"Old Chen, there are still a few statues of the Young Master left today. I've been waiting for quite a while. I must bring one back today no matter what."
My wife is giving birth in the next couple of days, and I won't feel at ease until I invite the young master home!
A man in the crowd wiped the sweat from his brow, squeezed his way to the front, and asked Old Man Chen in the shop with a look of anxiety.
The person behind him pulled him up and said, "Liu Tietou, get up. The Junior Tutor is in charge of farming. Your wife should pray to Madam Jinhua for childbirth. What use is it to come to our Junior Tutor?"
"That's right, the Junior Tutor is the god who controls the grain, Iron Head, don't add more burden to the god."
Someone 'kindly' gave Liu Tietou directions, saying, "Tietou, in the oil pressing alley, there's a Golden Flower Goddess in Ma Fu Ji's shop. Go there and ask her."
The Ma family's carving skills have been passed down for generations; you can rest assured to ask them for help.
Liu Tie shook his head vigorously, "No, Old Chen has seen the Junior Tutor up close, I trust the statues he carved!"
Who cares whether you believe it or not? We believe it ourselves!
Old Chen was lucky. Out of so many people, he managed to squeeze to the front and even had the chance to kowtow to the Junior Tutor. Now he doesn't even need to run his general store anymore; he can support his whole family by carving statues of the Junior Tutor.
Such scenes of 'inviting the gods' are constantly occurring in the villages and towns surrounding the capital, and there is a growing trend of this practice spreading outwards.
Along with the popularity of inviting gods, there was also the saying "a hundred ways to eat potatoes" circulating in the streets, which described the deliciousness of potatoes as unparalleled.
There are no fewer than a hundred poems describing the delicious taste of potatoes. As for the poems, they were all written by adults who had seen and smelled them but had never tasted them.
Many down-to-earth verses have been turned into songs by thoughtful people for children to sing.
"System, the sensations in my soul have become more pronounced these past two days."
[Host, this proves that your words from that day weren't in vain. Many people remember what you look like, and the statues and portraits of you on the market now are very similar to your actual appearance.]
If things continue like this, even if the once-in-a-century catastrophe of the eighth year of Yuan Kang comes, the host will not need many rain-bringing talismans to solve most of the problem on his own.
"Have you prepared the prescription?" Yue Fuguang didn't think that far ahead, but focused on the task at hand.
Don't worry, my formulas are based on the existing types of herbs available in the Great Evolution, and the herbs I've selected are all very common and ordinary medicinal materials.
"Let's begin!"
At this moment, Dong Qianli, the Minister of Revenue, was reporting to Emperor Mingxi on the statistics of the money and grain consumed by the court due to the snow disaster at the beginning of the year.
Nearly one million taels of silver was prepared in advance to reduce expenses after the loss.
In the original timeline, the national treasury was empty. Even if the imperial court used most of the treasury's silver, it was still not enough to help all the disaster victims. The financial crisis led to a lack of follow-up disaster relief efforts, which in turn caused several major upheavals.
After discussing the costs, Dong Qianli continued, "Your Majesty, due to the freezing weather in the early stages, which made excavation difficult, many bodies are still buried under houses."
Now that spring is in full bloom, although the prefectures and counties have increased their excavation efforts, due to limited manpower, the dead cannot be buried in time. I fear this may lead to… an epidemic!
Although Dong Qianli was reluctant to utter those two words, he had asked the Imperial Medical Academy, which also had many years of experience in dealing with various natural disasters.
They knew that the corpses were the source of the disease, and that if they were not dealt with in time, the consequences would be unimaginable.
Master, a great disaster is always followed by a great plague.
Emperor Mingxi's heart tightened. Dong Qianli's guess was not unreasonable to begin with, and now even the Divine Artifact Master said so. Emperor Mingxi couldn't help but wonder if the original timeline had actually happened...
"Not enough manpower? I remember the disaster victims should still be in the temporary relief stations, right? Aren't there readily available manpower in those places?"
Is the imperial court just feeding them thin porridge every day for nothing? Why don't they provide work relief instead? Those who want to be well-fed will naturally work hard.
For those who want to slack off and not work, just give them enough water each day so they don't starve. It's that simple.
Yue Fuguang felt that her current way of speaking was quite like that of some company leaders in her previous life, but if she didn't do so, those hardworking people who could have made a living would also be dragged down.
If this drags on any longer, and the epidemic spreads like before, too many deaths will affect her mission points calculation, so she has to take care of this matter.
Especially children and the elderly; in these states, the death toll nearly plummeted after that epidemic.
We can't afford to lose so many people before the drought even arrives!
Work relief instead of financial aid? Dong Qianli's eyes lit up. It wasn't that he hadn't thought of it, but rather that this was the law of the imperial court.
We hadn't done this before, so naturally we didn't dare to bring it up lightly.
But now that it was the Junior Tutor who brought it up, he couldn't help but look up at His Majesty, and Emperor Mingxi nodded subtly.
[Exactly, the roads here are so bad, and these people are being kept on the payroll without anyone taking the opportunity to select some hardworking and diligent individuals to repair them.]
It allows people to earn more food for their families, which is much better than starving with lazy people.
The crowd looked embarrassed; this has always been the case during disaster relief: the imperial court provides porridge, while the people await aid.
They never thought of using this labor force for anything else.
After all, building bridges and paving roads has always been a task assigned by the imperial court to the people. Officials in charge of disaster relief have no right to do these things, which involves the issue of authority.
If it weren't for the Junior Tutor pointing it out today, even if someone had thought of it, such as Dong Qianli and others, they wouldn't have dared to say it so easily.
"By the way, Little Pearl, you just said that a great disaster is always followed by a great plague. Do you mean that the next prefectures and counties in Dayan will be hit by an epidemic?"
[The master guessed correctly. Because the case of the four major families was solved in time and the disaster relief was timely, the number of dead people in this snow disaster in Dayan was much less than in the original timeline.]
However, just like in the original timeline, an epidemic is inevitable! The only question is whether, as before, so many people will die from the epidemic that many villages and towns will be virtually empty!
Is an epidemic inevitable? Nine out of ten houses will be empty!
Upon hearing this, many officials stumbled, and several elderly men would have fallen if not for the support of their colleagues.
If you were to ask them what they feared most in governing their country, plague would undoubtedly be among the top three.
The main problem is that this plague has killed too many people, is too difficult to control, and it doesn't discriminate between the rich and the poor! It kills anyone it catches!
Emperor Mingxi's face turned ashen. He had just obtained the high-yield seeds and was preparing to accumulate strength with the divine food before making a big splash.
They hadn't been happy for more than a few days when they were suddenly told that a plague was going to break out in Dayan, and that nine out of ten houses would be empty. Who could stand that!
He didn't explode on the spot because his two ancestors had accumulated too much prestige, and several mature and prudent ministers were the first to react, staring intently at him.
Emperor Mingxi: I dare not move, I absolutely dare not move!
Ahem! Of course, it's not that I'm afraid of them. After all, these people are the pillars of the court, my right-hand men. Their opinions cannot be ignored, cannot be ignored...
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