Although he felt very painful, Zhu Youzhen still handed over the "three salaries" of the tax fields in Jingyang County.

Jingyang now has a total of more than 200,000 acres of cultivated land, and each mu is two cents and seven cents of silver, which is more than 60,000 taels! Zhu Youzhen was so distressed that he couldn't do anything, how many big things can he do with these 60,000 taels of silver!

But distressed is distressed, this money still can't be saved. First of all, the imperial court must accept it, and if Zhu Youzhen does not pay it, then the people will have to pay it. Jingyang has been hit by droughts, earthquakes, and locust plagues, and it is a typical hard-hit area, and it is already good to not take a penny of relief from the imperial court, and if you still have to pay the "three salaries", if you don't have to pay the "three salaries", it will provoke a popular uprising, and the good situation that Zhu Youzhen has worked hard to get in exchange will be ruined.

Second, Zhu Youzhen reached a tacit agreement with local officials in Shaanxi to give up the financial power of the other two counties and monopolize Jingyang County. If this matter is shaken out because the "three salaries" are not paid in time, Zhu Youzhen will lose more than he gains.

Moreover, these "three salaries" belong to military expenditures, and although they are inevitably deducted from various levels, some of them can always reach the border army. Zhu Youzhen had fought on the front line, so he naturally knew the difficulties of the border army. The serious arrears of salaries for officers and men, the lack of food and grass, and the failure to repair armaments are all evil consequences caused by the lack of military spending.

In addition, the imperial court wanted to build the "Guanning Jin" defense line, and a lot of money was also needed to build the city. Although Zhu Youzhen did not believe that he could defend against the Jurchens by building only a few cities, Zhu Youzhen still had feelings for Yuan Chonghuan, Zu Dashou, Zhu Mei and other border generals who fought side by side with him, and he couldn't bear to let them suffer because of lack of money.

Especially Guan Ning Tieqi, that is Li Chongyao's team. Even in order to comfort Chongyao's spirit in the sky, Zhu Youzhen will never default on the "three salaries".

Of course, since Zhu Youzhen paid silver, at least the big cat who converted money and food was avoided. For this alone, Zhu Youzhen is equivalent to saving tens of thousands of stone of grain for the people, and this account is still cost-effective.

In fact, according to Sun Chuanting's intentions, for the peasant households who did not sign a land lease contract with the Jingyang Merchant Gang, it is very interesting for Zhu Youzhen to suspend their land levies, and there is really no need to pay the "three salaries" for them.

But Zhu Youzhen immediately and categorically rejected this suggestion, because he didn't want the people to think that the Jingyang Merchant Gang had something to do with the government, let alone let people know that he was the behind-the-scenes investor of the Jingyang Merchant Gang.

Moreover, his land reform was completely voluntary, and he wanted the common people to experience the benefits of renting land for themselves from the practical results, so that they would willingly cooperate with his reform. Therefore, coercion cannot be used.

Of course, after the "three salaries" are paid, what should I do, I have to find ways to earn back this large sum of silver. Now that the locust plague is over, it is time to sow seeds. Now Zhu Youzhen has mastered more than 100,000 acres of fields, and as long as this crop of cotton can get a good harvest, he will be able to make a comeback.

He carefully calculated that even if the yield of seed cotton per mu is only more than 200 catties, and the loss of ginning lint is two-thirds, it will have to be seventy or eighty catties. According to the price of more than one tael of silver per catty of lint, the gross income can reach nearly one hundred taels of silver. More than 100,000 mu, that is nearly 10 million taels of silver, Zhu Youzhen can eat a big fat man in one bite!

Of course, not only Zhu Youzhen has never planted cotton, but the people of Jingyang County have hardly planted it. Whether this first large-scale planting can be successful, Zhu Youzhen is still quite worried.

In order to ensure the smooth growth of crops and try not to be attacked by locusts as much as possible, Zhu Youzhen spent another day having the workers carefully plow all the cultivated land. This is because when locusts lay their eggs, they lay white egg masses about 10 centimeters below the ground, and they cannot be seen from the ground alone.

Sure enough, the plough was full of white-flowered egg masses, and there were dozens of locust eggs in each egg mass. Locust eggs hatch very quickly, hatching larvae in more than 20 days, and emerging into adults in more than a month. Fortunately, Zhu Youzhen had the foresight to dig out these egg masses and incinerate them all, which prevented another overwhelming locust plague.

Due to the large number of egg masses excavated, Zhu Youzhen thought that in places other than cultivated land, as long as the soil is dry and suitable for locusts to lay eggs, I am afraid that there will be no shortage of such things. So he specially sent more than 200 people, with Qin Wangzhuang as the center, to spread out in all directions to dig locust eggs. And it does not take Jingyang County as the boundary, but spreads to the surrounding prefectures and counties.

Although doing so is tantamount to working for other counties, Zhu Youzhen does not care. In his words, locusts don't matter what county you are from, wherever you have food, go wherever you go! So helping others is the same as helping yourself.

In fact, he still didn't dare to say one sentence, that is, he would become the emperor sooner or later, and the whole world was not the king's land, how could he favor one over the other!

After ploughing, the planting is carried out on a large scale. Under the guidance of the invited cotton agricultural technicians, thousands of workers worked in more than 100,000 acres of farmland at the same time, first watering the bottom moisture, applying sufficient base fertilizer, and then evenly placing the cotton seeds into the pit.

In this era, there were no seeding machines, and sowing was a purely manual job. Those farmers who do not have signed a lease contract are of course busy working in their own fields. Instead of cotton, they grow soybeans.

Of course, soybeans are also considered a cash crop in modern times, mainly used for oil extraction. But in this time and space, beans are mainly used for eating, which can only be regarded as a kind of food, and the yield per mu is only about 200 catties, so Zhu Youzhen did not choose to plant soybeans.

Although those farmers who work alone are also very industrious, it is certainly impossible to work from morning to dark in one breath with such a tiring work as sowing seeds, and there is always a time to rest in between. And drinking water, eating, or relieving one's hands, you have to delay some time.

On Zhu Youzhen's side, there is a clear division of labor, some are responsible for specific work, some deliver food and water, some are substitutes, and even Lang Zhong is responsible for preventing heat stroke among workers.

The workers who work in specific terms are also divided into groups, each responsible for a piece of land. The crowd is not just about doing their own work, but competing with each other to see who can do it faster and better. Because whoever can complete the task with quality and quantity will get extra wages, so everyone is motivated. As far as the excitement came, each group also took turns to sing the labor trumpet, and the more they mobilized, the higher the enthusiasm.

Zhu Youzhen is also well versed in the principle of "matching men and women, and not getting tired of work", and at least one or two women are assigned to each group of workers. Whether ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign, human nature is the same. In front of the opposite sex, even honest farmers subconsciously want to show themselves to please each other, so their motivation is even higher.

At the end of the day, the peasant households who worked alone were dumbfounded: it was still those people who worked, but individual labor was replaced by collective labor, but the efficiency was several times higher than that of their own side!

There is only one of them who is slow, only fifteen or sixteen years old, but he has been bending over and planting seriously, humming a little song while doing it: "Our hometown, on the field of hope~~~"