During the lunch break, Chen Sanhe, the leader of the four groups, walked up to the group members with a multigrain steamed bun in his left hand and a bowl full of white porridge in his right hand and said, "I just took a look, and the progress of the other groups is a little worse than ours, but not much." As long as everyone works hard in the afternoon, our group should be able to get the top two, and then we will be rewarded by the officials. ”

When the twenty team members heard this, they were immediately excited.

Because as long as the top two groups are ranked, each person can get ten cents, plus a meat steamed bun.

Although this money is not much, it is already a very generous reward for them who are penniless and have no income.

What's even more rare is that there is also a meat steamed bun, and they have all forgotten how long it has been since they have eaten meat.

This official reward is settled every three days, even if you can't get it this time, you can fight for it again after three days.

As long as no one in the group is lazy, basically every group has a chance.

Because each group is not only equal in number, but also all of them are young and strong of the same age, if a group fails to get a reward once, it can only mean that the people in the group are not diligent, and no one can blame it.

Every time I get the top two two groups, it's too beautiful, I take the money and meat steamed buns sent by the officials in front of everyone, and sometimes the officials will encourage me, which is very eye-catching.

Compared to the reward once every three days, what really made all the displaced people feel extremely excited was the matter of dividing the fields.

The government has made it clear that the ditches they are digging now are for the purpose of diverting water inland, and then cultivating fields in the mountains to store water.

The fields created in the mountains were called terraces, and they were specially used for cultivation by these displaced people.

When the terraces are completed, each household will be given a different number of mountain fields according to the size of the family.

As long as five years of cultivation are completed, the mountain field will return to the head of the household.

It's just that in the next five years, this mountain field can only be rented and not sold, and after five years, it can be sold at will.

What's even more surprising is that because the terraces are built on the hills, farmers need to carry water to irrigate, and they are more difficult to cultivate than ordinary flat fields. Therefore, in order to be considerate of mountain farmers, the government stipulated that the mountain field tax was slightly lower than that of ordinary fields, and the higher the mountain field, the lower the tax.

The terraced fields located higher on the mountain are generally only two-thirds or even half of the ordinary fields.

The news made hundreds of thousands of displaced people very excited, and many could not help but cry with joy.

This means that the Northwest Army really intends to give them a way to live, and will accept them as subjects under their rule.

For the hundreds of thousands of displaced people who were originally full of despair and almost waiting for death, this is simply a blessing from heaven, which is why they are so excited.

Next, the Northwest Army kept its promise, divided them into two groups and guided them to Zhangzhou and Linqi, the two prefectures closest to the Wujiang River, and then built many temporary grass huts by the river to house them, and gave soup twice a day.

Not long after, the local government sent a large number of craftsmen to guide the displaced people to dig canals to divert water from the river.

The thought that the canal was intended to be used to divert water from the terraced fields that would be distributed to them in the future made many displaced people feel full of strength and longed to dig it in one day.

In this way, more than 100,000 displaced people began a mighty campaign to dig ditches and build fields.

Since there are men and women, old and young, Mr. Zhang Wenxuan suggested that gravity work such as digging ditches and breaking ground should be completed by young people between the ages of 18 and 40, while the rest of the old and weak women and children should be responsible for lighter tasks such as cooking and delivering food, repairing clothes and straw sandals, and carrying materials. Let everyone do their part and do their best.

In order to increase the enthusiasm of the displaced people, Chi Fei suggested to his father-in-law that it would be best to divide the young Zhuang who were responsible for digging the ditch into several groups, with about 20 people in each group, and each selected one person as the team leader, who was responsible for supervising and leading the team members to work.

Each of the twenty groups is then divided into a large group, and one person is elected as the leader of the group.

Once every three days, the group leader selects the two teams that do the best and fastest, and then awards them.

The current reward is 15 yuan for the group leader for the time being, and 10 yuan for each of the other team members, plus a meat steamed bun.

In addition, in order to prevent the leader from being elected for personal gain, the group leader will be re-elected once a month, and the leaders of each group will vote for the election.

Ning Zhiyuan felt that this method was good, so he ordered his subordinates to vigorously promote it.

It worked wonders, and now every group is working so hard that no one dares to be lazy.

Because once someone is lazy, the rest of the group will definitely be dissatisfied with them and force the other party to dare not relax anymore.

This method is far better than asking officers and soldiers to force the homeless people to work all day with whips, not only is it more efficient, but the soldiers in charge of supervision do not need so many manpower, which is really a double win.

Compared with cultivating fields in the mountains, the work of digging ditches to divert water is obviously more important.

Because it won't be long before winter arrives, and once the weather gets cold, the soil will become very hard, and it will be even harder to dig at that time.

As long as the canal is dug first, the mountain can be burned to make the fields.

It's a lot of work, but it's much easier than digging a ditch, and you can do it slowly even in winter.

Chi Fei's plan was to build the canals and terraces before spring came, just in time for spring sowing.

If all goes well, we may be able to harvest the next autumn.

However, Chi Fei also knows that the harvest of the newly opened fields is very low, and the yield will only slowly increase after the cultivation is completed.

Therefore, he does not expect a high harvest from the terraces next year, as long as the displaced people are enough to support themselves.

Although these hundreds of thousands of displaced people are basically under the jurisdiction of the Northwest Military Department, local officials are not idle.

In order to dig the canal as soon as possible, officials from Zhangzhou and Linqi gathered the villagers who were gradually entering the slack period after the autumn harvest to dig the ditch together.

The villagers did not work for nothing, and each person could get ten cents a day plus a simple lunch.

Although the money is not much, it is also an additional income for the villagers who have nothing to do during the slack period.

Moreover, the government also packs Chinese food, which can save a meal for the family, so why not. So a large number of villagers joined the team of digging ditches.

In order to prevent the villagers from clashing with the displaced people, the government deliberately separated them and dug different sections of the road.

Due to the large number of villagers, in order to coordinate the work of digging ditches, local officials at all levels were also busy, and none of them were idle.

As for other officials in Yishan, Qianhe, Huaixing, Jinjiang, and other places, they are actively responding to the orders of the northwest authorities, employing all the local craftsmen and a large number of young people to go to Zhangzhou and Linqi to build thatched huts for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people for the winter.

This task is also very important, and if the huts for the displaced people are not built before the onset of winter, it is likely that a large number of displaced people will freeze to death.

In order to speed up the progress of building houses, Ning Zhiyuan also specially allocated 20,000 soldiers to cut down trees on several hills where they were preparing to build terraces, which were used as materials for craftsmen to build thatched houses.

Anyway, these mountains are ready to be burned to make fields, and if you don't cut down the trees now, they will be burned in vain, so it's better to make the best use of them now.

It can be said that the entire northeast region is now engaged in this huge campaign of digging ditches and cultivating fields, which has become the top priority today.

On the other hand, in addition to digging ditches and cultivating fields, the northwest authorities have another equally important thing to do, that is, to strengthen the defense of the northwest border passes.

Because during the period before winter every year, the Hu people almost take the opportunity to enter the grass valley.

Therefore, at this time of year, it is the time when the Northwest Army is most heavily guarded.

This year is no exception, Ning Zhiyuan handed over the defense and reclamation tasks of the Northeast to his henchman Li Dingbei, his two sons Ning Yabai and Ning Yafeng, and his youngest son-in-law Chi Fei, and then returned to the Northwest to support the overall situation.

After all, the northwest is where their foundation lies, and no matter what, there can be no mistakes.

Since there was no aid from the imperial court in the northwest, everything could only be relied on by itself.

Therefore, this time, Ning Zhiyuan paid more attention to the defense work in the northwest than in any previous year, not only did he not even return home, stayed in the northwest camp all day, and always paid attention to the situation at the border passes, but also became stricter in the training of soldiers, so that the whole army must maintain the strongest combat effectiveness.

However, as time passed, and soon two months passed, the Hu cavalry who came to fight the grass valley did not appear once, and it was a little strangely calm.

That afternoon, Mr. Zhang Wenxuan, who was a staff member, came to report a strange incident to Ning Zhiyuan.

This incident is related to the temporary border market located near the border gate.

At the beginning, after Chi Fei proposed to his father-in-law Ning Zhiyuan to conduct border trade with the Hu people, Ning Zhiyuan did not immediately agree, because there was nothing to trade at that time.

It was not until Chi Fei's salt-making method in Jiujiang was successful that Ning Zhiyuan decided to establish this temporary border trade market near the border pass.

He wanted to use the white salt made from Jiujiang to exchange cattle and sheep and other livestock with the Hu people to alleviate the shortage of military food in the northwest.

Later, with the efforts of Zhao Yaoguang and others, after the white salt was successfully sold to those salt merchants in the south of the Yangtze River, Chi Fei bought a large number of cloth, tea, spices, small handicrafts and other daily necessities in the local area with the money from selling salt, and added them to the list of transactions.

In addition to daily necessities such as salt cloth tea, the Hu people actually wanted more ironware made by the Han people.

However, the northwest authorities have extremely strict control over iron tools, and they will never sell them to the Hu people.

Because the Hu people can neither mine nor smelt iron, many of the bows and arrows used by the Hu cavalry are made of animal bones, and many herdsmen do not even have iron pots at home, which shows how short of iron the Hu people are.

If you sell iron tools to the Hu people, it is equivalent to helping them make weapons against themselves.

Therefore, in the Northwest for many years, it was strictly forbidden for anyone to sell iron to the Hu people, and once found, they would be punished with capital punishment.

The iron tools of the Han people are equivalent to the war horses of the Hu people, both of which are important war materials. Therefore, neither of these two things will be easily sold to the other.

Although it was impossible to buy iron tools, after the establishment of this temporary border trade market, it was still very popular with the Hu people, and soon spread among the tribes, and gradually more and more Hu people began to come here to trade with the Northwest Army.

Through this border trade market, the Northwest Army exchanged a lot of cattle and sheep, alleviating the shortage of some military rations.

The strange thing mentioned by Mr. Zhang Wenxuan happened in the border trade market.

He found that in the past few months, more and more Hu herdsmen have driven a large number of cattle and sheep to trade with the Northwest Army. And all of them look like they're in a hurry to make a move.

In addition to the traditional salt, cloth, and tea, many herders also asked to exchange hard currency such as gold and silver, which is even more unusual.

This is not to say that the Hu people are completely uninterested in hard currencies such as gold and silver, but such items often require additional means of trading in order to exchange for other desired items.

However, the market that can be traded outside the Sai is extremely limited, and ordinary Hu herders usually don't want to go so far to change things so troublesomely, so they are used to bartering. Cattle and sheep, furs, herbs and other specialties were directly used to exchange salt, cloth, tea and other daily necessities with the Northwest Army.

Nowadays, not only are there so many Hu people eager to sell their cattle and sheep, but there are also so many people who want to exchange them for hard currency such as gold and silver, which is indeed very suspicious.

After listening to Zhang Wenxuan's report, Ning Zhiyuan also felt that something was wrong, so he asked, "Old Zhang, what do you think of this matter?" ”

Zhang Wenxuan stroked his beard and said, "It's obviously about to enter winter, and it's the time when food is tight."

At this time, the Hu people not only did not step up the stockpiling of grain, but sold a large number of livestock on which they depended.

The subordinates thought about it for a long time and felt that there was only one possibility for the Hu people to do this, that is, there were Hu people who were ready to leave here. ”

"You say the Hu people are ready to leave? How is this possible? Hearing this conclusion, Ning Zhiyuan was very surprised.

The Hu people have been entrenched in the north for hundreds of years, and this is their root, how can they just leave?

Zhang Wenxuan replied: "Maybe the subordinates are a little biased, but the subordinates think that at least some of the Hu people are ready to move.

As far as his subordinates know, the Hu people are divided into multiple tribes, and they are not of the same language and race as the Han people.

The old man guessed that there should be several tribes preparing to leave the Saiwai, and the journey was long. It would be extremely inconvenient to go on the road with the livestock, so there were a large number of Hu people who had to sell their livestock. ”

"If that's the case, then it's reasonable, but ...... these Hu people want to go" Speaking of this, Ning Zhiyuan suddenly froze, and then looked at Zhang Wenxuan with a big change in his face.

Zhang Wenxuan knew that he had already figured it out, and said with a solemn expression: "Yes, lord, the old man guesses that these Hu people are preparing to move from the southwest plateau to the interior of Great Wei, and they are obviously preparing to settle there. ”

Ning Zhiyuan stood up suddenly, and then walked to the front of the map and stared at the southwest direction, especially the two provinces of Yannan and Zhenyuan, which were given up by An Guogong and others.

The longer he looked at it, the more serious his expression became, and finally his whole face even turned blue.

Zhang Wenxuan walked up to him and also looked at the map and said, "Lord, if the old man's guess is correct, this is a great catastrophe that has never been seen since the founding of the Great Wei Dynasty.

Obviously, this time the Hu people were not willing to run away after grabbing, but wanted to really swallow the inland of the Wei Dynasty.

Once the Hu people gain a foothold in Yannan and Zhenyuan, the entire southwest and even the south will become a hell on earth for millions of Han Chinese. ”

Ning Zhiyuan gritted his teeth and said fiercely: "I really want to see how Old Thief Xie will react after knowing the news!" ”