Li Siye had already returned to Qiuci, and before entering the city, he specially ordered Yan Xiaosi to lead a team of people to bring Twelve Niang and her family to Qiuci. Because in the next few years, the four towns of Anxi will be the focus of his work, and most of the money earned by pepper logistics will be spent in oasis cities such as Yanqi, Qiuzi, Shule, and Swap City, and the implementation of two points is to reward cultivation and plan grazing.

In the past few decades, the Anxi Protectorate has thousands of hectares of land in Qiuzi, Shule and other places, basically solving the problem of 24,000 soldiers to eat, but once the war needs to mobilize the people, the food is not enough, and it is necessary to use the grain transferred from Hexi by the imperial court, not to mention the increase in transportation costs, and it is easy to be stuck.

He didn't know that he had been appointed as the envoy of the Hexi Jiedu now, but even if he held this position, expanding the number of Anxi soldiers was a must.

He decided to spend money to hire local people to expand several granaries in the four towns of Anxi, so as to maintain a grain stock of 400,000 yuan.

At the same time, he had to secretly expand the number of soldiers, increase the number of soldiers in small quantities, and constantly increase the strength of the Anxi army, and if he wanted to do this, he had to solve the problem of armor.

Now the biggest demand of the major feudal towns for the imperial court is armor, which is also the only technical blockade of the imperial court to the feudal towns. Even if the two towns of Fanyang and Pinglu are strong, they do not have the ability to independently manufacture fine armor, which is quite a complicated process. It is necessary for the Northern Capital Weapons Supervision under Taifu Temple to be built by many Jiafang Bureaus. Each leaf of the armor is finely forged with an iron hammer, and then gilded with mercury and lead powder, copper powder or gold powder to prevent rust, and then punched with tools and then braided with a rubber band. Each set of armor needs to be smelted to cast and then processed, which consumes a lot of manpower and craftsmen, representing the ceiling of the level of Datang craftsmen, and belongs to the high precision of national defense technology.

The cost of a set of step armor is about three or four hundred yuan, and two sets of armor are equivalent to a bucket of pepper. In the early Tang Dynasty, the government soldier system was supplied by the state for free, and when the recruitment system rose in the later period, only the central sixteen guards and the left and right Longwu Imperial Forest Army were supplied by the imperial court for free. If each feudal town wanted to obtain armor, it needed to pay a certain cost, but it was not possible to obtain it just because of money, and it also needed to be approved by the Ministry of War.

The quota of the feudal town has been recorded in the military department, and if you want to order armor, you need to exchange it for scrap armor, and if you expand the army due to casualties, you need to issue a color household registration for recruitment, which can be said to be a radish and a pit, which can be regarded as a restriction on the army of the feudal town.

However, the Jiedu envoys were also able to find ways to go against the policy, some forged household registrations, some bribed the officials of the Ministry of War and the Northern Capital Ordnance Supervisor, and with the help of the underground forces in Chang'an City to buy and sell armor, and even bought off the Longwu Army and the Imperial Forest Army in the court, and colluded with the inside and outside to smuggle the armor out as wealth, which meant that more money would be spent to buy, and a set of armor would cost about three times the price if it was purchased through gray channels.

These transactions of gray and black methods can only be carried out in small batches, and Li Siye has no shortage of small money in his hands, and he wants to send a reliable person to Chang'an and let him continuously smuggle armor to Anxi. An Lushan must also be doing this, but such a small amount of expensive armor is not enough to expand the large army, so in the process of expanding the army, Fan Yang Pinglu used low-cost and easy-to-manufacture leather armor for ordinary soldiers, and only this kind of armor made the feudal town not be stuck by the central government. Methods are worth learning, and they can be used to equip non-elite garrison troops, and he will also use them when he takes control of Hexi in the future.

In the cold winter, Yan Xiaosi rushed to Qiuzi with Mrs. Li's twelve mothers and her family, and after more than a year, Li Siye was finally reunited with his family.

The size of the adopted sons is almost to his waist, and his own son Li Zuoguo has also run all over the ground, he picked up the child and felt a lot of emotion, in the era of poor medical and health conditions here, in this era of advocating early marriage and early childbearing, the eldest son is the guarantee of inheriting the family business.

He comforted himself like this in his heart, don't worry too much, the child still belongs to this era, and it can be regarded as the heir to the original owner. He himself is lonely, a soul who does not belong to this era, and the goals he pursues are beginning to become illusory and unclear.

He is not worried about the child's education at all, and he has never thought of teaching him with his own thoughts, because this is not necessary, the shaping of the three views must have the participation of the environment, and the three views shaped out of thin air are incompatible with the times and are easy to cause unnecessary troubles to children. Contemporary traditional poetry, including Confucianism, is enough for him to cope with this era, so why bother with extraneous branches.

Twelve Niang has not changed much, she is still gentle and lovely, like a standard image of a good wife and mother who can be remembered in the annals of history, Li Siye has been promoted to the past few years, she has been awarded the life of the court as the main supporter of the family, from Yiren to Gongren, and then to Lady, and then to Mrs. Erpin, and may become a first-class edict in the future, such as She Taijun.

She may have learned from Daorou's mouth that her husband was forcibly gifted four beauties by the emperor, but fortunately he was not brought to Qiuzi, otherwise a family ethics war would break out. But Twelve Niang still refuses to give up, her method of revenge is to ask for it at night, and perform traditional arts on her husband who is fierce and fierce, which is comparable to Luhua's 5S first-level pressing technology.

As a result, half a month after the reunion of the husband and wife, Li Siye felt overworked, as if he had been hollowed out. Twelve Niang is radiant, as if she has recovered her past debts.

……

When the emperor appointed him as the envoy of the Hexi Festival, the holy decree was transmitted to the west of the city, and it was already the first month of the twelfth year of Tianbao, and the eunuch who came to announce the decree was named Cheng Yuanzhen. These eunuchs, who came to power in the future, have now begun to emerge.

Now Cheng Yuanzhen's face is still very tender, like a little white face, and he is still trembling in the face of a big guy like Li Siye. The envoy of the Three Towns Festival stood in front of him, he was still a little lacking in confidence in announcing the decree on behalf of the emperor, and his sharp tongue trembled a little: "The Northwest Court of Anxi Jie Du made Li Siye accept the decree!" ”

Li Siye wore a copper-colored Wenshan armor, a phoenix winged hood, and a crimson brocade cloak tied behind him. Standing in front of Cheng like a mountain, he knelt on one knee and crossed his hands together, and responded loudly: "Minister Li Siye welcomes the holy decree." ”

Cheng Yuanzhen unfolded the bamboo slips of the book with both hands, and chanted loudly: "Under the door!" Ordered the Imperial Shi Dafu, the Right Weiwei General, the Kaifu Yitong Three Divisions, the Zhu State, the British Gong, the Longyou Provincial Interview Envoy, the Herd Envoy, the Recruitment Envoy, the Northwest Court Jie Du Envoy, the Governor of Qiuci, and the Governor of Tingzhou Li Siye concurrently served as the Jie Du Envoy of Hexi and the Governor of Liangzhou, so as to consolidate the border and guard against the Great Food of Tibet. Chen Xilie in the middle of the door......"

Li Siye crossed his hands again: "Thank you, Your Majesty, for your grace." ”

Cheng Yuanzhen slowly moved in front of Li Siye, because he was kneeling on one knee, no, all the Anxi generals behind him were kneeling on one knee, and the only one standing was him Chen Yuanzhen. This gave him a great sense of satisfaction, although he knew that what the other party was kneeling down was only the emperor, just a symbol of imperial power, but he was now the emperor's spokesman, at least maintaining this symbolic height. Like a soap bubble ball floating high, although it will burst when you poke it, it contains all the beauty before it breaks.

He held the book and thought about it above Li Siye's head, a smile appeared on the corner of his mouth, but he didn't put the book in Li Siye's hand for a long time.

Li Siye raised his head suspiciously, looked at the little eunuch who was smirking in front of him, and couldn't help frowning.

Cheng Yuanzhen suddenly sobered up, was looked at by Li Siye's indifferent gaze, and suddenly felt his scalp tingle, hurriedly put the book in the other party's hand, lowered his head and waved the dust to hide his gaffe, and secretly scolded that he was really proud and easy to get carried away.

Li Siye didn't pay much attention to this, and instructed Yan Xiaosi beside him: "Give Cheng's father-in-law some hard-earned money to run away." ”

"Don't dare, don't dare."

"Take it." Yan Xiaosi stepped forward, and what was stuffed into his hand was a gold collar, which surprised Cheng Yuanzhen in his heart, these knots were really rich, and even rewarded the eunuchs with gold.