Looking north towards the rivers and mountains

Chapter 324 In Full Swing

There's really no good solution; we can only remain calm and wait for things to change.

Could an ordinary, unambitious bandit really do something like robbing artisans? The officials of the Yuan Dynasty were just bad, not stupid, at least not all of them were stupid.

But if you ask him to return all these assets—especially the most important human assets—he becomes unhappy.

In short, Shao is currently in a very conflicted state of mind.

He didn't intend to do this, but since it has already happened, he has to carefully consider his next steps.

One thing is certain: the authorities won't be able to find him anytime soon. It's not just that it takes time to investigate by following clues; more importantly, they're currently in a mess and won't have the time to deal with him, Shao, until they've cleaned up their mess.

Based on this line of thinking, he has already made some decisions.

On the seventh day, the families of the thirty boatmen were gradually brought to the horse-drawn sand, along with two boatloads of timber.

The cargo ships were seized from the Grand Canal.

The official ship was slightly larger, with a carrying capacity of 300 shi (a unit of dry measure), while the civilian ship had a carrying capacity of 200 shi. In terms of ship type, it was neither a canal ship nor a grain transport ship, clearly made by shipwrights based on their own experience.

Shao Shuyi found it annoying and abandoned it on Matuosha, using it as a short-distance communication vessel. It traveled between Jiangyin, Mumasha, and various ports such as Kunshan, Shanghai, and Jiangning, transporting people while also purchasing daily necessities, food, and building materials to wholesale to merchants in Matuosha. He didn't seek to make money; he only cared about maintaining a relatively stable price level.

Shao Shuyi hosted a banquet in the dockside office building where he had previously met Zhu Daocun and his wife, as well as Ge Daji, to welcome them back.

After receiving the business, Wu Meng went to his acquaintances in the countryside two days in advance to collect pigs and sheep, but he didn't get many. He only got three pigs and a dozen sheep, which he slaughtered and sent over here.

It wasn't that he didn't have the money to pay upfront, but rather that the demand for meat in Ma Tuo Sha had surged recently. Although the local people had expanded their livestock farming, they hadn't kept up with the demand. In short, the pigs and sheep in the farms that Wu Meng knew were almost all eaten up...

After the cut meat was delivered, Wu Meng volunteered to stay and help, working with the boatman's family to process the meat, making large buckets of meat soup, which were then distributed to everyone.

After finishing all that, he looked around and saw Shao Shuyi and a few others chatting on the edge of the field. He walked over with a smile. "You weren't very willing to move your families here before, but now that I've forced you to come, do you have anything to say?" Shao Shuyi walked slowly along the edge of the field with his hands behind his back, carefully inspecting the winter wheat that was growing taller and taller in the field as he spoke.

Yan Zhongyi, the leader of the haulers, secretly glanced at Shao Shuyi's expression and said, "Brother Shao, things have come to this point. We know that staying in Jiangyin will only bring harm and no benefit. We might as well move the sand here on horseback. If anyone else has any complaints, I will persuade them."

Shao Shuyi stopped and said, "Oh? It's good that you think that way. You live in Yunting City, right? Do you own any land?" "If I owned land, I wouldn't be working as a boatman," Yan Zhongyi honestly replied. "My father used to have a few acres of poor land, but he fell seriously ill and spent all his savings on treatment. We had to sell the land, but he still couldn't stay. In the end, I had no choice but to become a boatman with my fellow villagers. The house in Yunting City was actually mortgaged."

Shao Shuyi never expected that Yan Zhongyi, a figure of considerable prestige among the shamans, was actually quite empty-handed beneath his glamorous exterior. He owned no real estate, had no liquid assets, and the little money he occasionally earned was probably all spent on treating his brothers to food and drinks.

"Since you're here, I won't treat you badly," Shao Shuyi said. "It's only thirty households; I can afford to support them. I'll allocate three hundred mu to you first, and you can start by clearing the land. Whatever you clear will be yours, and I'll support you until you can support yourselves."

Yan Zhongyi thought about it and realized that it wasn't actually a loss for him.

Once ten acres of land are cultivated, it becomes one's own property, which can be passed down to one's descendants. This is much better than the Jiangbei refugees we just saw, who are still cultivating wasteland for the officials of Jiangyin Prefecture. Even after the wasteland is cultivated, the land may not necessarily belong to them.

But this is not without its costs.

Shao Shuyi then looked at Zhou Chongwu and said, "Chongwu, I remember you came to Chunxiang, right?"

"Shao She has a good memory," Zhou Chongwu said, clasping his hands in a fist salute.

"I've been to Laichun and Taining townships, they're great places. Do you have any farmland?"

"My family rented five mu of paddy fields from Master Zhou in the village."

"Surname Zhou? Member of the clan?"

"We're beyond the fifth degree of mourning, so we can't really be considered relatives," Zhou Chongwu said. "Fortunately, the land rent is cheap, but I have to do corvée labor for Master Zhou's family." "That's quite a burden."

"It's a local official, otherwise I wouldn't have agreed," Zhou Chongwu said. "There are three hundred mu of government-owned land in the village. I heard it used to belong to some temple, but in recent years it was taken over by the imperial court and turned into government land. There are dozens of mu of vegetable plots and orchards there. I'll help the Zhou family by serving as the gardener."

Shao Shuyi nodded. The garden keeper wasn't a gatekeeper; instead, he lived in a makeshift hut beside the vegetable patches and orchard, helping to grow vegetables and tend to the fruit trees. The harvested fruits and vegetables were distributed by the government to officials as welfare, forming part of their income.

This job is indeed relatively easy.

"I had your people move over here. Has anyone been talking about it?" Shao Shuyi asked.

"There's not much discussion," Zhou Chongwu said.

"Tell the truth," Shao Shuyi emphasized.

Zhou Chongwu was ashamed and replied, "There was indeed some discussion, but it was mostly about their reluctance to give up their family property. However, I have already scolded them. What 'family property' do you have? You don't even have a land deed. Your family members either rent land or work as servants, while you yourselves are still doing hard labor as porters. What family property do you have? When you came to Matuosha, at least you were given some wasteland. Shao She supported your family for three years until they were successfully cleared. What else is there to say? After my scolding, no one dared to say anything more."

Shao Shuyi grunted and said, "Don't worry, if you work with me, you'll all have a real business in the future. Even if you die in battle, from illness, or are wounded, I won't give up on you. The military farmland is prepared for them."

Zhou Chongwu was quite interested in this, so he boldly asked, "Shao She, I heard that the military farmland is only eighty-odd mu. Why not cultivate more of it?"

"We are short-staffed."

"Then I'll go out and kidnap some people, and have them help with the farming, won't that solve the problem?"

Shao Shuyi laughed and said, "If you can truly defeat the bandits and capture prisoners, you can naturally let them cultivate military fields to benefit our comrades. But you must not arbitrarily seize innocent civilians, understand?"

Zhou Chongwu gave an awkward smile and said, "I understand."

"I won't say anything more," Shao Shuyi said finally. "Starting tomorrow, I will select more than ten people to form three teams of 'helpers.' You and the team leader from Class 1 will familiarize yourselves with the equipment first."

"Yes." Yan and Zhou bowed in unison.

The Fu brothers, who had followed, looked at the two with envious eyes.

They were sons of military families, and they knew best how rare such an opportunity was.

Generally speaking, in a stable military unit, promotion is very difficult; it's a one-size-fits-all situation, and you might not even get a chance until you die. But when the army expands, it's a different story. Once the opportunity is gone, it's gone forever. Yan Zhongyi and Zhou Chongwu were truly lucky.

Thirty towmen, plus ten carefully selected salt workers from Yidu, refugees from Jiangbei, and local people from Ma Tuo Sha, were scattered and mixed into three groups, with Yan Zhongyi, Zhou Chongwu, and Wei Erdi serving as team leaders, and they trained with Brother Shao's guards.

This was an unplanned, temporary expansion. It was originally supposed to wait until next year, but the situation changed too quickly, so we had to organize a team of over forty people to bolster our resources.

The Fu brothers knew perfectly well that their elder brother Shao was clearly aiming for rebellion, or at least to establish a regional power base and then negotiate with the court. They even thought the latter was more likely and more realistic, because the Yuan Dynasty liked to offer amnesty, and how could you accept amnesty without first killing some people and setting some fires?

On the eighth day, in the martial arts training ground in the backyard of Chong Sheng Temple, more than ten men carried out six wooden boxes in pairs.

When the box lid was opened wide, it revealed rows of well-oiled iron armor.

Bian Yuanheng counted from beginning to end, his face full of excitement.

In fact, they already have some iron armor.

I originally took seven sets of old armor from the Changzhou Miscellaneous Workshop, and after they were repaired, I never returned them.

I borrowed five suits of iron armor from the interpreter Han army. I was supposed to return them, but the incident with the Prince of Zhennan has delayed the return. The chances of returning them are very low.

Zhou Chunchao worked for more than ten days before, but due to the shortage of qualified steel and the fact that the local craftsmen in Matuosha were not very familiar with the manufacturing techniques, the task of making fifteen suits of iron armor was not completed. He only finished five suits before leaving, and the remaining three semi-finished suits were completed by Jiang Xingtuo and others.

There were a total of twenty sets. One set was given to Liu Xing, one set to Mother Tiger, one set to the team leaders and Zhan Feng of the five teams, one set to Brother Shao himself, one set to Tie Niu, and the remaining six sets are all here.

Just as Bian Yuanheng was overjoyed, Shao Shuyi arrived surrounded by his guards. Everyone immediately lined up and fell silent.

Shao Shuyi glanced at Bian Yuanheng and said, "Why are you laughing like that? These six suits of armor aren't all for you; Big Gun's team is taking three of them." Bian Yuanheng was taken aback.

Shao Shuyi laughed and scolded, "Sometimes you're quite clever, and sometimes you're quite silly. In ancient times, did everyone wear iron armor in battle? At most, the first few rows of soldiers were equipped with it."

Bian Yuanheng was slightly disappointed. He had thought that at least one team would be fully armored, but upon closer inspection, it was indeed a waste.

A team of soldiers in full iron armor could only be formed by the emperor and his generals, right?

"That should be enough to equip the first two platoons of spearmen in your team," Shao Shuyi said. "As for the others, we'll have to wait. Master Zhou took inventory yesterday and said that we can pick and choose from the items brought back by the Miscellaneous Workshop to finish those five half-finished suits of iron armor. We can also repair some of the seven damaged old suits of armor, but it will take some time."

Bian Yuanheng was delighted upon hearing this and said, "That's good."

Shao Shuyi patted him on the shoulder with a big smile.

The day before yesterday, Yu Yuan asked him if he wanted to return the five suits of iron armor belonging to the interpreter Han army. After thinking about it for a long time, Shao Shuyi finally decided against it.

In this grand drama at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, he was only one step ahead of others. Once the situation completely collapsed and the rebel army rose up in droves, did he really have that much iron armor?

The bandits of Huashan had already set a precedent, and the government troops often acted as the transport captains, losing countless suits of armor and weapons.

Imagine if a rebel army were to breach and occupy a city, how much would they gain? Miscellaneous workshops weren't just limited to Changzhou Road; in fact, every road had them, and Changzhou's was relatively small.

As for the Armor Craftsmen's Office, there were only two in the entire country, one located in Suzhou and the other in Tongzhou (north) near Dadu (Beijing). The latter was far larger than the former, with several times the production capacity, which was not unrelated to the court's wariness of the southerners.

Although the economy in the North was not good, the Miscellaneous Production Bureau was quite large. There were many leaders with titles such as Director, Deputy Director, Co-Director (more than 500 people), Dean, Supervisor, and Supervisor (300-500 people). In contrast, in the South, the general population was Ambassador and Deputy Ambassador (100-300 people). The focus of production was also different, and the reasons are self-evident.

With only two or three months left in the sixth year of the Zhizheng era, and as the chaotic situation deepened, Shao Shuyi judged that the "second phase" of the Yuan Dynasty drama was about to enter its second phase. The so-called divine weapons from the first phase would be released more in the second phase, which was an important sign that the government was unable to control the situation.

Return it? Return my ass.

Not only will he not return the money, but starting this month, he will also use the inventory of materials from the Changzhou Miscellaneous Materials Bureau to find a way to purchase another batch on the market, and go all out to manufacture and arm a well-equipped army.

He doesn't expect to be far ahead of others; he just wants to be one step ahead.

Of course, that was a long-term goal; in the short term, it was to guard against the government actually coming after him.

To be honest, Shao has been acting a bit too wildly lately. Knowing a little about the general historical trend, he's worried that the legendary "million-strong army" of Tuotuo will come to conquer him, which would be a real problem.

So he was a little anxious and started making preparations in a flurry.