Please ask me to be the emperor

After Zhang Shun occupied Luanchuan Town, he immediately led troops to surround the Wang family in Luanchuan. The Wang clan was also quite a talented person, and they quickly came to visit Zhang Shun, bringing gold, silver, food and grass and a few pretty women.

Zhang Shun considered that there were two "supervisory troops" sent by the Red Lady, Li Xiang and Liu Rushi, around him, so he had no choice but to accept the gold, silver, grain and grass sent by the Wang family, and casually declined the young women who were sent. .

The Wang family was afraid that Zhang Shun would be dissatisfied because of Wang's resistance during the inspection, so they sent a hostage girl, weighing 180 kilograms. Zhang Shun didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so he had to refuse again and asked for a hostage. Only then did Wang feel at ease.

Therefore, while Zhang Shun occupied the temporary office of the former inspection department, he sent troops to pacify and surrender Taojiawan, Minghe, Shimiao, Lengshui, Chitu, and Miaozi, a city of five miles. In addition to Sanchuanji and Kangjiazhuang, there is a total of one town, two cities and six miles.

Even according to the imperial yellow book, there are nearly a thousand households in these places. Moreover, Najia River, Taojiawan and Luanchuan Town are all located in river valleys, which are suitable for the development of agriculture.

Zhang Shun, who was full of hope for the future, suddenly burst out with great enthusiasm. Before Xu Ziyuan and others had finished counting the population and acres near Baodu Village, he couldn't help but recruit Zhang Shenyan and personally take people to count the population. Went to measure the land.

For Zhang Shun, after more than a year of deception and deception, he had enough military and political talents for the time being, but there was a serious shortage of actual staff and civil servants.

In the eyes of modern people, these tasks are insignificant, but for people in the Ming Dynasty, if they wanted to complete the work of counting the population and measuring land, they must have at least five skills: literacy, writing, arithmetic, geometry and farming.

Especially when measuring land, many acres are irregularly shaped. How to calculate the area? Some land in mountainous areas is barren and few seeds are sown. How should we calculate the amount? This is all a science.

Logically speaking, Zhang Shun would not dare to say that he had mastered these skills. At any rate, Zhang Shenyan had practiced farming and knew this well. Zhang Shuncai knew that the method of taxing barren land in the mountains was to collect seeds based on the number of seeds sown.

In desperation, Zhang Shun had to take his adopted son Zhang Kewang, Zhang Rujing, Zhang Wenxiu and Zhang Qineng, who were stranded here after the "Eight Kings" fell out with him, as well as his concubines Li Xiang and Liu Rushi, to take charge of the statistical measurement work.

When Liu Rushi heard this, Lao Gao pouted, but he didn't dare to make a mistake. She had to work overnight to make two curtain hats, and put them on respectively with her master Li Xiang. Firstly, it covers their charming looks, and secondly, it prevents the wind and sun from damaging their skin.

Fortunately, Zhang Shun also felt sorry for these two people, so he just sent them to find a shaded place and write down the results calculated by others. The work was quite easy.

As for the four adopted sons of the "Eight Kings", as "abandoned sons" they had nothing to say and had to work hard.

However, Zhang Kewang, the oldest, was the smartest and most attentive to statistics and measurement work. He even secretly learned some geometry knowledge from Zhang Shun.

Zhang Shun was also open-minded and said directly to them: "If you want to learn, I can teach you!"

The four of them originally studied the art of war with Zhang Shun, but within two days of learning the art of war, they encountered the "Eight Kings" and other rebels who had a falling out with Zhang Shun. The "Eight Great Kings" had so many adopted sons that they forgot about it for a while and left them here.

They are also smart people. Seeing that they have skills to learn, how could they not be willing? What's more, as long as Zhang Shun is willing to teach them, it means that at least Zhang Shun will not take it out on them. The four of them agreed to their request.

Although these four people are clever, they have no basic knowledge, and Zhang Shun is afraid of difficulty in teaching. He simply called Li Xiang and Liu Rushi to teach together, and they learned arithmetic and geometry while making statistics and measurements.

Li Xiang and Liu Rushi were the most educated, and their arithmetic was above the passing mark. The only problem they had was geometry, and they mastered the relevant skills within a short period of time. The four boys were a little behind, but it took them a while to fully master it.

Zhang was relieved a lot at this time. He ordered the four boys to lead a team to conduct statistics, while he, Li Xiang, and Liu Rushi were responsible for summarizing and checking for deficiencies. The speed was greatly improved.

In order to save time, while Zhang Shun was conducting the census of population and acres, Zhang Shun appointed Zhang Shenyan as the general manager of the farmland and began to select young men for reclamation work.

This matter of reclaiming wasteland sounds easy but is difficult to do. When reclaiming wasteland, one must have manpower, two must have time, three must have surplus grain, and four must have wasteland to carry out the work.

If it is an ordinary farmer, just the first and second items will be a big difficulty. For a farmer, planting in spring, harvesting in autumn, working in summer and hiding in winter, it is rare to have leisure all year round. Even if you finally have a moment of leisure, you will not dare to cultivate wasteland if there is no surplus food at home, otherwise people will starve to death if there is no food supply.

It is easy to have all three. If you are located in a plain area like eastern Henan and the land is exhausted, it will be difficult to find much wasteland, and you will have to be helpless.

Fortunately for the rebels, most of the more than 10,000 people who followed were young men. It’s not that there are no old and young people, but in the process of continuous exile and avoiding the pursuit of officers and soldiers, most of them died on the road.

These people were raised by Zhang Shun, and they were so idle that they now had wasteland, which just met the requirements for reclamation.

It was winter and the vegetation was withering. Zhang Shenyan divided people into several groups. Each group cleared four narrow passages about one foot wide, enclosing a piece of wasteland. Then they began to set fire to the wasteland to clear the vegetation on the wasteland.

If ordinary farmers are absolutely reluctant to do this, they cannot clear such a large area in one go. Even after burning the wasteland, they can only wait for the grass and trees to grow again; secondly, these grass and trees are good firewood, how can they be burned at once?

However, the rebels are so numerous that they can do this only if they don't care about the losses. However, after burning, the land cannot be cultivated directly.

There are a large number of thick trees on these wastelands that cannot be burned by wildfires, and there are also many roots underground that cannot be touched. At this time, we can only rely on manpower, working in groups of three or five, felling trees and digging roots, each performing his or her duties.

These felled trees and roots could not be discarded. Zhang Shenyan ordered the rebels to gather together and send someone to watch them dry in the sun and prepare to use them as firewood in the future.

It happened that Governor Zhang heard about this and quickly asked Zhang Shun for orders and came to ask for them.

Zhang Shenyan was willing to give it to him, so he only said: "Although these firewood are not valuable, everyone worked hard to dig them out, so how can I give them to you?"

Governor Zhang had no choice but to explain: "The method of smelting iron is based on charcoal at the top and pebbles at the bottom. Nowadays, the quality of Lushi's charcoal is poor, and the quality of the iron being smelted is difficult to use. I just asked your lord to bring him some charcoal to use."

There’s only one chapter today, I’m sorry