The Emperor ordered Zhao Tang

Chapter 38 Invite Me to Tian's House
In early spring in March, the hazy drizzle comes suddenly.

After offering sacrifices at the ruins of Qingshan Palace, the emperor and his ministers are on their way back.

The desolate straight road stretched as far as the eye could see, with sparse weeds tenaciously surviving. Looking around, the fields were all green, but there was indeed more grass than crops, which made the soldiers walking on both sides of the road frown.

"Look, what a good field! But it's planted like this. If it were in Hebei, would you still be able to survive when the military commander goes to the countryside?"

"Isn't it? There's no such good irrigation in Xiazhou. What a pity, all the rice seedlings grow here are barren."

"Instead of leaving it all barren, why not give it to me to cultivate?"

"It's suitable for herding sheep and running horses."

"Ugh……"

"No noise allowed!" Seeing the soldiers buzzing non-stop, Ximen Yuanyuan, the commander of the left wing of the Yingwu Army, frowned and scolded.

This time he was ordered to protect the saint, and he wanted to take his heroic left wing army of 2,500 men to familiarize himself with the interior of the country. Who would have thought that these new recruits from Guandong were a bunch of country dogs. What? They had never seen a field?
"General, there is a house over there." Suddenly, the saint pointed at a lonely tile-roofed house and shouted.

Du Rangneng looked over and saw that the farmer in front of the courtyard gate was nervously closing the gate when he saw a large group of soldiers passing by.

Before Du Rang could say anything, the saint suggested, "I want to go in and rest for a while."

He sat in the car, while his entourage were getting wet in the drizzle. After walking for most of the day, they were exhausted and their feet were covered in mud.

Du Rangneng looked around and confirmed that they had entered the territory of Huyi, which was not far from Chang'an. He nodded and said, "We are almost to the capital. It would be good to rest our horses."

After saying that, he rode forward to find Ximen Yuanyuan and explained the situation.

"I obey the commander's order." Ximen Yuanyuan was already tired after riding for most of the day, and he also wanted to let the soldiers rest. When he heard Du Rangneng's initiative, he dismounted, patted the rain off his hair, and told his men not to run around and to eat some dry food.

The sage stepped down from the chariot and walked towards the farmhouse, accompanied by Du Rangneng, Zhao, Li Dao, the left attendant of the imperial guard, Liu Zipi, the attendant general, Liu Xianyuan, and more than twenty others.

……

The farmhouse door, which had been ajar just now, was now tightly closed.

Inside, a woman sat beside a broken loom, carefully weaving a basket with bamboo strips.

In the vegetable patch beside the bamboo forest behind the house, the eldest daughter was watering the Kunlun melon seedlings.

In the mulberry forest, a boy and his black dog chased the hens, making them flutter all over the sky.

In the small courtyard, the second and third brothers held wooden sticks, and you pretended to be the governor of Lai Ya Army, having a lot of fun.

Suddenly, the sound of conversation came from far away.

Dozens of warriors with angry looks on their faces dragged their swords and started searching loudly along the farmhouse. The black dog barked twice, and the warriors raised their spears and fled into the mulberry forest again. The child looked at the men blankly and wiped his nose.

The second and third brothers who were "fighting" suddenly ran towards the bamboo forest.

The farmer climbed over the wall and ran away, followed by his two sons.

The horrified woman went into the kitchen and smeared some soot from the bottom of the pot on her face.

"no one?"

Du Rangneng pushed open the wooden door and walked in. He looked around and said softly to the main room, "We are just passing by. We would like to ask for a bowl of water to drink. Please be at ease."

After saying this, he asked his subordinates to take out two strings of copper coins and put them on the windmill.

The house was dead silent.

Du Rangneng had no choice but to call over General Liu Xianyuan and said, "Tell the warriors to stand thirty steps away and put away their weapons."

"Go ahead." Li Ye sighed and said, "It's enough to have the Grand Marshal and more than ten officials around you. You have your own family, so don't worry."

"Yes." Liu Xianyuan left.

Immediately, his violent shouts were heard outside the wooden gate, ordering the warriors to get out of here quickly and chopping off the hands of anyone who took anything.

After a long time, the door of the main room was pushed open, revealing a filthy face.

"Please prepare some food and hot water for this young man." Du Rangneng pointed at the saint in gray and white clothes behind him and said.

Perhaps because she saw the old man was kind, the woman breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Years ago, the Qi soldiers passed through the border and looted a lot of food. Yesterday, the county official went to the countryside to collect taxes and asked us to pay the green seedling money... We only have coarse millet and plain rice."

"Thank you." Du Rangneng invited the saint to sit down in the main hall.

The room was bare, the food and clothing were empty, and there was not a single decent piece of furniture or clothing. The floor was uneven and in odd shapes. It was probably because of the rain, the room was dripping constantly, and the water droplets made many holes of different sizes on the floor. Li Ye moved his butt three times before he could sit down.

"The warriors killed each other, treated men and women as worthless, and abused them at will. The people could not bear it." Du Rangneng said on the side: "So many of them hid in the mountains and valleys, or registered in Wubao. Only one in ten people who farmed on their own survived. And when the warriors went on expeditions, they took away the iron tools and livestock from the people for military use. The rest had no plows, oxen or mules, and production could not continue."

"I didn't know people's lives were so difficult." Li Ye was speechless.

This trip refreshed his understanding that the lives of ordinary people had been persecuted to this extent.

The warriors used the people as food and weapons, slaughtered them for jerky, or used them as sandbags to fill trenches and build cities. The surviving people either fled or became tenants under the powerful. After being plundered, the remaining self-cultivating farmers also had difficulty in production due to the severe lack of iron farm tools and animal power.

Along the way, Li Ye saw many farmers working in the fields.

But most of them had no large livestock, and this family had neither a cattle pen nor any donkeys, mules, draft horses, or sheep.

There are no cattle or horses, only human power.

"I heard from Minister of Agriculture Li Qun that there are many oxen and horses for working in the imperial gardens, the Imperial Household Department and the county offices in the two capitals..." Li Ye suddenly remembered Li Qun's memorial two days ago.

But before he could finish, he was interrupted by Du Rangneng.

“Ordinary people can’t afford it.”

Du Rangneng sighed and said hoarsely, "Even draft horses eat no less than an adult male. If it is a war horse, the salt, beans, and grass it consumes in a day can feed three to five soldiers during the march. A working ox eats more than ten kilograms of grain leaves and chaff every day... And there is little grassland inside the pass. For example, in the area around Wugong County, people can still graze in the mountains. Huyi is an endless plain."

Li Ye was silent.

He recalled what he had seen in his wife's hometown in his previous life. Even in the 21st century, there were still several farmers raising one cow.

It's very simple. No matter spring, summer, autumn or winter, 365 days a year, cows need to eat that much every day. The key is that it is not enough to feed them only with thatch! Corn leaves, rice seedlings, wheat straw, soybean branches, sweet potato vines, etc. should be mixed together. Otherwise, they will not grow fat and will not have the strength to work in the fields.

Moreover, Guanzhong at that time was not like Sichuan, where there were hills and mountains for cattle to graze.

It's a plain all over. Who's crazy enough to let you use it to herd cattle?
Well, in his previous life, Li Ye had never touched the water of the spring spring, and in this life, he had lived in the deep palace for a long time and had never heard of worldly affairs, so he really didn't understand agriculture. Now, after seeing and hearing the ministers' explanation, he finally understood how difficult it was for farmers. These damn warriors must be completely eradicated.

If the whole society serves the warriors, how can other people survive?

This damn world must be corrected.

“My two nobles…” The woman came over carefully with the food in her hand, and said with great trepidation, “The lessons are urgent, and this is all we have.”

A small bowl of golden coarse wheat rice, steaming hot, probably just steamed. There were also two bowls of corn rice, probably because they saw that Li Ye and his party were from a prominent family, so they cooked some fine grains.

As for the dishes, there was a plate of salted broad beans and a small dish of black soybean sauce.

Very shabby yet very grand.

"Thank you." Li Ye smiled, stopped the woman, and asked softly, "Just now, the virtuous woman said that the lesson was urgent. I wonder what it was for?"

The woman hesitated to speak, and seeing that Li Ye's eyes were calm and unmoved, she whispered, "I heard from the county official when he went to the countryside that it was this year's seedling money."

Qingmiao money was Suzong's "great invention", which levied an additional tax of 15 wen per acre of crops.

After Daizong came to power, he set his sights on the wallets of the wealthy people in the interior of China and ordered that the landlords in Jingzhao be levied an additional land tax of 20 wen per mu.

To put it bluntly, it was an increase in land taxes, but Daizong still forcibly called it Qingmiao Money.

This was created by the previous emperor. What does it have to do with me?

The father has to bear all the blame, while the son has to take all the benefits...

Until now, the Qingmiao money is still being collected, and the person in charge is the Taiwei Du Rangneng, who is also in charge of rent, labor service, iron, tea, salt, and Qingmiao fees for various regions.

This... Li Ye couldn't talk about it in front of ordinary people.

Let’s eat first!

Du Rangneng tasted a little of everything and waited for a long time to make sure there was nothing unusual. When he saw Zhao, who had entered the kitchen several times to check, nod, he handed the chopsticks to the saint.

The woman stood aside, at a loss.

Zhao saw the saint winking at her and asked sympathetically, "How many children are there in your family?"

"Three men and one woman."

"how old are you."

"The eldest daughter is seventeen, the second son is fourteen, the third son is eleven, and the youngest son is only six."

"Where?" Zhao asked.

"Maybe they went out to play..." The woman was a little scared. Just now, she saw fierce warriors surrounding the house. Her husband and children thought they were arresting people and hid away. If the old man and the child were not very polite, she would never tell the truth.

Upon hearing this, Zhao looked at Li Ye.

Li Ye said nothing, and quickly finished a small bowl of wheat rice and a small bowl of corn rice with soybean sauce and salted broad beans. Seeing that Du Rangneng didn't want to eat, he simply took the old man's portion and ate it all.

In his previous life, he would not even look at this kind of food, but seeing his people struggling to survive, he no longer found it unpalatable.

"Sorry for bothering you." After finishing his meal, Li Ye wiped his mouth, stood up and walked out.

Back on the carriage, Li Ye leaned casually on the couch and said, "Help me remember some things. I'm afraid I'll forget them."

"Everyone, please speak." Zhao spread out the pen and ink and looked at the saint.

"First, we must build ponds, dams, and dredge canals in the 22 counties of Kinai."

"Second, order the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Works to make more iron farm tools such as water wheels, plows, hoes, sickles, etc."

"Third, lend the government's cattle and farm tools to the people for use."

"Fourth, we will not collect the seedling money from the capital this year. I will go back and discuss this with Junrong and the general."

Although the imperial court was also annoyed, after all, it was the Spring Festival, and many military governors paid annual tributes to the emperor as usual, plus Du Rangneng's accumulation of alms everywhere, there was some food in stock. Moreover, there would be no war in the short term, and most of the Shen Ce Army had been eliminated.

Actually, I don’t really need the money.

If this additional tax is waived, ordinary people will have an easier time during this difficult spring, and they can spend some money to give to their children and pregnant women to improve their lives.

Du Rangneng is in charge of this matter. If he does the old man's job well, he can avoid paying the money. If Ximen Zhongsui scolds himself for being crazy afterwards...

Let him scold me! Anyway, it won't cost me any meat. It would be best if I could anger the old pig farmer to death sooner rather than later.

After returning to Chang'an Palace, Li Ye originally planned to look for Concubine Chen, but thinking of Ximen Chongsui's warning that day, he was about to go to Chang'an Palace to look for He Shi, when Liu Zipi suddenly leaned close to his ear and said mysteriously, "Everyone, Zhang Chengye, the military supervisor of Hedong, has returned to the capital today."

The sage had mentioned this man twice, and Liu Zipi kept a close eye on him.

He didn't want to be a eunuch who could be called upon at will and dismissed at will. As a eunuch, he had to command the army and give orders to the court and the country.

Unfortunately, he was born as a child captive in the Chao army camp, and had not been accepted by the veteran eunuchs for a long time. He could only do things for the saint, hoping that the emperor would turn the tables and make the decision so that he could be proud of himself.

Zhang Chengye is back? Li Ye's heart trembled, and he lowered his voice and asked, "Where are you now?"

Liu Zipi glanced around and said in a very vulgar and sinister voice, "He was summoned to the Privy Council by Ximen Gongjian for questioning. Does the Saint want to see him?"

Li Ye thought about it and felt that it was unreasonable to be too eager. It was not in line with the status and position of an emperor to be so enthusiastic about the return of a certain town's military supervisor. It would be better to wait a few days and then create a chance encounter and chat.

You must not follow the same path as your predecessor - when you meet a loyal minister, you would approach him as if you had taken an aphrodisiac. As a result, your words and actions were quickly discovered by the eunuchs, and not only would you be beaten, scolded, and locked up in a dark room, but you would also harm others.

He remembered clearly what Han Yu, a scholar of the Imperial Academy, had said to him in Tongyue Pavilion that day: Love for others is the beginning of harming others.

Therefore it is said that a king is selfless and a sage is ruthless.

There must be a purpose behind his preference!
If my previous life could understand this principle, how could Du Rangneng, Xu Yanruo, Li Xi and more than ten other people as well as the royal family kings have suffered tragic deaths?

Thinking of this, Li Ye said lightly: "Let's talk about it when we have time. I just wanted to ask Zhang Chengye about the people of Hedong and the Longxi County King."

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(End of this chapter)