Three Kingdoms: A Million Soldiers Grown from the Fields

Chapter 61 Slaughtering Pigs - Elementary Education (Please read 4k words)

"Stone, where are you planning to go today?"

On the dirt road in Taoyuan, Huwa bumped into Shitou, who was carrying large and small bags on his shoulders and in his hands.

"I'm off today, so I'm going back to my little mountain village to see my mother. What about you, Tiger Cub?"

"Haha, of course! Not only me, but Gouzi and the others are over there too. Let's go back together."

Tiger Cub laughed. He knew that everyone was thinking the same thing today, so he went to the storeroom early to exchange his things with Alan and then waited.

After several months, today I finally have a day off. And I heard from Brother Xian that because we have enough manpower now, we will have a few days off every month.

Today is a day off, and yesterday Brother Xian secretly gave everyone a lot of pay, saying it was for half a year, but after everyone counted it, it was almost more than the one year's pay promised in the original contract.

Each of them now has 10,000 to 8,000 coins. Of course, this only applies to those who have followed Brother Xian since they were young in the mountain village. These twenty-odd people are no longer just ordinary soldiers.

Instead, they held official positions. The newly recruited Taoyuan Clan numbered four hundred, and each of them commanded twelve men. In Alan's words, each of them was a squad leader in the army.

A few days ago, Brother Xian set the framework for Taoyuan.

Six men form a squad, with one squad leader.

Two groups, one gang, and one leader.

Three groups, one team, and one leader.

Three teams, one school, one hundred people, and one leader.

According to Xian Ge'er in private, a centurion is actually a military commander, but Taoyuan is only a village protector to the outside world, so he can only be called a centurion.

Currently, the Peach Blossom Spring only has three centurions: A-Yun, Deputy Instructor Huang, and A-Lan.

The three of them each led more than a hundred people, and together they commanded four hundred people in Peach Blossom Spring.

Tiger Cub pointed to the side of the dirt road, and Stone indeed saw about twenty people gathered there in shadowy figures.

So he laughed and said, "Sure, we have a lot of stuff, let's all carry it back together."

"Haha, we're going to carry it back? Brother Xian knew we were going to go back, so he arranged an oxcart for us long ago. Let's go."

Tiger Cub patted the burlap sack on Stone's shoulder; the weight of the sack, weighing several dozen kilograms, almost made Stone stumble.

"Hey you little rascal, you're doing this on purpose, aren't you!"

"Hahaha, I did it on purpose! Try and catch up with me if you dare!"

Tiger Cub grinned and leaped forward, creating a huge distance between himself and the stone.

The latter grinned and pretended to be angry, but the smile on his face was impossible to hide.

In April in Taoyuan, today is the day to go back and make my mother and younger sister proud.

Sixty catties of millet, four feet of cloth, ten catties of salt, five catties of lard, and five catties of meat—he bought all of these in the village with his own money.

Besides these, there was still more than four thousand left. In the countryside, who has ever had any spare money? Every year we live frugally.

This year is better. My eldest son has paid his own head tax, and there's even enough money left over to cover the family's land tax. My mother and younger sister should be able to have a prosperous New Year.

Thinking of this, Stone felt a surge of excitement in his heart, and his steps became much lighter.

Not only him, but all the boys from the small mountain village gathered together by Huwa looked the same.

When I left the small mountain village with Brother Xian, there were always some gossips at home, but things are different now. Today, the harvest I get back is equivalent to a whole year's harvest in previous years.

Stone was the last to arrive after purchasing goods in the village.

When he arrived, Huwa led two oxcarts over.

Everyone packed their belongings, loaded them onto the oxcart, and headed towards the small mountain village, chatting and laughing.

In Zhuangzi.

Two little heads perched a short distance away, watching with great curiosity the scene of several men slaughtering a pig with knives, whispering amongst themselves as they watched.

Li Zhen's mouth dropped open: "Ah Xu, your dad is amazing!"

The black pig's hair was removed by boiling water, and Huang Zhong precisely separated the meat from the bone with swift and precise knife strokes.

Hearing Zhen'er's surprise beside him, Huang Xu chuckled and said, "Right? My father is amazing. When he took me around to find doctors before, he could fight more than a dozen people by himself."

The women were helping out, collecting four or five basins of pig's blood and washing offal and other internal organs; their hands and feet never stopped.

The village was filled with joy and excitement. Today, the village head ordered the slaughter of more than ten pigs, saying that everyone should be able to have a piece of meat.

The scene of slaughtering pigs would occasionally attract passing farmers to stop and watch. They would swallow their saliva as they looked at the pieces of meat being cut up, thinking about the taste of the meat, before leaving to join in their work.

The land in Taoyuan was cultivated and planted, and then expanded.

The first thousand acres of new land were quickly reclaimed and maintained. After only two days of rest, the owner bought another thousand acres of new land.

Fortunately, the number of people in the village is increasing, and there are enough oxen. With the help of heavy plows, all they have to do is move the large stones that are visible to the naked eye and burn the weeds and thorns, so it is not too tiring.

Today, there are nearly 700 male residents registered in Taoyuan. Apart from the more than 300 people who have been incorporated into the Taoyuan community, the rest still mainly make a living by farming.

The tenancy model has not yet been implemented. This year is only the first year of Taoyuan's construction, and the land has not yet produced any crops. Even if Zhang Xian wanted to sublet the land to tenants, no one would dare to rent it out.

So now he takes care of almost all the food and drink for the people of Taoyuan.

However, once the more than 2,000 mu of land has yielded harvests next year, he will be able to sublet the land to the residents of Taoyuan.

Is it possible to not subcontract?

Of course, collective labor with room and board would actually make Zhang more profitable, but he still wanted to sublet Taoyuan's land to the villagers.

It's not for any other reason than to give these people something to look forward to.

When the land doesn't belong to you, all you put into it is physical labor.

But once the land belongs to them, even if it's just a lease, it still gives ordinary people a feeling that their lives are getting better.

This is the feedback between input and output, and a sense of satisfaction on a spiritual level.

What people seek in their lives is this kind of satisfaction.

I'm so lucky that I can give others this feeling now, even if it's just a tiny bit.

The same applies to slaughtering pigs today. Jiayuan Livestock Farm has accumulated 26 adult pigs ready for slaughter over two months.

Each pig weighs a uniform 287 jin (approximately 143.5 catties) at slaughter. After removing bones, blood, and internal organs, each pig still yields about 200 jin (approximately 100 catties) of meat.

Even if each person in the village received one jin of meat out of the five thousand jin, there would still be a surplus of three thousand jin.

Before he slaughtered the pig, someone tried to dissuade him, asking why he didn't continue raising it and why he had to share it with everyone on the village.

Zhang Xian said, "Because everyone is working hard to build Taoyuan, they have made sacrifices, so as the owner of the estate, we must give back to them."

The hard work of the villagers over the past few months has been evident to all. Even the migrants who were recruited later worked diligently during this month.

The 2,670 mu of land in Taoyuan, along with hundreds of houses, warehouses, threshing grounds, irrigation canals, and roads, were all reclaimed and built by these people.

The hardships involved are difficult to describe in words, but the fact that hundreds of doses of wound medicine were dispensed from the pharmacy is enough to show that the construction was not just a matter of physical exertion. Insect bites and rat stings were common, and snakes were frequently seen. Although these things eventually ended up in everyone's stomachs, injuries were still unavoidable.

After working so hard for so long, giving them some material encouragement is not a luxury, and it's not like this happens every day.

The inner hall of Peach Blossom Spring.

Both of them were bent over their desks.

One person is speaking, and the other is writing.

"When people are born, their nature is good and their natures are similar."

Clouds against rain, snow against wind, sunset against clear sky. Migrating geese against departing swallows, roosting birds against chirping insects.

"Heaven and earth were dark and yellow, the universe was vast and boundless. The sun and moon waxed and waned, the stars and constellations were arrayed in the sky."

"The world changes like the sea turning into mulberry fields; a clear river and calm sea foretell peace and prosperity throughout the land."

From early morning until now, Zhang Xian has already memorized several passages from some of the books suitable for early childhood education that he can remember.

It wasn't that he didn't want to memorize the whole thing, he just couldn't remember it.

Therefore, he could only recite it in fragments, pieced together from various sources.

Han Ji, the secretary who had been foreshadowing the events, had gone from initial surprise to utter bewilderment; he was now somewhat numb.

There were six scrolls of bamboo slips at hand, totaling 2,287 characters.

Although each volume is not a complete book, each volume is like a model of a masterpiece.

He now really wants to take a chisel and pry open his lord's head to see if he can complete every single volume.

Zhang Xian paused, then gulped down the plain water on the table.

Han Ji stopped writing, picked up the bamboo slips, and sighed deeply.

"My lord, why have you come to this? Why have you come to this? You are truly disrespectful to your teacher! You have not even fully learned such wisdom!"

I wanted to curse but couldn't bring myself to say it; I was just really angry.

Zhang Xian gave an awkward smile and said, "Mine, mine." But in his heart he was thinking something else entirely.

I'm incredibly impressed with myself for remembering so much.

He put down his water glass and asked, "Is this enough for my studies?"

Originally, Han Ji was invited to be a teacher, but unexpectedly, all of his family's knowledge had been confiscated. The few bamboo scrolls he brought with him were military strategies related to marching and fighting. Helpless, he could only rack his brains to recall the model texts he had learned before.

Han Ji blew on the ink on the bamboo slips and nodded in admiration, saying, "It is sufficient for the early education of young children. I can begin teaching them tomorrow."

"However, my lord, please make this clear beforehand: I will not allow anyone to interfere with my teaching."

“Of course.” Zhang Xian readily agreed. There were a few literate people in the village, but only Han Ji could be considered a scholar.

"No one should interfere with a young child's early education, not even myself."

"But since you're here, could we perhaps make a deal?"

Zhang Xian moved closer to Han Ji, whose face, showing a hint of helplessness, revealed a hint of the latter's thirties.

He knew what his lord wanted to discuss, but he really didn't want to teach his family's secrets, which he had risked his life to protect, to others.

This would be somewhat unworthy of our ancestors buried beneath the earth.

"My lord, please allow me to think about it some more, just a little longer," Han Ji said with some melancholy.

Seeing this, Zhang Xian stopped being shameless. There was nothing he could do; that was just how things were in this era. A family heirloom was the foundation upon which several generations, or even dozens of generations, of someone else had lived. He couldn't force someone to give it up.

Doing that would only alienate people.

Although he coveted the military treatises collected by Han Ji's family, he could only admire them from afar.

In fact, the military strategy of arranging troops and setting up camps was a minor matter to him; what he really wanted was the knowledge about marching and setting up camps.

Fighting a war is no longer as simple as playing a computer game.

The most crucial thing is the food, drink, and daily needs of thousands or even tens of thousands of people. Only by mastering these things can one be considered a qualified general.

While "building strongholds and fighting protracted battles" is a derogatory term, Taoyuan today cannot even achieve the very task of building strongholds.

If they are sent to fight in Xiliang in this manner, the result will inevitably be unfavorable.

The worst-case scenario is that he would gather a bunch of [Medicine Chef] food to restore stamina and endurance, then, with the added benefit of the [Weight Capacity] attribute, wear over a hundred pounds of armor and venture deep into enemy territory alone to fight an entire army!
Is this reasonable?

Is this appropriate?

It doesn't seem like it's impossible.
However, this approach is only useful on battlefields with a few thousand or tens of thousands of soldiers. In the event of a large-scale war, the gains from one battlefield cannot benefit the entire battlefield.

At most, it would earn him the title of an unparalleled warrior.

If he were to work for someone else, any feudal lord would treat him like a treasure.

But when it comes to rebellion...
Xiang Yu was strong enough, and Lü Bu was strong enough, but in the end, they still died.

With all his attributes boosted, he's at most comparable to seven or eight Xiang Yus.

The ink on the bamboo slips dried, and Han Ji put the bamboo slips away.

"My lord, is what I told you yesterday acceptable?"

"Huh? Oh, a water turbine, right? Great, that's a good thing." Zhang Xian, coming back to his senses, recalled his first meeting with Han Ji yesterday.

The pledge of allegiance that they submitted was the methods of water conservancy and irrigation and forging.

As expected of the scholar who loves craftsmanship as Huang Zhong described, the two talked for a while yesterday, and Zhang Xian calculated the power structure and found that it was completely feasible.

"Then you are in charge of handling the matter. Just ask Hansheng for the necessary materials, and you can also bring the Taoyuan people with you to carry out the construction during their spare time."

Although the stream in front of the gate was wide, it was too shallow, less than half a meter deep. Therefore, Han Ji planned to build a dam to block the water and use the difference in elevation to drive the waterwheel.

Then, the power of the waterwheel is used to forge and smelt metals.

The appearance of such thinking in this era could not help but delight Zhang Xian. When he first heard it yesterday, he almost used the transmigrator's code to test it.

But are people with such a mindset and perspective really historical figures they have no recollection of?
Or did something happen to him later that led to his untimely death?
I can't understand it. After all, I'm not a real historian. In the vast river of time, there are many brilliant but nameless people.

Han Ji might be one of them.

After all, he still has a prefect as an enemy on the surface.

Sigh, let's leave it at that for now. If Han Ji really masters water-based smelting and forging technology, then Taoyuan can produce its own weapons and armor.

However, this matter must be done secretly, even more discreetly than a brewery.

Forging weapons is a minor matter, but making armor is a major one!

Having been in this world for so long, he still hasn't managed to acquire a decent set of armor, which is why his greatest strength has yet to be revealed.

(End of this chapter)