The dark clouds that had been brewing for an afternoon finally overflowed with rain.

Next second.

Colliding with the whole world, the sky and the earth were instantly filled with the sound of dripping rain.

In the north of Luojing City, on the official road back to the city, a group of black-clad guards were guarding three carriages like stars surrounding the moon.

The only sounds on the road were the rain and the wheels. The hundreds of warriors were silent, walking in the rain, soaked to the skin, without any reaction.

Zhao Rong retracted his gaze, lowered the car window curtain, and looked at the only person in the car besides him.

"Yulinwei, the Lin family's private army, was founded by my great-grandfather."

Lin Wenruo gently pinched a small silver spoon in his slender right hand and added spices to an incense burner whose top was carved into a hollow rockery. Curls of smoke floated out from the "mountain", and the spacious carriage was filled with fairy air.

"When I was young, I was curious about why our Lanxi Lin family, which is a family with a long tradition of poetry and literature and a house full of scholars, would need this thing."

After Lin Wenruo finished adding the agarwood, he put down his work, picked up a piece of silk and wiped his hands, looked at Zhao Rong, and chuckled. "I didn't expect that it would be used by me, Lin Qingchi."

Zhao Rong nodded, sniffing the mellow and cool fragrance. He felt that the blood and qi in his body's meridians were flowing faster. He couldn't help but take a few deep breaths, feeling refreshed.

Zhao Rong had been watching indifferently from the beginning to the end with his sleeves rolled up during the entire thing that just happened in the Drunken Old Man Pavilion, without saying anything.

Later, Zhao Rong and the other two were ready to say goodbye and leave, but were "stopped by all means". He pulled Zhao Rong's sleeve with a sincere look and said to Brother Ziyu, "Don't be so heartless. They had a good time meeting each other today. He had not disciplined his brothers well and had offended Brother Ziyu. He must make it up to him. He begged Brother Ziyu to come to his humble home and not delay."

Zhao Rong pulled back his sleeves calmly and tried to refuse several times helplessly, but none of them dampened Lin Wenruo's enthusiasm.

Later, Lin Wenruo said that it was going to rain heavily soon, and it would be inconvenient to travel. It would be better to go to his house to rest for a while. When the weather cleared up, he would send someone to take them out of Zhongnan Kingdom and take some shortcuts known only to the locals. It would definitely be faster than for them to grope their way around.

Zhao Rong hesitated for a while and asked the other two for their opinions.

Liu Sanbian said it didn't matter and let him decide. Su Xiaoxiao said with an "I understand" expression, and said seriously that she would never be like those villains in the book who broke up the couple, and told them not to care about the secular perspective and rumors of others, and to boldly pursue true love...

Zhao Rong rewarded her with an afternoon dessert without saying a word. He was probably still rubbing his red forehead in the carriage at the back.

"Brother Wenruo, you don't have to do this."

"Ziyu, don't beg for him. That bastard deserves a beating." Lin Wenruo sighed. "My father died early. I was away for many years, and my mother didn't care about him. Now he has a lot of bad habits and is hated by everyone. Ziyu, please forgive me for the farce just now."

Zhao Rong looked at his expression and felt helpless.

You know that's not what I'm saying.

But I could only play dumb with him and skip this topic.

Anyway, I'll just wait until the rain stops and leave as soon as possible, away from this troubled place.

Zhao Rong savored the magical incense in the carriage and chatted with Lin Wenruo for a while. Suddenly, he felt the carriage shift sideways, so he lifted the curtain and looked outside.

The convoy seemed to have left the straight official road back to Luojing and turned into another broad road. There were vast rice fields on both sides of the road and green waters and green mountains in the distance.

"Brother Wenruo, isn't your mansion in Luojing City?"

"Not here." Lin Wenruo said with a smile.

"Where is that?"

“We’re already here.”

“…”

Zhao Rong looked around at the wilderness and then saw that smiling face. He suddenly felt the hairs on his back stand up.

"Well, I mean that the area of ​​100 miles we are walking on now belongs to our Lin family. The official road we just walked on was also built on our land. This place in the north of the city is called Lanxi, which is also the origin of our Lanxi Lin family."

Seeing this, Lin Wenruo coughed lightly and hurriedly explained.

"We haven't reached the manor yet. It's just behind the mountain ahead. In this special period, we won't live in the city."

Zhao Rong breathed a sigh of relief and moved his hand away from the sword at his waist.

But then his eyelids jumped. Wow, this area of ​​100 miles is equivalent to most of Luojing, and it is adjacent to the capital of a country.

But later, after listening to Lin Wenruo's explanation, I understood the whole story.

Seven hundred years ago, the ruler of Zhongnan Kingdom saw that the imperial power in the country was declining, the hermits and Taoists were not engaged in production, the country had no order, and the laws were lax. So he looked everywhere for talents to help govern Zhongnan Kingdom. However, due to the special national conditions of Zhongnan Kingdom, it was not only difficult to govern, but also had almost no culture and education, so all talented people refused the invitation.

The King of Zhongnan even traveled thousands of miles to the gates of the two Confucian academies in the north and south, and waited anxiously together with the scholars from the mountain who were trying their best to get into the academies. In the end, no one responded, so the King of Zhongnan invited his fellow sufferers who were starving to death to have a meal, and then returned to Zhongnan in disappointment.

As a result, one day ten years later.

A dusty middle-aged Confucian scholar came to the outside of the Luojing Imperial City, looking for the king. He solemnly took out a jade disk that symbolized his identity as a scholar in the academy, and said that if he had not had that meal, he might have given up halfway and returned to his hometown to become a teacher. There was no way he could have waited to be selected by the teacher of the academy to study. Now that he has learned the dragon-supporting technique, Lin dared to come and give it a try.

The King of Zhongnan was overjoyed upon hearing this, so he hired the Confucian scholar named Lin to govern the country and delegated all his power to him.

Within three years, Zhongnan Kingdom's national power was indeed flourishing.

The king, mindful of his great contribution, wanted to arrange a permanent residence for him. So his ministers hesitated on the map of Luojing, arguing about which house to give him. The king became impatient and walked up, snatched the pen, and casually drew a big circle in the north of Luojing City. He then gave the Lanxi in the north of the city, which was originally a royal garden, to the Confucian scholar named Lin, without considering at all that his descendants would be snoring next to the king's bed.

The Lanxi Lin family thus took root in Zhongnan Kingdom and passed down from generation to generation.

Lin Wenruo said this with a smile on his face, and then gave an order to a black-clad guard outside the window. The guard left the convoy and returned from the ridge of the field a few moments later, holding something in both hands and handed it to Lin Wenruo.

Lin Wenruo raised his hands, slid down his long and wide sleeves, and reached out to gently take a few ears of rice.

He rubbed his hands and crushed a handful of rice, then held it in his white hands and looked at it carefully, his lips moving slightly, his eyes moving slowly, counting silently in his mind, then lowered his head and moved closer, blew air with his mouth to warm it slightly, and immediately took a deep sniff of its scent.

The shell is golden, the grains are full, the rice aroma is pure, and there are very few bad grains.

The man couldn't help but smile.

"Tzuyu, this year will definitely be a good year."

"Our Zhongnan country has a unique climate. One piece of land can produce three crops every year. Unfortunately, in the past, Taoist temples occupied too much land. There are 480 temples in Zhongnan Mountain alone. The landlords also exploited farmers severely. Farmers often couldn't afford to buy seedlings to plant crops all year round. Therefore, they had to spend a lot of energy every year to buy grain from other countries. When it was shipped back to China, the price of grain increased by 50%..."

"The Spring Seedling Law, which is being implemented nationwide, uses the state as a lender to lend money to farmers at low interest rates, allowing them to grow crops instead of being forced to break up their families by high-interest loans from wealthy families. This law is divided into three quarters..."

"I learned the equal taxation method for square fields from a big country in the south. It can clear out the hidden lands of powerful landlords, increase the fiscal revenue of the national treasury, and reduce the burden on farmers..."

Zhao Rong sat aside, slightly stunned, silently looking at the current head of the top wealthy family in Zhongnan Kingdom, who was talking eloquently with rice in his hand and dancing from time to time. He was also the Confucian scholar who had cultivated the great spirit and read to the Tianzhi realm as Gui said.

Listen to him talk in detail about his six strategies and his new method of enriching the country.

I don’t know how long it took, but slowly, the carriage became quiet.

There was only a noisy sound coming from outside the car, which made the inside of the car seem even quieter.

The wheels rolled in the mud.

Horses' hooves trampled the earth.

The rain fell from the clouds and shattered into pieces.

The scholar with the sword pursed his lips.

"Why bother?"

The bent-over man straightened up, sat upright, and held the rice in his hands.

"Why not?"

Zhongnan Country has been nurturing scholars for seven hundred years, and our Lanxi Lin family must be worthy of Zhongnan!