Weinan County, Jingzhao Prefecture, on the banks of the Weishui River.

A team of about dozens of people was walking around the river, and at the forefront, in addition to Li Xi, Yang Shenyu, and Wei Yue, there was also a middle-aged man wearing a cyan official robe. Behind them, there is a group of officials from Weinan County, who are responsible for opening the road on the road and protecting them during inspections.

Of course, they are just scattered on the periphery, at this time standing not far behind Li Xi and the others, there are about a dozen people dressed as captains, they are Li Xi asked to go out to inspect the conditions of Weishui and Dahe, Yin Pei Yaoqing of Jingzhao Mansion arranged for him to come over, his intention is naturally to be a guard of honor when Beijing officials go out on patrol, so that local officials will not ignore Li Xi, and second, they can also provide personal guards.

Gao Sheng, with a short knife on his waist, stood in the middle of the captains and the group of officials in front of him, his face expressionless.

It's been nearly twenty days since he came to Li Xi's side, and he's always been like this, if it's not necessary, he doesn't even bother to say a word, he's lazy all day long, and no one wants to deal with him, of course, except for Li Xi who will talk to him every day as usual, whether it's the officials of the Jianghuai Transfer Envoy Division, or the people in Li Xi's family, no one is willing to deal with him.

After taking office, he first took Wei Yue, Yang Shenyu and Gao Sheng and others to ask for an order to go out of Chang'an, and traveled eastward along the Weishui Road, and after a two-day delay in Xinfeng, he arrived at Weinan County, the easternmost county of Jingzhao Prefecture, Weinan County.

"Uh, Lord Li, look, if you go further, you will be out of the county boundary of this county, this ......"

This is talking about the county Cheng of Weinan County, Jingzhao Prefecture.

It stands to reason that although Li Xi is not a big official, he is only from the sixth grade, but first, he is a Beijing official, and secondly, he is the chief official, and he also has a member of the three departments, so if he is ordered to go on patrol, the local officials must accompany him, not to mention that at this time he also has the errand of supervising the grain and road affairs of Gyeonggi.

But the strange thing is that when he arrived in Weinan County yesterday afternoon, the county magistrate was still warm and respectful, but when he was about to go out to inspect this morning, he just sent the county magistrate, saying that he was sick and couldn't get out of bed.

As for whether it is a real illness or a fake illness, whether he is unwilling to come out and suffer from the cold, or whether he simply looks down on himself, the so-called Jingguan who has only graduated from the sixth grade, then only God knows. After all, Weinan County is a Qi County, and the county order of Weinan County is on the sixth grade, which is two orders higher than himself, and it is understandable that he is unwilling to take care of himself.

It's just that when he turned his head and took a look, he saw the more vulgar Weinan County county magistrate with an iron-blue face, Li Xi thought to himself, he really wronged this county magistrate.

It's not too cold on the land of Guanzhong in early winter, but if you go out, you still have to wear a big hat as usual. When Li Xi went out, it was Lianlian's bags packed for him, and the wind was blowing when he got up this morning, and the winter wind was dry and cold, so Li Xi simply put on a big hat, although he walked on the bank of Weishui at this time, the wind was not small, but he didn't feel cold.

But the county lord obviously didn't expect Li Xi to get up early in the morning and really come down to inspect, so the clothes he was wearing were inevitably a little thinner - in his mind, on such a cold day, everyone sat in the room and drank tea, hello, how am I? Besides, the water condition of Weishui is reported every year, if you really want to know, just check the report, why bother to run out on a cold day?

However, this Master Li Xi and Li really led people straight to the shore of Weishui early in the morning!

On the shore of Weishui in winter, thousands of miles are reckless, the wind is howling, and it is very cold!

So at this moment, he saw a small river fork at the bend of Weishui not far away, and knew that after crossing the small river fork, he would go out of the county boundary of Weinan County and begin to enter Zheng County in Huazhou, so he immediately opened his mouth to warn.

An official is not allowed to leave his post without a directive. So what he meant in and out of his words was, you want to see Weishui, and now you can see it, it's so cold, let's go back quickly! Anyway, if you want to continue watching, if you go over there, you'll be out of Weinan County, and I won't follow.

Li Xi could hear the meaning of his words, and he didn't care about the attitude of the local government that obviously took himself as the deputy envoy of Jianghuai transport seriously.

Because he knew that although they would probably get the news of the new establishment of the Jianghuai Transit Envoy by the Imperial Court from Chang'an, and they would also know that an eighteen-year-old young man had become the deputy envoy in charge of affairs, but perhaps in their hearts, they would prefer to see themselves as a great talent of Wenmo Shihan.

As for the deputy Jianghuai transfer envoys, they may not care much - their local authorities only have some obligations to cooperate, and they are not subordinates of the Jianghuai transfer envoys.

And what I need to do most at the moment is, of course, not to worry about these things with them, with the background of the three members of the foreign department, they don't dare to blatantly shirk many things, so that's enough.

For themselves, it is probably better to try to do a good job of Caoyun as soon as possible, as long as they do this thing well, they will probably soon know who they are!

Therefore, the county magistrate who was the sixth grade pretended to be sick and didn't come, Li Xi was not annoyed at all, the county lord who was the eighth grade was impatient, Li Xi also pretended not to see it, and even when he looked back at him, Li Xi smiled at him very friendly.

Then he turned his head to look at Wei Yue, "The water level of this Weishui is very shallow!" ”

As he spoke, Li Xi stretched out his hand and pointed to the surface of Weishui under his feet.

The time is only early winter, Weishui has not frozen, but just on the way over, Li Xi saw that there is a river embankment with a very gentle slope, so he walked to the river and stretched out his hand to try it, the river water is cold and cold, the moment the hand enters the water, it makes people have a feeling that the whole arm is frozen immediately, it seems that it only takes one night of tight north wind, and the river can freeze the next day.

In fact, Li Xi has read the annual routine water situation reports of these prefectures and counties where Weishui crosses one by one, and he also knows that there will be about another ten days and half a month, and as soon as the raging north wind blows, the river should really be frozen, and it will be frozen until February of the following year, which will begin to thaw one after another, and the ice period can be as long as three months, sometimes even three and a half months.

Today, such a strong wind is blowing, and it is already showing signs that it is about to freeze.

Weishui is an incomparably important river in ancient Chinese history. Not to mention that since the beginning of the Western Zhou Dynasty, to the Qin and Han dynasties, and even the Sui and Tang dynasties, all dynasties have chosen to set their capitals on the shore of Weishui, making this river "the river of the Son of Heaven drinking horses", and since the Qin and Han dynasties, the Weishui and downstream channels have always been the main road of Caoyun in Guanzhong, and it is still the case in the current Tang Dynasty.

Li Daoyuan of the Northern Wei Dynasty wrote in "Water Jing Note? Weishui" said: "Weishui out of Shouyang County, Shouyang Mountain, Weishouting Nangu Mountain, in the northwest of Bird and Mouse Mountain, this county has Gaocheng Ridge, there is a city number Weiyuan City on the ridge, and Weishui is out of Yan. Then, the river meandered all the way eastward, successively converging the Jing River on the north bank, and the Luo River and other rivers, and then nourished the land of Guanzhong, which had been fertile for thousands of years, and finally merged into the big river.

However, the upper reaches of Weishui and the tributaries of the Jing River and the Luo River all flow through the Loess Plateau, and the water flow carries a large amount of sediment without exception. At the confluence with Jingshui, the boundary between water turbidity and clear is obvious. The Book of Songs? In "Shao Feng", there is already "Jing Yi Wei turbidity, and the surging is stopped." It can be seen that the Wei River has always been relatively clear, but after the Jing River joined, the river began to become turbid.

At present, the location of Li Xi and others is already downstream for Weishui, and it will be merged into the big river after Huazhou, so the river water is naturally extremely turbid, and it is in the dry period at this time, the amount of water is very small, and a large number of sandy riverbeds are exposed, which more and more sets off the weakness of the river at this time.

Walking all the way along the riverbank, seeing the water conditions like this, Li Xi's brows became tighter and tighter.

Although it is the dry season now, and after April and May, the water flow will definitely rise sharply, and there is no need to even look at the water condition report, as long as you stand on the shore and carefully observe the hydrological imprints left on the riverbed, you can roughly guess the water level of Weishui in the wet season, but ...... Weishui has a dry season of six months every year!

Moreover, from the perspective of hydrological characteristics, even in the wet season, the water level of Weishui is not high, coupled with years of sediment accumulation, resulting in the extremely shallow flatness of the river, which is simply not enough to carry large ships.

Looking at such a river, Li Xi couldn't help but think: No wonder the rice and grain transported over the years will be changed to land transportation after entering the Taiyuan warehouse in Shaanzhou.

If you want to solve the transportation bottleneck of Caoyun, this is a big pass!

At this time, Wei Yue nodded when he heard this, turned his head and glanced at the more vulgar one with disdain, and turned to Li Xi respectfully: "Lord Hui, or, let's go to the official road and have a look?" ”

In fact, although in the imperial court, the so-called Cao Yun probably refers to the transportation of rice and grain, but in fact, Chang'an is the capital of the Son of Heaven, and those who live are either officials or rich, and most of the officials are rich, so this is naturally a huge consumer city, so the Jianghuai area, in addition to rice and grain, there are more such as silk, cloth, all kinds of beautiful toys, etc., in short, all the things in the world, can be seen in Chang'an, and the Jianghuai area is naturally the same.

After these Jianghuai materials, which are mainly rice and grain, arrived at the Taiyuan warehouse in Shaanzhou, they wanted to continue to be transported to Chang'an, Beijing, and the journey was extremely difficult. Due to the sandy nature of the Wei River, the river channel is sometimes deep and sometimes shallow, which is inconvenient for transportation. The Guangtong Canal opened by Emperor Wen of Sui was inconvenient to use in the early Tang Dynasty, so it had to be transported by land and transported grain and other materials to Chang'an by ox carts.

This kind of transportation has high freight and low volume, and it is extremely laborious on the way.

However, the water conditions of Weishui are like this, and before significant improvements are made, even Li Xi has to admit that the official road from Chang'an to Luoyang is the main channel for Caoyun.

So after listening to Wei Yue's words, he took a deep breath and nodded, "It's okay, then go to the official road again!" ”

The county lord clenched his fists helplessly, thinking: What kind of official is this, and it's not an urgent matter, why are you so hard-working, you take a break and go back to the county seat to avoid the wind and let me wear clothes and die!

(To be continued)