Traveling to Daliang Kingdom starts from falling into the water

No, not to brag about his good taste, but neither of his sons-in-law, whether it's the eldest or the third son-in-law, are the type to bully others at home.

Third son-in-law, that's a good question!

Are you saying you can only be a bully at home?
Conversely, if someone is unhappy about Sanya getting close to someone else, they can find ways to vent their anger on outsiders.

Yes, this is his third son-in-law.

If he were truly a muddle-headed person who couldn't distinguish between family and outside, how could his third daughter be so loyal to her son-in-law?

That's good. I'm not worried about the son-in-law being naive or lacking in cunning. What I'm worried about is that he's easily swayed, lacks his own opinions, and is too proud to admit his mistakes. If that happens, we're really doomed.

Zhou Sishun originally wanted to bring up the old topic again, saying that his daughter Sanya would act childishly towards her third son-in-law, which meant that she treated her third son-in-law better than her own father.

At this point, the third son-in-law had said all he needed to say, so he didn't press the matter further. Instead, he changed the subject and brought up the second reason for his visit.

—The bricks and tiles he brought.

"I still want to build your house first."

When Gu Wenxuan heard his father-in-law mention that the bricks and tiles to be fired at the brickyard would be prioritized for the expansion of his father's village house, he had no choice but to decline and would explain later.

"Let me finish speaking, my good father-in-law." Gu Wenxuan raised his right hand to signal Zhou Sishun not to rush to disapprove. "Let's not be so formal, father and son."

This is what I'm thinking: no matter what the harvest is like next year, since we don't lack money, we might as well stockpile more grain.

"It's not that we're donating or allocating grain, so we only store grain when there's a shortage here. Wherever there's a shortage of grain, there's no way we'll lack grain here."

This is what I believe on Thursday.

Who would be foolish enough not to have enough food for their own family?

Besides, there are so many mouths to feed in the workshop right under our noses, how could we dare not stockpile more grain?
"Even though there's no shortage of food here, my wife and I haven't prepared much. At most, we can feed 5,000 people two meals a day for two years, and that's mainly coarse grains."

As expected.

Thursday, Shun nodded in agreement.

Do we really want to rely mainly on refined grains?
Don't say things like "you can't beat up your son-in-law!"

"Even with favorable weather, if the harvest is bad, and by the third year we still can't stockpile the amount from the first year, then things will be tight."

In other words, they stored up enough grain for three years.

Thursday, Shun understood and gestured for his son-in-law to continue.

"So I'm thinking of stockpiling more food this year."

Go ahead and hoard it, since you two can't afford to have any money on hand anyway.

They'd rather spend all their money than hoard grain.

When Gu Wenxuan saw that Zhou Sishun nodded emphatically this time, he knew that there was hope.

He persisted, "but once more grain is stockpiled, even more grain will inevitably be transported in."

Even if we could bring in goods to cover it up, wouldn't we still need manpower to move them and a cart driver? I was thinking of having Uncle Changgen and his men dig a cellar while you were building your house, and then we could mix the grain in with bricks and tiles.”

good boy!
We've finally gotten here!

"While they build houses and granaries on the other side, the grain can be slowly mixed with sand, timber and other materials and transported from the village on the west bank of the river."

Finally, we can openly transport the grain we've stored into that granary. In this way, we have grain stored both openly and covertly, and we can store quite a lot of food.

To be honest, if something were to happen, your house only has your great-grandfather's family living next door. Wouldn't that be more secure than my dad's house in the village?

"You've blocked the way in front, and there's a mountain behind. If we were to be even more domineering, we could block the road all the way to the south of my great-grandfather's old house, connecting the two ends of the road, right?"

Zhou Sishun had initially thought he would just listen to how his third son-in-law was trying to persuade him to give up on expanding his in-laws' village house first, but as he listened, his heart was pounding in his throat.

After finally waiting for his third son-in-law to finish speaking, he didn't even bother to nod or shake his head in response. Instead, he hugged his grandson tightly, leaned close to his son-in-law, and whispered, "Is there going to be a war?"

what?
Gu Wenxuan was taken aback when he heard this. After realizing what he meant, he couldn't help but laugh. "No, the border is very stable now, and the disaster situation in Jiangnan has also been stabilized."

A war is unlikely, at least not in the next year or two. However, the harvests in the coming years might not be as good as in previous years, and grain prices could potentially surge.

"Oh, right, I was just saying I seemed to have forgotten something. I saw Senior Brother Qian before I came back last night; it seems we might not be able to pay this year's summer tax with silver instead of grain."

"..." Zhou Sishun just wanted to slap his third son-in-law on the forehead. How could he forget something so important? "Didn't you tell your father either?"

Gu Wenxuan chuckled, "I originally thought I'd tell you two before I came back yesterday, but then I saw that Grandpa Ma was there, so I decided to wait until this morning."

I forgot about it when I woke up this morning, but it's okay, there's still time. My husband and I had already made a budget before Brother Qian said that.

This is one of the reasons why my wife wanted to move the grain stored in Beidi Village to three different villages; she wanted to free up the granaries before autumn to store more grain.

Whether or not the summer tax can be paid in silver instead of grain won't have much impact. The key is the autumn tax. The autumn tax will be paid again, and at that time, you and my father will have to work together to fool Grandpa Tian.

Once our county government's Taiping Granary opens up the exchange of old grain for new grain with grain merchants, this year's grain merchant choice will definitely be Master Tian. At this critical juncture, the Shanggao Prefecture will certainly support Master Tian.

Now, after my wife's charitable act of donating grain in the south was exposed, the grain shops under the names of the young mistresses of the Gao family have started to accept unlimited quantities of coarse grains.

Their biggest supplier of grain in the prefectural city and Dingzhou Prefecture was the grain merchant Master Tian. For both public and private reasons, Lord Gao would support Master Tian to get the lion's share.

After all, other grain merchants wouldn't be as easy to control as Uncle Tian, ​​which is similar to how the current emperor wouldn't be unhappy if my wife acquired the Jiangnan estate.

Zhou Sishun believed he understood what Zhou Sishun was saying. His daughter Sanya had told him that grain was the foundation of the nation, and the imperial court would not allow the aristocratic families of Jiangnan to hold too much land.

Only a family like his third daughter, who has no power or influence but is entangled with Qingshan Academy and the Zhou and Xu families of Jiangnan, would be the most suitable candidate.

That's why his third daughter said it was all about timing and luck; she had almost snatched food from the tiger's mouth and gained a huge advantage, so it would be unreasonable not to be at the forefront donating grain.

Not to mention the emperor himself, countless aristocratic families fled to Jiangnan during the Southern Song Dynasty, and they have not disappeared to this day. They are not to be trifled with.

So his third daughter simply conspired with her uncle to donate grain in her aunt's name, so that those gentry who were not completely extinct would have no shame and act like unrighteous villains.
If it weren't for the Duke of Liang's advice to Emperor Taizu to overthrow the previous dynasty and bring the country back into the hands of the Han people, how could those aristocratic families have lived in peace? They would have all died out long ago.

The Duke of Liang gave those aristocratic families a chance to survive, and even strongly recommended to Emperor Taizu that learned and talented scholars from among them become officials.

That's how those aristocratic families found a place to stand. Otherwise, a bunch of weak scholars, no matter how wealthy they were, wouldn't even dare to kill a chicken. How could they possibly survive in a chaotic world?
"...There are always ups and downs. This scheming, seemingly without any master-servant distinction between the grain merchant and the grain shop owner, is doing very well; it can advance or retreat as needed!" (End of Chapter)