At the beginning of the fifth month of the second year of Longwu, Yuan Huang, who was supervising the construction of the Dachi Road in Liaodong, received the news.
A group of strong laborers captured and sent from Nihon was about to arrive at the Tianjin Port. He asked Yuan Huang to receive a group of strong laborers and manage them to speed up the construction progress.
Since the construction began more than a year ago, the Dachi Road in Liaodong had been completed from Tongzhou to Sanhe, from Sanhe to Jizhou, and from Jizhou to Malanyu Pass. Now it was on the way from Malanyu Pass to Jizhou Town. Looking at the construction period, it was estimated that this section of the road would be completed in about half a month.
The people were really tired after all the construction. They had put in a lot of effort. In order to repay the emperor for giving them land and teaching their children to go to school, they also did their best to contribute their labor to help the emperor build the Dachi Road.
However, their strength was limited after all. During the spring plowing season, they also needed to complete their own spring plowing tasks. Otherwise, if this task was not completed, everyone would have no food to eat.
That was to say, Yuan Huang would soon face the situation of a shortage of labor.
The weather in Liaodong was extremely cold. Once winter came, the land would be frozen and it would be difficult to start construction. The long winter was an unavoidable problem in Liaodong.
Therefore, now Yuan Huang not only supervised the construction of the road from the capital to Liaodong, but also asked another construction team to start building the Dachi Road from Shenyang, opposite to him.
What was lacking now was time and labor.
At this moment, a group of strong Nihon laborers came, which was undoubtedly a great thing. As for Xiao Ruxun using the Nihon labor force without interfering with the spring plowing of his own people, Yuan Huang still approved of it. There was nothing to say about this.
Xiao Ruxun had been the emperor for more than a year. In addition to treating the officials harshly and launching a wave of purges that killed thousands of people, he had done everything else very well.
He had reformed the maladministration, strengthened the centralization of power, severely punished corrupt officials, lightened the burden of the people, repaired the world, built schools, and let children go to school, and so on. All of these were promises he had made.
He did not break his promise.
However, this was not a reason for Yuan Huang to forgive him. Yuan Huang would never forgive Xiao Ruxun. From Yuan Huang's point of view, Xiao Ruxun was qualified to be an emperor. This was the bottom line that he could accept. No matter how well Xiao Ruxun did, it was what he deserved.
If Xiao Ruxun could not do what he had imagined, if Xiao Ruxun was a tyrant who tortured the people, he would rise up without hesitation and blow the horn of the destruction of the Daqin Dynasty.
Xiao Ruxun had done a good job at the moment. He had effectively lightened the burden of the people. Usually, when Yuan Huang panted and talked with the people who came to work, the people praised the new Daqin Dynasty.
The commoners all said that after so many years, this was the first time they truly owned their own land. As long as they paid less taxes than before, they could get more than before. Even if they worked or served in the military, they could also get a reduction in taxes. The pressure was not that great.
After the introduction of new crops, under the vigorous promotion of Xiao Ruxun, many people began to plant new high-yield crops, and the harvest was very high.
Now it was no longer a big problem to have enough to eat. Although it was still an unattainable dream to eat meat and oil, at least they would not be hungry.
For the people who had just gotten rid of the exploitation of the landlords and the court, the current life was already a dream life.
There was an old man who once said that.
"In the past, we looked forward to the stars and the moon. We just wanted to save a few more money to redeem the land from the lords and live a more comfortable life. But no matter how much we saved, we could not keep up with the rising price of the land. Our family lived frugally for many years and went hungry every year. There was no way to redeem the land."
When Yuan Huang asked for the reason, they said: during the famine, they sold the land at a low price to survive. When the good years came, they could not buy the land back. They could only become tenant farmers, working for the landlords for several generations.
Even having enough to eat was an extravagant hope.
Therefore, His Majesty led them to overthrow those heartless landlords and gentry, took back their land, gave them real land autonomy, and guaranteed their land ownership rights. He gave them high-yield crops so that they could fill their stomachs, and even provided their children with education. This was a sage!
When the people mentioned the current Emperor of the Daqin Dynasty, General Xiao, they all praised him with a pious face, and there was no trace of falsehood in their words.
And it was true that they could eat their fill. They could eat potatoes and wheat rice, and they could always eat their fill. With some spare money, they could also buy some meat to eat.
Xiao Ruxun promoted livestock farming in Northern Zhili and encouraged the people to raise poultry. He also raised a large number of chickens, ducks, fish, and pigs in his Imperial Plantation. He lowered the price of meat in this area, so that some ordinary people could also buy some meat to eat at home.
Not to say how good it was to eat, but they could always eat it.
In addition, the large-scale planting of peanuts and soybeans provided the market with soybean oil and peanut oil, which increased the supply of oil in the market.
Many oil shops directly operated by the government sold oil at a relatively low price, so the people could eat vegetables with oil every few days.
From these small things, Yuan Huang could see that Xiao Ruxun really cared about the people. Xiao Ruxun in Myanmar and Xiao Ruxun in Beijing seemed to have never changed on this point.
This was also the reason why Yuan Huang was willing to give up everything to follow Xiao Ruxun.
He deeply sympathized with and cared for the people at the lowest level. The army he commanded would never harm the people. It was similar to the attitude of the Yue Army in the past, which was still the same even now.
Within his jurisdiction, what he cared about the most was whether there were people who starved to death, whether there were people who didn't have enough to eat, and whether there were farmers who didn't have land to farm.
In those years in Myanmar, no one had starved to death. So when Xiao Ruxun encountered a disaster, all of Myanmar provided 100,000 troops for the northern expedition to help him defeat the court.
This was also the reason why Yuan Huang trusted him so much, and why he was willing to give advice and advice to calm the place and solve everything for him, and why he was even willing to die for him.
But in the end, this was the result.
Countless times in his dreams, Yuan Huang thought about it. If Xiao Ruxun hadn't taken that step and hadn't become emperor, what would the result have been?
He didn't know. He thought about it countless times, but he still couldn't figure out what would have happened. The only thing he knew was that it probably wouldn't have been like this, because no emperor could tolerate a general controlling 500,000 troops.
If it were the current Xiao Ruxun, he wouldn't be able to tolerate it either.
The only difference was that after Xiao Ruxun became emperor, he still held a benevolent and caring heart towards the people. He killed officials, generals, nobles, and low-class merchants, but he never harmed the people. Even when he conscripted them into the army, he gave them corresponding tax incentives to make up for it.
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