Half a year passed quickly, and the county school was on the right track, and everything was developing in a good direction. Geng Qiu retired from the county school and turned to manage private property for Yu Mingyi. Because they now live in Beixian County for most of their time, Yu Mingyi and Master Zhou plan to buy some properties in Beixian County first, and the property purchased by Master Zhou is also recorded in Yu Mingyi's name, after all, the property in the capital and his previous property are basically divided between the Fang family and his children.

Baron Yu wants to buy property in Beixian, the county lord is quite welcome, Beixian is a poor county, few people but a wide land, although most of them are mountainous areas, but the mountainous areas also have the benefits of mountainous areas, there are many forests, wood, charcoal, mountain delicacies and game, and most of the mountains are cheap.

Yu Mingyi and Geng Qiu fell in love with Huishui Town, which is less than 20 miles away from the county seat of Beixian County, where there is a tributary of a large river, called the Great River of Huishui, both sides of the river are full of mountains, but there is not even a wharf of a slight scale. The left bank is within the boundaries of North County, and on this side, the terrain is relatively low, full of hills and marshes. As soon as the backwater river rises, the nearby hills and marshes are flooded. Therefore, it is very desolate, with only a few small villages, and a few villagers living here and there. Life is also very poor.

But this place is quite large, full of swamps overgrown with tall weeds and thorns, or a series of small hills, and there is a wide river between the large mountains in the distance, but this river is wide but very shallow, the water is just knee-high, and the riverbed is full of large and small stones, and in the dry season, it will even be dry, or the water surface is not up to the calf, at this time, it is very suitable for hunting in the mountains. Geng Qiu and Yu Mingyi both thought that this place was good, and after discussing it with Ah Hao and Master Zhou, they decided to buy it.

It's not the best, but it's cheap. The Yu family and the Zhou family do not have many assets in Shannan Town, and each of them only has a house, dozens of acres of fertile land, and three or two small shops. Shannan Town is already poor, how much output can they have in this industry, it is only an income of two or three hundred taels a year, and there is not much left except for spending.

Master Zhou has been an official for nearly 20 years, and his previous properties are all located in the capital and suburbs, where both fields and shops are very expensive, and these are handed over to the Fang family to take care of.

And Yu Mingyi had never been aware of his savings before, but he only had 200 taels of cash, and his new house near the county school cost nearly 1,000 taels of silver. Originally, it only took three or four hundred taels to build a house, but the decoration inside was even more, and this was still half shared by the Zhou Governor's Mansion, so he was even more embarrassed. The two of them combined, if this is a good land, a shop, it is not enough at all, a slightly better field is six or seven taels of one mu, the best good land is more expensive than twelve taels, and a slightly better shop in the county town is at least five hundred taels and one room. These eight hundred taels of silver are too little.

And a small hill in this place, plus nearly 100 acres of wasteland nearby, only costs 300 taels of silver, so Yu Mingyi took the 500 taels given by Master Zhou and bought a hill, including the nearby wasteland. However, after Yu Mingyi bought the hill, he still had five hundred taels of idle silver on hand, and it happened that the new shop near the county school had been repaired, three hundred taels a piece, Geng Qiu took the opportunity to persuade Yu Mingyi to buy it, and he got the internal price, five hundred taels but won two. In this shop, Geng Qiu thinks that it is okay to operate mountain goods, grain, oil, and daily miscellaneous goods.

And Geng Qiu also bought an adjacent hill, and the two industries are adjacent to each other, and they also take care of each other. The three hundred taels were spent, and Geng Qiu and Ah Hao spent all their savings. Now the life of the whole family, including the cost of Brother Haoning's schooling, all depends on the family's five acres of land, Ah Hao's monthly three taels of silver and fifty catties of rice grain, and the three or two months of silver given by Geng Qiu to help Yu Mingyi do things.

In other words, they have an income of six taels per month, which can be regarded as a wealthy family in an ordinary farmer's house. But for their family, it is just enough to spend and a little rich. I can save seven or eight hundred dollars to one or two pieces of silver every month. Not to mention having extra money to hire long-term workers. The land they bought needed a lot of people to work on the land.

When Geng Qiu had a headache and no money, three connected small houses had been built on the side of the hill of the Yu family, one was lived by people who came to work, and the middle one was left to let the master come to check and have a place to rest. This was all planned by Geng Qiu.

It's only half a month's work, and nearly ten acres of fields have been opened near the small hill of the Yu family, and some crops must be planted before autumn. The Yu family sent more than a dozen people to open up the wasteland and cultivate the fields, these people are all familiar hands, they are all old tenants and long-term workers of the Yu family in Shannan Town, the Yu family has always been tolerant of things, these people work very hard, and except for a woman, the others are all young and strong men. Even this woman is tall and big, her strength is not less than that of a man, and she cooks three meals a day for more than ten people, including chopping wood, which is very neat, and she actually has time to do some needlework.

Geng Qiu said that he was in charge, and he didn't live here every day, after all, he didn't need to keep an eye on the wasteland, these people were very conscious, and they did a pretty good job. And people are also veterans of crop planting, and they know how to behave. After these fields are opened, a few tenants will be moved from Shannan Town, and the remaining families will not lack manpower. But there are no superfluous people, so Geng Qiu still has to figure out his own way.

He only stared here for three days before returning to Beixian. There is also a shop in Beixian, and he has to take care of it. The most important thing is that he told Yu Mingyi early on that he can't completely help the Yu family now, and he has to leave some time for himself to do his own business, otherwise, wouldn't this small hill of his family be barren forever.

He planned to go back to the village first to hire a few short-term workers, and each person would be given fifty or sixty yuan a month, which was not a low price, and coupled with their family's reputation in the village, many people agreed to come. plus the third uncle, a total of twenty-one people, it takes two months, just enough to open a dozen acres of land, and at this time it is not considered to be farming, each family can free up one person to work here. You have to take advantage of the hot weather to dig up these weeds and dry them to death.

Coincidentally, Geng Qiu arranged for the third uncle to take the people in the village to work for a month, and opened more than ten acres of land, and Ah Hao actually brought back an important person. This is a middle-aged man named Zeng Dashan, with a slight limp on his left foot and a significant scar on his face. He also has six children with him. The youngest was five or six years old, the oldest was twelve or thirteen years old, two girls and four boys.

It turned out that Zeng Dashan was one of his guards when he fled. In every noble family, there will be a few secret guards, and even dead soldiers, but no one knows. And this Zeng Dashan is the person in charge of the secret guard of the General's Mansion, not to mention that the subordinates of the General's Mansion don't know, even Ah Hao doesn't know.

Because Ah Hao was constantly being hunted down, the situation became worse and worse, and as soon as he left the capital, Zeng Dashan took a young man disguised as Ah Hao and a team of guards to part ways with Ah Hao. Because of this target, Ah Hao was able to break through from another road, and soon met Geng Qiu and others who came to help in secret, so that he could save his life. After the two teams separated, they ran separately, and soon lost contact, and Ah Hao thought that the team led by Zeng Dashan was all dead.

Unexpectedly, Zeng Dashan had a big life, and when he was about to die, he met Orion in the mountains and saved him. But because his injuries were too serious, he stayed at Orion's house, and he also carried a few silver tickets with him, and took one of fifty taels to Orion, and helped him find a doctor. He had been recuperating well in Orion's house, and he had only recovered most of his injuries, but in those days, a heavy rainstorm suddenly fell, causing a flash flood, and the small village where he lived was swept away by the flash flood on a night when the sky was falling apart. Only the seven-year-old son was rescued by him with all his might. However, this disaster also made him more injured, and since then he has a limp in his left foot and a scar on his face. However, he didn't pay attention to this change in appearance, and he saved his dress.

He took the little boy named Bolt and began to look for Ah Hao, and along the way, he took in a few beggars, pretending to be fleeing villagers, until he met Ah Hao.

Zeng Dashan grew up with the general since he was a child, and he was the adopted son of the old general, so he has been secretly responsible for protecting the master of the general's mansion. Because his identity is too important, the general didn't tell Sù Ah Hao at all, his identity, this is something that only the head of the family can know. Ah Hao only thought he was an ordinary loyal subordinate at first. When the general's mansion raided his house, Zeng Dashan tried to get out. has been secretly watching, and he was only exposed when Ah Hao dealt with his family's funeral and was about to leave Beijing. At this time, Ah Hao knew that the most ordinary subordinate of the General's Mansion was actually extraordinary, brave and strategic.

Zeng Dashan has a deep affection for the General's Mansion, because when he was a child, he went to the wild to find food and was almost bitten to death by a wild dog, and it was the old general who rescued him from the mouth of the wild dog at that time, and healed him, taught him martial arts, and gave him a normal life. Because of the injury to his private parts, he did not give birth to children after he got married, and later his wife also died of illness, he was alone, with the general's mansion as his home, and has been doing the most ordinary janitorial work in the outer courtyard. On the surface, he is just an ordinary subordinate in the outer courtyard of the General's Mansion.

Zeng Dashan didn't expect that he would be able to meet Ah Hao in Jianghuai, and at that moment, he knew that God had eyes and did not let the General's Mansion lose its last hope. He spent more than two years in the capital, in the suburbs, in all the places he could think of, to find Ah Hao, from some of the main traces of the bead silk horse, he knew that it was not very likely that Ah Hao was alive, but he refused to believe that Ah Hao was really dead, and he had been looking for it.