Since the snow broke on the night of the Lantern Festival, there has never been a single rain in Ximazhi. The West River, which normally began to flow in mid-February, now has a trickle of hairspring, meandering its way through the bed that is about to dry up. Sensitive farmers have noticed that this year, the green shoots spit out from the branches of the ridges and fields are less than one-third of those of previous years. Everyone's mood was extremely heavy. Those who have worked with the land for many years know from experience that this year's drought has clearly come earlier and more intense than in any other year. Alas, how are you going to spend this year......

Just when everyone was worried about the crops and harvest, a piece of news spread in the Sichuan Road, one by one, the command post Yamen had invited several masters of drilling wells from Duanzhou Mansion to dig new wells for several villages upstream; The yamen is not only digging wells for these villages, but also building weirs and ponds for them. It is said that the yamen will do this not only in the villages upstream, but also in the villages in the middle and lower reaches.

Quite a few people scoffed at the news. No way! Drilling? Repair the weir pond? How much does it cost? Will the public lords in the yamen do these things for ordinary dealers? What can they do except pay tribal taxes and draw conscription? Who will believe it?

However, this news was quickly confirmed by the local head of the Rizheng household, and the proclamation posted with the official seal also proved that it was not a rumor. The proclamation said that the yamen had indeed invited high-ranking people to come, and that it would soon be repaired along the banks of the West River, village by village. The proclamation also said that this time not only will wells be drilled and ponds will be built, but cofferdams will also be erected in the river in suitable places, and open channels will be dug to divert water from the west river. However, Li Zheng and the head of the household also told everyone that if the local coordination in terms of land occupation and labor cannot be achieved, then the project will inevitably be delayed......

How could it be that there was no result? As long as there is water, what is it if you suffer a little loss? What's more, even if you give up some land, the water conservancy is also on the edge of your own land, and won't you take advantage of the water for farming in the future? As for the laborers, there is nothing else, and working hard and suffering is the foundation of their lives, not to mention that this is still working hard for themselves!

Less than three days after the yamen's proclamation was posted, the lizheng everywhere flocked to Zhongzhai like crazy, and all the villages proposed that they could let out the land for the development of water conservancy, and there was absolutely no problem with labor, as long as the yamen could send the masters who explored feng shui to them first, they would be able to afford the wages of these masters. As long as the yamen asked them to dig wells to store water first, they not only did not let the yamen spend money, but they were even willing to pay another sum of money to the yamen.

Shang Cheng and his subordinates originally thought that the construction of "water conservancy projects" was a new term that had just begun to become popular in West Malaysia, and there would be some resistance, because the yamen really couldn't come up with the money for a while, and they couldn't do everything, but seeing this situation, they realized that their previous worries were unnecessary. Now they have to worry about another matter: how to arrange the order of the construction of each village. In the midst of the quarrel of the head of the household in the room, Jiang Shuban came up with a not-so-good idea for Shang Cheng and asked everyone to draw lots to decide. In desperation, Shang Cheng had no choice but to leave this matter that he was extremely scratching his head to God to decide.

The small note marked "One Two Three ......" was crumpled into a ball and thrown into a large bowl, and a dozen or twenty squires stretched out their hands with great piety and solemnity, as if they were not grasping paper balls, not the order of water conservancy, but deciding their own fate. Then some people looked up to the sky and laughed, some people hung their heads in despair, and some people were so annoyed that they sat on the muddy floor of the official room with their butts on their buttocks, stretching their sleeves and wiping their tears.

By mid-March, six villages had been visited by the experts who had explored the location of the ponds and the diversion routes. Everywhere they walked, without exception, there was a lively situation in full swing, digging soil, digging wells, smashing stones, building weirs, and digging ditches...... The farmers threw themselves into this big scene as if they were building a newlywed house for themselves, and even the seven or eight-year-old half-grown dolls were busy with the adults, who did not do rough work or heavy work, but they could always carry a mud bag and a clay basket with one hand. They are also contributing their modest efforts in the fight against drought......

But the problems also keep coming.

The first is the setting of the cofferdam. According to the plan of the "masters", the entire Xihe, including its two tributaries in the upper and middle reaches, will build four water storage cofferdams. However, this solution was unanimously rejected by the 11 villages downstream. If the drought is too severe, and the upstream and midstream hold the cofferdam and do not release water, what will they do downstream? No, you can't build a weir on the West River! Whoever wants to build the weir will cut off the lives of the people downstream, and don't want the farmers in more than a dozen villages downstream to live, then everyone will not live together!

Over the competition for water, which is more valuable than gold, the villages upstream and downstream have clashed fiercely and intensified, and finally there are signs of large-scale fighting......

Seeing that the good things were about to lead to unimaginable consequences, Jiang Shuban, who was in charge of the water conservancy project on the West River, did not dare to slack off and hurriedly notified Shang Cheng. Shang Cheng, who was attending the border army military meeting in Beizheng, received the news and immediately rode back to Zhongzhai to deal with it before the meeting was finished. He once again gathered the heads of the 19 villages and asked them to sit down and discuss a proper solution to the problem.

But he was soon disappointed, these squires were still polite to each other on weekdays, and they were polite in their words and deeds, but once their vital interests were involved, they would immediately expose the shallow side of the villagers. Dozens of people in silk and satin were red-faced in front of him, the commander, and two short-tempered guys even dug out old tents and grabbed them in public, and in the end even he, a seven-rank lieutenant, could not suppress them, so he could only call a group of soldiers to forcibly separate them.

Since the discussion could not reach a result, he had no choice but to use his official authority to solve the problem.

He decided that a total of four respected gentry from the 19 villages in the upper and lower reaches of the river would form a "working group" to coordinate the use of water in the West River, and that the water intake of each village and the height of the cofferdam on the West River would be decided by this working group through consultation, and the yamen would also send a clerical clerk to participate in and supervise the distribution plan of the group. Any resolution of these water allocation groups can be disagreed with and discussed, but until a new resolution is made, it must be strictly followed!

This method was barely accepted by these red-faced and thick-necked squires, and who couldn't think of a better way?

After dealing with this matter, Shang Cheng had to go back to Beizheng overnight to attend a military meeting, but he didn't even step on the stirrup, and even worse news came that Bai Jiaji's newly drilled fourteen-zhang well collapsed, and six people were buried in it, including a "master" apprentice who guided the well......

He had no choice but to go to Bai's house immediately to solve this sudden "engineering" accident.

The accident was caused by human factors, Bao Kan's father-in-law Liao Da thought that more people would do things faster, regardless of the dissuasion of the master's apprentices, even the well wall bracket was not built strong and sent people down the well, and the well face of two people was forced into five people by him, and as a result, a fool did not listen to the command and waved his head to dig indiscriminately, and the soil of the well wall was loosened, which caused the accident. Fortunately, not long after the construction of this well, there was an experienced craftsman at the scene, who commanded everyone to rescue in time so that no one died.

The first thing Shang Cheng did after he arrived was to have Liao Da whipped five times, Bao Kan wanted to say two good words for his father-in-law, but he was also scolded, and in the end, even Jiang Shuban couldn't get out of the way, and was swept away by Shang Cheng. This well is next to a large piece of good land under Liao Da's name, and it is the benefit of Bao Kan's "planning" for his father-in-law through Jiang Shuban......

After disposing of his subordinates and teaching Liao Da a lesson, Shang Cheng said to the apprentice who was in charge of surveying the location of the well: "Change the place and start another well!" ”

The master's apprentice was embarrassed and asked him for instructions, what should I do with this well?

Shang Cheng stared at the "engineer" he had invited with round eyes. Does this need to be asked? Keep digging, of course! Otherwise, what about the pond that has been built with stones not far away?

In addition to the big and small things that kept popping up in the process of building the water conservancy, Shangcheng also had to worry about the dozens of farmers who had to move due to the lack of water. Alas, although these people have to go over mountains and mountains for more than ten miles to get water for cooking, they are still unwilling to leave the land left by their ancestors, even if the government has promised them to build new houses and courtyards elsewhere, and will provide them with a year's rations, farm tools and large livestock for reclamation, these people are still unwilling to move. Even the command post said that as long as they were willing to move to other large villages, the yamen would provide a subsidy of 300 wen per mu of land according to the standard of 20 mu of land per person, and could also provide each family with a small interest-free loan for two years, so that they would have enough money to reclaim the wasteland, but they were still indifferent.

Jiang Shuban is also responsible for this matter. He ran back and forth several times, his legs ran in a thin circle, and his mouth was worn out and he didn't say anything about moving a family. He was annoyed, so he prepared to set fire to the courtyards and houses of these people, and there was no place to live, to see if they could move.

Fortunately, this time Jiang Shuban had a lot of thoughts, first told Shang Cheng all the difficulties in his official affairs, and then carefully proposed his "good method". He has been scolded by Shang Cheng many times, and now he knows Shang Cheng's temper, and when he encounters a tricky matter that is difficult for him to decide, he must first talk to Shang Cheng and say goodbye, and he will no longer deal with it without authorization as before.

As he expected, the commander did not agree with his approach. The next day, Shang Chengcheng went with him to the small villages scattered in the hilly terrain of the middle and upper reaches of the West River.

It was the first time that Jiang Shuban and Shang Cheng had done such an official job. What surprised him was that Shang Cheng, a seven-rank captain of the imperial court, and a dignified commander of Xima, had no saft at all in front of these villagers who had not rubbed all the mud on their hands. Shang Cheng sat on the broken wooden bench where the farmers creaked, not caring that the nurses rubbed their noses on his clothes, just like visiting relatives to talk about family life, while drinking the muddy soup that the farmers gave him, while listening to the farmers complaining to him, and still persuading these people bitterly......

What surprised Jiang Shuban even more was that Shang Cheng didn't show the prestige of being an official at all, neither fiercely threatened these croppers, nor promised them heavy profits to lure them, he just repeated the words that Jiang Shuban had repeated countless times in the way of a farmer, but these people really listened to him, they walked on the front foot, and these people began to pack up and move on the back foot......

Why do the same words, in different words, end up with very different results?

For this problem, Jiang Shuban was puzzled......