Spring is blooming, and everything is recovering.

Zhao Zhen is still the same as in the past, after getting up and exercising in the morning, he will go to ** to greet a few mothers, and then eat together and chat.

After breakfast, take a walk to digest and digest, you have to deal with the day's government affairs, although I have readjusted the cabinet and given them a lot of rights to deal with it, but it is still in the adjustment and run-in stage, and it is not the time to be lazy.

Compared with other dynasties, the Song Dynasty's court meetings were not held every day, but were more like the worship patterns of later generations. It's just that the Song Dynasty held a court meeting every month, and on the one hand, there were two large court meetings per month, and as for the small court meetings, it depended on the situation. Moreover, every five or six days of work for officials in the Song Dynasty would have a day off.

During the court meeting, the ministers of various ministries will bring the major things that have happened in the past ten and a half years and cannot be handled by themselves to the court meeting, and let the emperor personally give instructions. And those urgent matters are either solved by the bosses of the ministries and the emperor to convene an internal court, or through special channels directly submitted to the emperor, which is also a small department set up to prevent the cabinet from being autocratic.

Therefore, under normal circumstances, Zhao Zhen is in the vertical arch hall to review some ministers who are not sure to pay attention to the chapter, but also pay attention to the report of the Supervision Yuan and the intelligence of the Guoan Temple, if you encounter a major event, you can also convene the ministers working in the Daqing Hall at any time to have a small meeting or something.

At this time, the internal rebellion of the Liao State had just begun, Li Yuanhao of the Western Xia had not yet established the country, and the western Tubo was also caught in the trade, and the southern Dali was still ignored, and there was a small friction in the frontier, and there was no major war, and the domestic surface was peaceful. Therefore, Zhao Zhen does not have much to deal with, and he spends more energy on communicating with the ministers, in order to achieve the desired state of internal affairs as soon as possible, so that he can be lazy in the future.

"Your Majesty, Li Xingxiu is out asking to see you!" Xiao Shunzi rushed over and whispered in Zhao Zhen's ear.

"Oh, this kid is back, and half a year has passed! Bring him in! Zhao Zhen patted his head with a look of surprise.

"Whoa!"

"Little one to meet the emperor, long live the emperor, long live long live!" Li Xingxiu walked into the vertical arch hall and came to Zhao Zhen and saluted exaggeratedly.

"Okay, okay, you kid still plays with this hand, hurry up!" Zhao Zhen said with a smile.

"Hey, hey! It's been a long time since I've seen you, miss you! Li Xingxiu rubbed his hands and said cheaply

"Stop, how did I do what I gave you? If you mess up, don't blame me for cleaning you up! ”

"How can it! Following your instructions, the small company built a small cement plant in Haizhou, which was specially supplied to the salt factory for only use. In the past six months, a total of nearly 20 salt farms have been explored, but only 5 have been completed so far. ”

"Have you tried the salt-making method I gave you?"

"Speaking of which, that would have stunned the little ones! After the first salt farm was built, I tried it, and the salt made according to your method is not only white in color, pure in taste, but also very large! Did you know! Just one salt factory produces nearly 15,000 stones a month, and if it is all completed, we can produce nearly 4 million stones a year. This is several times the annual output of our dynasty, and when the time comes, we will not only be able to sell salt, but we will also be able to eat salt......," Li Xingxiu said, and the excitement could not be stopped.

Originally, at this time in the Song Dynasty, the annual salt output was only more than one million stones, which was almost 100 million catties. According to the calculation that normal people eat four to five catties a year, the more than 100 million people in the Great Song Dynasty are far from enough to eat. In addition, in this era, the Liao Kingdom in the north and the Tubo in the west did not produce much salt, and they needed to import a large amount from the Song Dynasty, so there was a surplus of salt produced in the Western Xia and they could import a little from there. From this, we can imagine how much the common people need to eat, and it is officially because of the importance of food that it has become a project of the imperial court, which is difficult for modern people to imagine.

"Don't be too happy, this is just the first step, this bit of salt is enough for us Song people to eat ourselves, and it is far from being able to be sold out on a large scale. So you have to continue to pay close attention to this matter, in terms of manpower, you can rest assured, I will send you the idea, what you have to do is to hurry up and complete the salt farm in Haizhou, put it into production as soon as possible, and do a good job of confidentiality. After the completion of the Haizhou Salt Works, you go south along the coast, looking for a new site to start building a new salt factory, everything is up to you, and I don't have time to keep an eye on you every day. In order to reward you for your hard work during this time, I will give you the title of Governor of the Eight Grades, and wait for the next imperial examination to take the exam well, and take more time to read books, don't just read the Four Books and Five Classics, I will also pay attention to what I teach you, and work hard! Zhao Zhen patted him on the shoulder and said meaningfully.

"Haha...... I'm also an official, thank the emperor, the minister understands, he must do a good job! ”

After Li Xingxiu finished speaking, he happily left the palace, returned home to say hello to his parents, and then came to the Royal Academy to get together with his former partners. After drinking and eating, pouring out his heartfelt feelings, and bidding farewell to everyone, he took a few classmates who had just been abducted from the academy and galloped to the east......

Sending Li Xingxiu away, Zhao Zhen was thinking about where to get people, but he couldn't think about it for a long time. Zhang Zhibai, the secretary of the Ministry of Industry, shook it slowly.

"Your Majesty, look at it, this is the progress of the Jingcheng Avenue project!" Zhang Zhibai walked to Zhao Zhen's side and handed over the piece in his hand after a brief salute.

Zhao Zhen looked at the chapter, and Zhang Zhibai gave a simple explanation: "Your Majesty, since you ordered the construction of Jingcheng Avenue in the past few months, my colleagues in the Ministry of Industry have drawn the best route, and the terrain has been explored. The cement factories in various places were also prepared in place, and the military department also reported that Fan Ke, the commander of the Japanese army, led the reorganized Japanese army with 20,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry, divided into multiple units and began to clear and suppress along the road many times at the same time, winning a complete victory, capturing nearly 10 million yuan of money and capturing nearly 100,000 bandits. ”

"Oh? There are so many bandits, is the country's money hidden by these rats? ”

"Your Majesty, don't you know, this road used to be full of ravines and dense forests, why not too many bandits, they have been in trouble for many years, and what they have accumulated is not wealth, and the local government is unable to clear it, and the combat power of the Xiang army is also unbearable, so they have been arrogant for so many years. However, this time when I encountered the adapted Japanese army, those rabble disarmed directly in front of the rain of arrows that supported the Japanese army, of course, they didn't think that the emperor would make such a big determination to suppress the bandits, so there were not many fish that slipped through the net along the way, and they were basically captured, which saved a lot of trouble in the future! Although Zhang Zhibai is old, he is still very uncalm and very excited about the happy things he says.

"What Aiqing said is very true, so be it! According to the original rules, three layers of seizures were given to the army to improve themselves, three layers were returned to the people along the way, and the rest was filled into the treasury. In addition, the captives will let them be responsible for building the most dangerous areas in the future, which can be regarded as atonement for their sins! ”

"The old minister obeys! Lao Chen will complete it together with Yang Shangshu of the Ministry of War and Fan Shangshu of the Household Department, to ensure that every money is well documented, you can rest assured! Zhang Zhibai has been messing with Zhao Zhen for a long time, and he knows that he cares more about these.

"Then work hard Aiqing, Aiqing is also old, pay attention to your body, I will give you some supplements, go home and make up for it, I still rely on you a lot!" Zhao Zhen said with a smile, and asked Xiao Shunzi to prepare some supplements for him to send home.

"I am willing to smear the emperor's liver and brain!" In this era, the emperor gave him a great grace, Zhang Zhibai was so moved that his blood was boiling, if he was asked to fight with Liao Guo at this moment, it would be no problem.

"By the way, Your Majesty, the old minister almost forgot, you said that this avenue uses the way of buying and selling to let the people participate, and later after prediction, the fee period of the private businessman was increased to thirty years, so as to reduce the amount of each charge. And according to your intention, the whole road is divided into fifty sections, each section is about fifty miles, and the toll will be subject to each section at that time. Up to now, except for the part you want to reserve, the rest have been claimed by businessmen, and the funds are basically in place, just wait for the start of construction, I don't know the emperor's ...... your construction group."

"Oh! Don't you remind me that I'm in a hurry to forget, during this time I have asked Xiao Shunzi to contact those nobles, no matter what reason they are in, they basically participated anyway, and when I find a person in charge to discuss with you, I will treat it like an ordinary businessman in the future, I should ask for money, don't have any worries. ”

"Then the old minister will retire first!"

"Aiqing go slowly!"

Zhao Zhen thought about it, relieved the music in his hand, and rushed to Kunning Palace.

"Why is the emperor free today?" Because Zhao Zhen was usually dealing with government affairs at this time, Empress Dowager Liu asked in surprise.

"Greetings to the queen mothers!" Zhao Zhen said with a smile: "I have something I want to discuss with a few mothers today?" ”

"What's the matter? Could it be that something is wrong with the charitable foundation? I heard that the emperor did a good job of finding that Huang Xing, and he really got a lot of money some time ago! ”

"It's not a matter of the charity fund, it's like this, the preparations for Jingcheng Avenue are ready, and the construction is about to start, I didn't promise to set up a construction group to build this road with private businessmen. First, it plays a leading role, and secondly, it also allows those nobles who have nothing to do to find something to do, and by the way, they can also make some money. It's pretty much done now, but we're going to have to find a few trustworthy people to take charge of the project. ”

"So I thought about it, don't you have a nephew named Congde, I heard that he has a bad official style, so I just let him be in charge of this project, and you let Yang Zhiyan, the father of the little lady, and my father, that is, my grandfather Li Rende, assist him together! What do you think? ”

Liu E thought of Zhao Zhen's recent big move in the court, thoughtfully, and said after a while: "All listen to the emperor's arrangement, and the palace will invite them to come to discuss." ”

"That's good! I've heard that the royal charity fund run by the queen mothers is not bad! The people of the capital are all grateful to Dade, and even those beggars have had a good year! The image and prestige of our royal family have also been greatly improved, and I am very happy! ”

"The emperor praised it! We haven't done anything, Huang Xing is taking care of it, the emperor is a discerning talent, these days, our fund has not only helped a lot of poor people, but also a lot of inputs! Liu E said modestly and excitedly.

"That's good, when I straighten out the country's finances, I should be able to squeeze out some money, which will be invested in this fund, there are a lot of poor people in our Great Song Dynasty, so that the whole world will remember the immeasurable merits of the queen mother, there is still a long way to go!" But there are a few mothers! Zhao Zhen said with a smile.

Liu E was born poor and knows the hardships of the people, so it is quite good for her to be able to help the poor. Although she also has the right to **, but looking at history, she cares more about being recognized or caring more about her reputation, otherwise she can be the second Wu Zetian. It is precisely because of this that the image of the real mother of the world planned by Zhao Zhen for her is more in line with her mind, and she is more subjective in doing this.

She was very excited about Zhao Zhen's goal, but she tried to pretend not to care and said: "The emperor has to take care of everything at a young age, and we can't help much, we will be satisfied if we can help you!" ”