Goose Three Kingdoms

Chapter 590 An Opportunity

Lantian, Wangchuan River Valley.

During the black bear's patrol, government affairs in various places gradually resumed and official documents began to be exchanged.

Zhuge Jin washed up and went out as usual, carrying his suitcase to the restaurant.

The suitcase contained accumulated official documents and notes, as well as plates, bowls, chopsticks, and spoons.

As one of the few single people in the core of the shogunate, he always got up early and did not need to queue up for meals.

As the weather warms up, several rapidly growing wild vegetables are the first to be put on the table.

The bad thing is that during spring and summer, the supply of meat is very low.

Unless there was extreme weather, everyone in the family could only have a bowl of oily and meaty carrot soup for every meal.

Zhuge Jin sat down, took out his work notes and read them, while eating a rice cake in one hand. The taste was not very good.

This is the Hunan rice that was stored two years ago. We can only eat other grains after this batch of rice is eaten.

This is the only bad thing about Guanzhong. Grain is purchased in a unified manner and the minted five-zhu coins are circulated internally. In addition to salaries, rewards, and military pay subsidies, they are mainly used to purchase grain from the people.

Except for a few times of celebratory eating of new grain during each season’s harvest, most of the new grain will be stored in warehouses.

Thanks to the maturity and promotion of maltose technology, the rice cake in Zhuge Jin's hand tastes sweet.

While he was reading his notes, a secretary came to sit in front of him with a tray and said, "Sir, Zhou Gongjin and his men have been stranded for seven or eight days since returning from Chang'an. Do you want to arrange for someone to take them out to relax?"

"If they are bored, lead them to the library."

Zhuge Jin glanced at the man and said, "Spring ploughing has just ended, and the horses in various places need to rest. It would cost a lot to lead them out for a trip with more than a hundred carriages and horses."

The male horses are now grazing and recuperating, and need time to recover their physical strength.

Zhuge Jin paused and said, "Your Majesty will be back from his inspection soon, so it is not appropriate for Zhou Gongjin and others to travel far. I will issue a banknote later, and you can withdraw 30,000 coins to buy some wine and meat to send to them."

The chief secretary of the secretariat, Ling Fazheng, followed Hei Xiong and basically performed the duties of the chief secretary and housekeeper, and was called Ling Gong; Zhuge Jin, the secretary who guarded the household, basically performed the duties of half of the chief secretary.

Although he did not manage the work of the various departments of the shogunate, the work content of the departments had to be constantly communicated with the secretariat. Zhuge Jin was introverted and peaceful in character, and gradually he was called Lingjun.

For Zhuge Jin, withdrawing tens of thousands of dollars was as simple as writing a note and keeping records.

Zhou Yu and others were ordered to report on their work, but were sent to Chang'an University to give lectures for three months.

Zhuge Jin couldn't guess what Black Bear was thinking, but he could only entertain Zhou Yu and his group well.

The person responsible for actually entertaining Zhou Yu was Bu Zhi. At noon, Bu Zhi received the batch of wine and meat worth 30,000 coins. After issuing the receipt, Bu Zhi arranged a banquet to let Zhou Yu and others relax.

The only bad thing was that the shogunate moved from Ganquan Zhongxiang to the Wangchuan River Valley, making it difficult to gather a group of drummers, singers and dancers.

Before in Zhongxiang, it was not difficult to put together a few temporary singing and dancing troupes with one person from each family.

Seeing such a big commotion, Zhou Yu came to ask, "Zishan, has the Grand Marshal returned?"

"It is hard to predict when the Grand Marshal will return, and it is difficult for us to guess."

Bu Zhi welcomed Zhou Yu into the living room and continued, "This is what Zhuge Lingjun sent to me out of consideration for the governor, in preparation for the banquet."

"Oh? Will Lord Zhuge be attending the banquet?"

“Very difficult.”

Bu Zhi lowered his voice and said, "Ever since his brother Zhuge Kongming was demoted as the commander of the Ministry of Finance, your Excellency has been diligent and frugal, and has not participated in banquets with his colleagues."

Zhou Yu nodded his head, indicating that he understood, and said, "Please tell Lord Zhuge not to worry about us."

He lost the battle of Suicheng. Last year, the two sides were in a stalemate between the north and the south. Pei Qian's greatest military achievement was his clever rebellion.

But judging from the results, if Pei Qian had not instigated a rebellion, the southeastern rebels would have been in a desperate situation. Grand Commander Lu Yi resigned due to illness, and his successor Lu Su had no choice but to adopt a tougher attitude.

If this happens, and the Grand Marshal returns triumphantly and sends a surprise force to the battlefield in Jingzhou, then the results that can be achieved will not only be the 50,000 surrendered troops.

During this period, the 50,000 surrendered soldiers missed their families and more than 10,000 of them fled one after another.

Therefore, Pei Qian's military achievements were largely exaggerated, and he was afraid of further investigation.

Even so, the shogunate appointed Pei Qian as a marquis with a fief of 500 households based on his meritorious service in the winter.

But for Zhou Yu, the biggest benefit of awarding fiefs to those with merit in the winter was that Sun Shao's title of Marquis of Wu was recognized, and he was also given the treatment of a fief of 10,000 households.

Sun Jian also allowed Sun Yi to inherit the title of Marquis of Wucheng, which was set at 3,000 households.

The Sun family had two county marquises, and although they were not granted any official positions, it was only a matter of time.

As long as there is a future expedition against the pseudo-dynasty in the southeast, Sun Yi will still have the opportunity to participate in military operations.

At the secretary's desk, Zhuge Jin frowned as he held the document handed over by Jin Cao, and asked his attendants, "What does this mean?"

A secretary took the document, which was a report from the Hancheng Iron Smelting Commander to the Jin Cao, saying that an additional 120,000 catties of iron would be spent on forging iron awls this year, but it did not say what it was for. After Jin Cao recorded it, he just routinely passed the information to the secretary's desk for record, in case Black Bear consulted.

After seeing this, the secretary said, "Your Majesty, your Majesty is inspecting Hancheng. This may be something that was ordered by the Grand Marshal. 120,000 catties of iron is not a lot. Hancheng is expected to produce no less than 8 million catties this year. It will not affect the supply of farm tools in the counties."

"If your Majesty needs it, Hancheng will allocate many craftsmen to do it, and the impact will be more than a million jin."

After Zhuge Jin expressed his opinion, he wrote a handwritten order and pushed it to the other party: "Hand it over to the Jin Cao immediately, and give instructions before the mail leaves tomorrow. Satisfy the needs of the monarch, and do not delay the increase in production."

He was worried that the Hancheng Iron Smelting Commander would delay the production increase plan in order to curry favor. As public security improved, although the counties and prefectures began to resume local iron smelting, Hancheng had already formed large-scale production and was the largest source of agricultural tools for county officials.

People's daily lives require not only the necessary agricultural tools, but also a variety of tools.

The amount of iron smelting in Hancheng has been increasing, but the more it increases, the less it is enough.

Zhuge Jin felt that the number of captives captured from Youzhou last year would soon be insufficient, and the number would stop increasing by the middle of next year at the latest due to labor shortage.

Sending corvée labor to the mines is too cruel. Sending unskilled miners and ironworkers there would be tantamount to harming people and would also hinder production.

Unless hired, long-term workers are trained to become reliable skilled workers.

However, there are no such surplus population in Guanzhong and other counties, and everyone has their own jobs to do.

Yizhou now has the largest surplus population, but it is already maintaining the reconstruction of the Shu Road, occupying nearly 120,000 laborers.

Among these 120,000 people, apart from the corvée laborers who took turns to serve in the transportation work, the rest were mainly prisoners and hired laborers.

Some invisible powerful people joined forces with officials to forcibly capture young and strong refugees and mountain people and send them to the mountains to open mountains and quarry stones in order to earn the difference between labor service money and the wages of hired workers.

The powerful military deterrence of Guanzhong gradually enhanced the stability of Yizhou. Under this situation of stable public security, the influx of a large number of newly minted coins further strengthened the Shu brocade industry, causing the civilian labor force in Shu to become tense.

Unless we capture the barbarians and southern man as slaves, we will have to suspend the plan to rebuild the Shu Road.

The increase in Shu brocade production has also brought about quality problems; in order to sell Shu brocade, the Hebei Trading House will even be reopened this year.

Wars can go on, but private trade cannot stop.

As luxury goods become increasingly abundant, Guanzhong's commerce must also be gradually liberalized.

By that time, before the next wave of population is formed, the civilian labor force in Guanzhong will be even tighter.

There is also the system of one hundred households. When the external order is in chaos, these people refuse to be registered households and are determined to become the subordinates of the Grand Marshal.

When business is booming, these people will never be satisfied with a life of self-sufficiency and military service.

Unless the war is maintained, the channels for military merit, career advancement and promotion must always be kept open.

Therefore, the powerful Hundred-Household System that integrates farming and warfare will soon be reformed to carry out personnel diversion.

The shogunate's energy is also limited. There are now calls to merge the hundred households and set up thousand households to divide the responsibilities.

Zhuge Jin chose to suppress such calls.

The Hundred Households System is the most stable cornerstone of Guanzhong at present. As long as the Jian'an court is still respected as the legitimate government, the Hundred Households System cannot be changed.

The registered households in counties and prefectures were weak, and the county chiefs were also Han officials, nominally subjects of the Jian'an court.

The hundred households were the personal subordinates of the Grand Marshal. The Han officials could unite to resist and discuss the pros and cons of the Grand Marshal's policies; and the hundred households, at least morally, had to protect the Grand Marshal.

It is obviously not a low-cost thing to bribe so many hundred households.

Setting up a thousand households in charge will obviously make it easier to bribe people, and the difficulty of bribery will be reduced tenfold.

There are also counties and prefectures in various places, with a series of Tinghou and Xianghou who were granted titles in winter. The taxes and rents from these people's fiefs were taken from the taxes levied by the counties and prefectures.

Starting from this year, although the number of registered households in each county has increased slowly, the tax revenue available at both the county and prefecture levels has dropped sharply.

The powerful were purged and disintegrated, and there were no powerful financial groups among the people; the county finances were also scarce, and there was basically no ability to quickly arm a new army.

Therefore, the county governors were very jealous of the nearby centurions and wanted to eat them up alive.

But as long as these centurions existed, the shogunate did not need to go through the county channels. Once a military order was passed down, these centurions could capture all the nearby county chiefs and their subordinates.

After years of fighting, these grassroots centurions have become very skilled in arresting people and confiscating their homes.

If we were able to relocate one million people last year, then we will also be able to capture officials from the surrounding counties and prefectures in the next few years.

Officials, if captured and exiled to other places and demoted to slaves, can quickly adapt to their new identities.

Zhuge Jin, the good old man, thought about it and felt that perhaps he could start from this aspect.

It is definitely unrealistic to ask officials to learn and teach technology.

Every year during spring plowing, summer harvest and autumn harvest, these people become extremely resentful of their official duties.

But if they were demoted to slaves and were eager to quickly upgrade their status, these people would definitely be very active.

There are problems with county officials in Guanzhong, let alone those in more peripheral counties and prefectures.

The law on titles and salaries has not yet been promulgated, so taking action against outdated officials will not cause resistance from military officers and centurions.

If it were enacted, officials would obtain new titles depending on the level of their positions...which would obviously be somewhat unreasonable.

Although it was this bait that hooked the officials, they endured it obediently.

How could the nature of the old officials change because of the shogunate's rule?
Now that the external crisis has been cleared, how can we let the old officials stay in place if we want to work hard to govern the country?

The Title and Salary Law has not been promulgated yet, and it definitely needs an opportunity.

Zhuge Jin was stunned, and felt more and more that he needed to have a good chat with Fa Zheng.

Not everyone can eat the rice of the Xin Dynasty.

(End of this chapter)