My lady, I'm going to rebel.

Time passed quickly and it was April. Mu Zheng and his friends returned to Donglai after attending Han Zi's simple engagement banquet. When Yunniang saw her husband coming back, she threw herself into his arms.

After a while of sobbing, Yunniang realized that there was someone behind her husband and felt embarrassed.

"This is Lizidu." Mu Zheng introduced.

"Haha, this is my sister-in-law, right?" Li Zidu saw Yunniang's beauty and finally understood why Mu Zheng missed her so much. He then praised her: "My sister-in-law is so beautiful. Let me draw a picture for you tomorrow."

"Ah? Brother Li is also a painter?" In Yunniang's mind, painters were people only the rich and powerful could see. But now that he wanted to paint her, she was a little flattered.

"Haha, I just know a little bit about splashing ink." Before Li Zidu could say anything else, Mu Zheng kicked him in the butt, "Get lost!"

Yunniang was confused, "Husband..."

Her voice was soft and tender, as if she was acting coquettishly, expressing her dissatisfaction with her husband's treatment of intellectuals.

Mu Zheng took Yunniang's hand and said, "Ignore him."

As he spoke, he pulled out a pearl from his bosom and inserted it into Yunniang's hair, a look of admiration on his face. As expected, this hairpin was a perfect match for Yunniang.

Yunniang had never seen such exquisite jewelry before. She was surprised and happy, and her eyes were red.

Mu Zheng quickly advised: "It's just a little thing. If you are so easily moved, won't you cry every day in the future?"

"What?"

"Because there are more good things coming."

Yunniang burst into laughter and punched Mu Zheng's chest with her little fist: "My husband is always making fun of me."

As she spoke, Yunniang took off the pearls and jade, looking over them, cherishing them very much. "My husband, this thing is not cheap, is it? How can you afford it?"

"Of course I earned it." Mu Zheng said with a smile.

"Ah? How did my husband make so much money in just a few days?" Yunniang asked admiringly.

Mu Zheng's mouth twitched. "Well, I'm hungry. Is there anything to eat?"

When Mu Zheng said he was hungry, Yunniang quickly brought out two plates of pastries from her room. They looked delicious, but they were actually just wild grass cakes.

Life is getting harder and harder now, even the Li family has lowered their living standards.

However, Mu Zheng and his companions ate with gusto, which made Yunniang sigh with emotion. "Husband, I heard that this famine will last for a long time. We are fine in the north, just out of food. I heard that there is a big epidemic in the south."

"A big epidemic?" Mu Zheng and others looked at Yun Niang. After all, they had been traveling on the sea for some time and really didn't know what was happening on the shore.

"Well, it is said that in Chu, more than 20,000 people died at once." Yunniang sighed.

"Chu Di?" Mu Zheng's fingers trembled involuntarily, and he seemed to remember what it was.

"Well, a place called Green Forest." Yunniang said.

really!

Mu Zheng suddenly felt that the poop in his hand no longer smelled good.

In 17 AD, famine struck Jingzhou (present-day southern Henan, central Hubei, and western Hunan) in southern China. The people were forced to dig wild water chestnuts in the swamps to satisfy their hunger. The large population and limited availability of wild water chestnuts led to a scramble for supplies. Two prominent figures from Xinshi (present-day northeast of Jingshan, Hubei), Wang Kuang and Wang Feng, stepped in to mediate between the farmers and won their support.

Thus, the Green Forest Uprising began.

This group of rebels occupied Lulin Mountain (now Dahong Mountain in Hubei) as their base and grew to more than 50,000 people in just one year.

But just when the uprising was in full swing, in 18 AD, the fifth year of Tianfeng, an epidemic swept through Green Forest Mountain, killing almost half of the people.

The Green Forest Army was almost destroyed.

Fortunately, this group of green forest heroes adjusted their strategy in time and moved to Hubei, which gave them a chance to survive and continue to grow.

"What's wrong?" Yunniang asked when she saw Mu Zheng stopped talking.

"It's okay, I just feel sad when I think about how many people died." Mu Zheng said.

Upon hearing this, Yunniang stopped talking, and Li Zidu and Li Lian beside her kept silent. However, everyone's faces were heavy, and no one knew what they were thinking.

"Brother Lian!" Mu Zheng spoke.

Li Lian was startled and immediately looked at Mu Zheng with a wary look. He had figured out Mu Zheng's personality: when things were going well, he was Li Lian; when things were going wrong, he was Liandi.

"Do you think we can help them?" Mu Zheng thought that this group of Green Forest Army would become Liu Xiu's main force in the future, and they would be considered his own people. If he could help them now, it would be considered a good relationship.

"How can we help?" Li Lian asked, not because he didn't want to, but because he simply didn't have the strength. Chu was so far away from Lu that even if he had food, he couldn't transport it there.

"Oh!" Mu Zheng thought about it and realized that he was thinking too simply.

That's it.

Anyway, this team will never be finished in history, so let it go.

……

"Everyone, be careful and move quickly. This salt field cannot tolerate any carelessness." Qi Yuxiu tied her hair up high, looking very neat.

Following the method taught by Mu Zheng, everyone chose to build several salt ponds on the flat wasteland along the coast of the salt lake. This would allow the seawater to receive better light, facilitating the completion of the salt drying process.

The salt drying pond is generally half a foot high, and the beach pond is dug lower from top to bottom, with a drop of 3 inches. There is a pool door between the upper and lower pools to allow water to flow downward.

A platform, commonly known as a salt platform, was built under the bottom pool to store salt. Large ditches, commonly known as salt ditches, were dug on two or three sides around the beach pool to collect tidal water.

When drying salt, the seawater is first introduced into the evaporation pond. After a few days of drying, the water evaporates to a certain extent, then it is poured into the crystallization pond and continues to be exposed to the sun. The seawater will become a saturated solution of table salt. With further exposure, the table salt will gradually precipitate, and the resulting crystals are coarse salt.

Then add caustic soda to the brine, stir it, filter out the precipitate, and put it into a container to boil.

Not long after, a layer of white crystals appeared at the bottom of the container!

This is fine salt!

"Wow!"

Qi Yuxiu picked up a little bit with her little finger and put it in her mouth to taste it. It was salty, without any bitterness of coarse salt. It tasted really good.

"Brother Mu really did what he said. Sister Yuxiu, we are going to be rich!" Gong Wen was so excited that he almost knelt down in the salt field.

The solar salt production method has high yield, high efficiency and low cost, which is a huge profit. And as the salt fields expand in the future, their production will increase even more. It is hard to imagine that the entire territory of the Xin Dynasty will be covered by the salt from Kongtong Island. How much money will that bring?

"According to the time, Brother Mu should be back in Donglai. I have to go and tell him the good news." Gong Wen was extremely happy.

"You're going to Donglai?" Qi Yuxiu felt inexplicably happy when she heard this.

"Yeah, what's wrong?" Gong Wen looked at Qi Yuxiu.

"I, I want to go with you!" Qi Yuxiu said.

……

Mu Zheng hangs out with Li Zidu every day, and the two have established a solid "money" relationship through their collaboration on various paintings.

Speaking of which, this is also Mu Zheng's luck and fortune.

Li Zidu used his paintings to exchange for food and money, but during those years of famine, food was almost unavailable, so Li Zidu often brought back a large amount of currency and jewelry.

Li Zidu, on the other hand, looked down on the jewelry because it couldn't be converted into cash during the famine years. So after a few times, he and Mu Zheng formed a tacit understanding.

Li Zidu accepts cash, and Mu Zheng accepts jewelry.

In just over half a month, Mu Zheng had collected a small box of pearls and jadeite. Looking at this dazzling array of jewels, Mu Zheng felt for the first time that heaven had been kind to him, allowing him to enjoy the aura of a time traveler. In an era when pearls and jadeite were worthless, it had directly gifted him with a vast fortune.

Haha!

Seeing Mu Zheng laughing alone, Li Zi couldn't help but tease him: "You have changed so many pieces of jewelry. Even if your wife wears them every day, she won't wear the same one twice a month."

"That's..." Mu Zheng looked very proud. Just as he was about to say something else, Cao Pengfei pushed the door open.

"What's wrong?" Li Zidu asked.

"My young master, my young master hasn't come back for two days." Cao Pengfei said anxiously.