Family Rise: Beginning with Grandfather.

Chapter 602 What is the purpose?

"Sir, according to what specifications should we build the framework?" Ma Yan asked.

Yang Mingzhao said: "Just follow the example of a county government, but don't rush. We have too few scholars under our command. We should focus on training some scholars first. At least they should be able to write and calculate."

"If possible, it would be best to open the school!"

Ma Yan nodded and said, "I understand!"

"What about me?" Chen Buyu couldn't help but ask when he saw that everyone had arranged their tasks.

Yang Mingzhao looked at him and said with a smile: "You follow Uncle Wu. Uncle Wu, you should accept him as your apprentice!"

Wu Zheng was standing outside the door, yawning. Hearing this, he turned his head and looked at Chen Buyu, "No!"

"Uncle Wu!"

"He's too old!"

"His cultivation is pretty good!"

Wu Zheng looked at Yang Mingzhao with a strange look, "You call this good? Look at them, which one is not better than him!"

The "they" he was referring to were naturally Zhao Kai and Zhang Mo. Zhao Kai and Zhang Mo were both in their early twenties, and their cultivation was at the second or third level of the acquired realm. Although their cultivation was not as good as Chen Buyu's, Zhao Kai and the others were young, and were both seven or eight years younger than Chen Buyu.

Chen Buyu looked at Wu Zheng, then at Yang Mingzhao.

He could naturally see that Wu Zheng was a master. In fact, in his mind, Deng Xing and Han Lin were already masters. However, Yang Mingzhao's attitude towards Wu Zheng was obviously different from his attitude towards Deng Xing and others.

So he felt that Wu Zheng should be a very powerful warrior, possibly a ninth-level warrior.

Well, his knowledge is still a little shallow.

Deng Xing and Han Lin are at the ninth level of the acquired realm, while Li Dagui and Yang Ze have just broken through to the half-step innate realm not long ago.

To be honest, asking him to serve a group of young and strong men with almost no cultivation is really a waste of his talent.

"Uncle Wu, please help me!" Yang Mingzhao looked at Wu Zheng with pleading eyes.

Wu Zheng was somewhat helpless. "Well, forget it. I can only be considered a registered disciple. None of my disciples are so bad!"

Chen Buyu was overjoyed when he heard this, and he kowtowed directly to the master, "Disciple greets Master!"

"Get up, get up!" Wu Zheng said with some disgust.

He didn't hate Chen Buyu, he just disliked that Chen Buyu was too old.

Chen Buyu is already thirty years old, and it is a bit late for him to become a disciple now.

"Give him more wine and some tea, too!"

"No problem!" Yang Mingzhao said happily.

After the apprenticeship, Yang Mingzhao continued, "Next, let's discuss the development plan!"

"Young Master, are we going to attack Dachang County?" Chen Buyu immediately became excited.

Chen Buren, Chen Jianghua and others also became excited.

For them, being able to capture a county town is definitely a great thing. As for whether they can capture a county town now, this is beyond doubt.

There were no more than a hundred yamen runners in the county towns of Bashu at most, and even if the patrol soldiers were included, there were only a few hundred.

If we can sneak into the county town in advance, it might even be possible to capture the county town without bloodshed.

Yang Mingzhao said: "Don't be in a hurry, let's talk about our purpose first!"

"Purpose? Isn't the purpose to capture the county and kill those corrupt officials?" Chen Buhan said.

Chen Buhen is two years younger than Chen Buyu. He is also a warrior, but just an ordinary warrior.

In the Three Arrows Valley, apart from the people brought by Yang Mingzhao, only Chen Buyu and Chen Buren were warriors.

Yang Mingzhao shook his head. "Taking down the county and killing corrupt officials is just a process. Our goal is to let the people live a good life!"

"Yes! We want to let the people live a good life!" Chen Buyu nodded in agreement.

"Since we want the people to live a good life, what should we do after we capture the county? We can't just distribute the money and food from the county government to the people and be done with it, right?"

"This may allow the people to live a good life for a few days, but it does not fundamentally solve the problem!"

Yang Mingzhao glanced at everyone.

Chen Buyu, Chen Buren and others looked at each other in bewilderment. They had never really thought about these questions.

Zhang Mo pondered for a moment and said, "Sir, we should distribute land to the people!"

"and then?"

"Reduce taxes and corvée labor, cancel excessive levies and miscellaneous taxes, develop water conservancy projects, and encourage agriculture!" Zhang Mo said.

Yang Mingzhao nodded with satisfaction, "That's right, distribute land to farmers, build water conservancy projects, and encourage agriculture to develop!"

Zhang Mo had such an idea because he was originally a refugee from Fuhai. When he was eight years old, he followed his parents to Xingyue Island. After settling down on Xingyue Island, the government began to allocate land to them and organized people to build canals to irrigate the farmland!
When he was eight years old, he could already remember things. He remembered very clearly what kind of life his family lived in Fuhai Province, and what kind of life they lived after arriving at Xingyue Island.

Although they were not rich on Xingyue Island, as long as they cultivated the land, they would not starve.

Yang Mingzhao also had the same idea: the reason why the people could not eat enough was not because of natural disasters, but because of man-made disasters.

The people had no land to cultivate and could only become tenants, and as tenants, they were oppressed by the landlords.

The rents became increasingly heavy, and once a disaster occurred, the tenants would have difficulty making ends meet.

The reason why the Yang family's former tenants were loyal to the Yang family was because the rent was low, and sometimes the Yang family would even reduce or exempt some of the rent.

Therefore, the tenants truly supported the Yang family. With just a few words from Yang Zhengshan, thousands of tenants could move to Xingyue Island.

But other families are different. A 40% rent is considered low. Some even stipulate a specific rent, which is how many buckets of grain to pay to the landlord per year.

The amount of rent is fixed regardless of the amount of food produced in the fields.

This may seem better than profit sharing, but in reality a fixed amount of rent is more likely to bankrupt the tenant.

Once the land production decreases, the tenants may have to pay food to the landlord.

This is not just the conflict between landlords and tenants, there are also taxes, corvee labor, various levies and levies, and various gentry and landlords oppressing ordinary people.

Officials and gentry have many ways to harm the people, and their sinister ideas are countless.

Officials colluded with gentry to transfer their own land to other ordinary farmers.

Ordinary farmers only have ten acres of land, but they have to pay taxes for thirty acres of land. The other twenty acres of land do not belong to them at all, but they have to pay taxes.

What’s even more hateful is that the common people don’t even know who is harming them, or who they are paying taxes for.

There was also corvée, where ordinary people were used as private slaves, without being paid or given food, and forced to work for them. This situation was most serious in the garrisons, where many officials used military households as free labor.

"We will distribute land to the people. When we capture a county, we will distribute all the land to the people. We will distribute the land of the gentry and landlords to the common people!"

"We will issue land deeds to the people, recompile the Yellow Book and the Fish Scale Book, and burn all the original Fish Scale Books. This way, even if we cannot occupy the county town forever, we can still allow ordinary people to own land!"

Yang Mingzhao said excitedly.

At this time, his idea was very simple, which was to distribute the land to ordinary people, establish land deeds for ordinary people, and recompile the fish scale book. In this way, even if they were driven away by the court, those lands would become the legal property of the people.

It will not be easy for the gentry, landlords and government officials to take back those lands in the future.

"This is a good idea!" Chen Buyu was stunned.

Li Dagui suddenly said, "Sir, the land of ordinary gentry can be divided, but what about the land of martial arts families and martial arts sects?"

Yang Mingzhao said: "Of course we have to share it!"

"Then young master must be prepared to make enemies with all the warriors in the world!" Li Dagui reminded.

"Haha~~Naive~" Wu Zheng outside the door laughed.

Yang Mingzhao's face turned red. Well, his idea seemed a little too naive.

The land of ordinary gentry can be divided because they are not afraid of those ordinary gentry.

They are just a bunch of country rich people, so naturally they are not afraid.

But those martial arts families and underworld sects are different. These forces possess powerful military force.

If you divide their land, how can they not fight with you?

Yang Mingzhao didn't bother to pay attention to Wu Zheng, he looked at Li Dagui and asked, "What do you think?"

Li Dagui smiled and said, "We can divide the warriors' land, but we also have to give them preferential treatment. Warriors can get more land, and we can also give them some benefits, such as doing business!"

Yang Mingzhao frowned, "The court prohibits sect forces from doing business!"

Li Dagui said: "So those sects have been trying every possible way to annex the people's land!"

From Emperor Chengping's military restriction order to Emperor Yanping's military promotion order, there have always been restrictions on the business activities of clan forces in order to prevent officials, warriors and businessmen from colluding with each other and monopolizing various local industries.

This policy is actually correct, because it is easy for officials and warriors to collude with each other. One side has power, the other side has military force, and with enough money, they are able to dominate the place.

However, in actual implementation, there are many loopholes. Martial arts families are not sects, they can do business, and sects have close ties with some martial arts families. Sects do not come forward to do business, but they can use martial arts families to do business.

In addition, some sects felt that since they could not do business, they might as well buy land and real estate. Fields, shops, real estate in the city, etc. became the first choice for sects to invest in.

The Yang family used to do the same things. They bought a lot of land and real estate in Chongshan Town and Liaodong.

The same is true for the Yang family. In the past, Yangjia Village only had a few thousand acres of land, but how much land does the Yang family have now? The family property alone exceeds ten thousand acres. If all the land owned by all the families in the Yang family is added together, it is estimated to be hundreds of thousands of acres.

In just over thirty years, the Yang family had annexed so much land.

Not to mention those powerful families and sects that have been passed down for hundreds of years.

The lives of ordinary people in Darong are really hard, but in this world it is also more difficult for ordinary people to resist.

The presence of warriors increases the difficulty of rebellion.

Even though Chen Buyu and his men had captured a county town before, it was absolutely impossible for them to occupy a county town.

The current rebels in Bashu are actually supported by martial arts forces.

They rebelled not for the common people, but to seize more resources.

Yang Mingzhao fell into deep thought. He had actually considered these issues along the way, but he did not take those martial arts forces seriously because he felt that the Yang family could suppress most of the martial arts forces.

But now he felt that he had thought too simply before.

"Do you mean to let warriors do business?" Yang Mingzhao looked at Li Dagui.

Li Dagui nodded, "That's right. All the common people want is to have enough food to eat. If we give them land, they can have enough food. But what warriors need are all kinds of training resources. We must let them have the channels and methods to obtain them!"

"Doing business can satisfy their need for silver and money, allowing them to have more money to purchase various cultivation resources!"

Yang Mingzhao seemed to be thinking about something. "You are right. The interests of warriors must be taken care of. Only in this way can we win over warriors!"

Li Dagui smiled and said, "That's right, back then, Taizu Darong used the benefits of business to win over a large number of martial arts forces!"

"Emperor Darong? Did Emperor Darong also get the land?" Yang Mingzhao asked.

Li Dagui shook his head. "No, at the end of the Great Sheng, the country was in turmoil for decades, bandits were everywhere, and the people suffered countless disasters. At that time, there was no need to divide the land!"

When Emperor Taizu Darong founded the country, the world had already been in chaos for decades, with remnant soldiers and bandits everywhere, and nine out of ten houses of the people had been killed.

At that time, as long as the people could settle down, they could reclaim wasteland anywhere and there was no need to divide the land.

In comparison, Dayong has not yet reached the point of chaos.

There are still many people and the land still has owners, so it is naturally impossible to reclaim wasteland everywhere.

After thinking all this through, Yang Mingzhao felt that it was really difficult to rebel now.

There are many enemies they need to face.

The imperial court is just one of them. The gentry, wealthy families, and powerful clans may all become their enemies.

Yang Ze smiled and said, "Sir, there is no need to think so much now. With our current capabilities, we can only occupy one or two counties at most!"

"In the two counties, as long as we avoid those powerful sects, we can completely conquer everything."

"We can now divide the land according to what you want. If we really encounter powerful sects in the future, we can think of a solution then!"

"If we have the support of the patriarch, there shouldn't be too many problems as long as we don't push too hard."

Yang Mingzhao nodded, "That's right. It's too early for us to think about this now. It may not be long before we are wiped out by the imperial army!"

Li Dagui and Yang Ze both laughed when they heard this.

It is indeed possible that they were wiped out by the imperial army.

But they didn't think there would be any danger in doing this.

In the entire Darong, who wouldn't give Yang Zhengshan some face and just rebel? As long as they were strong enough, it wouldn't be a big problem.

Of course, in their opinion, Yang Mingzhao was just fooling around, and they were just joining him in fooling around.

It's just a joke. As long as it doesn't cause too much noise, it shouldn't be a big problem.

What should we do if the noise is too loud?
What else can we do? We should ask for help when necessary and run away when necessary.

When the time comes, I will hide back in Xingyue Island. Is there anyone who dares to attack Xingyue Island?
(End of this chapter)