Spring in the southwest is often accompanied by a gentle, lingering drizzle. In the first spring after decades of war, a spring rain always brings hope.
In the hills of the southwest, many surviving farmers, holding on to a glimmer of hope, obeyed the orders from the government, walked out of the old forest where they lived, and tried to plant some seeds in the fields that had been abandoned for a long time.
Most of the reclaimed land is on the edge of the old forest, not because the soil is fertile, but simply because farmers are reluctant to stray too far from the mountains. After all, during the past few decades of war, the government had repeatedly sent people to the edge of the forest to announce that the war was over and hoped that farmers would come down the mountain to rebuild their villages.
It is believed that those who left the forest by the government never returned.
Setting fire to the mountain was the last resort to force the survivors out until no one could shout anymore.
Everyone knew that this was a stupid tactic. The rainy and humid forest could not be ignited by just any fire. The billowing smoke at the edge of the forest only took away the credibility of the government, although no one knew how many times the local government had changed in the past few decades.
People went deeper into the mountains again and again. Although the tigers and wolves in the mountains also ate people, they were safe for a while after they had eaten. No one had ever heard of a tiger storing food.
However, wars always have to end, especially after it was no longer easy to recruit suitable soldiers locally. The competition for the three southwestern provinces finally came to an end. After all, the precious troops recruited from other provinces had more uses, and it was not cost-effective to use them to seize a piece of uninhabited and unproductive wasteland.
The three warring parties hastily demarcated their spheres of influence and stationed necessary troops at important transportation routes such as passes and canyons. The military generals then left behind a few unlucky souls to guard this once fertile land, while the others happily returned to Beijing to celebrate their achievements. The rest was the business of the civil servants.
The civil servants firmly believed that the land was not deserted, but simply uninhabitable. After a war that had swept across the continent and pitted four major powers against each other for decades, committing any remaining resources to an uninhabited borderland was idiotic. Therefore, expecting the various empires to invest resources in the southwestern frontier was unrealistic.
Of course, since this was imperial territory, it couldn't be left unattended, and certainly not tolerated, those who fled into the mountains to fish and hunt for their entire lives, privately reproducing without contributing any taxes. Of course, most importantly, there were too many veterans who needed rewards, and the treasury... well, let's just say, the Minister of Revenue stated that the only payment he could make to the veterans was in IOUs, and the size of the IOUs needed to be strictly controlled, otherwise the Ministry of Revenue couldn't afford to buy so much paper.
After several days of closed-door deliberation, the cabinet released a comprehensive post-war reconstruction plan. The imperial court and cabinet highly praised the sacrifices and contributions of every soldier. At the very least, at the end of the war, the empire had only lost two provinces in the prosperous central mainland, and had also taken a bite out of the Chen Dynasty in the south, occupying almost half of the three southwestern provinces of the Chen Dynasty. Therefore, from the overall perspective, the empire had not lost at all. Therefore, the imperial center would do its utmost to ensure that every military officer's contributions were honored, if they were willing to relinquish command of their direct troops and exchange defense zones.
As for the merits of low-ranking officers and soldiers, they will be offset with land, of course, the unowned land in the southwest.
The civil servants made it very clear that everyone would get land of varying sizes depending on their merits. They only needed to recruit some local farmers who had lost their land to avoid the war to cultivate the land. Then congratulations, no matter how much land you reclaimed, it would be yours and you could do whatever you wanted with it, provided that you could pay enough taxes to the empire after the three-year tax exemption period.
Of course, you can also choose another option, which is to go home and wait patiently with the IOUs stamped with the seal of the Ministry of Revenue, which may be torn even with wiping your butt. Once the finances improve, the empire will cash these IOUs as soon as possible and will never default on them.
On the map of the Ministry of Revenue, the entire southwest was unowned land. After all, during the three-day public notice period, no one came out of the old forests in the southwest and used the legendary method of shrinking the earth into an inch to go to the capital thousands of miles away to appeal to the Ministry of Revenue that they had ownership of a piece of land. Therefore, the Minister of Revenue was generous and divided up all the land in the southwest except for the main cities.
Lin Hai got a big piece.
While many others were rushing to the plains near the southwestern capital, Lin Hai chose the hills bordering the dense forests of the south. Since ancient times, the hills have been less productive than the plains. When the Ministry of Revenue official saw this fifteen-year-old replacement soldier choosing the barren hilly terrain, he wanted to kindly warn him, but he discovered that this unassuming young man had scratched across the map, removing at least the area of an entire pre-war county. A word got stuck in his throat, and he couldn't utter another word.
Well, it's up to him. As long as no one competes with him, he can take as much land as he wants. Anyway, the uncultivated part will be recovered and redistributed after three years. Let him be happy now.
After checking Lin Hai's merit book and finding that he could indeed take away such a large area, the officials of the Ministry of Revenue were shocked that a small reinforcement soldier could have so many merits. At the same time, they remembered a story about a lucky man they had heard while chatting with their colleagues.
Lin Hai is the lucky one, although he never thinks so.
Before the age of eight, Lin Hai was an orphan, and after the age of eight, he was a replacement soldier.
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