Time has come to April again, when taxes are paid for the first time in a year.
In April last year, Yunzhou County was full with the newly acquired Nanli County!
Not only did the people under his command have food, but there was also a large amount of food left to buy people in the pass. It also increased the population of the Song Dynasty under Zhao Jun to more than one million in one fell swoop!
Among all the areas now ruled by Zhao Jun, the population of Song people alone has reached about 2.2 million.
Many of the Song people who came early got married, started families, and became pregnant with children during this year. It is expected that Zhao Jun will usher in a wave of newborns around June.
At least it can bring another 40,000 to 50,000 people to Yunzhou County.
This year, compared to last year, Zhao Jun once again has two more counties under his command.
Whether it is Woye County that has been acquired for half a year, or Youer County that has just been acquired, they are also ushering in the spring harvest like Nanli County at this moment.
During last year's autumn harvest, Zhao Jun, the sixth commander of Nanli County and Woye County alone, collected nearly 50 million dan in grain taxes.
Deducting the 10 million shi sold and the 10 million shi used as food preparation and market supply, Yunzhou County had a balance of nearly 33 million shi in grain during the entire autumn harvest.
Before Wang Cezhi's mission, Yunzhou County had just completed the collection of winter taxes.
The previous Woye County only collected 12.93 million shi of grain in the autumn due to insufficient population and cultivated land, as well as the war.
But when the winter tax was collected, after a large number of people from the Song Dynasty filled in the land, large tracts of the originally barren land in Woye County were reclaimed, and there was no impact from the war.
The winter tax of Woye County actually levied a total of thirty million dan.
Coupled with the stable 46 million shi of grain in Nanli County, Yunzhou County has obtained a grain reserve of more than 76 million shi for the entire winter tax.
Including the surplus from the previous autumn harvest, at the end of the winter of 2023, Yunzhou County's grain reserves had reached 115 million dan!
By this time, Yunzhou County was no longer worried about the lack of food. With the population of Yunzhou County, this food was enough for all the people under Zhao Jun's command to eat for ten consecutive years and more!
But then the problem came. Yunzhou County could not find a suitable place to store so much grain, although Nanli County and Woye County of Yunzhou County had already started building granaries after the autumn harvest.
But the problem is that building a large granary that can store so much grain is a huge project in itself and is not easy to complete.
But as a quarter passed, the goal of each county becoming a large granary was not achieved.
However, nearly ten granaries have been built in each county.
As originally set up, each granary could store approximately 3.5 million dan of grain.
These thirty granaries are still not enough!
There are still nearly 8 million shi of grain that cannot be stored.
In desperation, Zhao Jun had no choice but to order all the more than eight million stones of grain that could not be processed to be transported to the pass for sale and processing.
Naturally, such a large amount of grain cannot enter the customs in an open manner. Among other things, if my emperor knew that he could actually take out such a large sum of grain for sale in the customs, he would definitely doubt himself.
Maybe the true situation in Yunzhou County will also be exposed.
But if Yunzhou County wants to enter the pass, the only way to go is through Liaoyun Pass, but the guard Li Wei is his father's man.
This means that if you don't want your emperor to know about the eight million stones of grain entering the customs, then you must not let Li Wei know about it.
But Li Wei was the guard of Liaoyun Pass, and eight million shi of grain was not a small amount. How could he not discover it?
At this time, Zhao Jun suddenly remembered a person. At first, he just wanted to be a free chess player.
But I didn't expect that now it would actually become my own skill.
What Zhao Jun was thinking of was none other than the deputy general of Liaoyun Pass, the deputy general Peng Li who was responsible for guarding the general pass on a daily basis!
When Zhao Jun first stirred up his idea, he didn't forget about him. Instead, he regularly asked the secret guards to give him "small gifts". After he slowly accepted them, the two sides started to get straight to the point.
We are all adults, and we all know the reason why the other person is nice to us for no reason.
So Peng Li also directly promised after being corrupted: "In the future, whenever something from Yunzhou County wants to enter the customs, tell him and he will solve the security problem!"
Peng Li is not stupid. He is just a small lieutenant. Why do others want to win over him and give him benefits? It is just that he is beneficial to them. How can he have such value?
There is no doubt that it is the Liaoyun Pass that he is in charge of.
This was the only place where he could help them, so Peng Li went straight to the point and made his promise.
Now is the time to deliver on that promise.
Zhao Jun directly asked Wang Huai'en to take his warrant to the Liaoyun Pass, and then the matter of eight million grains entering the pass was successfully resolved.
Although Li Wei is the guard general, he will not come to patrol every day. He will only patrol the pass every ten days and a half. On a daily basis, Peng Li is completely responsible for guarding the pass.
Zhao Jun's eight million stones of grain only needed to be broken into parts and passed through the customs in small batches at night. With Peng Li as cover, he could enter the customs without anyone noticing.
And all Zhao Jun had to pay was just a little benefit to Peng Li.
Compared with the income that can be brought by eight million grains after entering the customs, this is completely a drop in the bucket.
But this is not a long-term solution. Zhao Jun is also ordering Feiyun Trading Company to open up the Hedong Corridor as soon as possible.
As long as the Feiyun Chamber of Commerce can open up this trade route, there will be no need for many things in Yunzhou County to enter the pass through the Liaoyun Pass and risk being discovered.
You just need to go a little further and send things directly from the grassland to the Hedong Corridor.
But this cannot be achieved in a short time. The trade route along the Hedong Corridor has existed for thousands of years, and the interest disputes involved are extremely complex.
Although Feiyun Trading Company is now a famous large trading house in the Song Dynasty, it is still very immature for those multinational chambers of commerce that have been traveling along the Hedong Corridor all year round.
Far from being able to join them, they are excluded.
Therefore, it is not realistic to open up the Hedong Corridor in a short time. It needs to be planned slowly. At present, the only way for Yunzhou County is still Peng Li.
After solving eight million stones of food that could not be stored, Zhao Jundang felt a sense of crisis.
The sense of crisis does not come from the outside world, but from themselves.
Now they only had food for two seasons, and they actually had no place to store it. But as they fought against Shendu, they got another county's land.
It seems that in April Yunzhou County will have another large sum of grain taxes put into the warehouse, but the warehouse is still insufficient.
What needs to be solved then is not just eight million stones.
With that amount of supplies, no matter how powerful Peng Li was, it would be impossible for him to send the god into the pass without Li Wei noticing.
So before the next grain collection, the problem of the granary must be solved!
Finally, at a revised meeting in January, Unzhou County approved a proposal to increase the number of construction workers to build the granary.
The Yunzhou County Government will recruit nearly 50,000 people in each of the three counties to participate in the construction of granaries, and try to speed up the construction of granaries in each county.
Solve the problem of too much food in Yunzhou County and the inability to store it as soon as possible.
…
(End of chapter)
