Sun's son, "Come with me."

Old Sun and his family stood there dumbfounded for a moment, but Old Sun's daughter-in-law reacted quickly and pushed her husband, saying, "Quickly, go with the official."

"Oh, oh, oh." Old Sun's son then ran out of the group and headed towards the fortress.

Under the orderly guidance of the officials and soldiers of Bingzhou, the chaotic crowd gradually became clear, like rivers flowing into the sea.

A huge registration tent was set up on the open ground outside Baijingbao. Behind a dozen long desks, clerks wrote down household records with swift and powerful strokes.

Old Sun's family was assigned to "Group 7 of the Dingzi".

He shakily extended his right hand.

A young clerk, expressionless yet deft, grabbed his finger, dipped it in bright red ink in a rough ceramic dish, and then pressed it firmly onto a thick household register.

A clear, deeply textured red fingerprint landed next to the line indicating Sun Sha, a man from Shahe Village, Zhongshan County, Jizhou, aged 58.

The clerk handed him a polished hardwood plaque, about half the size of his palm.

The wooden sign had clear indentations carved with a knife, forming the characters "Ding Qi Jiu San". A small hole was also drilled in it, through which half a hemp rope was threaded.

"Here you go, this is your ID card. You need this to get food, supplies, and land!"

The young clerk finished one task quickly and immediately called out, "Next!"

Old Sun's daughter-in-law stepped forward and, just like Old Sun, quickly completed the registration, made a list, and then distributed wooden plaques.

"After you've registered, don't stand here. Just go to the soup kitchen over there."

The county soldiers responsible for maintaining order came on patrol and reminded Old Sun, who was holding a baby, and his daughter-in-law.

Old Sun hurriedly said, "I have a son who hasn't been registered yet. He just went to the fort with an official to get treatment for my granddaughter."

"Then don't wait here."

"Go to the soup kitchen over there. Someone will go to the clinic later and tell the people there where their relatives are. Don't worry."

Old Sun quickly bowed and said, "Yes, I know, sir."

Then he took his daughter-in-law to the porridge stall.

(End of this chapter)