Chapter 184 183. You are not pregnant again, are you?
The truth is unexpected.
The court ultimately leaned towards peace talks and sent the second prince to Dongyuan as a peace envoy. This was completely different from what Lei Li and the other two had guessed, and it also caused a lot of discussion in the market.
But this result is not difficult to understand.
Lei Li, Zhou Yi and Meng Luo are just ordinary people after all. They don't understand the officials and composition of the court. They only consider the best plan for the people, but everyone in the court has their own interests and ideas.
The current ruler of the Dayou Dynasty is Emperor Anwu, whose reign is called Feng'an. He ascended the throne at the age of 29 and has been on the throne for more than 30 years. When he was young, he valued military power and even went to the battlefield in person, forcing the surrounding foreign small countries to surrender and become his vassal.
Afterwards, he worked hard day and night to govern the country into a peaceful and prosperous era. The tax rates in various areas were the lowest since the founding of the country. In order to encourage farming and commerce, for several years he even promulgated the policies of "reclaiming wasteland as income" and "opening maritime trading ports", and agriculture and maritime commerce flourished.
But now, Emperor Anwu is old, and the ambitions of his youth have been worn away by the peaceful and comfortable days.
In addition, several princes were getting older, there were many factions in the court, and the civil officials were strong but the military officials were weak. For a while, they could not find any generals suitable for fighting in Dongyuan. After several parties competed with each other, they finally came to the unpleasant result of peace talks.
The second prince, who was brilliant and resourceful but had no powerful outside family to support him, became cannon fodder in the peace talks.
Even if the peace talks succeeded, the common people who did not know the reason would only scold the Second Prince, scolding him for being cowardly and without blood, scolding him for not caring about the common people and the soldiers at the border, but would not bring the fire to the court. If the peace talks failed -
Then we will return to the bloody battle of the main battle.
Who should we send to fight? How many troops should we bring? Where should we get them from? Is conscription necessary? Which prefecture should we recruit from? Dongyuan? Why Dongyuan again? Fighting foreign invaders isn't just Dongyuan's responsibility!
How much baggage should we bring? Where should we transfer it from? Xiling? Why Xiling again? Zhongchuan has plenty of grain, but Dongyuan has no cotton at all? What will happen to Xiling if we transfer grain? And then we raise the tax rate again. The people of Xiling will be furious!
And most importantly——
How to reward people if they win, and who is responsible if they lose?
In bunches.
The emperor quarreled with his ministers, the princes quarreled with each other, the civil officials quarreled with the military officials, the Ministry of Revenue quarreled with the Ministry of War... There were always endless issues to argue about, and there were always people who disagreed.
Therefore, it is better to drag it out and wait until the results of the peace talks come out. At worst, we will have another quarrel. If the peace talks are successful, everyone will be happy.
As for what the people think, what to do with the dead villagers, and whether the soldiers at the border will obey?
Ha ha.
This is something the Second Prince should worry about.
In short, by the time Lei Li and Zhou Yi learned that the court was in favor of peace, the Second Prince and his entourage were about to arrive in Dongyuan, and this news was also passed on by the people along the way.
At that time, Sanlihe Village had finished spring plowing and entered the slack season of more than two months. The children in the village also went to school. It was early summer when the lotus leaves were tiptoed.
The cicadas on the trees were calling "cicada--" and "cicada--" at the top of their lungs, making a great noise. Some children who were not yet of school age gathered in groups of three or four, using bamboo poles wrapped with spider webs to catch cicadas.
This cicada monkey smells especially good when fried in oil. Families in the village who love their children will put a thin layer of oil in the pan, half-fry the cicada, and give it to the children as a snack.
If you find cicada shells, you can sell them to a pharmacy for a few copper coins.
But adults don't have it so easy. Although it is the slack season during farming, they can't really sit idle. They have to find other work to do. It's good to earn a few more cents.
Especially now, the men and women in the village can pick peppers in the pepper garden and work in the pepper factory. During the pepper harvest season, they earn more than the men in the family, and they earn money every day. Their backs are getting straighter day by day, and their say in the family has increased.
For example, Gui Fulang originally had an 50-50 relationship with the other men in the family. After he was able to earn money to support the family, he became the one who made the decisions in the whole family. Even his father-in-law and mother-in-law followed his lead without saying anything.
The men in the village have a stronger sense of crisis and are more motivated. In addition to working in the fields, they go to the county town to find work. Some of them even find another way to do takeout.
This was something Zhou Yi had not expected, and in fact, he also had some credit for it.
Last year, Sanliuzi caught Li Chengcai who stole tomatoes. Although Sanliuzi's mother was indecisive and temporarily turned against him and spoke for Li Chengcai, it did not prevent Sanliuzi from having more and more contacts with the Lei family.
Sanliuzi is strong and pragmatic, but his family is relatively poor because he has many brothers and sisters and little land.
Village patrols are paid, but not much, and are voluntary and semi-public welfare work.
Sanliuzi often worked in the county town, and the place he went to most often was the port as a laborer. However, working too much would harm his body. He had to carry several large bags of rice and huge logs as thick as his waist on his shoulders, and the skin and strain on his shoulders were the only minor injuries.
He thought about finding other work to do.
Zhou Yi casually said, "Then come to my restaurant. I can deliver some takeout. Some customers live far away and don't want to come to the Sichuan restaurant specifically for dinner."
"Or maybe it's inconvenient for them to eat in the hotel, or they're not rich enough to have servants, or they're simply too lazy to go out to eat."
"You can help deliver the goods. You'll get a few cents per trip. It's hard work, but it's easier than manual labor. You just have to be familiar with the roads in the county."
Sanliuzi has been looking for work in the county town all year round. Although he is not familiar with every road, he basically knows them all. Moreover, if the person has a long distance to walk, he can get extra money.
Sanliuzi went to a Sichuan restaurant to try it.
There is a billboard outside the Sichuan restaurant, which usually posts new dishes or informs customers in advance when the restaurant will close for holidays. Now that there is a "takeout" service, it is naturally advertised as well.
Don't say.
It’s done quite well.
From working for Sichuan restaurants, he also expanded to running errands for other restaurants, delivering meals to customers' homes, helping college students buy books in bookstores, helping boys and girls in brothels buy rouge, powder and handkerchiefs... and helping people deliver letters and messages.
——In the past, if you wanted to send a letter, you had to ask someone to do it specially, which was quite expensive, or you could see if there was someone going the same way and spend a few copper coins to ask them to take the letter.
I earn three, four, five or six cents per trip. If I work hard delivering food every day, I can earn hundreds of cents.
Sanliuzi promoted himself while delivering the food. If other people found it good, they would recommend it to others. All they had to do was ask someone to stop by the Sichuan restaurant and pass on a message and spend a few cents, and delicious hot meals would be delivered to their door.
It started with Sanliuzi, who was the only one doing it. Later, smart people from the village and the county town followed suit, and it developed into a new industry that the villagers talked about for a long time.
"If I had known that this would be a way to make money, I would have let my Ershu lead the team to do it. He knows a lot of people and is very familiar with the county town."
Liu Xiaocao said with some regret.
Lei Li listened, looked at him, and scolded him with a smile, "Don't work too hard when the time comes. I feel sorry for your Ershu and don't want him to work. I don't know who told me before that if he can earn enough money to get him up at Yinshi in the morning, it's fine."
"Nowadays, I don't know who sleeps until the middle of the morning, almost the afternoon, and then takes a nap in the afternoon."
Liu Xiaocao felt a little embarrassed.
He just likes to talk big, just like some modern people who say that if I can get into Tsinghua University or Peking University, I can get up at three or four in the morning to study. In fact, it is a life-threatening situation for him to get up early and not be late.
"But I've definitely been sleeping a lot more lately. Maybe it's spring sleepiness?"
“…”
Lei Li suddenly narrowed his eyes, staring at Liu Xiaocao's increasingly round face for a while, and hissed, "Are you pregnant again?"
"No way?"
Liu Xiaocao was surprised but hesitant. "But when I was pregnant with Tao Ge'er last time, I was full of energy and ate a lot. I wasn't always sleepy like this."
Finally, I consulted Dr. Niu to check my pulse and found out that I was indeed pregnant and was already four months pregnant.
Liu Xiaocao almost cried with joy. The last time she was pregnant, she died within three months after she accidentally fell while working. He was heartbroken for a long time, but this time, the first trimester passed without him noticing.
Liu Xiaocao hopes that this baby will be a little boy.
"My brother Tao will have his younger brother's support in the future, so he won't be afraid of being bullied by his in-laws after he gets married. His father and I are old, and our in-laws may not give us face."
"Jinjin is also strong, like a calf. The two brothers support their sister and brother together, and no one dares to bully our family."
Liu Xiaocao said to Lei Li happily, and then said mysteriously,
"I heard that when the child was born, they thought the family was kind enough to invite other children. Then they would give you more to hold and you would have one more. If you gave birth to a little brother who followed your temperament, it would be a lot of fun."
"Follow me?"
Lei Li thought about the scene and chuckled. It was enough for Zhou Yi to worry about having a well-behaved little ginger. If he followed his temper, Zhou Yi would be very busy.
The child climbs up to the roof and tears off the tiles every day.
My old father is sad every day.
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Ha ha ha ha!
The second child's due date is unknown, and Lei Li and Zhou Yi have serious things to do.
Lei Li and Zhou Yin bought the wasteland behind the village from the village chief after the New Year and invited villagers to reclaim the land. Since it was hard work, most of the people who came were men, and they were paid a lot of money but no food was provided.
More than 20 acres of wasteland.
Half of the men in the village came to cultivate the land, and the strong women and husbands also came to help, weeding, removing large stones, and deep plowing with oxen pulling plows.
It took less than half a month to clear the wasteland and organize it into neatly arranged plots of arable land.
But that’s not enough.
The soil also needs to be fertilized.
There are many ways to add fertilizer in the village, which are nothing more than fermenting dead branches and leaves and human and animal feces, then diluting them and slowly adding them to the soil.
The tomato seeds cultivated last year can now be planted on the more than 20 acres of land. The planting is relatively sparse. Zhou Yi asked people to plant some leguminous crops such as peanuts and soybeans.
Legumes Legumes form nodules through symbiosis with rhizobia in the soil, thereby converting nitrogen in the air into nitrogen fertilizer that can be absorbed and utilized by plants, thereby increasing soil fertility.
As the planting area expanded, Zhou Yi and Lei Dashan could not take care of it alone, so they hired a few uncles and aunts in the village who were all experienced farmers.
They were hired as "consultants" to look after the growth of tomatoes. There were other workers to do tasks like watering and weeding, while the workers and the trivial matters of the tomato garden were the responsibility of the manager.
The manager is Liu Guihua and her husband.
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