Winter goes to spring, everything recovers, mixed peanut trees, grass grows warblers fly, and there is bright spring everywhere. After a hungry winter, taking advantage of the good spring, the households in the city of Lanzhou began to eagerly dry their seeds, prepare the land, and prepare for sowing.

Ten miles outside the city of Lanzhou, the spring cold is steep, the morning breeze is fine, and a caravan that set off early is resting. Half of the hundreds of carts in the middle were piled with tea, silk and other precious goods in China, and the other half carried a large amount of rations, dried meat, drinking water and other supplies. The convoy was surrounded by three hundred cavalry guards, including hundreds of foot guards, all of them with fierce expressions, Uighur robes covered with chain mail, swords hanging from their waists, and the guards' carts loaded with crossbows and bundles of arrows. Unlike the nervous expressions of the caravan guards before they left the fortress, the caravan guards joked with each other from time to time, as if it was just a safari that was about to begin. Since the end of the Tang Dynasty, the country has been in many difficulties, the Tubo party has risen together, the road is uneven, and the Central Plains Prefecture has not seen such a large-scale caravan for more than 100 years.

In the Ten Mile Pavilion, Wu Yingying, the lord of Lanzhou, was saying goodbye to the leader of the caravan.

"Kang Jun, Captain Xin, and Captain Yu Fuxiao, we drink this cup together, and I wish you success. Wu Yingying raised his glass and said with a smile. This time, Lanzhou sent a caravan to the northern foot of Yinshan and Helan, carrying a total of 300,000 yuan worth of goods, Kang Ke Khotan estimated that if it could be successfully transported to Dunhuang for sale, it would get nearly one million guan of money, and then buy some strange things in the Western Regions, salt, and horses in Dunhuang to transport back, resell them to the mainland, deduct the loss on the way, and make hundreds of thousands of yuan in one trip. Lanzhou is more than half as close to Dunhuang as Shangjing, so the profits made by the caravan have also greatly increased. Because of the first time out of the fortress, Wu Yingying was extremely cautious, not only sent his henchmen and fierce generals, who had been the captain of the hussar battalion Xin Gu who had been a horse thief in the north of the Saibei to lead the army, but also let Yu Furen, the captain of the white feather battalion who had gone out of the fortress many times to patrol the border and was familiar with the trade routes, as his deputy, and all the officers and soldiers of the guard were selected from the four battalions of the Ya Army, Jinfan, Hussar, and Bai Yu, and there was no problem with loyalty and bravery.

"Lord Xie Wu. The three of them drank a full glass together and walked out of the pavilion. Xin Gu turned over the saddle and got on the horse, lightly lifted the reins of the horse, the horse was so brisk that he had to go forward, Kang Ke Khotan rode the horse in the team, and Yu Fu Ren led the white feather light horse to retreat, these three people are both wise and brave, any one can be alone, this trip out of the plug three people together, it can be seen that Wu Yingying attaches great importance to this trip.

Xin Gu rode his horse, suddenly realized in his heart, turned his head to look at the hillside on the left side of the trade road, the sky was clear today, far away on the hillside bent over, the people who were preparing the land and sowing seeds, although small as ants, were clearly visible, a thin figure of a woman was looking at this side on the high slope. It was Zhu Huilan biting her lip and watching the Lanzhou caravan leave. Since Xiao Han came to the door drunk and left that day, there seems to be some kind of tacit understanding between the two, Xin Gu will come to visit from time to time with some meat and food, Zhu Huilan sews clothes for him and cooks meals for him, although there has not been anything that makes her nervous all the time, but Zhu Huilan has regarded herself as a woman of Xin Gu, the only thing that remains undecided is whether Ming Media is marrying, or bending to the side room, and in the eyes of other soldiers and civilians in Lanzhou City, the same is true, they all say that she is lucky.

Looking down on the high slopes, the huge caravan seemed extremely small, and slowly marched northward, meandering into the distant mountains, gradually disappearing. Zhu Huilan held back the tears in her eyes, bent down and picked up a handful of grass seeds, the small grass seeds were lighter than wheat seeds, like fine sand overflowing from the cracks of her fingers, along with the warm wind, dancing in the rising sun, falling into the neat soil ridges, sowing the hope of waiting.

At the foot of the mountain, Sun Gouzi carefully spread the wheat seeds in the bag on a small flat rock, straightened up, the wheat seeds reflected the golden light in the sun, as if looking at a piece of gold, Sun Gouzi took a deep breath of the smell brought out of the soil, closed his eyes, and felt the rare leisure of the year. Others feel that the farmer ploughs the ridge for a year, but for Sun Gouzi, who is familiar with the field, even in Khitan, as long as he stands on the ridge of this sunny field and feels the rising earth qi of the land, he feels that he is full of Tai, Cai Shibai said with contempt that he is in the devil, the life of plowing the field all his life, Sun Gouzi also feels that this ridge and himself seem to be closely connected, planting in spring, hoeing grass in summer, and harvesting in autumn, that is the pulse of the earth's qi. After being a tenant all his life, he finally had a good piece of land under his feet, and from the day the earth thawed, Sun Gouzi spent twice as much time in the field as other tenants. Blacksmith Cai 18 felt that it was fortunate that farming did not say that he sacrificed himself to the furnace in the sword-casting shop, otherwise he would have been able to do it badly.

Cai 18 did as he said, and asked for a piece of thin land near the city. Growing grass-fed sheep is too ridiculous for a household like Sun Gouzi who farms land all year round in the mainland, but it is very suitable for a person like Cai Shiba, whose ancestors have never planted crops for several generations, anyway. The Lanzhou government promised to purchase and produce at a price of 400 yuan for a sheep and 20 wen for a bundle of grass, and also subsidized the households who planted grass with one liter of grain per day.

Cai 18 was a man who worked iron, and he did not enter the craftsman's camp after concealing it, except for the artisan household that was screened once when the people first came at that time, there was no one again. The craftsmen are scheming, Cai 18 found that most of the high-spirited masons and tailors, blacksmiths and carpenters were nowhere to be found, and he couldn't help but secretly rejoice that the husband was not guilty and guilty, and these people were afraid that they would be caught doing hard labor in that dark place. He also settled down to serve his dozens of acres of thin land, planted pasture grass on the ground according to the requirements of the Lanzhou government, and hoped that when the world would get better, he left this key place for the north-south army and moved to a state capital in the interior to reopen his blacksmithing shop. Craftsmen are no better than peasant households, they are not as dependent on the land, and they can get food wherever they go.

Wu Yingying saw the caravan go away, and returned to the mansion with the guards and soldiers, and Cai Jian, the captain of the craftsman battalion, reported that the yield of a kiln of bone china had been increased to 10%, and Wu Yingying was overjoyed, and ordered the kiln craftsmen to reward ten sheep per household, and record them in the baggage camp account to take it by themselves. From now on, the craftsmen will strictly classify the finished products of the Lanzhou porcelain kiln according to the quality, which is like the diamonds of later generations, and the strict grade will make the high-end products more expensive.