Not to mention Gao Yu's development of land in Huaiyin, when a large number of nobles and businessmen disembarked from Huaiyin and chose to build new homes here, Guo Er and Lu Fang were a little hesitant.

According to their original intention, they naturally wanted to enclose hundreds of acres of land in the south to build their own homes. In their eyes, Huaiyin, the closest city to the Song Dynasty, is undoubtedly the best place.

And this best place was contested by almost the entire Song nobles and merchants. When they found the officials in Huaiyin and applied for the 100 acres of land, it was extremely difficult for them to do so.

Any commoner of the Song Kingdom, if necessary, could apply for a hundred acres of land in the south. This was a decree issued by Song Jun himself, and the Huaiyin officials naturally did not dare to disobey. However, the specific implementation of a decree can naturally be grasped by officials.

Guo Er and Lu Fang, even if they were small people at the lowest level in the Song Kingdom, could indeed get hundreds of acres of land in Huaiyin. However, these fields are either extremely far away from Huaiyin City, or some of the most barren land far from water sources. Such a place is naturally not an ideal place to build a home.

When Guo and Lu questioned this, the official's reply was quite direct: "The land near the periphery of Huaiyin City has either been distributed to the soldiers, or has been bought by people from China." The remaining land is the land owned around Huaiyin. ”

Because absorbing more people is related to the assessment of officials, these officials persuaded them: "Now the nobles from China want to settle down in Huaiyin, if you are willing to serve them here, you will definitely be reused!" Huaiyin is the closest city to the mainland, the south is a remote and wild place, and the weather is extremely hot, you will definitely regret it when you go there. ”

This kind of temptation is a threatening rhetoric, not only for Guo and Lu, but also for all the civilians who have come here. I have to say that many people who have never seen the world were indeed frightened by this set of rhetoric of the officials, so they stayed in Huaiyin and became the new tenants of the Song Kingdom.

However, more low-level little people are not afraid of difficulties at all and continue to move towards the south, including Guo Er and Lu Fang. In the eyes of these people, did they come to this wild land in the south to become tenants under the control of others again? If that was the case, wouldn't it be better for them to stay directly in the Song Kingdom, and why bother to go to the south so much?

When the officials of Huaiyin saw their strong will, they no longer persuaded each other. So they began to follow the boats along the river, and then into Hangou, and reached Guangling, an important town on the north bank of the river.

Compared with Huaiyin, there were many fewer merchants and nobles who were willing to come to Guangling to open up. In contrast, the number of soldiers left here is much greater than the number of Huaiyin. This kind of thing is also very understandable, after all, Huaiyin is a city close to the Song State itself, and the Song State can control it relatively strongly; And a city like Guangling is not only far away from the Song Dynasty itself, but also close to the Great River, which is a dangerous place to control the entire Jiangbei. Once the war broke out between the Song State and the Chu State again, and this place was taken by the Chu State, then the entire Yangzhou land would be completely cut in two by the Great River, and then there would be a big trouble.

Most of the people who came with the ships chose to stay here. For these people, although Guangling is also far away from the Song Dynasty, it is still on the north bank of the river, and if it is not here, it is relatively easy to return to the Song Kingdom.

Even Lu Fang, who had a good relationship with Guo Er, was extremely moved by this place. After all, if the ship continues to sail, it will have to cross the wide river similar to the sea and go to the south of the Yangtze River. The Song people all know that once they arrive in Jiangnan, it will be the land of Wuyue, and for Guo and Lu, who were born in the Central Plains, Jiangnan is undoubtedly another world.

The land of Wuyue, even if it is a commercial country like the Song Kingdom, is also very prejudiced. There is a story widely circulated in the Song Kingdom, a Song merchant sold a batch of hats to the south to sell, but the people of Wu Yue broke their hair and tattoos, and did not use hats at all, which led to the loss of the merchant.

In the eyes of the Song people, hats are the basic clothing, and a group of people who don't even wear hats, what is the difference between this and savages?

However, in Guo Er's opinion, the more remote the south, the fewer Song people will definitely go here, and this represents this opportunity. Therefore, at great cost, he finally persuaded Lu Fang to continue walking with him to see the scenery of this other world.

When the ship continued to move forward and arrived at Yunyang on the south bank of the river, it finally saw a completely different scenery from the land north of the river. The environment here is not a place of poor mountains and rivers as they think, but an extremely beautiful place.

In the land south of the Yangtze River, there are very few mountains, and even if there are, they are generally low hills. If there is any difference between this land and the Song Dynasty itself, it is that the number of lakes and ponds in this place is far from being comparable in the Song Kingdom.

Starting from Yunyang, the official road to the heart of Wu Di, the route taken is not in a straight line, but in a zigzag, just to avoid the many small lakes. When they met the legendary Wu people who did not wear hats and had broken hair and tattoos, they found that the other party was not as difficult to deal with as barbarians.

The two immediately decided to settle down in this place. And when they applied for territory to the officials of Yunyang, they found that their arrival here was indeed correct.

The land of Yangzhou, because it is a newly developed place, the officials appointed on this land are completely different from the officials in the Song State before, and the way of assessment is also completely different. The local officials of the Song State mainly assessed the wealth created by the local area and the specific amount of taxes they levied. In Yangzhou, there is only one standard for the current assessment, and that is the number of new local population!

In the land north of the Yangtze River, there is no need for officials to publicize it, and a large number of nobles and businessmen are willing to move over with their families. Although the land south of the Yangtze River is a beautiful place, because of the remoteness and years of demonization and propaganda, almost no one wants to come over except for the merchant fleet that has been pioneered everywhere and the army that has been assigned here to defend the place.

Now that the local officials have seen these two people who are so bold, they naturally will not let them go. They directly gave great benefits, increasing the free supply of land mentioned by Song Jun to ten times, and each person was given 1,000 acres of land. In addition, a natural reservoir will be rewarded.

This kind of treatment made Guo Er and Lu Fang flattered. Sitting on thousands of acres of land, this was something they couldn't even think of before, but now it is so easy to achieve.

However, they soon discovered that such a vast land was not so easy to hold. After all, if a person wants to cultivate a thousand acres of land, he can't be busy at all. At this time, they could only choose to hire local Wu people to help.

Yunyang, and even the officials of the entire Jiangnan, did not think of allocating land to these Wu people. However, those Wu people are extremely shrewd people, and the land suitable for growing millet has long been occupied by the heroes of Wu. The rest of the land, the Wu people thought of various ways to plant on it, but there was no result.

Therefore, these lands were abandoned by the Wu people. They are even willing to choose to hunt fish and turtles rather than farming. According to their experience, the income from preying on fish and turtles is much higher than the income from growing millet.

Even if the officials of the Song State promised many words and sent peasant disciples to find local heroes and teach them agricultural techniques hand in hand, the interest of the Wu people was not high. These officials thus learned how difficult it is to change people's minds in a place where agriculture is underdeveloped!

Although there are few people from the north, they are all people who have come from agricultural civilization, and they naturally know the importance of agriculture, and they also know that land is the foundation of life. Even if they needed to borrow money from the government to reclaim the land because of their lack of manpower, and they could only persuade the local Wu people to help with high salaries, they accepted it.

It can be said that for people like Guo Er and Lu Fang, who have nothing, as soon as they came to the land south of the Yangtze River, they directly owed a large amount of debt to the government. After all, the construction of houses, the reclamation of land, and the expenses required to hire local Wu people are all expensive expenses, but compared to the thousand acres of land they get, it is really worth it.

Such an experience reminded them of the popular Yang Xue in Taoqiu. As a typical commercial city, Taoqiu began to summarize the principles of commerce because of the arrival of Yang Zhu. There is a popular saying in Taoqiu that the more debt a person can have, the greater the wealth he has. "The richest man" and "the first loser" are only in a thought.

Guo Er and Lu Fang both deeply realized this, but the huge debts on them did not become a huge shackle on them, but instead became an inexhaustible motivation for them to continue to work hard!