Chapter 1016 Xihe Fertile Soil

Chapter 1016 Xihe Fertile Soil

A confrontation training ended in such a dramatic way. Li Tai had already decided on the punishment for the defeated people. He directly sent those who participated in the fight to the horse camp to be responsible for feeding and training the horses. Li Ya, an old horseman, was in charge of supervising the work.

Next, Li Tai and his party stayed overnight in Chengcheng Fang, and the next day they led a group of personal guards to continue their journey north. He did not stop when passing through Luochuan Fang, but continued northward towards the Kuli River Basin.

When Li Tai was running the Three Defense City, he built a canal to divert the Luoshui River eastward and connect it with the Kuli River, a tributary of the Yellow River. Through manpower, he created a land suitable for farming and living in northern Shaanxi, which is roughly equivalent to Later, it was Nanniwan south of Yan'an City. Since the vegetation coverage of the Loess Plateau was still relatively good at this time, this area was actually wider than Nanniwan.

Originally one of the three defense cities, Blackwater Defense City, was established in this area, but it was later renamed Xihe County. Xihe County is the core of Li Tai's various operations in northern Shaanxi, especially the farming area along the Kuli River, which is now the largest and most important farming center in northern Shaanxi.

Dugu Bin and other Xihe County officials had been waiting in the upper reaches of the Kuli River early in the morning. When Tang Gong and his party arrived, they led Tang Gong to Xihe County City and introduced the current development of Xihe County along the way.

"Now there are more than 5,000 registered households in the county, more than 16,000 residents, and more than 15,000 hectares of farmland..."

The most important indicator of the livelihood and economy of a place is the amount of land and population, so Dugubin and others also focused on relevant data when reporting.

Xihe County is not a large county with a vast area. At that time, it was just a narrow strip drawn between Dongxia Prefecture and Beihua Prefecture, and it was only a section along the Kuli River Basin.

When Li Tai heard that the number of cultivated fields in Xihe County had reached such a figure, he couldn't help but nodded with satisfaction. When he became the governor of Suizhou and was transferred from Sanfang City, the reclamation work had just started. Although thousands of hectares of land had been reclaimed by burning wasteland, most of it was rough cultivation and the harvest was limited.

Now a few years have passed, and the barren wasteland has turned into mature fields with considerable harvests. Although it is also related to the overall warming of the climate and making it more suitable for farming, the most important thing is naturally the effective management of the officials and the efforts of the villagers. Hard work.

More than 15,000 hectares of land may not be very impressive in the entire Western Wei Dynasty, but within the county of Xihe County, it has basically fully reclaimed the wasteland suitable for farming.

Although northern Shaanxi no longer occupies a core position in Li Tai's career map, it is the starting point for him to take charge of local military and political power and develop his own power. Naturally, he has extraordinary feelings in his heart and is happy to see the personnel in this town. Development is booming.

Farming is busy in early autumn, and there are many farmers working hard in the fields. When they see such a large group of people walking through the countryside, they can't help but stand up and look around curiously.

When it was learned that the then-ruling Duke of Tang came to inspect the countryside, many farmers rushed from the fields to the left side of the road and worshiped from afar to welcome him. Many people even shouted loudly: "Little people!" Datong was kidnapped by barbarian thieves in the past year. Fortunately, he was rescued by Duke Tang and settled in the county, where he was able to get married. The kindness of Duke Tang in rescuing and rebuilding his family will never be forgotten..."

Similar shouts came one after another, which also brought Li Tai's thoughts back to the old years of Datong. At that time, he personally led a team to sweep away a group of Jihu tribes and rescued many Han and Hu people who were robbed and enslaved by Jihu. Manpower has been added to the farming and development of this township.

Unknowingly, several years have passed. Now he is certainly in a powerful position, and these rescued villagers are also living and working in peace and contentment. Looking at the sincere gratitude and heartfelt smiles on their faces, it can be seen that life is much better than before. There has been a huge improvement.

The three guardsmen followed behind, and they were deeply touched when they saw Mr. Tang walking in the fields and interacting cordially with the farmers.

They naturally knew that Duke Tang had a high reputation among the people in Guanzhong, and even their own soldiers and bodyguards were loved and praised a lot for this.

But in the past, they only knew about Tang Gong's various illustrious martial arts, but they didn't know that Tang Gong had done many benevolent and righteous deeds to save people and benefit the world in his early years before his fame was revealed. Now when they heard the farmers' excited expressions, Describing the story of that year, the image of Tang Gong in their minds suddenly became taller and fuller.

Nowadays, people working in the countryside are not only local residents and campers, but also many powerful country people who come from other places to rent and cultivate land.

The development of agricultural production in the Guanzhong area has been quite mature. An important sign is that the local resources, especially the basic means of production, land, have basically been divided up. Even if Li Tai wanted to implement the granting of land to soldiers in Guanzhong, he would have to collect land from the original rural order and expand the scale of reclamation. Naturally, it would be even more difficult for ordinary people to expand farming and increase production.

In the past, northern Shaanxi was a barren wasteland. Basic personal safety was not guaranteed, and even local people were displaced. Naturally, it was even less attractive to people from other places.

However, as Li Tai made every effort to crack down on the Jihu bandits in the territory and actively developed water conservancy construction, various objective conditions improved, making the area gradually become livable, and its attractiveness was greatly enhanced.

Although many people have the idea of ​​​​relocating to their hometown and are unwilling to leave their hometown and move to other places, when staying in the hometown and even development and survival become a big problem, of course some people will choose to leave their hometown and find another way out.

Therefore, people have migrated here over the years. Through the policy of rewarding cultivation, they worked hard to reclaim wasteland, obtained a piece of land, and took root here.

However, the most influx here are merchants from all sides. Although merchants are mostly profit-making, their arrival has really injected new vitality into the development of Xihe County.

Previously, Li Tai implemented the Kaizhong method, combining the salt monopoly system with border defense to improve border defense. This policy was highly praised by Yuwen Tai, so even if Li Tai had left northern Shaanxi in the future, this policy has been implemented.

Merchants from all sides came to Xihe County to reclaim wasteland and grow crops because of the salt profits, and the grain they grew was transported to Xiazhou, Suizhou and other border defense areas nearby in exchange for salt permits. It is precisely because of the participation of these merchants that the agricultural development of Xihe County has reached its current situation. Otherwise, it would be difficult for the wasteland in Xihe County to be developed so quickly and fully with the promotion at the administrative level alone.

Not only Xihe County, but also other prefectures and counties in northern Shaanxi have seen many reclamation groups attracted by the Kaizhong Law. The grain they produce can not only be supplied to the border in exchange for salt permits, but also traded with local Hu tribes. If it were not for the restrictions on transportation methods and transportation costs, they could even return part of it to Guanzhong.

In addition to the reports from the officials of the county government, Dugu Bin also summoned some merchants engaged in Kaizhong trade in the country to report to Tang Gong on the development status of related matters.

Most of these merchants are from Hedong. After all, the salt pond in Hedong is the main source of salt, and the people of Hedong are used to making profits from salt. Even if people from other places have enough capital, they may not have such an understanding, or they dare not easily get involved in the salt industry because they are not familiar with it.

Just as these merchants came forward to greet, Li Tai actually saw a familiar face among them, that is, the famous general of Nanliang Liu Zhongli.

Liu Zhongli stood in the crowd with his back bent. He looked much older than in previous years. His brows were lowered and his appearance was submissive. It was hard to imagine that he was a powerful general in the Southern Dynasty.

"I, the guilty Liu Zhongli, kowtow to Lord Tang!"

Liu Zhongli also noticed the way Li Tai was staring at him. After everyone else had finished their greetings, he bowed deeply again. Some of the other people around him did not know Liu Zhongli's past. They were curious after seeing him. Some of them could not help but change their expressions. They did not expect that there was such a person hidden among them.

"It is really unexpected to meet here. Lord Liu, please don't be polite. If it is because of the past, there is no need to talk about your crimes. If there are other reasons after returning to the country, I would like to hear why you committed the crime?"

Li Tai was indeed a little surprised to see Liu Zhongli, but he did not directly question him.

He himself did not have any hatred towards Liu Zhongli. The conflict was caused by different positions and interests. Later, the series of punishments such as public trials and crackdowns were all due to practical needs, not deliberately targeting him.

And then again, the reason why he was able to develop so smoothly in Shannan was because Liu Zhongli and other guys made a fool of themselves in the process of rescuing Jiankang City, which caused Hou Jing to cause chaos and brought him an excellent opportunity for expansion. Of course, Li Tai would not express any gratitude to Liu Zhongli for this.

When Liu Zhongli heard what Li Tai said, he first breathed a sigh of relief in his heart, but he did not dare to stand up directly. Instead, he continued to kneel on the ground and reported to Tang Gong about his experiences since entering the Western Wei Dynasty: "The criminal offended Tang Gong in Handong last year. Fortunately, Tang Gong was benevolent and captured but not killed. Later, he entered the court and was pardoned by the former Anding Gong and released back to his hometown. Later, he was appointed by the former Zhongshan Gong..."