Chapter 483: Orderly Progress
Tianshui County, outside Shanggui City.

Beside the Wei River, there are three layers of curtains and flags fluttering.

Tianshui County Magistrate Liu Ye accompanied Black Bear and sat at the top, with the curtain open to the Wei River. Looking at the scenery of the Wei River, the two of them drank from cups.

Liu Ye was surprised by the arrival of the black bear, but he also felt it was natural.

Tianshui also has another name, called Xiaoguanzhong.

Black Bear originally just wanted to inspect and supervise Beidi County. When he arrived in Beidi County, he wanted to see the effects of the Qianhu Suo established and resettled in Hexi.

After investigating Hexi, since he was already here, he turned east to Anding County, and then turned southwest to Tianshui.

If it weren't for the county and state athletic competitions and the Double Ninth Festival in September, he would have wanted to go to Longxi, bypass Wudu, and return to Guanzhong via Hanzhong and Ziwu Road.

When Zhang Lu ruled Hanzhong, he burned down the Baoxiade Road, the most important trunk road between Guanzhong and Hanzhong. This year, he mobilized the forces of Hanzhong to repair the plank road in the Baoxiade Road and restore the pavilions and post stations along the way.

The restoration will probably be completed the year after next, and then it will be much more convenient to travel.

Black Bear didn't want to walk the Ziwu Road for the second time, so he planned to inspect Tianshui and then return to Guanzhong via Chencang.

Guanzhong has been abandoned for a long time, and there has been no planned management of the Wei River in recent years.

Originally, Chencang was not suitable for the east-west passage of large armies, but during the years when the Wei River was out of control, silt accumulation raised the banks and improved the road environment. However, it was still not suitable for the mobilization of large troops.

So this time I plan to pass through Chencang and observe the road conditions carefully.

As for the future Western Expedition, the main troop assembly point will be Hexi, which has nothing to do with Tianshui and Longxi.

Liu Ye has become accustomed to his current authoritative life of governing a region. Although he has left the center of the shogunate, he no longer has to live such a tense life.

The scholars of Tianshui were highly integrated with the shogunate. He was the first chief historian of the shogunate and now he is working very smoothly in Tianshui.

The shogunate's decrees were implemented smoothly in Tianshui. The scholars in Tianshui had more room for advancement and cooperated with Liu Ye.

The family that should be divided should be divided, and the household that should be registered should be registered.

In less than two years, Tianshui collected the hidden households of the powerful and scattered Qiang and Hu tribes, and increased its population by 37,000 households and nearly 120,000 people.

Among them, 20,000 are children born in recent years. It is hard to tell whether the situation in the world has improved, but the local order in Tianshui has improved, and the vast majority of people have obtained means of production.

After people had enough food to eat, their desire to have children increased, and the practice of infanticide and infanticide came to an abrupt end.

While drinking, Black Bear looked through the records of various counties in Tianshui. Although Guanzhong also had a set of supplementary files, they were far less real than what he was actually observing at this moment.

In terms of the governance and development of each county, Liu Ye can be ranked first among the counties this year.

However, the shogunate was only so small, and there was no imperial court, so naturally there were no court officials to accommodate Liu Ye.

This is probably the shortcoming of the current system, but it also has many advantages. In a special system like the shogunate, power is infinitely concentrated.

If this group of people were to get out of the court and become high-ranking officials, they would be difficult to control.

The heads of various departments in the shogunate were, after all, his personal subordinates recruited by him and had nothing to do with the justice of the world.

He could resign whenever he wanted and had extremely strong personal control over the shogunate officials.

If a new dynasty is really established and these people become emperors through various compromises and concessions, they can legitimately gain the support of the "people of the world."

Of course, when a new dynasty is established, power can be legally and reasonably left to the heir.

However, this legality and rationality can only be achieved through compromise and concession to both the outside world and those below us.

He didn't need to be as anxious as Cao Cao to establish the Duchy of Wei and the Kingdom of Wei to wash away the legal system. He had enough time to do so.

After killing two groups of people, you can wear the imperial robe however you want.

There is no need to impose restrictions on yourself just for a set of clothes.

The emperor is still capable of what he has done, so there is no need to stick to the name.

Even if he exceeded the limit and violated the rules in offering sacrifices to heaven and earth, who could punish him?

"Zi Yang is underappreciated."

After another glass of wine, Black Bear closed the last scroll of bamboo slips, sighed with emotion, and said, "The people of Jingxiang have sent us letters one after another, asking the shogunate to recommend a virtuous person to lead Jingzhou. Are you interested, Ziyang?"

Liu Ye was a little surprised, but after thinking carefully, he answered: "Your Majesty, I have been in power in Tianshui for less than two years. Now I am just publicizing the government's orders, which can only be implemented with the help of your majesty's power and virtue. The common people will not benefit much. Only when the government's orders benefit the common people and the common people are convinced, can we reap the full benefits."

"Is that so? Then give Zi Yang another two years."

"Two years is not enough. We need at least three years."

Liu Ye extended his palm to gesture, and added: "Three years later, when the village fortresses in Tianshui are completely rebuilt, and the towns, pavilions and post stations are rebuilt, I will feel at ease."

Liu Ye said with a puzzled look on his face: "Your Majesty is now feared throughout the country and all foreign threats have been driven away. This achievement is comparable to that of the Qin Emperor and Han Emperor. The officials and people have many questions about the construction of the fortress. Can Your Majesty explain them?"

“There is an old saying that when a person dies, the government will cease to exist, but the fortress we built will not collapse easily. On a small scale, it can keep out ferocious beasts and bandits, and if the world becomes chaotic again, it can also protect our descendants. Even if we are barely surviving, one more year of survival means one more hope.” Black Bear explained simply that the community-based living of the residents in the fortress is conducive to the salt and iron monopoly and public security control.

The legendary plague that almost wiped out the Seven Sages of the Jian'an Period was much more terrifying than the plague of the Hu people. When there were signs of this at the time, the movement of officials and civilians at the county level would be isolated, and personnel flow control would be implemented within the county, which would naturally minimize the losses.

Therefore, there is almost no room for survival for traveling merchants within the shogunate system. Mobility is essential for the traveling merchant group. Only when funds and goods are circulated can they continue to make profits and grow.

During the great plague, profit-seeking traveling merchants were very likely to travel back and forth to sell some pots and pans, acting as intermediate hosts and sources of infection.

Behind the traveling merchant groups are often local tyrants and their children.

As for ordinary people, you don’t even have the environment to do business and survive locally, and you have to connect with local powerful people.

Without transferring benefits, you cannot survive locally, let alone in the territories of other powerful people.

The lower the productivity, the fewer points of interest there are in the living environment.

Every point of interest is a money-making nest for the children of the rich and powerful. How can they just sit back and watch?

Naturally, one would want to reach out and grab some, or put a foot in and take over.

Since even the powerful are being suppressed, there is no reason to let the traveling merchants go.

The government-run monopoly on salt, iron, tea and wine is now being implemented in order to suppress these people.

Forest farms and mines have also been set up in the core control areas, and the forests and mines are exclusively operated and managed. The powerful people can't even occupy the mountains and forests to trade in timber.

Food is even more of a red line, and the powerful can only do some cloth business nearby.

With Liu Ye's experience, status and current vision, he also understands that although building a fortress consumes people's manpower, it is much better than in the past.

Without the impact of war or unrest, this amount of civilian expenditure is completely affordable.

It's not like they were doing forced labor thousands of miles away to build a palace for Black Bear, or to build a city for the government. It's just building a fortress for themselves during the slack season at their doorsteps, so there wasn't much resistance from the people.

On the contrary, Tianshui had relatively rich folk vitality, and its scholars were highly integrated with the shogunate.

As a result, what he, as the county magistrate, had to do was not to encourage and supervise the construction of fortresses, but to supervise the counties and prevent the emergence of fortresses that exceeded the specifications.

The larger the fortress is, the more people can live there, the richer the various ancillary industries will be, and the corresponding productivity and mobilization capabilities will also be stronger.

Therefore, outside the county, the specifications of the fortresses above the villages were improved and they were differentiated according to their uses.

There is no need to explain in detail about pavilions and post stations, which were often built together with military stations and forage yards.

In addition, there are towns and villages. The fortresses in the towns are larger, but they are only larger.

Towns are different. They are specially located at key transportation locations and are often the result of the reconstruction of rural communities.

Compared with the village community, it has more functions such as market and garrison.

The market is held every three to five days, and is located in the town. Military service is also assigned, and a patrol and security force of 20 to 30 people is set up.

The town markets in Guanzhong only served as markets, while the garrison and public security were the responsibility of the nearby hundred households.

Except for the North Mountain and South Mountain in Guanzhong where one needs to be vigilant against bandits, the security forces in most of the plains within the Sanfu territory are only responsible for routine public security.

The pavilions and post stations are assisted in this regard, and the patrol duties between the pavilions have been resumed.

It is unlikely that a patrol team of three or five people would be killed or robbed by bandits. If such a situation occurs, it will immediately trigger a joint search by the surrounding security forces.

It is precisely because of the regular public security suppression force of hundreds of people that the public security in Guanzhong is so good.

With the cooperation of the people of Tianshui and Liu Ye in charge of administration, the implementation of the policy was still so slow, let alone the surrounding counties.

In about ten years, Shuzhong will not be able to reach the current situation of Tianshui.

Unless the big families in Shu stop disguising themselves and rebel openly.

Only by bloodbath and violent destruction of all the original things can the new system be promoted smoothly and efficiently.

But the problem cannot be solved in this way. Shu has a large population, so the only way is to send tens of thousands of officials there at once. Otherwise, no matter how many measures are taken, they will just be formalities.

Black Bear was not in a hurry about this, and even Li Feng, the governor of Yizhou, was not in a hurry.

Recently, Li Feng has begun to invite doctors from Shu to compile a book specifically for popularizing medicinal materials and their properties.

Li Feng lacked the motivation to implement the Guanzhong system. All he had to do was to control Shu and wait for time to pass.

They will only take action when the resistance in Shu is no longer firm, most people are accustomed to the new order, and there is a reserve of officials in Guanzhong.

Li Feng's main focus was on building the Taoist system among mountain groups such as the Badi. When the Badi were stable and their relationships were strong, and he could easily mobilize Badi believers, then Shuzhong would become a small problem.

(End of this chapter)