Ming Dynasty man

Chapter 616 Elimination of Locusts
Behind Li Jingchao, he pouted: "This kid is fighting for you, calling me a prodigal."

Zhu Huiling raised his eyes to look at Xiaojiu and said with a smile, "It's still my son who loves my mother, and my sister's adoptive son is not in vain."

Shen Ying smiled, turned around and said to the maid behind her, "Go get a melon and give it to my filial son."

Xiao Jiu smiled and said, "Thank you, Godmother."

Shen Ying smiled, pointed to the chair and said, "Don't be restrained at home, just sit down."

Xiao Jiu shook her head: "I'd better stand, my boy, sitting in front of you, my heart is not at ease."

Li Jing said with a smile: "Then you don't stay in the house, find a cool place to eat your melons." "

Xiao Jiu nodded with a smile: "Then I'll go talk to Anguo."

Li Jing waved his hand.

Xiao Jiu saluted Shen Ying and Zhu Huiyu, then turned and left the house.

When Xiao Jiu went out, Shen Ying picked up the round fan and fanned Li Jing while saying, "My lord, I think that blindly relying on disaster relief is not a long-term solution, and finding a way to eliminate the locusts is the right way."

Li Jing sighed lightly and said, "Is there any way? If there is a way, I don't have to be in such a hurry."

Zhu Huiling laughed and said, "My lord, the method is thought up by people. There is a saying that one person counts the disadvantages, and two people count the long. The master has no solution, but it doesn't mean that everyone has no solution."

Li Jing smiled bitterly and said: "Elimination of locusts is not something that can be thought of by thinking. If we can't come up with an effective method, it is called tormenting. For the common people, tossing them at this time is tantamount to making things worse. One is not good, The hearts of the people will be in chaos, and it is not impossible to rebel.

Therefore, at this time, we must stabilize the hearts of the people. As long as the hearts of the people are stable, the world will not be chaotic, and we will be able to survive this disaster.The first thing to stabilize people's hearts is food. As long as the people can eat, they will not make trouble. "

Shen Ying nodded and said: "What the master said is that the food must be prepared in advance. If the food is sufficient, we will have no worries. At this time, we will brainstorm and find a way to eliminate the locusts. Don't worry, the master. When I turn around, I will let someone give it to you." The household department sent 300 million taels of silver."

"Then I would like to thank Madam." Li Jinggong cupped his hands and said.

Shen Ying smiled and said: "The master cares about all the people in the world. My sister and I can't help with big things, so we can contribute to these small things."

Li Jing smiled and said: "This is not a trivial matter. Is there anything more helpful than this when the country is in crisis?"

Sighing lightly, Li Jing continued: "Actually, what Xiaojiu said is right, our family's money is earned by your sisters hard work, I can't just use it as I say, so I will ask the Ministry of Households to make statistics from it later. How much money have you borrowed in your hands, and you will be repaid when the treasury is full."

Zhu Huiling said with a smile: "Let them not forget to calculate the interest. It's more than 1000 million taels of silver. My sister and I put this money out, and the annual interest is nearly one million taels."

Li Jing smiled and said, "Okay, I'll give you some interest. But if the country borrows money, you won't charge such a high interest, will you? Just make a point."

Zhu Huiling pursed her lips and said with a smile to Shen Ying: "Sister, I don't know if the master is our family's master or Daming's master, but let the country take advantage of the family."

Li Jing shook his head and smiled, "Is there any difference between state affairs and family affairs?"

Shen Ying and Zhu Huihou fell silent when they heard the words.

After a while, Shen Ying suddenly said: "By the way, sir, last year Henan was also plagued by locusts, and a large number of locusts also appeared in the Hongshanling area.

But I remember that in July last year, people from Laozhai sent more than ten fat chickens and ducks to our family, each of which weighed five or six catties, and you were full of praise after eating it.This shows that Hongshanling should not be affected too much. Otherwise, the food crops and even the grass will be gone. How could those chickens and ducks be so fat? "

Li Jing thought for a while and said, "That's the case, but I'm sure there must have been a large number of locusts in Hongshanling. They won't lie to me about such a big thing. But what you said is also reasonable. If Hongshanling was plagued by locusts, chickens and ducks would not grow so fat."

Zhu Huiyu continued: "That's not necessarily the case. The people in Hongshanling have food in their homes. Even if there is no harvest for a year or two, they can't go hungry. Therefore, when the disaster happened last year, all counties in Henan distributed food for disaster relief. , only Hongshanling did not ask for food."

Li Jing shook his head: "Even if they have enough surplus food in their hands, they will not feed chickens and ducks. Don't forget, in order to ensure the army's meat supply, I ordered every family in Hongshanling to raise chickens and ducks. That's a good thing." There are tens of thousands of chickens, if all of them are fed with food, these chickens and ducks will eat the equivalent of nearly 1 people, no matter how much food is stored in Hongshanling, it will not be able to support it.”

"Could it be that these chickens and ducks grow so fat by eating locusts?" Shen Ying asked suddenly.

Li Jing was startled when he heard the words, and suddenly got up and said: "It must be like this. After the locust disaster last year, my attention turned to other places. I don't know the specific situation of Hongshanling. Madam's words remind me. Come on!" "

The guard outside the door heard the door and entered, bowed and asked, "What's your order, Commander?"

Li Jing said seriously: "Ride a fast horse immediately and rush to Hongshanling for six hundred miles. May I ask how the locust plague in Hongshanling was overcome last year? If chickens and ducks ate a lot of locusts, you should rush to Hongshanling immediately. Kaifeng told Lu Xiangsheng to order him to quickly order the prefectures and counties in Henan to purchase a large number of chickens and ducks from other provinces and scatter them into the fields, and at the same time send people to report back to Beijing immediately, do you understand?"

"Understood." The guard replied loudly.

Li Jingjing nodded, took out a token and handed it to the guard, "Take my token and go quickly."

The guard took the token with both hands, clasped his fists heavily, turned around and was about to leave.

"Wait a minute." Seeing that the guard was about to go out, Li Jing said suddenly.

The guard hurriedly turned around: "What else can the commander instruct?"

Li Jing pondered for a while and said: "Henan's treasury doesn't have much money. You tell Lu Xiangsheng that this matter is no small matter, and there is no room for loss. If there is not enough money, let him go to Kaifeng's Jingji Bank to borrow money first. If not, then go to Shen Qing." If it’s not enough to help Shen Yi, then take my token and go to Prince Zhou’s Mansion and Tai Kangbo’s (Zhang Yan’s father) mansion for help. Go!”

"Yes!" The guard replied.

Zhu Huiling heard about it, looked at Shen Ying and said with a smile: "Sister, did you hear that, it's not enough to harm the family, and it's starting to harm the old man's family again."

Li Jing said with a smile: "Brother understands righteousness deeply, but not like you."

Zhu Huiling pouted: "I'm not talking about my natal family, I'm talking about that person's natal family."

Hearing this, Li Jing froze, opened his mouth, and was speechless for a while.

Shen Ying laughed and said, "Sister is just joking with you."

Li Jing said with a smile: "You sisters are interesting, you call each other elder sister, so who is the younger sister?"

Shen Ying smiled and said, "Sister Huiyu is a few months older than me, so naturally she is my elder sister. That's what I called her when we first met."

Zhu Huiling smiled and said: "After I marry the master, I can no longer talk like before. The wife is the respect in the family. Of course I want to call my wife my sister."

Li Jing nodded with a smile, took the clothes from the servant girl and said, "Okay, I'm going back to the Yamen. I'll have someone come to Xianghe Tower to arrange some dishes in a while, and I'll invite you two to drink in the evening."

Shen Ying and Zhu Huihou shook their heads again and again when they heard the words, Shen Ying smiled and said: "Come on, master, you can go about your business, we don't have extravagant expectations for this meal."

Zhu Huiyu also smiled and said, "Yes, the last time we promised to come back for dinner last time, we didn't keep it, causing my sister and I to wait until midnight. We won't listen this time."

Li Jingwen listened to Moran, after a while, he sighed softly and said: "Follow me, you will be wronged."

Shen Ying said with a smile: "The master is a person who does great things, but he can't love his children."

Li Jing shook his head, sighed softly, and put on his clothes silently.

……

Although Li Jing received the news in advance and started to arrange it immediately, it was still a bit late.

This is mainly related to the living habits of locusts.

The lifespan of locusts is about two to three months, and they can lay two hundred or more eggs in their lifetime. However, locusts are not a disaster because of their fecundity, but because of the hatching characteristics of their eggs.

Locusts lay their eggs in the soil. They will not hatch if they do not reach the incubation temperature (25 degrees), but once the temperature reaches the temperature, the eggs in the soil will start to hatch. Suppose there are thousands of pairs of locusts in an area. There are hundreds of thousands of eggs in the soil in this area, and once they hatch, there are hundreds of thousands of locusts.In fact, hundreds of thousands of locusts will not cause too much disaster, it just lays the groundwork for future disasters.

Because these hundreds of thousands of locusts will still lay eggs, and this time the number of eggs laid is tens of millions. When tens of millions of eggs hatch at the same time, it will become a disaster.

There were locust plagues in Henan and Shandong last year. It is conceivable how many eggs will be in the soil where the locusts ravaged?When the temperature for eggs hatching is reached again this year, the number of locusts produced will be a hundred times that of last year.

It takes about a month for locusts to grow from hatching to larvae and then to adults. When people find a large number of locusts appearing in the fields, they are already larvae. Li Jing received the news at this time and began to arrange arrangements. In any case, there were no locusts. The growth rate is fast.

Once hundreds of millions of locusts appear, they will really cover the sky and cover the sky and block out the sun. Wherever they pass, there will be no grass left.In just over ten days, nearly half of the prefectures and counties in Shandong and Henan were ravaged by locusts.

When Li Jing received the news, the locust plague in Henan and Shandong was irreparable.

Fortunately, Lu Xiangsheng, the governor of Henan Province, and Zhang Bingwen, the chief governor of Shandong Province, made a decisive decision to stock the poultry on the spot without waiting for the poultry purchased from the surrounding provinces to be shipped back to their own provinces.

A large number of poultry flooded the fields at the junction of the two provinces, effectively curbing the spread of locusts in Shandong and Henan to other provinces.

In order to protect these poultry from being predated by humans, at that time, Shandong, Henan and surrounding provinces issued a strict decree that anyone who dared to prey on poultry scattered in the fields would be killed without mercy.

……

The cabinet signed the pledge, Li Jing opened his bloodshot eyes, and carefully read the memorials sent by the provinces.

Judging from the reports sent from various places, there is basically no hope for the two provinces of Shandong and Henan. Among the locust plagues, only those mountainous areas and places with rich water resources can survive.

(End of this chapter)