Three years ago, Ning Yabai and Ning Yafeng's family affair was finally decided.

Ning Yabai and Ning Yafeng's family affairs were arranged by Ning Zhiyuan personally, Ning Yabai married the daughter of Zhaowu General Li Dingbei, and Ning Yafeng married the daughter of An Yuan's general Xiao Zhijian, both of whom were Ning Zhiyuan's most trusted and valued confidants.

The marriage between these two Tsubaki has a somewhat political flavor of marriage.

Ning Yabai and Ning Yafeng are not too young, and the three families want to finish their family affairs as soon as possible, so as to give birth to the next generation as soon as possible.

Since both the man and the woman are healthy and of moderate age, not long after Ning Yabai and Ning Yafeng got married, their wives soon became pregnant one after another, and after they became pregnant in October, they gave birth to sons.

As soon as these two grandsons were born, the third generation of the Ning family was completely stable.

Seeing this result, the three families of Ning, Li and Xiao were very happy, and the Yao family, who had been upgraded to grandmother, held their two little grandsons all day long and did not let go.

As Ning Zhiyuan said privately to his wife Yao, his daughter can be pampered in the Ning family. As long as they are not hostile families, they are even allowed to choose their own husbands, but not sons.

Because the son wants to inherit the family business, he must not only be strictly disciplined from an early age, but also must choose a candidate who is beneficial to the family in terms of family affairs.

In fact, before he defected from the imperial court, Ning Zhiyuan originally had other arrangements for the family affairs of his two sons, and he was in the picture with the other two families in the capital.

But now that he is independent of the northwest, Ning Zhiyuan naturally pays more attention to the loyalty of his subordinates, especially the generals of the military.

Li Dingbei and Xiao Zhijian are both henchmen and generals cultivated and promoted by Ning Zhiyuan, even if everyone wants to oppose him, the two of them will firmly follow the Ning family to advance and retreat, and their loyalty is beyond doubt.

Ning Zhiyuan deliberately asked his two sons to marry the daughters of Li Dingbei and Xiao Zhijian respectively, not only to express to the two henchmen that he would share weal and woe with them.

It is even more important to take this opportunity to reassure the hearts of other generals, saying that the Ning family is by no means the one who crosses the bridge and draws the board, unloads the mill and kills the donkey.

The reason why he wanted to do this was because Ning Zhiyuan saw it very clearly, and the general trend of the world had indeed tilted towards the Ning family.

Let's not mention that the Great Wei court, under the governance of An Guogong, was defeated in both military and political affairs.

Not only was the entire southern region occupied by the Hu people, but other places were also full of civil unrest and complaints because of the continuous tax increases.

On the other hand, the northwest and northeast, which have rebelled from the imperial court, are thriving and all industries are thriving, forming a stark contrast.

Especially in Jiujiang Mansion in the northeast, under the governance of the little son-in-law Chi Fei, it is simply fat.

Thinking of being forced by him to be the little son-in-law of the Jiujiang prefect, Ning Zhiyuan was really angry and funny.

Others want to be an official with their heads sharpened in every possible way, but this kid really doesn't want to be an official, and he looks like a hermit.

Since taking office as the prefect of Jiujiang three years ago and being arrested and imprisoned by the local anti-corruption society for corruption and bribery, Ning Zhiyuan has not been able to find a suitable successor for a while.

Jiujiang is a very important place, not only as a major salt-producing area, but also as an important port to the sea, on which maritime trade business is completely dependent.

It can be said that most of the money and grain in the entire northwest and even the northeast come from Jiujiang, and the importance of this place to the Ning family is as crucial as Jiangnan's position in the Great Wei.

Because Jiujiang is so important, it must be taken over by someone who can trust and have the ability to govern.

Although there is no shortage of military generals in the northwest, there are too few capable civilian officials.

Ning Zhiyuan looked around at the people below and found that except for his confidant Zhang Wenxuan, there was no one who was suitable for this important task.

But Zhang Wenxuan wanted to assist him in handling various military and government affairs, and Ning Zhiyuan really didn't want to transfer him to Jiujiang, lest he couldn't cope with it on his side.

After thinking about it for a while, Ning Zhiyuan decided to let his little son-in-law Chi Fei try.

First, he is a family member who can be completely trusted, and secondly, the workshop is already on track, the production of muskets has basically stabilized, and the little son-in-law is now almost idle.

Ning Zhiyuan thought, anyway, that kid is idle and idle, so it's better to let him try to govern Jiujiang.

At that time, as soon as Ning Zhiyuan thought of this, he immediately waved his hand and sent the letter of appointment to Jiujiang, and forcibly promoted his little son-in-law to the position of the prefect of Jiujiang.

If it were anyone else, he would have been overjoyed and overjoyed to receive this appointment.

This kid was fine, and immediately wrote to him to cry that he was not the prefect, and asked him to quickly take back his life.

Ning Zhiyuan was so angry that he replied directly to a letter, with one sentence on it: Shut up and do a good job for Lao Tzu.

Chi Fei looked at the old man's letter full of gangsterism, and he really wanted to cry without tears, so he could only harden his head and become the prefect of Jiujiang.

Now that three years have passed, Ning Zhiyuan is once again extremely proud of his original decision.

In order to make business activities more free and easier, the little son-in-law greatly lowered the threshold for doing business in Jiujiang, and even the business of buying and selling illegal salt, which would be killed in the territory of the Great Wei, became an ordinary business.

As a result, those salt merchants in the south of the Yangtze River came to Jiujiang to buy a large amount of private salt. This led to the fact that Jiujiang's white salt occupied nearly seventy percent of the private salt market in such a short period of time.

Due to the abundant quantity, cheap price and high quality of white salt produced in Jiujiang, many salt merchants were reluctant to take the risk of opening their own salt factories to make private salt, and instead bought large quantities from Jiujiang.

Driven by these salt merchants, more and more merchants began to come to Jiujiang to do business.

Coupled with the fact that customs duties are completely exempt here, and there is a clean and honest society supervising it at all times, local officials naturally dare not arbitrarily exploit merchants as before.

The business environment is so good that it cannot be compared with any place in the Great Wei Dynasty.

Such a superior business environment has made many businessmen who have come to Jiujiang to do business in amazement and begin to forget to return.

As long as the businessmen have been here, they will almost always become regular visitors here in the future. Not only do I often come here for business, but I also recommend it to other colleagues.

After this back and forth, Jiujiang's reputation soon spread throughout the Central Plains, attracting countless merchants to patronize.

Jiujiang Port has become the largest port in the Far East in just three years, which is not inferior to several large ports in the south of the Yangtze River.

Although Jiujiang Port does not charge any tariffs, the land in the port has long been bought by their Ning family.

The younger son-in-law built a lot of construction on it, built various shops and warehouses and rented them out to all the merchants who came to Jiujiang to do business, and even the entire Jiujiang market was also their Ning family's property.

Now the rent alone has made the Ning family earn a lot of money.

Due to the prosperity of Jiujiang's commerce, the local people's livelihood and economy have also risen.

As long as the local people are willing to work, they can find work at will, and the salary is not low.

This makes more and more people from other places come here to make a living, and now Jiujiang is the most prosperous place in the northwest and even in the northeast.

To make such an achievement in just three years not only surprised many people, but even Ning Zhiyuan, who appointed his little son-in-law as the prefect of Jiujiang, was surprised and delighted.

He couldn't help but sigh to his wife Yao: Ah Zhen, this kid is really a genius, as if there is nothing in the world that he can't do.

In addition to the increasing prosperity of Jiujiang, in Zhangzhou and Linqi, the terraced fields that were built to feed the hundreds of thousands of displaced people are now basically mature.

At the beginning, because these terraced fields were newly opened up fields, the grain produced was indeed not much, and the Northwest Army had to subsidize a large amount of grain every year to feed so many displaced people.

But the situation has slowly improved as the fields have become more and more ripe.

Especially this year, with good weather and good weather, these terraces are expected to be self-sufficient.

In addition to the people's livelihood and economy gradually entering the right track, in the military aspect, Ning Zhiyuan has already conscripted a total of 250,000 soldiers in the northwest and northeast according to the original plan.

Although grain and grass are still quite tight, they can be maintained for the time being through local land endowments and overseas grain purchases.

This conscription is one thing, what really makes Ning Zhiyuan more confident is that the little son-in-law's musket workshop can now produce more than 100 muskets every month.

Now Ning Zhiyuan has a musket brigade of about 4,000 people.

The spectacular scene of muskets firing in unison and being invincible made Ning Zhiyuan excited every time he thought about it.

Ning Zhiyuan knew very well that the most important thing now was not to attack the city everywhere and seize the land, but to seize the time to train troops and make more muskets, and what the Ning family needed most now was not territory, but time.

()