Late Qing Dynasty Executioner

Chapter 51: Farming and Warfare
"Haha, actually there's nothing wrong with it. Who knows, maybe it's even a good thing!" Bai Wencheng said with a smile.

"Maybe!" Bai Yunqing also smiled.

After returning home, Chen Gu went straight back to his room, lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He thought of Bai Wencheng, who had just looked like a modest gentleman. He was completely different from the Bai Wencheng who had a conflict with Bian Shichun before.

Chen Gu felt a chill in his heart. They were all so smart. This was just the younger generation. What about those old guys? He couldn’t even imagine it.

No wonder Chen Gu always felt that Liu Er seemed a bit bluffing when facing the head of the Bian family. Now it seems that it is normal for Liu Er to lack confidence. After all, it is a bit too much to ask a mere warrior to confront the old villain of a big family.

Chen Gu grabbed Pingtou's head with all his strength twice, but he still couldn't think of any good way to deal with it. In the end, he was too lazy to think about it anymore. If it really didn't work, he would just fight with all his strength, which was Chen Gu's strong point.

In the next few days, all the tobacco shops in the Bai family, big and small, were slowly closing down. The reason given was insufficient supply. The prices of the remaining shops were also getting more and more expensive, which made some old smokers uncomfortable.

That day, the obstacle who was gathering intelligence upstream came back, and also brought back some men for Chen Gu.

"About ten. I dare not take more at one time. All of them have been examined by my brothers. They are all young men of 17 or 18 years old. They don't smoke opium and have good character and personality!" said the roadblocker while gnawing on a pig's trotter.

In order to rotate the personnel in the stronghold, Liu Er prefers to recruit young people. Chen Gu likes to recruit young people even more. After all, he is not very old, so he naturally hopes to train a team that can be used for a longer time.

How could he not care? That was dozens of acres of land. Chen Gui himself was from the countryside and attached great importance to land.

When Liu Er first established the mountain stronghold in his early years, he had to fight several battles with nearby bandits before he was able to build the stronghold. After that, he would encounter challenges from time to time.

"That's right. There are so many people. We can recruit them selectively!" Chen Gu nodded, put the broad beans on the chopsticks into his mouth, chewed and said, "Add the brothers you already have, it should be enough.

"Then we can't give up!" Chen Gu looked at Liu Er with dissatisfaction, "Why didn't you tell me there was so much land on the mountain?"

The village still needs to be operational. If so many people suddenly disappear without a trace, it will easily arouse suspicion. Besides, without us guarding the village, it will be easy for others to take advantage of the situation and break in."

"The village can indeed continue to be operated. The place is actually quite good. There are still dozens of acres of land. If we hurry up now, we can plant seeds!" The roadblocker grinned.

Where the imperial court cannot control, civilian forces will naturally move in. The existence of mountain strongholds is actually necessary to a certain extent, and can even maintain a certain degree of peace for the people. Otherwise, the Bai family and the Bian family would not allow the existence of mountain strongholds.

"I thought you made so much money that you no longer cared about such a small piece of land!" Liu Er said with a smile.

There will always be people who rob people on the road anyway, so it’s better to let Liu Er’s stronghold stay there and give them some protection fees. Then everyone will have a better life and at least no inexplicable things will happen.

Moreover, young people are more flexible and if they get enough nutrition, even 17 or 18-year-olds may still grow taller.

To be precise, our entire nation attaches great importance to land. Since Qin Shihuang, we have been a nation that built our country on farming and warfare.

All wars are for land. Ninety percent of civil fights are for land, and the remaining nine percent are for water. The only reason for grabbing water is for farming.

It is normal for two families to fight over a small piece of land and have no contact with each other for generations. We farm during the busy farming season and fight for land to farm during the off-season. Everything is for the land.

"By the way, when I was in Hejiang, I heard that someone was planning to open a smoking house here. Did something happen to the Bai family?" Stumbling Block suddenly asked.

Chen Gu raised his eyebrows and sneered, "Then let them come. Try to figure out who they are and try to collect as much information as possible about them!"

The stumbling block knew that Chen Gui hated opium, so he brought up the matter. Hearing this, he said, "But they probably won't come down by land. At most, they will go by land occasionally when they go back. It will be a bit inconvenient for me to stay in the mountain village."

"In fact, we can ask the Cao Gang to help keep an eye on it. We won't be able to hide it from them if we take the water route!" Zhang San suggested.

Chen Gu nodded, wondering whether he should contact Wang Jian.

Anyway, the Bian family knows everything about his own affairs, and now even the Bai family knows about it, which means that everything that can be known is known, and everything that cannot be known is impossible to know.

There's nothing wrong with adding Wang Jian. Since you want him to do something for you, it's only right to contact him and have a good talk.

The entire Jiangjin County, with an area of ​​more than 2,000 square kilometers, sounds large, but there are actually only a few top-level people. So when you stand at a certain height, you will feel that the circle is very small.

It's so small that it seems like nothing can be hidden, but for ordinary people, those things are secrets that they will never know in their lifetime.

This information gap is actually the biggest gap between the upper and lower classes. Under information asymmetry, ordinary people become leeks, and sometimes they don’t even know how they died.

On the third day after Banluhu led his men back to the mountain stronghold, Chen Gu also came to the mountain stronghold on horseback with Scar, intending to take a look at the specific situation of the mountain stronghold. Zhang San was left in the city by Chen Gu to chop wood.

The mountain village is about ten miles away from Longhua Field and more than thirty miles away from the county seat. It only takes an hour or so to get there by horse.

The village is naturally on the mountain, but only halfway up the mountain. Several rows of earthen brick huts have been built, and a lot of sloping land has been opened up along the sunny slope, about 40 to 50 acres. Unfortunately, there are no paddy fields.

Scar said that there was only one spring on the mountain, which could guarantee water for dry land, but not for paddy fields.

A large number of crops such as broad beans, peas, cabbage, and rapeseed are grown in the area.

The broad beans and peas are ripe and it is time to harvest them, but the cabbage and lettuce have already blossomed and grown moss and cannot be eaten. They are too old even for making sauerkraut. The rapeseed, on the other hand, will have to wait for some time before it can be harvested.

Stumbling Block was leading people to harvest broad beans and peas, while some people were digging and turning the soil.

"Now, dig out the soil and dry it for two days before planting corn. You can also plant sweet potato seeds. When the corn seedlings grow a little bigger, you can plant the sweet potato vines in the gaps. After the corn is harvested, the sweet potatoes will enter their growth period, so you can avoid delaying either!"

Scar is also very knowledgeable when it comes to farming.

(End of this chapter)