Silver Fox of the Three Kingdoms

48 The Return
On the new year of the first year of Jian'an, the villagers of Huangmenting started with a banquet and ended with a banquet.

Of course, at this time they still don't know how miserable Liu Xie, the emperor who is far away in Anyi, Hedong at this time, has passed the New Year in a very miserable way amidst the tugging of all the warlords in Guanzhong.

In fact, it should not be regarded as the first year of Jian'an, but it should be regarded as the third year of Xingping. It will take Cao Cao to welcome Liu Xie in Xuchang in September this year before changing to Yuan Jian'an.

But according to the chronology of later generations, this year is indeed 196 AD, and it is also the beginning of the general trend of the world, which gradually becomes clear.

After this year, first Zhang Ji was defeated in the battle with warlords such as Li Jue and Guo Si in Guanzhong, fled to Nanyang in desperation, and finally died here, and was taken over by his nephew Zhang Xiu.

Then Cao Cao defeated the Runan Yellow Turban, and at the same time expelled Yuan Shu's soldiers and horses, and expanded his power to Yingchuan, Runan and other places, gradually extending from Yanzhou to Yuzhou.

While Liu Bei was fighting Yuan Shu in Xuzhou, he was going to fight Lu Bu at the same time.Exhausted and miserable, he finally fled to Xuchang at the end of the year to join the emperor.

Sun Ce made great strides all the way to Kuaiji, and drove away Wang Lang, the prefect of Kuaiji. Jiangdong has since fallen into Sun Ce's hands.

At the end of the year, Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan also decided the victory and defeat. Ju Yi was forced to withdraw his troops because of the exhaustion of food and grass.

But everyone knows that Ju Yi has a high prestige in the army due to his meritorious service in the Battle of Jieqiao. This time the food and grass are exhausted, it may be that Yuan Shao is holding back from the rear.

After he was defeated, Yuan Shao immediately found an excuse to kill him.One is that the bird is completely hidden, and the other is indeed caused by Ju Yi's pride in taking credit for it.

Since then, Yuan Shao has completely controlled the army. Although he still has to guard against Gongsun Zan, at this time Gongsun Zan is gradually no longer his opponent.

During this period of time, while growing with peace of mind, he launched a full-scale encirclement and suppression of Gongsun Zan.

At the end of the year, Cao Cao welcomed the emperor in Xudu, attacked Lu Bu and Yuan Shu in the east, and attacked Zhang Xiu and Liu Biao in the south. Gradually, he gained a firm foothold in Henan, and his strength grew a lot.

The general trend of the world has naturally become a watershed since this year, forming a basic pattern with Yuan Shao and Cao Cao in the north, Liu Biao and Sun Ce in the south, Liu Zhang in the southwest, and chaos in the northwest.

However, these are things that will only happen in the future this year. At least on the surface, Nanyang is still in a very stable situation.

Huangmenting still lived in such tranquility. After gaining a certain ability to protect himself, Deng Mao also strictly followed Shen Chen's instructions to expand the surrounding wasteland, actively develop land, and adopt refugees.

Just because of geographical problems, even if there are hundreds of square kilometers of barren land around the Shahe area where Huangmenting is located, it is difficult for them to expand quickly.

The main reason is that Xinye is located in the south-central region of the Nanyang Basin, closer to Xiangyang.

Wuguan is in the northwest of Nanyang, and Runan is in the northeast of Nanyang.

Refugees who flow into Nanyang from these two directions tend to go to counties closer to them, such as Li Guo, Shunyang, and Wancheng, and it is difficult to go to Xinye.

Therefore, there are still not many refugees that Huangmenting can absorb, so far, there are only more than 1000 people.

But Deng Zhao and Shen Zhen also have their own plans.

The Yellow Turban stronghold that attacked them before is located in Liaoshan, about 50 miles to the east, and there are not only one, but also many small Yellow Turban forces.

There are so many people, there may be tens of thousands of people, if they can absorb all these people, Huangmenting will grow a lot.

It's just that the Yellow Turbans are no better than refugees. They are thieves who rebelled and killed officials. They have blood on their hands.

Regarding this question, Shen Chen gave an answer.

That is, the manor of Huangmenting must be occupied by clan forces, that is, the 1000 people who moved from Xuzhou can stay in the manor.

The refugees and the Yellow Turban Army absorbed will arrange villages on the outskirts, and they must be scattered so that the refugees and the Yellow Turban Army can live together. thing.

In this way, while controlling their families, they control these young adults to form an army and disrupt their social relations and organizational structure again, so that there is no need to worry about the refugees and the Yellow Turbans joining forces to cause trouble.

After receiving Shen Chen's suggestion, both Deng Zhao and Shen Zhen thought it was very clever, but they didn't know that for thousands of years in Chinese history, warlords of all walks of life have been doing this.

Not only warlords and bandits, but even the imperial court did the same.

For example, the frontier soldiers sent by the Han Dynasty to guard the fortress were allowed to bring their family members with them.

There is also the old battalion of the Dashun Army in the late Ming Dynasty, which is also the battalion of the family members of the army.

As refugees, their family is their only concern.Basically, as long as the family members are controlled, it is equivalent to controlling the entire army.

And it can also boost morale, saying that the family is behind them, and if they don't fight to the death, the family will die.

Therefore, separate control of the army and family members has become an important means of control.

However, there are advantages and disadvantages to doing so. Controlling family members can indeed control the army.But once the family battalion is attacked, the morale of the army will immediately slacken.

During the battle between Li Zicheng's Dashun Army and the Qing army at Fuchikou, the Qing army raided the family members of the old camp of the Dashun Army, causing the army to collapse instantly.

So this is only a short-term way to control the young and strong soldiers taken in by the Yellow Turban Army and refugees. After the army is formed in the future, there is no need to do so.

In mid-January, after staying in the clan for more than 20 days, Shen Chen and Deng Hong had to set off again to go to Xiangyang to go to school and go to work.

During these 20 days, Shen Chen also re-planned the clan.

His planning and design are relatively clear. In the main direction, he will continue to farm, mainly recruit refugees, and start a sideline business.

Shen Chen hopes to temporarily use colored porcelain and spirits as pillar industries to support Huangmenting's economy, because now their main source of income is still selling food, and other income is very little.

Although food is very important, even buying pig iron from Fuyang requires a large amount of expenditure, as well as daily necessities such as oil and salt, so there is no way to do this. We can only use food production in exchange for life development.

However, relying entirely on food is definitely not enough. As the world becomes more and more chaotic in the future, the importance of food will increase day by day.

Therefore, new commercial and trade industries have to be developed.

Last year, Zhou Lin introduced several merchants from Xiangyang to them. They were still very interested in the porcelain and high-strength wine produced by Huangmenting, but the current orders were not many, and the output could not increase.

This is also normal. The south has a high demand for porcelain, especially now that the north is in chaos, and a large number of refugees and powerful families have moved to the south, requiring a large amount of household porcelain.

However, the current mainstream porcelain market is still dominated by Jiangdong white porcelain and celadon. It will take time for Huangmenting's colorful porcelain to enter the market.

At the same time, spirits also encountered Waterloo.

Because of the humid air in the south, people are actually not willing to drink high-grade spirits in spring and summer. On the contrary, the winter in the north is relatively cold, and the sales of spirits should be better.

So from last year to now, only a few thousand shi of spirits have been sold out.

However, the south is also cold in winter, and drinking can keep the cold away, but the sales of the thousands of stone wine are not worrying, and they are sold out quickly.

But it is estimated that by this summer, the sales of this wine should not increase, and tend to decline.At most, people who are particularly good at drinking will like it, such as Zhang Fei Chunyu Qiong.

Therefore, the porcelain and spirits produced by Shen Chen are far less popular than expected.

Of course, this was also expected by Shen Chen.

It is pure nonsense that a traveler who invents soap glass can sell it immediately.

Even the best products must follow the laws of the market.

Emerging things want to enter the market, not only need time to establish, but also need a suitable opportunity.

Therefore, although the current sales of porcelain and spirits are not very high, Shen Chen feels that merchants should conduct promotional experiments first, wait for market feedback, and then start mass production.

Judging from the market feedback in the past few months, spirits are very popular in winter.

The humid and cold climate in the south combined with the bitter cold in the winter of the Little Ice Age, if you can drink a few sips of spirits in winter, it can not only dispel the cold, but also dispel the humidity, so at least spirits can do a lot in winter.

Shen Chen plans to brew a few more batches of wine this year, store them, and sell them in the second half of the year. I believe Zhou Lin and the big merchants in Xiangyang will be happy to accept this large batch of spirits in the second half of the year.

As for colored porcelain, white porcelain and celadon still occupy the mainstream high-end market. Shen Chen plans to target the mid-end market, increase sales first, and then attack the high-end market.

Anyway, he is selling it to Zhou Lin and the others at a low-to-medium price. Zhou Lin and the others definitely don't want to make less money for themselves, so naturally they also want to bring colored porcelain into the high-end market.

After all, they were able to reap huge profits in this way, buying colored porcelain at the price of cabbage, and then selling it at the price of celadon and white porcelain, and the profit doubled several times.

Therefore, there is no need for Shen Chen to do anything, just wait for Zhou Lin and the others to expand their markets in Yizhou and Jingzhou, and the sales of colored porcelain will naturally increase sharply, gradually replacing the status of celadon and white porcelain in the south.

So to a certain extent, Shen Chen has already put down the bait, and the rest just needs to wait for the market to ferment.

Perhaps in another year or a half, Huang Menting will be able to create wealth at full capacity.

On the nineteenth day of the first month of the first year of Jian'an, Deng Hong and Shen Chen were about to leave.

When they came back from Xiangyang, Shen Chen and Deng Hong were relatively thin. When they set off from Huangmen Pavilion, both of them gained a lot of weight. On the contrary, the sixth grandmother lost some weight.

Because when the two of them returned to their own homes, they would eat chicken, duck and fish every day, and they would be served for food and water. The farthest door they had traveled for a new year was to go to the ancestral hall to worship their ancestors.

The sixth grandmother used to have a low self-esteem in the Cai Mansion because of her body and appearance. She usually didn't go out of the door. She became fatter and fatter, and the fatter she was, the less she dared to go out.

After coming to Huangmenting, everyone praised her every day, and took her boss to the west and the alleys, and became the center of wherever she went. She enjoyed this feeling of being watched by everyone, but she walked diligently outside every day. .

Now that she has to leave, the sixth grandmother is a little bit reluctant.

When I came, there were only a few carts and horses, and more than 30 servants.

When leaving, there were seven or eight extra carts and horses, all kinds of chicken, duck, fish, all kinds of pickles, pickled vegetables, and smoked bacon were brought, and seven or eight carts were stuffed.

Such a large team will definitely not be able to take a boat, because the water is dry in winter. Although it is a medium-sized river, it cannot take large boats in winter, only small and medium-sized boats.

They don't have many people, but they have a lot of things. The big boats with more than a dozen carriages alone are enough.

So they chose to go south by car this time.

The last time when Deng Hong and Shen Chen went south by car, they were still very embarrassed. There were only three of them in total, the grandfather and grandson plus a coachman, and they rode in a donkey cart pulled by two donkeys.

But after just one year, today is not what it used to be, and this trip to the south is much more spectacular.

Shen Zhen led the escort of fifty tribesmen, twelve carriages, and a large army of nearly a hundred people in total, which was very eye-catching in the countryside.

When passing through Huyang County, even the magistrate of Huyang County heard that there was such a large team passing by in his own territory, so he quickly sent someone to inquire about the situation, and when he learned that it was Deng Hong, he immediately came to greet him in person.

To some extent, the position of Huyang county magistrate is greater than that of Deng Hong. As the county magistrate of Zhongxian County, Huyang magistrate is six hundred stones.Deng Hong is only engaged in the meritorious service of the state government, three hundred stones.

But from another point of view, the eunuch with the seal of the chief inspector of ceremonies in the Ming Dynasty was only a fourth-rank official. Is it an ordinary fourth grade?
So in the same way, as Liu Biao's accompanying staff, even if there are only three hundred shi, those working in the state capital are already considered middle-level and high-level officials, second only to Cai Mao, Kuai Yue, Huang Zu, Zhang Yun, Liu Pan and others.

As long as the magistrate of Huyang County is not stupid, he will naturally come out to curry favor.

However, the main reason why he came out to greet Deng Hong was not to curry favor with Deng Hong. In this era when officials would abandon their posts if they disagreed with each other, many officials were still very upright.

The main reason is that last summer there was a nationwide severe drought, which not only affected the Guanzhong and Kanto regions, but also affected Nanyang and Huainan to a certain extent.

The main river in Huyang is Bishui, that is, the Tang River in later generations. The water level dropped sharply, and it was difficult for the people to get water, so they had to choose to dig canals to irrigate the farmland.

However, the workload of digging the canal is very heavy. Water needs to be taken from both upstream and downstream. The lower the water level is, the deeper the canal must be dug.

It turned out that at this juncture, Deng Hong, who was only the chief historian at that time, presented a keel waterwheel to Liu Biao, and then promoted it in various places in Nanyang. Liu Biao entrusted him with this task. During the past six months, Deng Hong traveled all over Half of Nanyang.

At that time, Huyang County was also facing the embarrassment of water shortage. After Deng Hong sent the keel water truck, the county magistrate called all the craftsmen in the county to speed up the production, and hundreds of water trucks were produced and put on the river to draw water, which solved the urgent need. .

As a result, Deng Hong became famous in the countryside of Huyang. Hearing that the benefactor who helped the people of Huyang solve the water problem passed by, the county magistrate of Huyang was naturally grateful to Dade and invited him to the county government to meet.

(End of this chapter)