Li Qi immediately went to the Wild Fox Ridge, holding back his desire to go to the vast grassland called Zhangbei in the future to go around. In autumn, the tribes of the steppe returned from the mountains and drove their cattle and sheep back to their winter pastures.

At this time, the climate was relatively humid and groundwater was abundant, and the vast grasslands of the Northland were dotted with lakes of all sizes. According to people who are familiar with the Northland, there is even a large swamp land with abundant water and grass in the northeast of the Tan Mountain (Dama Mountains). It is hard to imagine that the Guyuan area in later generations is now a swampy area.

He was eager to see what it was like.

Unfortunately, now this grassland has been included in the territory of the Khitan State, and the Khitans have built two small forts in the area of Zhangbei and west of the Guyuan swamp, one is called Yanzi City and the other is called Yangcheng. The Khitans stationed 500 cavalry in each fortress to manage this grassland, which was thousands of square kilometers.

A total of 1,000 Khitan cavalry is nothing, but Li Qi doesn't mean to provoke the Khitans now.

Immediately on the top of the mountain, the light wind blowing from the north is already chilling, the grassland has begun to turn yellow, and in a little more than a month, the first snow may fall.

Li Qi hopes that the heavier the snowfall, the better, and if there is a snow disaster, perhaps after the beginning of spring next year, many herdsmen will flee to the north of the mountain because of lack of food. Shanbei now has enough food to accommodate tens of thousands of families of refugees on the grasslands. After the construction of more than a dozen dams along the Yanghe and Sanggan rivers, there is now a lot of irrigated land in Shanbei, but there is a lack of sufficient labor for reclamation.

The wolf smoke rises, and the rivers and mountains look north

The dragon curled the horse, and the sword qi was like frost

The heart is like the water of the Yellow River......

Standing on the top of the mountain, he somehow remembered the song.

This song is sung with pride, but it's a pity that the current situation is ......

Let's continue to talk about it for a few more years!

He has enough confidence for the future, so he will be very patient.

After glancing at the herds of cattle and sheep on the northern grasslands, Li Qi turned his mount and galloped along the valley in the direction of Yangmen City without looking back......

He rarely stayed in Jinyang Palace, and a mess of political affairs, including the folds, were handed over to the prime minister Zhang Xian and the central gate official Lu Yan to deal with. For this reason, Prime Minister Zhang Xian would complain once every time he returned to Jinyang.

Li Qi insisted that a good leader must learn to be lazy, delegate some of the power in his hands to his subordinates, let them do things, and do not have to do everything himself. An emperor who spends his days dealing with various pieces of music is not a good monarch, and the more things he has to deal with, the more he does not trust his men at all.

Many emperors would have been blinded by this chaotic chores.

Except for military affairs, he generally doesn't bother much with the civil affairs of various localities, and the direction is pointed out to you, and if he doesn't do it well, it is a matter of the ability of some people.

As for military power, he is not ready to let go, and every time he goes to a place, he will inevitably inspect the barracks, and then find the generals to chat and enhance their feelings. If you stay in the palace all day and don't even know the generals under your command, then when something happens, who is the emperor of you? !

The steel production of Jindi is rising steadily, and the Wuzhou Iron Smelting Mill in Shanbei has also begun to produce iron, and the annual steel output of more than 5,000 tons will be put in the future generations, which is a joke for a small private steel factory, but now it has brought endless wealth to the Jinyang Army. Although the iron price of Jindi has dropped to about 20 wen per catty, the iron price is still above 30 wen per catty in the northern grasslands and the territories controlled by Guanzhong, Hebei, and even Luoyang.

Advanced productive forces are themselves equal to wealth.

Never underestimate the ingenuity of the craftsmen, although limited by knowledge and insight, their creativity has not been fully stimulated, but in terms of summary and improvement, after thousands of craftsmen diligently summarized and changed, some of the machinery produced in the workshop made Li Qi feel surprised after seeing it.

For example, a water-powered spinning machine has increased from the original 16 spindles to 120 spindles today. Looking at the long rows of spinning spindles in the workshop, Li Qi had the illusion of walking into the spinning workshop in his previous life......

Various primitive machine tools have been built for the machining of iron parts, although these were originally converted from woodworking tools.

And now what makes Li Qi most satisfied is the brainwashing of the garrison troops, which has greatly improved the combat effectiveness of those half-peasant and half-army tuntian troops. The main thing is morale, under the long-term unremitting propaganda of the "Jinyang Tingbao", those simple Tuntian troops and even the farmers in the area under their jurisdiction regard the southern army and the Khitan people as jackals who can only rob, and they are the biggest and evil enemies who destroy the current "good life".

In the past four years, the number of standing armies in Jindi, including Shanbei, has not increased, in fact, except for the cavalry army, almost all the infantry troops have to participate in labor regularly, and only gather for training during the slack time. The number of the standing army of the Jinyang Army has not decreased, mainly because the scale of the Praetorian Cavalry is getting larger and larger, and the number of the Praetorian Cavalry in the northern, eastern, and southern military camps around Jinyang has exceeded more than 15,000 people.

When he came to Yangmen City, Pei You, who stayed in Shanbei, had already rushed over from Wuzhou and stood outside the city to greet the holy driver.

In this place in Shanbei, in addition to Ulzhou, there is a county under the jurisdiction of a state, and the local civil affairs are under the management of the history and the county, and the largest number of people in each place is the Tuntian Guard, which is not under local management, so Pei Yue should be regarded as a light province after staying.

After being plundered by the Khitan for many years, the total population of Shanbei was only more than 12,000 households, and after the migration of Tuntian in recent years, the total population increased to more than 40,000 households, that is to say, three-quarters of the population belonged to the Tuntian military households.

Although there are more than 30,000 militiamen, Li Qi still feels unsafe.

"What is your Majesty's will like a minister?"

Li Qi was a little hungry, so he ate first when he returned to the city, but he didn't expect Pei You's house to be unable to hold his breath at all, and the time to eat was not peaceful, obviously he didn't expect that the emperor's lunch was a simple wheat juice mixed with noodles, although the wheat soup was filled with diced meat and eggs.

"Hmm...... Outside the three cities of Zhangyuan, Yangmen and Huairong Fort, another outer city should be built to strengthen the defense. Li Qi said, and then continued to bury his head in the mouth and eat noodles.

The cost of building the city was very large, especially the outer city, which was larger than the inner city, and the two walls were separated by at least one mile.

Pei Yue felt that although Huairong Fort and Yangmen City were smaller, Zhangyuan City was strong and tall enough, and he didn't expect the emperor to build a ring of outer cities, which was a bit of a waste.

"In the next ten years, we should still not have the upper hand over the Khitans, and I don't want to be threatened at the back door of my home when I go all out to deal with the south." Li Qi saw that he still didn't understand, and after swallowing a big mouthful of noodles, he explained again.