Standalone Northern and Southern Dynasties

Chapter 341 [A Master of Inscriptions Who Can Draw Inferences from Other Cases]

Su Chao took the account book and began to report to Su Ze the family fortune accumulated in the second year of Xiaochang.

"Last year, Xiazhou suffered a locust plague. Most of the land was newly reclaimed, and livestock were used to generate grain. Last year, a total of 500,000 hu of grain was harvested."

Su Ze was generally satisfied with this number. Xiazhou was a border state, so its area was larger, but its land resources were relatively poor, and it was on the front line of the locust plague. The harvest of 500,000 hu this year was already quite good.

Of course, this hu refers to grain. The staple foods of this era were beans, millet, wheat and rice. Wheat was generally grown in the north, while rice was generally grown in the south.

In addition, there are many ranches in Xiazhou. The ranches will hand over cheese and dried meat as taxes, which will also be converted into the unit of "hu".

In fact, the unit "hu" is used to calculate rations, and the final conversion is how many troops can fight and how long.

When troubled times come, everything naturally serves the purpose of fighting the war.

These 500,000 hu are the grain collected by the government from land rent. Now they have been delivered to the granary outside Yongle City.

Of course, this is just the rent for the land. The rent levied according to the population is generally various specialties such as dried fruits and silk. These things are also sent to the treasury of Yongle City. This is also Su Ze's family fortune.

In addition, Su Ze's land rent was very low. If an emergency really came, he could collect more grain from the people. Generally speaking, the amount collected in the end was about the same as the land rent.

In the final calculation, Xiazhou, a border state considered poor by the Northern Wei Dynasty, produced more than one million hu of grain for Su Ze in one year!
This number is already very large. You should know that even large states like Hedong could only pay about 600,000 hu to the court in a good year.

Su Ze was able to obtain this number mainly because his bureaucratic system was just being established, there was little internal corruption, and the officials were also very careful when collecting grain, resulting in relatively small losses.

Officials wanted to make progress, so naturally they had to try their best to complete the task of taxation. The power of the local nobles in Xiazhou was very small, and after the development of the remnants of the Six Garrisons moved in by Su Ze, this result was finally achieved.

But this amount of grain is very small. If 500,000 hu of grain were transported to the front line, it would only be enough for 10,000 people to fight for five months.

Su Chao continued:

"Last year, Huazhou was captured after the autumn harvest, and the grain was basically wasted by the government troops and rebels. Not only did we fail to harvest the grain, but we also had to transport seeds and stored grain from Xiazhou to ensure spring farming."

Su Ze nodded. The Government Affairs Hall had already drafted a plan to ensure spring farming in Huazhou a few days ago. It would allocate 100,000 hu of grain and various seeds from Xiazhou to restore the agricultural production order in Huazhou this year.

Well, 100,000 hu were deducted from the 500,000 hu.

"Hezhou has 400,000 hu, Liangzhou has 300,000 hu, Gaoping County has 50,000 hu, Longxi County has 300,000 hu, and Liangzhou has 500,000 hu. However, these grains are only stored in the official warehouses of each state. They have not yet been shipped."

Su Ze frowned and said:

"Why are there so few in Liangzhou? The same is true in Gaoping County."

Su Cho said:

"Gaoping County suffered a white disaster at the beginning of last year. The then County Magistrate Yu petitioned the court to exempt the cattle leg tax. General, you also recognized the exemption granted by the court last year."

Su Ze nodded. Of course. If the Northern Wei court had already ordered a tax exemption and he continued to levy taxes, wouldn’t that be equivalent to pushing the people’s hearts to the Great Wei?
Su Chuo paused and said:
"The general also knows the situation in Liangzhou. Liangzhou is the region where the land granting system for soldiers is implemented the slowest. Only five Zhechongfu were set up near Dunhuang City, and most of the land is in the hands of the gentry."

"Last year, Liangzhou reported more than 300 disasters. All counties except Dunhuang received relief. In the end, they only received this much grain."

After saying this, Su Chao looked at Su Ze carefully, waiting for his reaction.

There was no expression on Su Ze's face.

Su Cho was a little disappointed. After seeing the account book of Liangzhou, he felt disappointed.

Hezhou Liangzhou, also known as Heliang, is the ancient Liangzhou. After the separation, Liangzhou has always been superior to Hezhou.

Hezhou was threatened by Tuyuhun in the past. It was only after Su Ze defeated Tuyuhun that he began to reclaim the Huangshui River.

Because Hezhou is Su Ze's base and the earliest region to implement the equal-field system for military personnel, Hezhou's land rent this year exceeded that of Liangzhou.

It is true that your Liangzhou nobles invested in General Su in the early days, but now the land rent in Liangzhou is not even as much as that in Longxi County, and is almost doubled by Liangzhou. How will General Su, who has never been interested in the gentry, think about this?

Moreover, after the former Liangzhou governor Yuan Yu returned to the court, Su Ze also served as the Liangzhou governor!

These local nobles in Liangzhou don’t know the rules at all!

Su Chao was not a member of the Liangzhou gentry, but he was also concerned about the gentry as a whole. After the Yang family in Hanzhong was destroyed, how much grain did Liangzhou hand over this year?

Su Cho was worried that Su Ze would attack the Liangzhou gentry again, which was something Su Cho did not want to see.

Su Ze looked at Su Chao and said calmly:

"In this examination of the six states and two counties, the two county officials who were rated as low-ranking because of their poor collection of land rents are both from Liangzhou, right?"

Su Chao nodded. Taxation is a very important indicator in the examination.

Land rent is levied according to the land, so normally, as long as there is no war, there will not be much change in the land.

When evaluating the land rent, the inspectors would average the rent paid in the previous four years. If the rent was significantly less than this number, it would mean that the local chief official was not doing his job well. In fact, due to various circumstances, if the land rent collected in one year was less than 80% of the average, it would not affect the result of the evaluation if it was made up in the second year.

In other words, these two county magistrates failed to collect enough land rent for many consecutive years, so they were finally rated as inferior.

Su Ze said:

"Select two people from the inspectors to go to Liangzhou to take a look."

Su Cho finally breathed a sigh of relief. General Su did not directly blame Liangzhou, but asked the Inspector to check according to the procedure. This showed that General Su was not going to turn the table this time.

As long as they don't overturn the table and make up for the accumulated grain owed over the years, Liangzhou will be able to survive.

Su Cho was observing Su Ze, and Su Ze was also observing Su Cho.

Seeing Su Chao's look, Su Ze couldn't help but sigh that it was indeed very difficult for people to deviate from their class background.

Su Cho was his junior fellow apprentice and also the earliest meritorious follower, but he still needed to think about some issues from the perspective of the gentry.

Su Ze would not blame Su Cho for this, because Su Cho's position was not on the side of the Liangzhou gentry. Instead, he was worried that he had killed too many gentry and would not be able to unite the hearts of the gentry in other regions in the future.

There is no other way. It can be seen from this plan that without the talent base like that of the Tang and Song dynasties, there will be no one to replace these children of the gentry.

The powerful families are deeply rooted and monopolize knowledge, wealth and talent. Anyone who aspires to rule the world must be careful to maintain relations with the gentry.

Su Ze thought of his sworn brother Erzhu Rong. The Erzhu family had been doing business in Luoyang for three generations, but was still regarded as a country bumpkin by the Luoyang nobles.

In the historical timeline before Su Ze traveled through time, even after Erzhu Rong held the "Luoyang Diving Competition", he was unable to kill all the ministers in Luoyang, and even had to promote the remaining ministers in Luoyang by three levels.

Dong Zhuo, who also committed massacres in Luoyang, also tried to please the nobles in Luoyang after he came to power. Did they like these aristocratic families?

But Su Ze is not prepared to sit back and do nothing. He has the system as his killer weapon and the printing technology as his black technology. Judging from the trends in the Tang and Song dynasties, the era when the gentry monopolized knowledge and talents would soon be over.

It takes ten years to grow a tree and a hundred years to cultivate a person. The cycle of cultivating talents can be very long.

However, the seeds of a generation can be harvested in twenty or thirty years. The development in the decades before Su Ze traveled through time was actually based on the heavy investment in education over the past decade.

Chongwen Pavilion has completed printing the agricultural book and the "Compilation of Criminal Laws" compiled by Fengshu, and has now sent them to county officials in various places.

A purple follower summoned by Su Ze a while ago improved the ink formula for woodblock printing. After adding turpentine to the ink, clearer words could be printed.

[The stone engraver who draws inferences from one instance to another]

Name: Su Ke;
Grade: Purple;
effect:

By analogy, one can gain inspiration from one skill and improve other skills.

Comment: "The black clouds are rising and the peaks are overlapping with green, this is the Wei stele."

Price: 500 wen tai and 100 baht coins, and a maintenance fee of wen tai and baht coins is required every month.

The Northern Wei Dynasty was the peak of stele calligraphy culture. The Wei steles were unique and provided a large amount of material for later calligraphers to copy and learn.

Su Ze couldn't help but think that in the history before he traveled through time, woodblock printing technology also originated in the Tang Dynasty. Was it inspired by the Northern Wei Dynasty inscriptions?

Or was it that the accumulation of technology in rubbing Northern Wei inscriptions eventually led to the emergence of woodblock printing technology?

The emergence of woodblock printing technology was also a turning point in breaking the aristocratic class’s monopoly on knowledge.

After the words are carved on the wooden board, ink is applied and then covered with paper, which is then rolled over with a roller and finally peeled off to produce a printed book.

As long as the woodblock is carved, a printer can print a thousand pages a day, and one printing plate can be used for printing tens of thousands of times, which speeds up the dissemination of books by hundreds or thousands of times.

The first thing Su Ze printed was "Thousand Character Classic".

Su Ze's system did not produce this set of enlightenment teaching materials, but it happened that the "Thousand Character Classic", an enlightenment classic that has been used for thousands of years by later generations, appeared in this era.

To be precise, "Thousand Character Classic" was created in the present-day Southern Liang Dynasty.

In order to enlighten his sons, Xiao Yan ordered his literary attendant Yin Tieshi to peel off a thousand different characters from the stele of the great calligrapher Wang Xizhi, and teach the princes one character at a time, with each character on a separate piece of paper. However, the characters were disorganized and difficult to remember.

Zhou Xingsi, a minister of Xiao Yan, one of the Eight Friends of Jingling and also one of the top writers of the time, inherited the thousand words in rhyme and was immediately praised by Xiao Yan.

However, at this time, "Thousand Character Classic" was still the enlightenment textbook for the royal family of Southern Liang. Su Ze also asked people to visit Liangzhou some time ago, but no one had heard of it.

The turning point came when Bian Ji entered Southern Liang.

(End of this chapter)