In February of the seventh year of Taiping in Daliang, winter turned to spring, the ice and snow melted, and everything revived. As the new ruling area in the south of Huai Town, the line along the river in Huainan Road is also the first area to see signs of spring. And in the slightly cool morning dew, Luo Bumeng, who was riding a red-skinned mule, also took the lead on the patrol road, holding a fire gun diagonally across his body in one hand, and holding roasted leafy corn in the other. , eating breakfast snacks while doing double duty. Lao Bu Meng is a veteran who was disabled and retired the year before last. He is a native of Borneo. If it weren't for the original Longzhou regiment recruiting troops in his hometown, I'm afraid he would never have the opportunity to see the ice and snow in his life; As a result, when he was stationed in Huanglong Mansion from Anton to the north, he accidentally broke his foot in a snow cave while going out on patrol in winter, and recklessly delayed the rescue time. As a result, although the bones were reattached, half of his right side was still intact. The sole of the foot was also frozen and had to be amputated. But compared to what happened to others, he was lucky. There was a Henanese named Bu Xinxie who had his lifeblood frozen when he secretly ran out to urinate. Even if he was rescued by pouring warm water on him, he still lost his life. The basic functions cannot be passed down to future generations. Therefore, he is still a little weak in walking and unable to run at full strength. Therefore, in the end, he can only choose to retire to the rear and serve as a coach in the third and fourth line garrison regiments and patrol teams; and then actually receive military points in his name. When it came time to farm, he had three options: One was to go to Andong and settle in a pioneer village near Tieling Yiyi, which gave him 357 acres of land, and he could recruit his own people to go there. One is to Shanzhou, Henan, the westernmost part of Huai Town, and they are given 290 acres of farmland, plus five servants with a 15-year labor period; the other is near Xianju County, Guangzhou, Huainan As the head of the local village, he received 409 acres of land, thirty-seven male and female villagers, and fifty-two slaves. In the end, he was afraid of the freezing cold in the north and did not want to bother to relocate again. He took the initiative to choose the position of village chief in Xianju County, Guangzhou, Huainan, which was closer to the warmer areas in the south. But in fact, when he brought a group of men, women, and more than a dozen carts of items, ready to go through all the obstacles and re-open the land, he found that almost everything was ready-made, including land, houses, cattle, seeds, and farm tools. Everything has been prepared through the local government. He doesn't even need to worry about the specific allocation and planning of the headcount. He only needs to move in the clothes, quilts and household items he brought. As the village chief, in addition to urging his villagers to complete the corresponding production plans and pay quotas of public grain in accordance with the local season in a timely manner, he also has to train and train these adult villagers in accordance with military regulations and rules. Therefore, in addition to the customary swords, guns, bows and crossbows that are assigned to each person, they even have more than a dozen firearms, mainly three-eyed blunderbuss and narrow-mouthed bird blunderbuss that have been eliminated in the army. In this newly developed place, the men, women, and children in Zhuangzi must be able to adapt to these guys skillfully, so that they can be able to deal with various situations that may be encountered in the place. Therefore, the first thing they did when they settled down was to surround and protect their residence with earthen walls and wooden fences made from local materials in accordance with the Huai Army's unified standards for encirclement. On the one hand, it is to prevent the infestation and harm of various wild beasts from the mountains after the fields are deserted and the population is sparse. On the other hand, it is also to guard against human factors that are not very stable in the local area. After all, many places near the west are still experiencing various riots and banditry from time to time. At certain times, groups of refugees fleeing on the road are the most common scene in these places. Before the Huai Army sent people to settle in and clean up the territory of Guangzhou, even outside the county town or the suburbs of the state capital, there were people doing murder and smuggling in broad daylight. Under the years of unrest, many local people have abandoned their fields and villages and fled to the mountains to seek a living and escape the war. Even when they are hungry and have no food, a vicious cycle has become a new factor of banditry and unrest in the local area. . Therefore, before the government and the army completely withdraw their hands and send out large forces to thoroughly sweep and inventory the place, as a Bei Kou captain who has just entered Xianju County, in addition to his heavily armed garrison, he can rely on tentacles and extended execution The force, that is, they, the foreign settlers who were allocated land and settled in thousands of units, and the patrol teams they drafted for service, were used to maintain order in the grassroots townships. Then, after the grassroots order in these key areas is established, more manpower and material resources can be allocated to establish larger management areas involving local butchers with more household registrations. Then through the ever-expanding editing and management area, and the rich Zhu ZheThe reliable villages and self-defense forces in key points have been eliminated and eliminated one by one, which allowed local banditry to continue to increase and flow, and even forced most of them to come out of the mountains and accept the control and arrangement of the government. . In this way, in the absence of invasion by foreign enemies or large-scale banditry, it only takes two to three years to complete the basic sorting out of the newly occupied areas and the basic execution of the government's orders with less cost and investment. Construct. However, the first year after Lao Bumeng arrived here, he felt that such a good place and output had been wasted. You must know that the place where he settled is not far from the official road, the land is fertile, the climate is not cold, and it is not far away. There is a river everywhere, which is very suitable for canal irrigation and there is a relatively abundant fish stock; on the rolling hills on the opposite bank surrounded by the river, there are tea gardens and orchards that have been opened up before, and because it is located in the confluence of four miles and eight townships with convenient transportation Therefore, before this, there had been some trends and patterns of developing into a market town; but now it has been abandoned for a long time, and the fields covered with weeds have become a paradise for various birds and animals. Therefore, after the initial completion of the first encirclement project, the next collective activity was to enclose the abandoned fields one by one and set them on fire, and then use crossbows and fire guns to kill those who escaped. Birds, rats, badgers, civets and so on, I had a good tooth ceremony and also stocked up on a lot of dried meat and skins. Then after more immigrants filled in their households and supplemented production materials arrived one after another, the joyful and bustling atmosphere of the first New Year also made most people completely abandon their melancholy about the past and the last bit of reverie and sorrow. . Then in the second year, when the rapeseed, peanuts, soybeans, corn and rice they planted on the land that they had tilled and fertilized with drinking water had grown very tall, he suddenly found that his men had grown taller. There were a lot of extra people; it turned out that the local area was out of business, which caused villagers in nearby places to run out in search of food. Then many things happened. Among the resulting conflicts, large and small, some of them had not yet grown into a harvest. The fields were ruined, and in the subsequent retaliation and punishment activities, some people lost their lives in the confrontation, but more people were caught on the spot by organized farmers and even raided for trying to steal crops. They were captured and detained on the spot in the wild settlements; in the end, only women and children would be left behind and given a bite of food as limited helpers, and then all the men would be taken away by the county garrison and organized separately. Moreover, the vast majority of those left behind will never leave again. Because, relying on the exchange of resources and flows within Huai Town, even the livestock being fed in Zhuangzi will have better food than local villagers like them who are full of bark, grass and roots. Just like the two women next to Lun Bumeng, who are called sisters but are actually sisters-in-law with no name or status. They got it through a combination of circumstances; they were caught stealing mule soybean meal cakes and tofu dregs. A person went first, and voluntarily used another way to compensate, and then dragged another relative into the water in the name of helping. And through these almost one-sided battles and conflicts, these foreign settlers have completely established a foothold in the local area, and completed the suppression and deterrence of the remaining Tuhu and their settlements in the surrounding areas. Then, using the limited supplies as a temptation, they turned them into supernumerary labor objects one by one. After the first batch of crops of the coming year are produced, food to fill their stomachs is no longer a concern for them, and they begin to look for local specialties and land supplies that can be used to increase production and purchase property. Once it is confirmed that a small-scale industry can be established, more labor positions suitable for the management area will be born. This is also a disguised governance method that ensures long-term stability. According to the "Tea Classic" written by the former tea sage Lu Yu, it is said that "Huainan tea, Guangzhou is the best", and Xianju is the leader among them. At one time, there were all kinds of tea mountains in the local rolling hills; just because War-torn and abandoned for a long time, this kind of crop, which can neither feed nor be used as firewood, is allowed to fend for itself in the wild environment; Therefore, his patrol this time is to ensure that those crops that are an important sideline of the village - are grown in various places. The new tea mountains opened up will not be damaged and destroyed by unexpected factors such as the floating population. Although Xianju County has basically settled down, it cannot resist the chaotic behavior of those small groups of hungry people who fled from other places, or the sporadic people who fled from the mountains and ridges from the west. Especially on the Baixia Hill near their village, the small patch of old tea trees that survived the war is a high-end specialty product used by Xianju County to generate income. But last year, they added new patrol areas and prevention targets; those who followed the famine escape routes in winter and passed through the fields and trails in the Tongbai Mountain area.The scattered troops of the Western Army; although their number is extremely limited and there is no order, these guys who have been in battle and have always sought advantages and avoided disadvantages have caused more damage and destruction than those who are hungry and cold. Belongs to the refugees. Jing Bu Meng alone encountered an attack in person, killed two of them face to face, and participated in at least three manhunts that were jointly mobilized by various villages; and recently, on the blacklist that requires attention and precautions, Water thieves and lake bandits from the south near Yunmeng Daze were also added. Due to the continuous drought and floods in the local area and the raging ravages of the Western Army after moving south, even these guys who had been hiding in the water town of Daze for a long time, both thieves and civilians, have come to the land to avoid trouble because they can no longer survive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . But in Guangfu, amid the weather that had just become hotter, there was a low pressure that enveloped the court.