Li Su entertained Lu Su at the house and had lunch, and the two brothers talked about a lot of discordant topics before sending Lu Su away.

As soon as Lu Su left, someone from the Prefecture Pastoral Mansion came to invite Li Su, saying that Liu Bei had summoned him, and he wanted to talk to him about the planning of Nanzhong affairs.

As soon as Li Su heard it, he knew that Liu Bei had drunk too much yesterday, so he was only sober now.

Or is he and Lu Su like Sven, drinking relatively restrained.

However, he was just about to discuss this matter with Liu Bei, so he went to the car. Anyway, the Taishou Mansion and the Prefecture Pastoral Mansion are very close to each other, so the horses don't have to ride.

"Boya is here? Sit, I did drink too much last night, I won't drink it when we talk about things today, I will also learn from you, change the tea, come, pour tea. Liu Bei greeted and ordered the maid to serve tea.

The maidservant immediately poured two bowls of tea soup with stir-fried tea, chrysanthemums and honey, one bowl per person.

Tea at the end of the Han Dynasty was still considered a medicine, and some people drank it, but they were all spices such as salt, pepper, ginger, garlic, etc., which were more terrible than sauerkraut and fish soup.

In the words of Lu Yu, who wrote the "Book of Tea" in later generations, the method of drinking tea from the late Han Dynasty to the early Northern and Southern Dynasties was simply "ditch wastewater", which blinded the light and elegant tea leaves.

Therefore, this method of changing the sweet taste is obviously invented by Li Su just two months after he entered Shu. Shu was the main producer of wild tea at the end of the Han Dynasty.

In fact, Li Su wants to directly tinker with bitter roasted tea, and he is used to drinking it himself. But he also knows that the cultivation of aesthetic interests and cultural atmosphere in high society does not happen overnight, and no one likes bitter things as soon as they come up.

Historically, bitter tea can be carried forward, because Buddhism was introduced to China and hundreds of years of cultural edification, which links bitter tea with high and indifferent, and repeatedly emphasizes its cultural tonality. Rao is like this, from the Liang Dynasty of the Southern Dynasty to the end of the Sui Dynasty and the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, it took one or two hundred years to stabilize this cultural tone.

Now there is no such condition, and Li Su doesn't want to be a chattering thing, so he will be simpler and find a way to change the salty and spicy evil tea to sweet and bitter.

Just like the British and other Western seafaring peoples, they came into contact with Oriental tea in the early days, because of the transportation conditions, the last thing they got was fermented black tea, and the fragrance was far inferior to fried green tea, so their early black tea was added with sugar, which was similar to the recipe for drinking coffee.

In the 80s of the 20th century, when the Oriental people had just opened their borders, they were not used to drinking bitter coffee at first, and they also had to add sugar cubes and milk. After drinking for ten or twenty years, the petty bourgeoisie has become more tempered, and it is necessary to further pretend to be fundamentalist before drinking American style and condensed.

This shows that for those who can't accept pure bitterness, giving him sweet and bitter as a transition is the most reliable cultural inducement.

For a pragmatist person like Li Su, he wants to give full play to the advantages of tea production in Shu, promote tea culture and increase export trade, of course, he must use such a useful way.

No, Liu Bei and the others were led by Li Su for a month, and they initially entered the pit. However, honey is only added by the top rich nobles, and if you change some of the officials and eunuchs who resist it, you can only drink coarse brown sugar sweet tea.

Drinking honey tea, Liu Bei followed last night's topic and asked some details at the operational level: "Boya, I thought about it later, since the land of Nanzhong, soldiers can only be used after the autumn harvest every year. Shouldn't the levy and levy of conscription and construction work also be idle in winter?

The winter in the north is too cold, and the imperial court does not levy conscription much, and when it comes to the south, it is a pity not to levy it. In order to use troops after next autumn, how should we reorganize and prepare for the dispatch of troops in the next few months? ”

Liu Bei was inspired by Li Su yesterday and said that he would not delay the work of the people before the autumn harvest in the counties of Shuzhong, so he was not even willing to delay this winter.

Li Su hazy also thought about this problem, and seeing that Liu Bei paid attention to it, he also happened to sort it out thoroughly. He carefully thought about the time for half a bowl of honey flower tea, and said:

"In order to prepare for the assimilation and encirclement of Nanzhong, it is also necessary to rectify transportation and increase the number of tuntians. The model can imitate the story of Guoyuan and Cheng Bing who set up shipping transit points along the Jialing River in Hanzhong County and Ba County to set up Tuntian and remediate dangerous shoals.

In my opinion, if we want to levy and issue conscription this winter, we should focus on starting from the Yandao County on the border between Qianwei County and Zhudi County, and rectify the shipping of the Yangtze River from the Yandao to the south to Zhudi and Tanglang counties in Zhudi County, and rectify some dangerous shoals that are easy to run aground, and eradicate some dangerous reefs.

In addition, for the section of the river that is really difficult to navigate, Tuntian townships are also set up, so that the local people can live together, and when the fleet goes back and forth, they can serve as a conscript, help load and unload cargo, and tow empty ships to cross the beach.

In this way, it is not a problem to transport goods by water from the road to the southernmost part of Zhudi County. In this way, after the short-distance land transportation and water transshipment of Wei County and Muma County, you can reach Kunming and Dianchi Lake.

Although the Yuewang County and Qiqi County in the south and the central land are close to the hinterland of the three counties in the plains, the roads are actually difficult and dangerous, and there are mountains everywhere, but there is no value of vigorously enveloping and developing. Therefore, I think that in the next few years, the focus of our focus will be along the Yangtze River, Tushui, and Yongchang County through Jianning County. ”

Li Su's words were also explained to Liu Bei while pointing to the map.

Thanks to Li Su, who was a successful person in his previous life, Xishuangbanna, Kunming Dali, and those winter tour groups that avoided the cold were not underreported. In addition, he is familiar with geography, so Li Su knows very well - the difficulty of transportation in the south and central places cannot simply look at the distance.

At the very least, although Yunnan is farther south and farther than Guizhou, the road from Sichuan to Yunnan is much easier than to Guizhou, mainly thanks to the Yangtze River shipping and the Tushui Valley. (Guizhou is roughly equivalent to Qiqi County)

To be precise, it is not too dangerous to go south from Yibin, an important town of the Yangtze River ferry in southern Sichuan, through Zhaotong and Qujing to Kunming. After arriving in Kunming, there are also relatively flat water and land passages leading to Baoshan, that is, Yongchang County in the late Han Dynasty.

Of course, in the northwest of Yunnan, such as Lijiang and Dali, as well as a bunch of places to see the snow-capped mountain scenic spots, as well as Panzhihua in southern Sichuan, don't think about it until there is no railway or plane. Those places belonged to Yuewang County in the late Han Dynasty.

Today, the household registration books of the four counties in Nanzhong show that the population distribution of the four counties is only 30,000 households in Qiqi County and Jianning County (near Kunming).

Jianning County claims to have 100,000 households, but they are mainly concentrated in the northern part of the plain near Qianwei County.

The most populous county is Yongchang County, which is the most remote, and it is known as 230,000 households when Emperor Lingdi! Nominally, it is second only to Shu County and Ba County in Yizhou. But in fact, because of the difference in statistical caliber, other counties only count the Han population, while Yongchang County also counts the barbarian population reported by the barbarians.

Since the establishment of Yongchang County for more than 90 years, the Han people have not actually formed a complete rule over it, and often there is no Taishou, but the imperial court posthumously recognizes the local barbarian chieftain to rule by himself, and the Han people only send a few people with long historical identities to actually serve as liaison officers.

Because the predecessor of Yongchang County was the Eastern Han Dynasty Ming, Zhang Erdi when the Ailao State, later the Ailao King was attached to the country, presented the atlas household registration, at that time claimed to have 77 tribes, 560,000 people, in the middle of the Ailao State also rebelled against the Han Dynasty, the Han Dynasty then ordered the Kunming people of Jianning County to crusade against the Ailao State to eliminate it again, and then after more than 90 years of reproduction reached the total number of 1.8 million Han barbarians.

(Note: "Kunming people" in the Eastern Han Dynasty was a title for a nation, not for place names.) )

……

Liu Bei looked at the map, and it took a long time to understand Li Su's priorities, and finally confirmed:

In this way, the core of this plan is to let the imperial court's henchmen directly and completely control Jianning County and the Kunming people, and then assimilate and control Yongchang County through Jianning County with commerce and education as the mainstay, supplemented by force.

As for Yuewang County and Qiqi County, they are mainly self-shepherds. However, Yongchang is still too far away from Shudi, even if we build it well, it will not be of great help to pacify the world, and it is difficult to transport materials there. ”

Li Su persuaded: "Now we have not asked the counties in Nanzhong to pay for grain, cloth and other bulk materials that are difficult to transport. Since the second emperor of Zhang and He, the requirements of the imperial court for Ailao State and Yongchang County are to pay tribute to jade agate, fragrant wood and jade.

In the future, if the development is successful, the barbarians can be taught to cultivate self-sufficiency, and get more grain to feed the local people, and the imperial court only needs to apportion and cultivate tea, pepper, pepper and other spices, or increase the tribute of special products, and do not need them to transport grain as taxes. These special products, like Jiaozhou incense medicine and pearls, can be traded with other states and counties to obtain money and grain to subsidize the country, and the soldiers have enough food. ”

The best way for Li Su to overcome the high cost of transportation was to replace the tribute and taxes paid to the imperial court with high-value and high-density treasures.

For example, according to the tax system of the Han ruled area, 1,000 stone of grain and rice should be paid, which is converted into a few buckets of jadeite agate, pearl agarwood, or dozens of stone of tea leaves and pepper, and the transportation cost will come down all of a sudden. On the Shu Body Poison Road and the Ancient Tea Horse Road, aren't these valuable goods that the merchants have gone through hardships?

As for the means of transportation, the locals can also be asked to pay tribute to the Dian horses, which are suitable for mountain transportation and walking. Although the Yunnan horse is not suitable for being a war horse, it has a very good carrying power and is very useful as a cart and carrying goods.

After being analyzed so deeply by Li Su, Liu Bei suddenly felt that Nanzhong was not a place without value of conquest.

After all, there is still trade between states, and if you have money, you can exchange it for grain and cloth. Originally, in history, the finances of Shu were all maintained by exporting Shu brocade. Now part of it is discounted with jade agate pearls, so as to reduce the pressure of the Shu brocade trade.

Liu Bei sighed: "It turns out that there are quite a lot of valuable properties in this place in Nanzhong...... Virtuous brother, it is better for you to concurrently serve as the governor of Nanzhong for a year or two, and Zhu Di is too guarded by Pang Xi to be controlled by you. Qianwei, Zhudi and other places of people's power, you can also organize the levy and distribution of conscription during the winter slack time, as long as you don't use the people too much.

The generals we brought with us were all northerners, and they were not familiar with how to submit to the barbarians. Did you say that it was not easy to deal with these Southern Barbarian Kings with the merits of Wuhuan Qiu Liju and Southern Xiongnu Yufuluo? ”

Li Su: "This ...... But I'm still the Taishou of Shu County. ”

Liu Bei: "The daily civil affairs of Shu County don't need a great sage like you to govern the place, just find a competent long history and assign the daily work." Besides, it's just that when you are slack in winter, Chengdu is fine, so you go to take charge of Nanzhong's affairs.

When the spring ploughing is time, I will let you come back. You will grasp the general situation, and when the time comes, you will be assigned a deputy governor to be in charge of the affairs of Nanzhong when you are in Chengdu, and hand over the affairs of Nanzhong to him to continue to carry out. Well...... Also, the governor of Nanzhong doesn't sound good, so let's call it the governor of the city, and take the meaning of attracting people from afar to surrender. ”

Liu Bei didn't give Li Su a chance to shirk at all, so he asked him to quickly get two deputies to serve as the deputy of Shu County and Nanzhong affairs, so that Li Su could control it remotely.

Alas, he had just taken the 1,500 fiefs that Liu Bei had sealed, and Li Su had a short hand, so he had to temporarily work for a while.