This year's Spring Festival is much warmer than in the past, and Yangcheng County also held its first annual meeting with the arrival of a heavy snowfall.

Today's Xiao Jiu can already be called a hegemon, and he also has a trace of capital to settle down in this turbulent era.

Not to mention that there are no less than 80,000 soldiers in the various departments of the Xiaozi Battalion under his command, there are more than 1.5 million people in Yangcheng County, Lingshui County, and Yujun County alone.

At the beginning, due to the drought in the north, there were not so many people in the three places, but with the rise of Xiao Jiu and a series of land reform policies, a large number of refugees fleeing the famine have flocked to it.

While the people in other places were still worried about a bite to eat, the people under Xiao Jiu's rule had already lived a rich life that they could not imagine in the past.

One of the biggest help is the opening of local textile, food and iron-smelting factories driven by the Lingshui caravan, which has provided a large number of local jobs.

When these workers in the factory have money, it will drive local consumption, forming a virtuous circle.

If Xiao Jiu was still worried about how to feed the people under his rule a year ago, the food hoarded in the treasury now is enough to consume for two or three years.

What Xiao Jiu lacks most now is population, and only by having a large population can the vacancy of labor force be filled in order to achieve real take-off.

At this annual meeting, Xiao Jiu convened a lot of officials and generals, such as the high-level leaders in the group, except for the gold that needed to be stationed in the fishing county, basically all of them were there.

Even Lao Ma, who had retired to become the housekeeper of Xiao Jiu's Mansion, was present and chatted warmly with a group of former old buddies.

At the beginning, those mountain bandits who followed Xiao Jiu from Hare Mountain either became generals or leaders of the Lingshui Chamber of Commerce's supervision group, and most of them had already started a family at the same time.

In just three years, Xiao Jiu made the promises he had made to them come true one by one, so this group of people was undoubtedly almost blindly obedient to Xiao Jiu's worship.

Even the shrimp crawler on the wild wolf mountain completely turned over after Xiao Jiu's rise and became a partial general under Jinzi, and came to participate in the annual meeting on behalf of Yujun this time.

For example, most of the people in Lijiazhen, who cooperated with Xiao Jiu to earn the first pot of gold, also chose to do business because of Li Li and became a member of the Lingshui caravan.

The original dilapidated town has become the best place to repair in Lingshui County at this time, and before the Qingzhou Army raged, the two-story buildings were repaired to the road to the entrance of the town.

These people who followed Xiao Jiu all the way were more or less rich, and those ordinary people who were allocated land also rewrote their own destiny after obtaining the land.

Not to mention how much surplus food there is in these people's homes now, at least since Xiao Jiu took power, there has never been a situation of people starving to death.

Under this background, Xiao Jiu's personal prestige reached an unprecedented peak.

Especially now that Kyoto has been broken by the rebel army, there is no nominal co-owner in the world, which has led to a very high call for the people to support Xiao Jiu as king.

However, in the face of the strong support of the masses under his rule, Xiao Jiu unexpectedly rejected the proposal of his officials to ascend to the throne.

After all, Xiao Jiu, who is familiar with history, knows that whoever is the first to be the king and self-reliant on the cusp of this storm will undoubtedly become the target of public criticism, and only by slowly accumulating his own strength is the king.

In the Yangcheng County Guard, in addition to the political officials and military generals in the army, the Lingshui Caravan, as Xiao Jiu's money bag, will naturally not be absent.

Some of the most capable members of the chamber of commerce were also fortunate enough to attend the first annual meeting held by Xiao Jiu, which surprised some literati who originally looked down on businessmen.

After all, before this, whether it was Great Xia or any previous dynasty, the status of merchants was very low, maybe those elites at the top of society would secretly plunder profits through commerce, but no one would put these on the surface.

It was Xiao Jiu who drove the Lingshui caravan all over the Central Plains, so that the princes of this era began to examine the value of commerce for the first time.

As the banquet began, exquisite meals were served one after another, and these guests began to feast and talk happily during the banquet, and the scene was lively.

Halfway through the banquet, Xiao Jiu, who was on the main seat, also began to announce many policies and military reorganization plans for the new year.

The first is to unify Yujun and Lingshui County into Yangcheng County, and there is no longer any geographical barrier between the three, and all government decrees are subject to the Yangcheng County Government.

Although Xiao Jiu has only begun to promulgate explicit regulations now, it has already become a tacit fact by everyone, so there is no surprise.

The second is to plan to change the existing military structure and divide all the armed forces under its jurisdiction into three or four military regions.

The First Military Region is naturally the Yangcheng County Government under the direct jurisdiction of Xiao Jiu, with 40,000 soldiers and horses, and Xiao Jiu is also the commander of the military camp for the construction of the barracks.

The second military region is the Lingshui Military Region, with the commander Zhang Ben, commanding 20,000 troops, and is responsible for the military within the jurisdiction of Lingshui County.

The third military region is the Yujun Military District, with the commander Jinzi and 20,000 troops, responsible for the military within the jurisdiction of Yujun.

The Fourth Military Region set a precedent for the military system, establishing the Yangcheng Navy, with the commander Ma Heizi in charge of all warships and maritime affairs, and the upper limit of the command was 10,000.

Except for the navy, everyone present was not too surprised by the position of commander of the military region, after all, Jin Zi and Zhang Ben were both old men who followed Xiao Jiu, and they themselves had made great achievements.

However, Kuroko, who is still floating on the sea, leads an army alone, which surprises many people.

Of course, this second restructuring is not as simple as simply dividing several military regions, and the most important thing is Xiao Jiu's next separation of military and government.

The main reason why Lingshui County and Yujun County are independent of Yangcheng County is that the government decree is not passable.

Now Xiao Jiu has abolished the model of taking the county as the military and the administration as one, and separated the finance, taxation, materials, and civil affairs of various localities from the army, and unified the officials appointed by the county government to be responsible for governance.

This can not only effectively curb the phenomenon of local officials being dominant, limit their power, but also greatly reduce the financial and material resources consumed in administrative matters.

This system is applicable in any prosperous dynasty, but it is in vain if the central government does not give its strength.

However, Xiao Jiu now doesn't have to worry about these problems at all, firstly, Xiao Jiu's own prestige has reached its peak, and secondly, the people who hold power in the local area are all brought up by Xiao Jiu, and there is no possibility of forming a party at all.

If this second decree is implemented, Xiao Jiu's rule in Yangcheng County will be on the right track, and it will not be recorded by historians in the history books as an armed mountain bandit.

After all this, the third article is about people's livelihood.

Now Xiao Jiu's various factories built in Yangcheng County have created huge wealth, which is in everyone's eyes.

Now Xiao Jiu has decided to turn all these factories into public enterprises of the Yangcheng County Government, and all the profits generated by the factories opened in various places will be owned by the local government after half of them are taken away by the county government, and the technical support required for the construction of the factories will be provided by the county government.

In this way, as before, although factories are built in the local area, in addition to bringing some jobs to the local area, it will not play any role in the local fiscal and tax revenue, and will even become a burden.

But then it was different, and the local government could leave a part of the profits of the factories, which would undoubtedly greatly ease the financial pressure, and the local military or local officials could also benefit to a large extent.

As Xiao Jiu elaborated on the long-planned decision, Li Yi was finally appointed as the first chairman of Yuzhou Public Enterprise, in charge of the operation, construction and distribution of all factories under his rule.

For Xiao Jiu, these factories built everywhere are his lifeblood.

If you want to make a difference in this troubled world, the most important thing is to have money, and the factory is a tool to make money for yourself.

Maybe it's not obvious now, but when the Lingshui caravan develops the maritime trade in Wanpingkou, these factories will be the money bag for their own army expansion.

Therefore, for these factories, Xiao Jiu can only be handed over to the people he trusts the most, and Li Yi, as his eldest brother, undoubtedly represents his own interests.

Thinking about this, the eyes of the officials and generals present at Li Yi began to change from surprise to envy, and they couldn't stop sighing in their hearts that it was better to raise a good girl than to work hard for a lifetime.

Of course, they only dare to say these things in their hearts, and they naturally won't show it on the surface.

In the matter of opening an office enterprise, Xiao Jiu still has one thing that has not been said, that is, Li Yi will take one percent of the factory's profits as a dividend as a shareholder.

After all, Li Yi is also Xiao Jiu's eldest brother, so it is impossible to really just let him work without giving some benefits.

In this way, with the end of an annual meeting, many of the decrees of the new year were transmitted to all parts of the administrative system in this informal way.

Through Xiao Jiu's revelation at the banquet of the annual meeting, after the separation of the military and the government, a large number of students who came out of the academy will enter the ranks of grassroots officials.

Although Xiao Jiu said that the current officials and generals from all over the country should mention these young people more, everyone knows that the officialdom of Yangcheng County will change in the future.

In this era, the power of officials is basically controlled by scholars who have knowledge, but now Xiao Jiu has completely broken this monopoly with the schools he has set up from everywhere.

It can be expected that these students from poor families will never form a party with the old civil official group, and this is a check and balance method for Xiao Jiu.

These officials didn't dare to continue to think deeply, they could only try their best to do their own work in the future, and don't be pushed to the end because they slacked off their work, after all, their lord Xiao Jiu is not a mediocre person who is easy to fool.

What makes these veteran civil officials most jealous is the identity of these poor students who are about to enter the officialdom.

As far as they knew, the schools that Xiao Jiu opened everywhere were not just teaching students to read and write, the most important idea of loyalty to the monarch had brainwashed these young people who had not yet reached the crown, and even let them die for Xiao Jiu, they might not be able to frown.