The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 319 With surplus food in hand, one is not afraid.

All members of the Kansai team threw themselves into the vigorous construction project.

A border town three thousand miles away.

Finally, the harvest in Juntian this year has come.

The fertile fields buried by the blizzard were later replanted with seeds.

The rest of the growing season went relatively smoothly.

After the grain is stored in the granary.

Zhao Muyun finally felt relieved.

Right now, he's drinking and chatting with Big Beard in a private room at Zuixiangju.

He slowly tore off a piece of rabbit thigh meat and ate it, then drank a few glasses of wine, and remarked:
"Thanks to the migration of nearly 300,000 border troops and their families to the Nine Guards of Guanzhong, the population of the Five Guards of the border city has decreased by nearly half. This year's grain production has increased by 30%. From now until next autumn harvest, I will no longer have to worry about the long-standing problem of not having enough food."

"Your Highness, I think having enough food to eat isn't enough! It's better to be prepared than not. Who knows if there will be another wave of immigration? Right now, we can expand the scale of rabbit farming!"
Using the pasture grass from Xilu Ranch to feed the wild rabbits this year has been a huge help! General Gan's younger brother said he has collected seeds of several varieties of pasture grass, which the rabbit farm can try planting on their heated beds during the winter.

"What was he thinking? Growing grass indoors in winter! Is that even feasible?"

“The younger one asked him repeatedly, and he said that as long as the kang bed can be kept warm, there is no problem. Moreover, pasture is easier to grow than vegetables and grows faster.”

"Haha, what a good lad! I didn't expect him to figure out all these tricks after managing the ranch for only half a year! In that case, let him continue collecting grass seeds. As long as the grass planting on this kang (heated brick bed) is successful, we'll buy as many grass seeds as he has!"

"Hehe, Your Highness! In that case, could we open a branch of our Drunken Fragrance Inn in Huaiqing Prefecture? The gourmets in Huaiqing Prefecture complain every time they come, saying that the border town is still too far from Huaiqing Prefecture."

"Hmm, I took a look at Zuixiangju's accounts for the past few months last month! I never expected that, with the wine that General Xiong and his men brought back from Huozhou, even in a small place like Biancheng, Zuixiangju could still maintain a profit of about five hundred taels of silver every month after deducting all expenses! Once we go to Huaiqing Prefecture, we should be able to double or triple this profit."

"That's because Your Highness underestimated the cravings of those gourmets, especially the wine from Huozhou. In the past, you couldn't buy it even if you had money! Now, it's considered a luxury to entertain guests at Angmen Zuixiangju with fine wines from the Western Regions and hand-shredded roasted rabbit."

"Good, good, good, make the arrangements. Have the quartermasters set up a branch in Huaiqing Prefecture tomorrow!"

"I'll go and deliver the message shortly."

Zhao Muyun is now a typical person who has plenty of grain and money at home and is never flustered.

The King of Youzhou in Yuyang City was also on the same wavelength as him.

The military farmland in Youzhou is several times the size of that in the border city, and a single good harvest there is enough to feed a large army for three years.

Joyful harvests have also been reported from military fields across the country.

However, the people inside the pass did not feel the same way.

According to incomplete statistics:

In the first half of the year, more than one million farmers joined the uprising, and millions more fled their homes as refugees.

It's unknown how much money these key laborers gained from the looting and rioting, but one thing is certain: they all missed the spring planting season.

More than half of the country's arable land is abandoned.

Now, with the rise of three princes of different surnames, a strange period of calm has finally arrived.

Grain merchants, who had been eagerly awaiting this season's harvest, quickly rushed to various villages to collect the grain.

They searched for a desolate place.

Eight out of ten villages had fields overgrown with weeds and were deserted.

After walking for three to five days, we finally came across a village with inhabitants.

Upon entering the village, they learned that a group of over fifty grain inspectors, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, had arrived before the grain merchants.

These people are in a standoff with the villagers.

The atmosphere was very tense.

Some elderly people in their fifties or sixties even sat on the ground, sobbing and lamenting:

"This is outrageous! In the more than two hundred years since the founding of the country, I have never heard of the imperial court collecting such high land taxes! The tax rate is 60% for land that yields one shi of rice per mu; 30% for land that yields two shi of rice per mu; and 20% for fertile land that yields more than three shi of rice per mu!"

"Damn it, they're not giving us any way to survive! This spring, my family sold three of our granddaughters to buy just a little bit of rice seeds! We only managed to take over six acres of poor land. If we pay the land tax according to the grain tax requirements, we'll only have a little over two bushels of rice left. How can the seven men in my family survive until winter with just this little bit of rice?"

"I can't pay! I can't pay a single bit of this land tax! If anyone tries to force me to pay taxes, I'll fight them to the death! Look at the Prince of Dingnan, wasn't he just a peasant who became a king of a different surname? At worst, I'll make a scene again, and maybe he'll even grant me some kind of kingship!"

"Ahem, listen to me! The prefectural garrison is gone now, and the people working in the county government are all hooligans. Who knows what kind of imperial orders these grain clerks are carrying out?"

"Yes, folks, don't back down! Grab your weapons and drive all those grain inspectors who are falsely claiming to be acting on imperial orders out of the village!"

"Get out! Get out! If you don't leave, we'll leave you here as fertilizer!"

More than fifty grain clerks were driven out of the village by the entire villager. During the chase, they were almost drowned by the thick phlegm of those old women.

It's absolutely disgusting!
Before the grain clerks left, they could vaguely hear the village chief shouting at the villagers:
"Starting tomorrow, we'll be setting up roadblocks in our village. Nobody we know will be allowed in! If anyone tries to force their way in, we won't be polite!"

After the grain inspectors were driven away, the grain merchants received the same treatment.

After learning the identities of the grain merchants, the village chief spoke up again in his loud voice:

"Everyone should store their grain well! Who knows what natural disasters or man-made calamities might come next? We can't just sell it off because we're short-sighted."

“Village chief, you’re right! We don’t even have enough to eat for our own family, so how can we have extra grain to sell to others!”

"That's right, no matter how eloquently they speak, it's useless. Unless these people are willing to exchange gold as much as grain of rice, they can forget about buying a single grain of rice from us!"

"Shopkeeper, stop wasting your breath in our village. Look around, how many villages within ten miles still have any survivors? Food is life!"

"."

The grain merchants refused to believe it.

I traveled to dozens of villages over half a month, but I couldn't buy a single grain of rice.

The city dwellers, barely clinging to life, were dumbfounded.

Despite more than a year of peasant uprisings, they still couldn't kill all the city dwellers.

Those who have survived to this day are all skilled and resourceful.

However, most city dwellers do not own land.

They had been eagerly anticipating the autumn harvest, and it was only after much waiting that it finally arrived.

Now, forget about stockpiling grain; you can't even buy regular staple food.

The farmers in the countryside were quiet.

City dwellers are engaging in all sorts of vandalism and looting every day.

No shops could stay open, and this quickly affected even the Imperial City Commercial Capital.

(End of this chapter)