Time flies, and another year has passed in the blink of an eye. Compared to the previous two Spring Festivals, this year's Yuquan Mountain Villa was somewhat quiet because many people had left.
There were no couplets or fireworks. To express her condolences, Xie Yushu ordered that the reunion dinner be postponed by one day to the first day of the Lunar New Year. On the eve of the Lunar New Year, she led the entire villa in a memorial service.
Having experienced this war, Xie Yushu and other elderly people have a different mindset; it's somewhat heavy and melancholy.
The newcomers, on the other hand, were all happy to go shopping because they received red envelopes and were given a day off.
Young people have few worries and are easily happy.
Aunt Su watched them go out in groups of three or five, and sighed to Xie Yushu.
"It's so good to be young!"
Their arrival has brought new vitality to the resort; otherwise, I don't know how we would have survived!
Xie Yushu nodded
"In the future, some people may pass away and new people may come in. This is our growth and also the growth of the resort!"
But growth is always accompanied by blood and pain.
Qu Xiaodie, however, remained optimistic.
"Although growth is painful and excruciating, the sacrifice was worthwhile in the end. I heard that Rouran and Northern Yan have taken the initiative to seek peace and have signed a 30-year ceasefire agreement."
At the very least, our border residents will not have to experience war for the next thirty years.
If we continue to develop at our current pace, in less than thirty years, our human, material, and financial resources will multiply several times over.
At that point, it won't be us guarding against them; instead, they'll be offering tributes and begging us not to go to war.
On the second day of the Lunar New Year, Xie Yushu received a New Year's gift from Han Zhongyu: a plum blossom ornament carved from chicken-blood stone, which was very appropriate to wear during the first month of the lunar year.
It looks like the gift was sent before the Lunar New Year and arrived on the second day of the Lunar New Year, avoiding the ancestral worship period; the timing was perfect.
Xie Yushu directly returned the favor with a white jade hairpin. Compared to Han Zhongyu's gift, it seemed unoriginal, and indeed it was.
Xie Yushu was terrible at choosing gifts anyway, so instead of racking her brains over that, she should focus on helping him where he needed it most.
She felt that for two people who could share the hardships of life, gifts were just icing on the cake, and Han Zhongyu wouldn't care whether the gifts she gave were original or not.
For the next ten days or so, Xie Yushu was either entertaining guests or attending banquets. Given her status, there were always guests who came to visit and offer New Year's greetings that she needed to receive.
Then you get together with your family and friends, and before you know it, it's the Lantern Festival.
After the Lantern Festival, all factories resumed full operation, and the hill behind the mountain had been leveled.
In March, the season when grass grows and birds fly, construction began simultaneously on the base and horse farm on the back mountain.
The horse farm was easy to build; there were horse pens all over the mountain. All that was needed was to build a few dozen rows of stables so that people could have shelter from the rain and snow. Wang Wu and his men built it.
Xie Yushu still asked Yu Muyang to bring people to set up the Shenyingwei base.
The blueprints were still designed by Xie Yushu. From the outside, it was just an ordinary square, but inside it was like a maze, and there were several underground armories.
It was officially completed in May. Apart from Xie Yushu, the designer who knew the terrain by heart, all the Divine Eagle Guards got lost as soon as they entered.
Besides the Divine Eagle Guards, there were Zhao Hu, Qu Xiaodie, Nan Xing, Xiao Haitang, and Lan Ting and his two subordinates who were temporarily summoned by Xie Yushu.
During this period, Han Zhongyu was still in the capital. With the Han family around, nothing major could happen. Xie Yushu simply called Lanting and the four of Han Zhongyu's secret guards over for a period of training. As a second-rank Grand Minister of Agriculture, Han Zhongyu certainly couldn't stay in the capital forever. He would have to visit various places to check the soil and environment.
Since Lanting and his group were skilled with guns, Han Zhongyu's personal safety was greatly enhanced.
Xie Yushu gave each of them a room number, and instructed them to enter from different entrances, find their own rooms, take out their own weapons, and gather at the training ground.
The time taken is half an incense stick's time. Those who cannot find the answer will be eliminated from the next training session.
This is just a small test, not to test their ability to identify directions, but to see if they have the awareness to advance and retreat together with their teammates.
Fortunately, their performance exceeded Xie Yushu's expectations; no one tried to distance themselves for fear of losing their eligibility.
She didn't want to see them blindly sticking with their comrades through thick and thin under every circumstance, but those who abandoned their comrades simply because they lost their training eligibility were clearly unreliable.
As expected, the Divine Eagle Guards trained by the royal family were much more mature and rational than Xie Yushu had imagined.
Once everyone had arrived, Xie Yushu officially began her lesson.
At the beginning, Xie Yushu directly raised her gun to demonstrate a ten-shot burst from 500 meters away, hitting the target every time.
Then it was a sniper shot from 1,500 meters away.
When the wine jars in the distance exploded with the sound of gunfire, everyone's mouths gaped open in an "O" shape.
His eyes lit up when he saw the gun in Xie Yushu's hand.
Xie Yushu originally intended to train their marksmanship. After letting them know the power of the gun, I stopped dangling the burden and started training them directly.
The first seven days were spent training them on disassembling and assembling the guns in their hands, so that they could get used to the feel of guns and bullets.
The second seven days were spent training in various shooting positions.
From the third to the fifth seven-day period, they began training in live-fire shooting.
After completing the live-fire training, they then spent half a month training on moving targets.
Then another two weeks of teamwork and operations.
Finally, a seven-day live-fire exercise was arranged.
Behind Yuquan Villa are mountains upon mountains, forming a natural, sealed shooting range. Even though the gunfire inside is deafening, no one outside can hear it.
The two-month grueling training session tanned them all two shades darker.
However, after this tempering, they became much sharper, like a sword that has been sharpened, and their overall spirit and energy were transformed.
However, most people are able to hit their target perfectly within 100 meters, and very few can hit a target more than 500 meters away.
However, it was enough. Being a sharpshooter requires skill, so Xie Yushu let them train on their own for the rest of the time and shoot as far as they could.
Anyway, I'm already hundreds of meters ahead of everyone else, so hitting the bullseye every time within 100 meters is more than enough.
The training officially ended, and Lanting, along with his men and their weapons, rushed back to the capital.
In the second half of the year, Han Zhongyu will go to Xiangling County in the south to promote biogas fertilizer. The land in the south is fertile and is the granary of the Great Qi. However, due to the presence of powerful families, most of the land is controlled by them, leaving very little land for ordinary people.
Moreover, powerful families always used various excuses to evade taxes, and the amount of grain they actually handed over to the imperial court was not much.
Therefore, Emperor Qingyuan wanted to vigorously develop commerce in the south, restrict agriculture, increase agricultural taxes, attract powerful families to engage in commerce, and find ways to allocate land to the common people.
When the land reached the hands of the people, although the tax revenue was higher, the grain production was also higher, so even after paying taxes, the people had enough to eat and wear.
Han Zhongyu was clearly the scapegoat sent by Emperor Qingyuan to plunder the aristocratic families.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
