Reclaiming Wasteland: Carefree Mountain Farmer

Chapter 122 King Martial
After the Wen Dynasty army hastily withdrew, the group excitedly went to the Arctic Martial Arts Academy.

"Master is blessed with boundless good fortune; he is destined by Heaven!"

Ögedei asked anxiously, "Master! Should we take advantage of the Wen Dynasty people's escape and go after them to capture some slaves?"

Now that the morale of the Wen Dynasty has collapsed, the Shan Nong people have subdued the East, West, and North. After taking advantage of the situation to conquer the South, they can rightfully possess the entire Jinzhou and set their sights on the Central Plains!
Beijiwu shook his head and said, "A group of people there contracted the plague. They got sick after they went there and things got worse. Since there's no more fighting, we should focus on farming. It's time for spring planting again."

Farming?

Should we go farming at this time of year?

Ögedei immediately said, "Leave the farming to the men below, let's go fight! We can fight in the east or north, even if we don't fight in the south!"

Ji Province occupies the plains, and to the north it also controls pastures and fertile plains like You Province. Which of these is not better than this barren land of the Nine Provinces behind the mountains?!

Arctic Martial coldly replied, "If you want to fight, go fight yourself!"

"Farming is the duty of the mountain farmers. Only with enough food can people be freed up to do other things."

"Only when you're full and have nothing better to do will you have time to think about other things! I think you've just eaten too much and forgotten that our food supply will only last for one or two years!"

"With the continuous natural disasters and abnormal weather over the past four or five years, it is impossible to have a bumper harvest every year. Ensuring that everyone has enough to eat is the top priority!"

"I will remember the provocations from the south this year that caused the deaths of four or five thousand of our people, and I will settle accounts with them next year!"

"Now everyone just focus on ensuring agricultural production and accumulating more grain. Anyone who causes trouble deserves to be killed!"

Wokoji dared not speak; killing him would be easier than killing a chicken.

"Your servant obeys!" Wokoji couldn't argue with Beiji Wu at all, and seeing that Beiji Wu was angry, he quickly admitted defeat.

Beijiwu looked at the others and said, "Continue to work on spring planting. We can plant more wheat this year. Don't go to those places outside Yanmen Pass for now. If you go, don't come back."

Shi Wenyuan asked, "Master, what about the tea leaves and salt?"

Arctic Martial Arts discovered that this is indeed a problem.

"I will find tea in Jiangnan and buy salt from Bohai. I will first send people to persuade the generals guarding Juyong Pass and Zijing Pass to surrender. I want to enter the gateway to Youzhou and Jizhou."

Shi Wenyuan immediately said, "This servant is from Hebei and is willing to persuade those two generals to surrender."

Arctic Martial nodded.

"Alright, let's leave it at that. Let's continue to focus on farming. There's no rush for fighting. We've already fought in all directions, and the people of the world should be convinced."

"Have the merchants contact the powerful families in Jiangnan, and also tell the others that the treatment of those who surrender voluntarily and those who surrender only after I have lost will definitely be different. Not everyone can keep their wealth and life."

All the civil and military officials showed expressions of surprise, seeing for the first time that Beiji Wu had ambition.

Yun Yong cautiously inquired, "Reporting to Master, the Southern Dynasty has now broken its promise and attacked us first. If we continue to refer to ourselves as the Wen Dynasty's Shan Nong County, wouldn't that be somewhat self-degrading? The people all harbor resentment towards the Wen Dynasty's emperor and wholeheartedly submit to you, Master, regarding you as their second parent!"

Beiji Wu smiled and said under everyone's gaze, "Do what you can with what you have. When there are 100,000 people, it is just a small county town. When there are 500,000 people, it is a mountainous agricultural prefecture."

"There are still more than 500,000 people here, but after two years of recuperation, many people have come to regard this place as their home, and no one has run away since the beginning of this year."

Wang Xiang praised, "Master is wise and farsighted. He has accumulated ample grain and is delaying his declaration of kingship. He has the aura of a king! We servants admire him greatly! Master can establish a kingdom whenever he wishes, and we servants will obey him!"

Beiji Wu also knew that a group of people were waiting for him to establish his own country, and at that time, these people would all be his loyal subjects.

"Then let's establish a kingdom! I will be King Wu, and the kingdom will be called Wu, or you can call it the Mountain Farmer Kingdom!"

The Arctic Army was established immediately, and now with 500,000 people, it has long had the resources to contend for supremacy.

The surrendered generals finally found their organization, and immediately bowed their heads and kowtowed.

"This humble servant pays homage to King Wu! Long live King Wu! Long live King Wu!"

Whether it was Wang Xiang or Yun Yong, these people were just like squad leaders in the Wen Dynasty before.

Surrendering was a last resort, because we really couldn't win.

If Wang Xiang doesn't surrender, his iron cavalry will become a dead cavalry.

If Yun Yong and other civil officials do not surrender, they will be farming in the countryside right now, and their family property will be confiscated.

The policy of killing officials but not civilians was that the Arctic Army's attitude towards officials who did not surrender was to kill the men and divide the women and property among them.

Those who surrendered late and refused to work were made to work as slaves, subjected to exhaustion, and treated as less than human.

There are too few people with backbone. In order not to become ashes, everyone naturally followed the will of the people and surrendered together. Now that the Arctic Martial Kingdom has been officially established, and the Mountain Farm Kingdom is full of surrendered officials, there is no sense of discrimination against them.

Beijiwu waved his hand casually, "Rise, everyone go about your business."

"Thank you, Your Majesty!" a few civil officials said, while the others who didn't understand listened obediently, trying their best to agree without daring to speak.

Nie Zhen asked, "Your Majesty, your current residence is too simple. I believe that a palace should be built to demonstrate Your Majesty's majesty."

Bei Jiwu had no interest in architecture. "Forget it. In the past few years, we've focused our manpower and resources on agriculture and water conservancy. Building border defenses is better than building some useless palace for me."

"There's no need to say more about this. Go and do your own things. If you're not rich yet and you're already worrying about such wasteful things, go to the countryside and get some experience. See if the people in the countryside have time for other things!"

Nie Zhen immediately said, "Your Majesty loves the people like your own children. We admire you. With Your Majesty here, the Wu Dynasty will surely unify the country and last for thousands of years!"

Beiji Wu was getting annoyed and drove away these civil and military officials whose official ranks and titles had not yet been officially determined.

Some people are not satisfied with a hundred or a thousand households. Now, all those who can be considered powerful, from east to west and north to south, have been beaten up.

Although the Southern Dynasty was not directly defeated, the morale of the people and the army was greatly damaged by the natural disasters, which was more serious than if it had collapsed directly.

Once the people who surrendered here were certain that they wouldn't be easily killed, they felt completely at ease, no longer worried about being purged by the Wen Dynasty.

Strength is more important than benevolence; benevolence is merely icing on the cake, while strength is the true path to power.

Beijiwu ignored the lives of those people outside Yanmen Pass and led his people to continue farming and production.

The outside world is already plagued, and there's no manpower or resources to save people. We'll wait until the plague and the people are gone before going out to clean up the mess in the fall.

Beiji Wu single-handedly subdued 500,000 people in Shannong County, and is now considering his next move.

"It's time to get gunpowder."

Previously, I didn't plan to develop gunpowder because I felt I could live a stable life without it. Now, the enemy has developed a whole set of shooting techniques to assassinate me.

This means that they will likely no longer go to the battlefield to fight, and naturally they will not have to worry about being hit by guns or cannons.

Arctic Martial realized that even if he didn't develop gunpowder, others would, so he started developing it ahead of time.

Making gunpowder is very simple.

Sulfur is readily available; Tongzhou is the largest sulfur mining base, and there's a huge amount of it in the city right now.

The same goes for saltpeter; large quantities of saltpeter can be found in Tongzhou and Wuzhou.

For small-scale nitrate production, Tongzhou is sufficient.

The gunpowder needed to equip tens of thousands of muskets could also be easily obtained.

There are natural saltpeter mines in southern Shanxi. Once the technology is mature in a few years, we will take over the area, and we will also get salt ponds that produce salt, as well as a large number of coal, iron and copper mines as a bonus.

Surrounded by mountains, it can find almost any kind of material, including gold and silver mines, though they have long been illegally mined out.

"First, we need to get the horse-drawn combine harvester working. With a roller blade harvester, we can harvest more wheat faster, and the labor saved can be used for other things."

"The climate has been abnormal in recent years, so producing more grain is more important than anything else. Next year, we will try to take over Jizhou and then go to the Jiaodong Peninsula."

Beijiwu plans to flee eastward to escape the disaster.

If we consider disasters as occurring over a century, the Central Plains region can experience 100 to 120 floods, droughts, and locust plagues every hundred years.

In times of chaos, the Central Plains region is always the first to fall into disarray, and agricultural stability is only a fraction of what it is.

Jizhou, along with the Central Plains, is known as a locust corridor, plagued by frequent locust outbreaks and rapid shifts between drought and flood.

Jinju Sanxing's main problem is its barren land and lack of water. It usually suffers from severe droughts, but floods are the least common. This can be solved by building water conservancy projects.

Luzhou, a four-star city, is a favorable location for both flood control and drought relief, with moderate temperatures, making it a prime battleground during years of great disaster.

If you have the strength to defeat everything in the east, west, south, and north, this place is definitely the best place to farm.

Early-stage technology advancement requires time and resources, and Jinzhou's resources are just right, so there's no rush to farm in Luzhou.

Coal, iron, gunpowder, warhorses, oxen, wood, grain, people.

Apart from people, we have everything else.

(End of this chapter)