Chapter 295 New Dynasty
Compared to rock salt, sea salt is king.
However, the current method of making salt is basically to boil salt.
It requires firewood, pots, and labor.
Of course in ancient times, the last item was not valuable.
But, save wherever you can.
Just like Gu Qingcheng, the only reliable people she can mobilize now are about ten followers and twenty guest girls.
Although those rangers also settled in the fishing village with the Gu family, they were still in the probation period.
Whether it is reliable or not is still unknown.
After all, boiling salt is not something that requires technical skills.
The last step of filtering is a technical difficulty that requires "confidentiality".
And now, Gu Qingcheng has thought of a more convenient and effective method of making salt - solar salting!
Compared with boiling salt, drying salt is simply a business with no capital cost.
Salt fields are demarcated on the seashore, and when the southeast wind blows in spring, the sea water will do the work itself.
After collection, filtering and other processes, it becomes high-quality sea salt.
Guarding such a large beach is like guarding an endless treasure chest.
With money, what Gu Qingcheng wanted to plan would have a foundation!
"Do you need more manpower?"
Gu Heng strolls around every day.
In addition to personally experiencing the customs and culture of southern Xinjiang, I am also looking for old friends.
Ahem, don’t forget, this is Lingnan, the ancient “holy land” of exile.
Those who can come to this place are either extremely evil or extremely wise and capable.
Especially in the last hundred years or so, dynasties have changed frequently.
Not to mention the usual party struggles in the court, even during every change of dynasty, many loyal or treacherous officials would be exiled here.
Our dynasty has only a history of more than 40 years. When the founding emperor of this dynasty seized the throne, he exiled a large number of people.
Gu Heng is already in his sixties and has experienced two dynasties. Among those ministers who were exiled, there are many old friends!
What's worse, there are also branches or in-laws of the Gu family.
Since Gu Heng has come to Luozhou, he might as well visit his old friends or their descendants.
"Well! Aung, I want to do something that requires a large number of reliable people."
Gu Qingcheng sighed again, saying that she was still too young.
Six years old!
Not to mention being a little girl, even if he was a young man, he would have no prestige.
If she wants to recruit soldiers, people may be willing to take a gamble on her because her last name is "Gu".
However, it is not easy to gain the other party's loyalty.
To put it bluntly, for a six-year-old girl, it is a question whether she can grow up to be a successful person.
The infant mortality rate is too high these days.
A cold can kill an adult, let alone a child.
Gu Qingcheng can only wait for herself to grow up slowly.
For now, she can only seek help from her elders.
"Okay! I'll find a way!"
When Gu Heng saw Gu Qingcheng's serious expression, he knew that his granddaughter probably had a new plan.
After the incidents of purifying rock salt and horseshoes, Gu Heng no longer treated his granddaughter as a child.
He placed Gu Qingcheng on an equal footing, even treating her as the "head of the family".
Gu Heng had great trust in his granddaughter. Without even asking Gu Qingcheng what her plan was, he began to think of ways to help gather manpower.
The exiled prisoners and their families and descendants; the Gu family’s in-laws and old friends; and orphans who have lost their families for various reasons.
Gu Heng began to recruit people on a large scale.
Gu Heng's energy as the former Minister of the Chancellery began to be fully utilized.
In less than two months, a lot of people gathered around the newly built three-courtyard house of the Gu family.
Among them there are seventy or eighty young and strong people.
In addition, Gu Heng wrote another letter to Jiankang, selecting two heads of the family from the dozen or so clansmen who stayed in the capital, and asked them to go to Lingnan with their young and strong men and their followers.
Gu Heng was like a martial arts leader who had returned to the underworld. With one order, talents from all directions gathered together.
Gu Qingcheng: ...Great, my Aung! And those rangers seemed to have sensed something, and they all actively showed their willingness to join the Gu family like Nie Chengfeng.
By the time the twelfth lunar month was almost approaching, Gu Heng had already helped Gu Qingcheng select two hundred people who could be used.
These people have already joined the Gu family and are their servants.
If they want to become a retainer or even a higher-level retainer, they need to continue working hard.
The project that Gu Qingcheng is about to start is their opportunity to show their talents.
Huoshui: ...Honey, don’t be busy with infrastructure construction, it’s more interesting to complete tasks.
Gu Qingcheng ignored Huoshui's nonsense and continued to move forward step by step according to her plan.
Now that we have the manpower, we need to place them.
No problem, just continue building the house.
Then, it’s time to enclose and buy land.
Gu Qingcheng bought a large area of tidal flats in the surrounding area.
In addition, she also expanded Gu's "base camp" outward by more than ten miles.
The tentacles were almost touching the county town before they withdrew.
After such "expansion", the territory under the name of the Gu family included several villages and several hills.
When connected together, it is not much smaller than a county town.
Of course, most of the Gu family’s territory is wasteland and mountainous areas.
Some are even the territories of local people.
However, these Li people hid in the mountains and forests, unwilling to accept the "enlightenment" of the government, and were regarded as savages and barbarians.
Their interests (such as territory) are not protected by the government.
The governor of Luozhou unceremoniously allocated this piece of land to Gu Qingcheng.
Gu Qingcheng has the "common sense" in the small world of missions, and also agrees with the idea of national unification.
The Li people are not treated as foreigners as in the past.
We are all family! However, for now, Gu Qingcheng does not have the strength to educate him.
She had to run the Gu family's base first! Temporarily drawing out the Li people's territory separately, Gu Qingcheng did not take the initiative to provoke them.
She went on to develop other locations.
There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!
Build houses, repair forts, and reclaim wasteland.
In addition, she dug a cave based on local conditions.
If a hurricane hits next year, there will be an extra place to hide from natural disasters!
Gu Heng: ...
He is not really old and feeble, but an old fox in the court who has served in two dynasties and held the high position of Minister of the Central Secretariat.
His granddaughter's behavior made him feel more and more frightened (or excited?).
What on earth does this child want to do? This is no longer precocious, but bordering on evil.
If the gender was changed, Gu Heng would think that this child wanted to -
Well, okay, even if she's a little girl, it's okay! Women in this era are still very tough.
Not to mention the royal princesses, even the noble ladies from aristocratic families do not stay out of the house.
When they are quiet, they read books, drink tea, make tea and burn incense; once they start to move, they can also mount horses to play ball, and dismount to chop people!
Really, hacking people! If there is news of "domestic violence" in a family, it may not be a man beating a woman.
It is very likely that a woman who is both civil and military will beat up the useless man at home! Not only young couples will do this, but even the bigwigs in the court will occasionally fall down a grape trellis, or be scratched on the face by the cats or lynxes at home! There are also some fierce women in Beijing who hold machetes and whips and chase their husbands through several streets! If they encounter a man with a mistress, it is not uncommon for unmarried girls to gather together to help their sisters and aunts vent their anger, directly climb over the wall, smash the door, and beat up the adulterers.
This was still the relatively "elegant" Southern Dynasty.
The Northern Dynasty was said to be even more powerful.
For example, the deeds of the Dugu family and the Qiumuling family, those Xianbei noble ladies, wow, even though they were far away, the noble ladies of the Southern Dynasties had heard of them.
Compared to those tough women, my own Aqing is just more career-oriented!
This is actually nothing, right ?
Gu Heng comforted himself in this way. He did not stop his granddaughter, but did his best to help.
He wanted to see how far their Gu family's daughter could go.
Is it that women are as good as men, or——
Gu Heng's "indulgence" made Gu Qingcheng more unrestrained.
She built this coastal area into the Gu family's "Wu Castle" in full accordance with the standards of building a city.
In the midst of the busyness, various talents have arrived one after another.
It is the twelfth lunar month.
“It doesn’t snow here?”
Although Gu Qingcheng was from the Southern Dynasty, it would snow in Jiankang in winter.
But in Lingnan, even in the coldest time of winter, the sun is still shining brightly.
If you wear something a little thicker, you will sweat profusely.
"Using the temperature of later times, it would probably be over 20 degrees at noon."
Gu Qingcheng has "common sense" and knows that there is a big temperature difference between the north and the south.
But she still felt novel when she was in this area in person.
How can we enjoy the lanterns in the first month of the lunar year if there is no snow in winter? Enjoy the lanterns? Subsequent facts proved that even if Gu Qingcheng stayed in Jiankang, she was doomed to not be able to enjoy the lanterns this year.
Because, on that very day, the powerful official Chen Jing forced the current emperor to "abdicate", and he became the emperor of the new dynasty.
The Southern Dynasty has changed dynasties again! The fate of the current emperor is the same as that of the last emperor of the previous dynasty. Even if he abdicated obediently, he was still killed.
There is no way. The Sima family set a very bad precedent at the beginning, and the subsequent traitors followed suit.
The emperor of the Xiao family died, and the Xiao family was also purged.
Only a few people fled to the Northern Dynasty in panic.
“…”
Princess Jiangling, who had already established a foothold in the Northern Dynasty, saw the miserable appearance of her nephews and great-nephews. Although she had known that this day would come, she still couldn't help crying.
"Aunt! Father! Brother!"
Our Xiao family's kingdom is lost! We are so ashamed of our ancestors~~ Princess Jiangling almost fainted from crying.
However, she did not mention revenge.
It's just a change of dynasties. Even the Xiao family stole the world from the emperor of the previous dynasty.
This is just a cycle of cause and effect.
"Princess!"
Gu Yi felt very distressed when he saw his wife, but he didn't know how to persuade her.
The grief brought about by the destruction of a country and the demise of a family cannot be quelled by just a few words.
“…I’m fine!”
Slowly, Princess Jiangling calmed down.
She wiped her tears and said self-deprecatingly, "I will no longer be a princess! My dear, please just call me Xiao."
PS: The third update will be a little later!
(End of this chapter)
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