The coronation ceremony of Liu Cun's sister-in-law Liu Ze and his righteous son Liu Zhen was held at the same time on April 29. ,

After the solemn ceremony, Liu Cun found that more and more people followed him to eat mixed rice, and unconsciously ruled that the fields had reached more than 60,000 acres, and the scale of the major workshops had expanded several times.

Since the beginning of spring, the continuous drought of the Han Dynasty has intensified, even Zhushan Township, which has abundant water sources and rivers, has one-third of the newly opened fields that need to divert water to fight drought, and the craftsmen of the Zhushan Township Woodworking Workshop have copied the keel waterwheel style commonly used in the Central Plains for more than ten years, and rushed to produce more than 60 planes and put them into use, so as to ensure the agriculture of Zhushan Township.

The continued drought is a great disaster for agriculture, but it is a great thing for the salt pans along the coast of Zhushan Township, which have increased to more than 3,700 mu, with a total salt production of more than 38,000 stones in the past four months.

To Liu Cun's surprise, 800 salt workers took the initiative to sum up experience, strengthen the salt field to improve salt rakes and other tools, and used cattle and horses and other animal power in production.

The accumulation of a lot of experience and the application of improved technology have made the output of sea salt in April exceed the total output of the previous three months, and until the construction target of 10,000 mu of salt fields is completed next year, even if it is only produced for eight months a year due to the weather, it can easily ensure the annual salt output of 250,000 stones, which has truly become an important pillar industry of Liu Cun.

In the process of continuous expansion of the industries under his command, dozens of capable and conscientious talents have emerged, most of these talents come from the first two groups of displaced people, who are the most loyal to the lord Liu Cun, and many of them have a knowledge level and leadership far above the great steward Lu An, and have become the mainstay of various industries under Liu Cun's rule.

Liu Cun, who was very pleased, decided to reward a group of outstanding contributors, so he stayed behind Wang Qi and Liu Ye, who came to congratulate and prepare to return to the city, told the two of them their thoughts truthfully, and asked the two good brothers from the contemporary family to give advice.

Wang Qi is a military general, after re-leading the army is even deeper, he pursues the concept of soldiers, meritorious service must be rewarded, there must be punishment, the concept of strict hierarchy in his bones is deep-rooted, therefore, although he previously agreed with Liu Cun to subdivide craftsmen into master craftsmen, craftsmen, craftsmen, apprentices of the grading system, can also accept Liu Cun Zhushan Township established for the management of all aspects of the village elders, but never want to see Liu Cun give more power to the craftsmen and merchants under his command.

Liu Ye has royal blood and comes from a family of eunuchs, but he does not have Wang Qi's stubborn hierarchical concept in his mind, he appreciates Liu Cun's practice of not looking at his background and being meritocratic and broad-minded, and approves of Liu Cun's measures to reward talents and reuse talents, so he is very supportive of Liu Cun's adjustment idea, the reason is very simple and sufficient:

"Under the elder brother's rule, the division of labor was meticulous, the development was rapid, and the land and people were growing day by day, and it was time for readjustment. Taking Zhushan Township as an example, the Township Elders' Association, composed of Qiangfu, Xiangzuo, Pavilion Chief, Yanguan, Township Xueshan Chief, Township Three Elders, etc., can only manage the people of a township, supervise and coordinate to maintain the overall situation, and has no energy to undertake heavy affairs such as personnel allocation, production and operation, profit and loss accounting of major industries, and the elder brother cannot personally do everything, so it is imperative to promote talents and reuse virtues. The foolish brother thought that it was really necessary for the elder brother to promote a group of diligent and loyal people with both ability and political integrity, and entrusted him with important tasks to sort out his belongings and manage various industries for his elder brother, and select a few outstanding people from among them to serve as his brother's staff, and to pass on and distribute them to his brother and share mundane affairs. ”

Although Liu Ye's opinion is very different from Wang Qi's, his way of expressing it is gentle and modest, reasonable, and well-reasoned, and he was quickly recognized by Wang Qi.

Liu Cun gladly adopted Liu Ye's opinion, and immediately summoned Lu Ping, the chief housekeeper, and Sun Pei, the chief prince of Mengxueshan, who was highly respected among the villagers, to discuss with Liu Ye and Wang Qi the rewards for meritorious service, the division and integration of various industries, and the establishment of a reward and punishment system and a management system.

This milestone meeting took place for three days and three nights.

On the ninth day of the fifth month of the second year of Zhongping, the major adjustment concerning the vital interests of tens of thousands of people finally came to an end, and as many as 800 outstanding contributors were rewarded by Liu Cunci for building an independent house, distributing special carriages symbolizing merit and social status, awarding high bonuses, and commending them.

The new township elders will build their own office building near the township school, and the nine members will no longer participate in specific production and operation, and concentrate on shouldering the important responsibilities of managing the overall situation, coordinating and summarizing, soliciting public opinion, and supervising rewards and punishments.

Immediately afterwards, the management and reward and punishment system covering the three major industries of agriculture and industry were clearly announced, which greatly touched and inspired tens of thousands of people, and the entire Zhushan Township and Chengbei Manor radiated great vitality and vitality.

On the morning of the tenth day of the first lunar month, Liu Cun bid farewell to his wife and children, and earnestly told his son Liu Zhen, who controlled the core of Liu Cun's industry after being crowned, to leave Zhushan in the reverent eyes of thousands of people.

In addition to the twenty-eight martial arts disciples who followed Liu Cun on horseback, there were also five special four-wheeled carriages that symbolized status and merit, and in the carriages sat five outstanding people who stood out, and they had become Liu Cun's confidants.

Gongsun Pei, who was in the first carriage, was forty years old this year, his thin and pale cheeks still had a trace of redness, and his body trembled slightly, looking quite excited.

This declining aristocratic son from Zouping, Qingzhou, has a slender figure, high eyebrow bones, a straight nose, and a slightly chestnut long beard hanging down to his heart, and he has a calm and calm detached bearing.

At the age of nine, his father, who served as the chief secretary of Yongqiu, died in the line of duty, and then his grandparents died due to excessive sadness, and the already depressed family was even poorer, but his mother was knowledgeable and tenacious, and relied on the meager pension left by his father and the washing and sewing of the pulp, and independently raised and taught the young Gongsun Pei and two daughters who were not yet sensible.

When the self-respecting and self-reliant Gongsun Peiman was thirteen years old, he was already a well-known and intelligent young man in Yongqiu County, and his mother felt that she was no longer able to let her son continue to improve, so she resolutely sold the only ten acres of paddy fields and cultivated cattle, and sent Gongsun Pei to Yingchuan Academy, where he studied under the great Confucian Chen Yu and Han Shao, and pinned all his hopes on his son.

Five years later, Gongsun Pei, who had achieved academic success, left Yingchuan Academy and began a three-year study tour, all the way by working as a coolie and writing letters for others in exchange for food and lodging, covering all parts of the Central Plains and northern states, recording hundreds of thousands of words of experience and experience, including historical geography and ancient and modern anecdotes.

At the age of twenty-two, the tenacious and far-sighted Gongsun Pei ended his study tour and returned to his hometown to serve his mother, who returned to his hometown with his two younger sisters a few years ago.

At this time, Gongsun Pei was already quite famous among the young generation of scholars in the Han Dynasty, and was respected by the gentry and villagers for his outstanding literary talent, rich experience and virtuous virtues, and finally at the age of twenty-five, he was promoted to filial piety by the honest and fair county order, and went to Luoyang under the reluctance of his old mother to say goodbye, and since then he has stepped into the road of official career.

Gongsun Pei, who thought that he could display his talents after all the hardships, never expected that only three months after he became a Lang official, he ushered in the disaster of the party that shook the world, hundreds of civil and military officials and celebrities who were famous all over the world were brutally killed, hundreds of party members died unexpectedly, and the number of people who fled the disaster and their families was uncountable.

As a rising star among the party, Gongsun Pei did not hide or escape, and sat in the government without escaping, and when he was arrested, he was calmly and indifferent, but was appreciated by the captain who led the troops to arrest him, and the captain cherished his bearing and morality, and quietly relieved him, so Gongsun Pei escaped the crime of being killed, but was finally sentenced to ten years of hard labor.

Gongsun Pei was thirty-five years old when he was released, and the cruel hard labor did not destroy his mind and body, but made him more mature and more resolute, but when he rushed back to his hometown, he found that his ancestral home had already been confiscated by the government, and his mother, who was worried day and night, was paralyzed in bed, and his beloved and most intelligent and filial little sister died of dystocia five years ago.

Witnessing the tragic scene and hearing the bad news, Gongsun Pei finally collapsed and immediately fainted to death without waking up for three days.

On the fourth day, Gongsun Pei woke up leisurely and saw the diligent and simple brother-in-law in his memory, who was still serving himself respectfully with a decoction, and quietly found the eldest sister to ask the reason, and learned that the brother-in-law who was originally from a good family sold the field and ancestral house in order to heal his fallen mother, and still supported the family by renting the field without regrets.

After wiping away his tears, Gongsun Pei stubbornly stood up. Three days later, he took off his only scholar's robe, changed into a peasant's short clothes, walked out of the broken house side by side with his brother-in-law, and became a tenant farmer with farm tools and barefoot.

After that, day after day, Gongsun Peidu and his brother-in-law went out early and returned late, worked hard, and when he returned home, he talked to his mother with his sister who planted vegetables and raised pigs to serve his mother, and then lit Songming, teaching two young nephews and children from surrounding farmers who were willing to go up to read and learn calligraphy, never charging any remuneration, not to mention ignoring the many conscriptions of the county government, preferring to carry farm tools every day, living a dull and hard life, and not letting go of their dignity.

Gongsun Pei's noble and loyal filial piety finally touched many villagers around, the simple and kind villagers personally sent a place to help Gongsun Pei's family who had experienced hardships, and used the agricultural leisure to send more than 300 people to build a new house for Gongsun Pei, and worked together to move stones, and built a fish pond in front of Gongsun Pei's house, and planted peaches and plums, and built a wide house, so that Gongsun Pei could teach more and more children to read.

As a result, Gongsun Pei, who is not smiling, works as a farmer and teaches at the same time, and lives a plain and indisputable life.

Until the Yellow Turban Rebellion swept up with the momentum of a prairie fire, Gongsun Pei knew that a catastrophe was coming, and suddenly gathered more than 300 villagers around him, expressed his inferences and deep worries, and clearly told everyone: Within three days, he will carry his mother on his back and go south with his brother-in-law, sister and children to avoid disaster!

As Gongsun Pei expected, just two days later, tens of thousands of fugitives flocked from the western country of Jinan, 100,000 Yellow Turban troops burned all the way and chased after them, the Yellow Turban Army and officers and soldiers in various places had large-scale fierce battles, nearly half of the Han fell into the war, and the whole Zouping was terrified and cried all day long.

The villagers around Gongsun Pei were frightened, each family hurriedly packed up their burdens, helped the old and the young to gather at the door of Gongsun Pei's house, and then closely followed Gongsun Pei's family to the south, under the command of Gongsun Pei, cleverly avoided the sack of Dongwu, Qianqian two counties after all the way into Qingzhou tens of thousands of Yellow Turban Army, there was no danger to Xiahe City, and finally luckily obtained Liu Cun's relief, soon, Gongsun Pei's family and more than 3,000 desperate slaves of the same wanderers, stationed at the foot of Zhushan, became the first batch of domestic servants under the command of the lord Liu Cun.

When they first arrived at the foot of the grassy Zhu Mountain, all the displaced people, including Gongsun Pei, saw no hope, and thought that they would die in heavy labor and cruel conditions, but in less than three days, everything had changed: everyone was served beautiful and sturdy pottery bowls, they could eat two meals a day and fish almost every day, although the work was very hard, they were never beaten and scolded, and the wounded and sick were treated for free by itinerant doctors.

Two and a half months later, the displaced families began to live in the red brick houses they had built, and each family was given an acre of fertile land for growing vegetables and chickens.

Immediately afterwards, new farm tools made of fine iron, exquisite sets of pottery and cloth that only wealthy families could enjoy, were distributed to every household free of charge, and life was more comfortable and wealthy than in their original hometown, and all the children entered the spacious school built in the center of the village.

After talking to the lord Liu Cun for the first time, Gongsun Pei, along with the other seventeen people who could write and calculate, was elected as the teacher of the village middle school, enjoying preferential treatment that exceeded the average ration by twice the average ration, but the discipline was more than 300 children raised by the homeless people themselves, including the lovely five-year-old daughter of the lord Liu Cun, and the two nephews of Gongsun Pei.

When everyone watched the green seedlings emerge from the tens of thousands of acres of land they had reclaimed with their own hands, when everyone lived in a sturdy house with blue bricks and gray tiles, the laughter of children at home, and the noise of chickens and ducks in the backyard, no one dared to believe that everything in front of them was real.

Just when everyone was extremely confused, the lord Liu Cun returned everyone's deed of sale one by one, and only said one sentence before leaving: "From the beginning, I didn't treat anyone as a slave, you are all my Liu Cun's fathers and fellow villagers." ”

After Liu Cun left, the people who gradually came back to their senses held their deeds of sale, knelt on the ground one after another and wailed, thousands of people turned to the direction of Liu Cun's departure, prostrate on the ground and kowtow frequently, that night, the cry sounded all night.

Until three days later, many people came to the river every morning, looking at the direction of Liu Cun's residence in the north with tears, that is, from then on, all the frightened hearts finally settled down, and everyone regarded this land as their home, and it was from then on that everyone regarded Liu Cun as their protector and their lord.

During that time, Gongsun Pei went home every day and walked to the door of the small courtyard that was distributed to him for free, and he couldn't help but stop for a moment, staring at the spacious and simple new home of red bricks and gray tiles for a while, and then passed through the main hall with not many belongings, turned into the east wing to greet his mother, respectfully reported what he had seen and heard in the past day, and whispered to his mother who was getting better and better, telling his mother that the eldest sister was very comfortable working in the textile workshop, and that the brother-in-law Xu Jian was thrifty, and he made rapid progress through hard work, and won the weight of the eldest son Liu Zhen. As one of the first craftsmen in the pottery workshop, his salary will triple next month, and his two nephews are very obedient in the school and get along well with other children.

But after returning to his room and lying down, Gongsun Pei, who was in turmoil, couldn't calm down, because he saw a completely different world, saw endless new things, saw his incomparably shocking organizational methods, amazing production efficiency and all kinds of incredible superb skills, and also saw that Liu Cun, who was loved by everyone from the bottom of his heart, often wandered around, would take the initiative to greet the elderly, and talk to anyone with a smile, without the slightest slight.

Gongsun Pei has always felt that Liu Cun is very mysterious, although Liu Cun speaks simply and straightforwardly, without any sense of beauty, and mixed with many novel words, from time to time there are sick sentences and vocabulary matching errors, but he feels that Liu Cun has the power of a god, benevolence and generosity, omnipotent, Liu Cun not only has amazing wisdom in pottery, iron, salt, shipbuilding, etc., but also has a moving commander talent and decisive ruthlessness, as long as he shouts a few times, the tens of thousands of foolish people who are chaotic will soon be in order, The set of rules he formulated was unheard of, but it created a new order and an uplifting spirit for tens of thousands of people today.

What made Gongsun Pei even more stunned was that this young man, who was called the Lord by all the people, had no concept of dignity and inferiority, and often worked in the fields shirtless, braving the billowing dust and smoke to guide hundreds of young people to build huge kilns, and selflessly taught all kinds of stunts that could be exchanged for huge wealth to every craftsman who consulted him.

Gongsun Pei didn't know how he was noticed by Liu Cun and appointed as the first mountain chief of Mengxue, only knew that he stood up and won Liu Cun's approval when the thieves attacked a few months ago, and it wasn't until the evening five days ago that Liu Cun suddenly came to visit with a rich gift, and after sitting in front of Gongsun Pei's old mother's bed and chatting about family affairs as easily as the nephew next door, Gongsun Pei found that he could not do without this young man for the rest of his life.

After Liu Cun visited Gongsun Pei's old mother, he said goodbye happily and left, Gongsun Pei humbly sent Liu Cun out of the yard, and then accompanied Liu Cun to slowly walk to the completed dock, looking at the dark sea for a long time.

No one knows what Liu Cun and Gongsun Pei said when they looked at the sea that night, and what happened between the two.

Early the next morning, Gongsun Pei, who had changed into the most decent clothes and had taken care of his hair in an orderly manner, appeared in front of everyone, he calmly entered Liu's mansion, and then knelt silently behind Liu Cun, accompanied Liu Cun without saying a word, and met with one after another village elders and heads of various ministries.

In the evening, Gongsun Pei Shi Ran left Liu's Mansion and returned to his home, followed by four beautiful maids carrying small burdens, so far, everyone knows the name Gongsun Pei.