After the successful potato breeding, Chi Fei soon received a letter from his father-in-law, Ning Zhiyuan, full of joy and a letter of appointment from Jian Shuqi.

In his capacity as the general of the Northwest, Ning Zhiyuan appointed Jian Shuqi as the director of the Agricultural Affairs Department of the Northwest Household Department of Zhengliupin, and was fully responsible for the promotion and planting of potatoes in the northwest.

Strictly speaking, Ning Zhiyuan, as a courtier of Emperor Jing'an, was not qualified to appoint officials at will.

If it were changed before, this would be no different from rebellion, and it would be a great sin to raze the three tribes.

But Ning Zhiyuan, an old fox, naturally will not fall into the hands of others, and when he appoints officials, he will add the word "dai", which means temporary agency, and is not an informal appointment.

Moreover, he proudly claimed that he was loyal to Emperor Jing'an, not to the puppet dynasty controlled by the traitors of Shijun Shi's father.

Since his lord has been murdered by traitors, as an orphan of the loyal ministers of the first emperor, he naturally has the right to temporarily appoint in order to protect the territory of the first emperor.

These remarks soon flowed from the northwest to Jiangnan and other places, causing a lot of controversy among Shilin.

Although many people know that this is Ning Zhiyuan's sophistry, as long as he does not hold imperial examinations in the northwest or northeast for a day, and does not remove the word "dai" for a day when appointing officials, he really can't come up with hard evidence that he is a rebel and a thief.

After all, they are playing the flag of the orphans of the loyal ministers of the first emperor, and they have always regarded themselves as the general of the northwest who was appointed by the first emperor. Since he did not establish himself as a king, nor did he do anything other contrary to his courtiers, there really was nothing to attack in terms of officialdom morality.

There are even many scholars who miss the political and peaceful situation of the world during the reign of Emperor Jing'an, although they do not say it on the surface, they still admire this daring Northwest General in their hearts.

When Jian Shuqi received this letter of appointment, he was really surprised and delighted.

Once this is done, it will undoubtedly be a great merit and will be of great help to him in his future career.

At the same time, he also knew very well in his heart that if he could get this appointment letter, he would definitely have nothing to do with his friend Chi Fei helping him recommend him to the general.

Otherwise, he, an outsider who had just fled to Jiujiang not long ago, why could he suddenly become a household official of Zhengliupin, and he was still in charge of such an important matter.

Thinking of this, Jian Shuqi only felt a warm piece in his heart.

With his relationship with Chi Fei, saying thank you at this time seems to be raw.

He had decided that he must do this well no matter what, not only so that the soldiers and civilians in the northwest and northeast would no longer starve, but also so that the friends who recommended him would not lose face.

In order to have a deeper understanding of the cultivation of potatoes, Jian Shuqi not only personally cut all the remaining potatoes and planted them with the method of Chi Feijiao, but also stayed in the experimental field every day to observe and record the growth of seedlings, and refused to go back until dark.

A friend told him that when this batch of potatoes grows, he will take most of the seedlings to the northwest for a larger-scale promotion and planting as the director of the Agricultural Affairs Department of the Ministry of Households.

At that time, Ning Zhiyuan, the general who was far away in the northwest, would give him the greatest authority to act, so that he could do things with peace of mind without any hindrance.

The first batch of seedlings will be planted in the military cantonments controlled by the military, and only after the planting is successful, will it be spread to all the people in the northwest.

If it goes well, in just three to four years, potatoes will replace wheat and sorghum as the main food for the military and civilians in the northwest.

As for whether it is successful or not, it depends on himself.

When he thought of what he wanted to do in the future, Jian Shuqi was full of enthusiasm, and he devoted himself to potato breeding.

……………………

Only a few people know about the entry of potatoes, a brand-new crop, into Jiujiang, and even less about it in the capital.

At this time, the Great Wei court was in an eventful period.

It was not easy to suppress the momentum of the Hu people in the south advancing northward, and the Ning family in the northwest and northeast did not make much changes, and the situation should have stabilized.

But before the court officials could be happy for too long, a large-scale civil unrest broke out in the Jiangdong area, which made the already somewhat stretched Wei court exhausted again.

The civil unrest in Jiangdong this time is not as simple as the small-scale civil unrest caused by the continuous tax hikes in other places, because the riots in this time are more than 400,000 people.

The sheer number and scale of its population are far from being comparable to ordinary local civil unrest.

The source of this civil unrest lies in the terraced rice field method that was tried in the Jiangdong area.

Originally, in order to settle these displaced people who had fled from the south, the imperial court drove all the displaced people to the mountainous Jiangdong region, and then built terraced rice fields along the Weijiang River in the local area like Zhangzhou and Linqi in the northeast.

In order to survive, the displaced people had to dig ditches and make fields according to the orders of the government.

Originally, it was smooth at first, but as time passed, the problem of local governments stripping and intercepting the flow of materials and grain along the way became more and more serious.

So much so that in the later period, it was already a trivial matter for all the relief grain to be replaced with old grain, and even worse, it was mixed with a lot of sand.

As for the farming tools and other things, they are even more unusable goods, which cannot be used for clearing wasteland and farming, which makes the homeless people's hatred of the government deepen.

Officials at all levels in the capital are not fools, and naturally know what is wrong.

However, it was originally a common practice in officialdom to grow the hair of geese, and no one dared to say that they had not done anything similar, so everyone began to pretend to be deaf and dumb and did not know about it.

Finally, under the instigation of well-intentioned people, some of the displaced people who already had hatred for the government finally broke out, not only beating all the local officials to death, but also looting and killing people everywhere, and directly rebelled.

Among the displaced people, the leader was a young man named Duzin.

He not only took the lead in raising the anti-flag, but also proclaimed himself the king of Jiangdong, claiming to work with all those who followed him to create peace and seek wealth.

Under his leadership, almost most of the displaced people joined his ranks, and they became a large rebel army.

The self-proclaimed king of Jiangdong Doujin opened warehouses for the local people to release grain whenever he conquered a place, and robbed the local wealthy gentry and merchants on a large scale, and then distributed their land to the people who were willing to follow him.

As a result, more ordinary people, who could not afford the heavy taxes, were willing to join his army in the rebellion.

It didn't take long for this contingent of more than 200,000 displaced people to grow into a rebel army of more than 400,000 people

Since the imperial court used most of its troops to defend the Hu people in the south and the northwest army, the troops on the Jiangdong side were originally very weak. In addition, there are so many displaced people that the local health centers dare not stop them at all.

In just a few months, this rebel army, composed of half of the displaced people and half of the local people, occupied a number of prefectures and cities, almost half of Jiangdong, and had the potential to spark the prairie fire.

After the news reached the capital, the court was shaken.