The area around Xinjiangkou has entered a period of large-scale construction since August.

Along the Yangtze River, there are more than 200 people busy digging ditches all day long, the deep ditch slowly extends from south to north, deep enough to be more than one zhang, and the bottom is filled with pebbles, lime, fine soil and other things to tamp down, and in the future, the top will be filled with stones, and eventually a long embankment will be erected.

Yang Chao himself studied architecture, so he has his own set of engineering quality control, and the inspection and acceptance are extremely strict.

When the people mix pebbles, lime, fine soil and other things together, and tamp them in the deep ditch, Yang Chao will personally hold the iron chisel to pierce his eyes, and rework everything that is too loose, and at the same time threaten the craftsman Bai Lei to deduct his project money.

Bai Lei, the master craftsman of the Ministry of Engineering, who is proficient in water conservancy construction, squatted on the construction site day and night, stared at the people with his own eyes, and then poked at the past one by one, knowing that he thought it was hard enough, so he would ask Yang Chao to see it, for fear that if he was not careful, the project money would be deducted by Yang Chao, and the old bottom he would pay for would be lost.

As a result, the quality of the project has been greatly improved, although it has affected some progress, but Yang Chao is still unwavering.

In addition to these people who are nervously digging ditches, there are also farmers who are burning the weeds, leveling the land, plowing the land, and finally sowing the seeds on the wasteland surrounded by deep ditches.

These peasants were not hired by Yang Chao, but the families of some soldiers in the barracks.

It all started more than two months ago.

At that time, Yang Chao failed to negotiate with a group of middle-level officers from the headquarters of the Qian, and these people all rejected the proposal to exchange the wasteland without a title deed for the control of their heads.

Then Yang Chao planned to hire people to open up the wasteland by himself, and when the harvest in the field was stable, he didn't believe that these officers were not moved.

But suddenly, Huang Fengfu quietly told Yang Chao that many of his soldiers wanted to open up the wasteland, and there were some complaints. said that the old officers of the water battalion like Huang Chong could occupy the wasteland, but these soldiers who were born and died could not farm, and said that Yang Chao was eccentric.

Yang Chao took this very seriously. As a result, according to the investigation, it was only found that the dissemination of these remarks. In fact, it was not the soldiers in the battalion, but those soldiers who refused to go to Haizhou and were refused to enter the camp again by Yang Chao after returning.

These people and the soldiers in Yang Chao's current battalion are all villagers, and after Yang Chao left, it can be said that they wasted a lot of effort to open up thousands of acres of barren land in the Xinjiang estuary area, but as soon as Yang Chao came back, they were all taken away. And it was handed over to Huang Chong's family for farming, so these people were full of complaints, but they were all ordinary people, and they didn't dare to compete with Yang Chao at all, so they kept instilling rumors of Yang Chao's partiality to their fellow villagers.

Although it turned out to be a rumor, Yang Chao was still very concerned, and his soldiers, who had shed blood together, were the biggest reliance in Yang Chao's hands.

As a result, a series of targeted measures were immediately introduced, and the already generous military salary was immediately raised a lot.

An ordinary soldier. Yang Chao will give one or two pieces of silver now, but it is limited to these soldiers who have fought together, and the recruits are not counted for the time being.

At the same time, Yang Chao was well thought out. Some new military systems have been added, and that is the soldier grading system.

The soldiers are divided into one, two, and three classes, and now this group of soldiers who have been in battle are all called third-class soldiers, and the new recruits are called privates.

A private's salary is set at five cents of silver, and the third-class soldier is already one tael, the second-class soldier is one tael and five cents, and the first-class soldier is two taels.

The salary of the commander of the army is equal to two taels of silver for the first class, and the team is three taels of silver. The total number of flags is five taels, and the total number of hundred is ten taels. Put the total is thirty taels.

A total of nearly four hundred taels of silver can be received in a year, and this kind of military salary is not available to those officers in other armies who deduct military salaries.

But the total number of 100 and the total is less after all. On the contrary, a first-class soldier can get two taels of silver, which has caused a stronger repercussion in the army.

Two taels a month, twenty-four taels a year, anyone will calculate this account, even if each of them has received a reward of two hundred taels of silver, but they still feel that this military salary is too rich.

You must know that those coolies who dig ditches do not earn a tael of silver a month.

However, this military salary is not a burden for Yang Chao, you must know that Yang Chao is now less than five hundred and second class soldiers, less than six hundred taels of silver a month, one hundred captains are two hundred taels of silver, fifty teams are one hundred and fifty taels of silver, less than twenty flags are less than one hundred taels, and the total of one hundred and one hundred is only three or five hundred taels.

The total amount adds up to less than two thousand taels of silver, and the straightened out shipping escort fee alone can bring Yang Chao twenty thousand taels of silver every month.

However, after Yang Chao expands the army, the military budget may be doubled, because now many of these soldiers will become captains or even team leaders.

As for those recruits, they can't enjoy such good treatment for the time being.

Because Yang Chao stipulates that the third-class soldier is a veteran who has been in battle, the second-class soldier is an elite soldier who has seen blood, and the first-class soldier must not only have seen blood in battle, but also all military skills must be among the best.

Therefore, even if the size of Yang Chao's army is expanded to 3,000 in the future, the military salary expenditure will not rise too much.

According to this condition, for the time being, only the soldiers who went to Haizhou with Yang Chao were second-class soldiers, and the first-class soldiers had to be determined by the martial arts examination.

The increase in military salaries was naturally welcomed by everyone, but Yang Chao's later methods tied these soldiers to the water camp.

That is, the family of every soldier is allowed to come to Xinjiangkou to open up wasteland.

Yang Chao stipulated that every soldier could let their family members reclaim 50 acres of wasteland in Xinjiangkou, and the officers and soldiers would have an equal share.

Yang Chao's 500 or so people, even if each person gave out 50 acres, it was only more than 20,000 acres, which was less than half of the 50,000 or 60,000 acres of wasteland along the Yangtze River.

Moreover, Yang Chao also made a provision that as long as the soldiers were still serving as soldiers in their own hands, their families would be allowed to cultivate them forever.

At the same time, Yang Chao has not forgotten those soldiers who died in battle with him, although after the war, Yang Chao not only gave these family members pensions, but also gave a lot of the reward money that these soldiers should have received during their lifetime, and finally each martyr's family received three hundred taels of silver, even with a silver belt.

But Yang Chao still asked people to send a message to those family members, telling them that each family could come to Xinjiangkou to open up 100 acres of land, as long as Yang Chao was in one day, they could plant one day, and the 100 families divided 10,000 acres of wasteland, but there were still more than 20,000 acres of wasteland.

With more than 20,000 acres of barren land, Yang Chao fortunately hired these tenants to help sprinkle grass seeds, and he still has thousands of horses to feed with grass.

After the policy was moved, it was soon warmly welcomed, and I saw military households helping the old and the young from their guards, dragging their families to the outside of the water camp, building shacks, and then working in full swing.

Although many of these people received two or three hundred taels of silver and made a small fortune, they still did not have land, and the land in the guard was divided up by the hereditary hundreds of households and thousands of households a hundred years ago, and even if they gave money, they might not be able to buy it, and after they bought it, it also involved the problem of how to hold the land in front of the hereditary military attaché who oppressed people.

Therefore, even if these people have money, they still have to farm for the officers of the guards, or they just sit and eat nothing, as for using that money to do business, there are very few people who choose, and they can't read a single big word, so it is indeed a bit difficult for them to let them do business.

As a result, Yang Chao's reclamation policy, there was almost no hesitation, everyone came, the land, the land that they had been looking forward to for hundreds of years, they could finally plant it for themselves, although there was no land deed, but the land in the guard was still military land, and where was the land deed.

Anyway, as long as Yang Chao is there, their land can be planted, and Yang Chao said that he will not charge them a penny of rent, where to find such a good thing, isn't it the same as his own land.

In fact, they soon found out that this was better than their own land, because not only did Yang Chao not collect rent, but Juntian did not have to pay taxes, and no one thought of looking for Yang Chao to collect taxes, Shi Kefa did not expect it for the time being, and he did not plan to collect it, others just wanted to collect it, and they had to weigh whether it would make Yang Chao unhappy, at least Jiangning Zhixian did not dare to do so.

So Yang Chao saw with his own eyes that in the original large wilderness, shacks appeared, and the military households who knew each other were still accustomed to gathering their shacks together, and then villages were formed.

In the wilderness in a very short period of time, the formation of villages, in the eyes of Yang Chao, is like a blank canvas painted a beautiful picture, and this is more vivid than the pattern on the painting, more full of vitality, because the house on the scroll is always the same layer, but every afternoon, on the shack here in Xinjiangkou, you can always see the faint smoke of cooking.

I have to say that Yang Chao, a guy with a high level of education, is sometimes a little bourgeoisie, and the scenery here in Xinjiangkou just touched the enthusiasm in his heart, and he actually squatted in the wilderness for dozens of days, drawing sketches every day with a charcoal eyebrow pencil, and planned to turn it into oil painting when the conditions are met, and he is still very sure that it will definitely be a famous painting.

With the formation of villages in Xinjiangkou, Yang Chao accumulated more and more sketch materials.

Moreover, Yang Chao also started to add things that he thought of at any time in this naturally formed picture scroll.

When he saw groups of lively children playing in the wasteland, he immediately thought of building a school, so he immediately found a few scholars and set up a water camp school, and distributed books to these children for free, so that the scholars could teach them to read and write.

This won the gratitude of the soldiers.

After sketching in the wasteland for several months, Yang Chao, who was immersed in art, almost forgot about mundane things, and pushed everything outside as much as he could, and did not go to all banquets, neither stammering with the officials nor accepting the stammering of others.

But finally encountered something that couldn't be pushed away, and her mother Zhao Lan wanted to go to Linggu Temple to make a vow, and sent someone to call Yang Chao to accompany her. (To be continued...... ）。