When the fleet set out from Xiapi, both Guo Er and Lü Fang noticed the difference between this place and the Song Kingdom.

From Taoqiu to Xiapi Surabaya, the west is the Song Dynasty, and the east is Qi, Lu, Teng and other countries. In this section of the river, every dozen miles of ships, there will be a city to provide supplies. However, as soon as the ships passed Xiapi, there were immediately fewer cities to be seen along the way.

In their eyes, what they saw the most was only the supply depot specially built by the merchants of the Song Kingdom. Most of these depots were rudimentary, with a single pier behind them and a simple fortification on the periphery of the market.

These depots were not intended to protect against invasion by other countries, but only against people and wild beasts. Looking out from these supply stations, fertile fields are beginning to open up, and in the distance, even more humble villages can be seen. However, in this area where even the city is not perfect, it is naturally impossible to have too many large villages.

This is only the area that is relatively close to the Song Kingdom itself, and is on the main waterway of the Song Kingdom, and it is so desolate. Before Guo Er and Lu Fang had reached the farther south, they had a general impression of the desolation of the south.

When the fleet sailed to Fuling Lake, they finally saw a real city in the southern part of Huaishui - Huaiyin. This city was originally owned by the Chu State, and it was the first city conquered by the Song army in the Song-Chu War.

When they arrived in this city, the whole fleet began to stop, because there were many people in the whole fleet who had bought the land here and wanted to develop it. Among them, Gao Yu is included.

Seeing this city that is obviously different from the Song Kingdom, Gao Yu is not surprised. He was originally a Qi person, and there are many differences between Qi and Song countries, which are geographically close, not to mention Chu State, a country that is "Southern Barbarian" in the eyes of the Central Plains?

The place where Gao Yu settled down was in the south of Huaiyin City, ten miles away from the city, with an area of nearly 50 hectares. When he arrived at this land, his clan had already arrived first, and there were officials from the Song State who assisted him.

Gao Yu's idea is to build a new family foundation on this land, so he will naturally not be stingy. He hired excellent Mo craftsmen from Taoqiu City to help him design the entire family's living place. Such a place of residence is extremely important for defense, and in order to achieve the desired effect, many building materials even need to be transported from the Song Dynasty itself.

In addition to the construction of houses, Gao Yu also attaches great importance to the development of land. Because the Song State already had a relatively primitive industry, coupled with Gao Yu's status in Taoqiu, he could easily obtain a large number of iron tools to facilitate the development of land.

These pristine lands are full of tall trees. These trees are collectively called "Yang" by the Yi people, which is also the origin of Yangzhou's name.

If you want to open up these territories, you first need to eradicate all these tall trees. Even with the most advanced iron tools, it is not easy to clean them quickly. In particular, the invisible root system in the ground can only be planted smoothly if it is completely eradicated, which is undoubtedly an extremely difficult task.

Speaking of which, in earlier times, the Chinese ancestors pioneered the land, and they also came step by step. Like Xiong Yi, the ancestor of the Chu people, he was in the land of Jianghan in the south back then, and the road was blue to enlighten the mountains and forests. Gao Yu, who knows the history, personally repeated the arduous entrepreneurship of the ancestors, so that he deeply knows how amazing the ancestors who founded the family back then!

From time to time, he used the examples of his ancestors to encourage the clansmen, which made the Gao clansmen burst out with unprecedented enthusiasm, and soon opened up a small piece of land. In this new land, the types of land needed are naturally different depending on what needs to be planted.

When wheat was greatly developed in the Song Kingdom, such a primitive crop as millet had gradually withdrawn from the stage of history. In this southern land, wheat can be grown, but because of the climate and the land itself, the yield is not higher than that in the north. In this way, the entire southern Yangzhou land has really become the middle and lower ninth class land in Kyushu. If such a barren land is used, it will naturally greatly hit the enthusiasm of the Song people to open up Yangzhou, and the high-level leaders of the Song State naturally do not want to see this kind of thing happen.

Therefore, they had peasant disciples give urgent training to officials and teach them extensively how to grow rice.

Rice is not only not found in the Qi country where the Gao family was located, but even in the current Song country, it is also an extremely rare existence! Therefore, this new crop, its specific appearance, cultivation methods, and the required growth environment, the Gao clan people do not even understand.

However, out of trust in the Song State, Gao Yu only planted a small part of the newly reclaimed land with wheat and vegetables, and transformed the remaining territory into paddy fields for rice cultivation in full accordance with the teachings of the Song officials.

Because of such a traverser as Dai Yan, the Song Kingdom was soon able to span thousands of years of history and directly master the more mature rice planting technology.

The first step in rice cultivation is to grow it warmly. That is, the rice seeds are foamed with cold water, and then placed in a mild environment to wait for the seeds to germinate. In this mild environment, the incubator is naturally the most suitable; However, if you don't have this kind of equipment, it is also a good way to wrap the seeds directly on your body and rely on human body temperature to warm the seeds. Before the crossing, Dai Yan had seen farmers in the countryside using this method to warm crops.

When the warm planting is completed and the seeds germinate, these germinated seeds can be sprinkled on a special seedbed to cultivate seedlings. In the seedbed, dense seedlings can be cultivated. At this time, rice is the most vulnerable, and only by cultivating it intensively can a large number of seedlings be obtained.

When the rice seedlings grow to a certain extent, the area where the seedlings grow densely such as the seedbed is not suitable for the growth of the seedlings. At this time, it is necessary to officially transplant the seedlings into the paddy field, which is also commonly known as "transplanting".

When the transplanting is complete, the rice can be allowed to grow. At this time, it should be noted that, similar to the cultivation of other crops, it is necessary to control insects, weeds, drought and fertilization. Because rice is extremely dependent on water for growth, drought prevention is extremely important for rice.

When the rice blooms and finally matures and bears fruit, the planting of rice in one season is considered complete. The rest of the matter is the specific harvest of rice. In later generations, rice was threshed by a rice threshing machine after harvesting, so that rice was obtained, and then rice was processed by a rice clamping machine, so that the rice needed by people could be obtained.

In the Warring States Period, where there was a lack of machines, Dai Yan was naturally able to rely on less manpower and complete the work with higher efficiency. Like rice threshing, there is no rice threshing machine, in fact, you only need to spread the harvested rice on the threshing floor, and then use a cow to lead an ordinary stone stone to roll the rice, and the threshing of rice can be completed.

Of course, the rice obtained in this way must contain a lot of impurities. Removing these impurities is actually very simple, directly raise the rice, and use the wind that is prevalent in nature to remove most of the impurities!

As for turning rice into rice, it involves a primitive process called rice cooking. The tool of rice is very simple, like a medicine jar, consisting of a mallet and a container, with the mallet constantly hammering the rice in the container, you can smash the husk of the rice to form rice bran, and the remaining part is rice.

Something like rice bran can be used as animal feed, and in a disaster year, it can actually be eaten. It is said that in later generations, when the hybrid rice of the Celestial Empire had not yet been bred on a large scale and the grain problem had not been finally solved, rice bran was even a more important grain in rural areas.

However, in this era, if the rice provided by Dai Yan was fully used, plus the rice obtained by the farmers who continued to experiment and mature, it would definitely be able to alleviate people's hunger problems in a large way. In this era, wheat is a crop that is already considered to have a high yield. However, compared with rice, the yield of wheat is completely insufficient!

Dai Yan knows that in the tropical areas of the south near the equator, rice can be harvested three times in one season! Even if it is placed in the immature Yangzhou area, there is no problem at all if the rice is harvested twice a year. Compared to it, the long breeding of wheat once a year is a joke.

In the cultivation of rice, most of the steps are done by hand, but this does not mean that it is inefficient. In fact, the few steps of rice cultivation provided by Dai Yan are almost equivalent to the level of the first half of the 20th century, except for the quality of the seeds themselves, which cannot be quickly broken through.

In the first half of the 20th century, even though the Celestial Empire was in frequent wars, it was able to raise a population of more than 400 million!

Some people believe that the Celestial Empire was able to support such a population because of the introduction of crops such as corn and sweet potatoes from the Qing Dynasty onwards. However, it is an obvious fact that in the land of the Celestial Empire, whether it is corn, or sweet potatoes, potatoes and the like, the planting rate is extremely low!

What really supports hundreds of millions of people is actually relying on rice. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, because of the extensive development of the Huguang area, the yield of rice has increased steadily, which is the real reason for supporting hundreds of millions of people! Even in the second half of the 20th century, it was still rice that solved the problem of hunger in the Celestial Empire!

Dai Yan does not expect that the rice in Yangzhou will be able to support hundreds of millions of people in the future. As long as it can raise tens of millions of people in today's Warring States Era, it will definitely be a superpower in the whole world. It can be said that rice can fully support an empire, and it is not an exaggeration how much Dai Yan attaches importance to it!