After setting off west again from Lanzhou City, Li Su and his party passed the upper reaches of Liujia Gorge in just two days and moved into the Huangshui River Basin, which was considered to have entered the Qinghai Province in later generations.

To be honest, even Li Su, who was later generations, had such a convenient plane to take, and he had never been to the Qinghai-Tibet region for many years, so it was the first time he had been here in two lives.

Who made him not a literary youth in his previous life? He didn't catch a cold in the snowy plateau. He would rather spend money to go to the beach to sunbathe and see the glass sea. Moreover, he was not interested in "there are many OPEN girls along the Sichuan-Tibet Line to take a taxi and travel around the poor". Whenever his colleagues mentioned sexual encounters in the snowy areas, he always sneered.

If even Internet celebrities take photos, if he goes to join in the fun, wouldn’t he be as low-key as Internet celebrities? But this life is different. He is going to the real world of no one. No vulgar people can disturb him, and it is for official business, so I can just take a look.

The convoy was first loaded on the boat and sailed up the Huangshui River for seven or eight days, passing by Po Qiang, Anyi, Xiping and Linqiang. Along the way, Li Su talked about science topics with Zhuge Liang every day, or talked with Zhuge Zhi about "the imperial court credit endorsement to build the logistics industry" and the supporting policy reforms. The road was not boring, and everyone gained a lot.

From Linqiang to the upstream, there are actually still 150 miles to the source of Huangshui. However, because we have entered the Jishishan Mountain area, the drop has begun to become steeper, and it is difficult for some river sections to flow turbulently, and it is difficult for ships to flow backwards, so everyone unloaded the caravan from the ship in Linqiang County.

For river sections with large slopes, the car will be dragged by horses in the valley beside the river. For river sections with gentle slopes, there will even be a brief downhill, so the car will be driven into the river for a while.

Along the way, Li Su saw that the road conditions were pretty good. At first, he wanted to sigh "God helped me." However, after changing to land, he found that he was overthinking - he passed through the banks of the Huangshui River Valley of Jishi Mountain, which was not so flat.

What Li Su has seen so far is the result of the surrender of the Qiang and Barbarian tribes one and a half months ago after Wang Ping and Zhang Ren conquered Huangzhong, and the local Di tribes such as Lei Ding and the Qiang and Barbarian tribes.

Those Di tribes who had no eyes before and chose to resist Wang Ping by force, the first Ling Qiang tribe was arrested by the surrender tribes and presented them to Wang Ping as letters of fame. Then Wang Ping sent troops to supervise the prisoners to build roads and work.

In just one and a half months, the Huangshui River passed through the Jishi Mountain River. The dirt roads on both sides of the tidal flats were flattened, and many of them were roads filled with the lives of these barbarian prisoners in dangerous areas. In the Huangshui source area of ​​Longyi County alone, the most dangerous road on the ridge of Jishi Mountain was to cross the valley road, and in order to break the mountains and open the stones and open the entire valley road, hundreds of prisoners died.

However, Wang Pingken did this, and Guan Yuken, as Wang Ping's immediate boss, approved it, obviously saw huge benefits and was worth doing this - after opening the pass on the ridge of Jishishan Mountain in Longyi County, turning over it is Qinghai Lake and a large salt lake around Qinghai Lake.

According to the observation report of the pathfinding scout sent by Wang Ping before, there were many saltwater lakes in that generation, and some of them were particularly salty. Although it was not known at that time how difficult and costly these saltwater lakes were to produce salt, judging from this scale, the output should be enough to meet the use of the entire Liangzhou and even Guanzhong area. The key is to solve the transportation difficulties.

This is also one of the reasons why Li Su had to take a caravan when he came to Qinghai Lake this time.

He was not just for enjoyment or for comfort and not riding a horse. He just knew that in the future, he would transport the salt around Qinghai Lake at a lower cost, and he would have to use a caravan to transport goods and then take the Huangshui River route.

If Wang Ping doesn't open the road to a caravan and can only ride a horse, then he can't count on the pack horse's capacity to transport salt in the future.

...

"I finally reached the highest point. The sky is so high and the clouds are so clear that I have never felt so broad." After Zhuge Zhi and Zhuge Liang arrived at Longyi Pass, they were not satisfied with climbing over the mountain directly, but insisted on getting off their horses and climbing to the high places on both sides of the pass to inspect.

After all, I have been going on the road for seven or eight days, and three or four days by land, and twelve consecutive days. Now I have finally reached the highest point of the trip to Huangzhong. I have to climb a little higher and so on. Fortunately, I don’t have a camera in this era, otherwise Zhuge Liang would have to take a selfie.

Li Su was a little tired when riding a horse, so he ordered a little repair at Longyi Pass, but it would only take half an hour at most. He also hoped to arrive at the salt pond at the foot of the mountain before dark. If it was dark, the road down the mountain would be difficult.

The only thing that made him feel lucky was that it was already the fifth month of the lunar calendar, so the high altitude places were not cold, but the sun was relatively strong, the air on the plateau was slightly thin, and the ultraviolet rays were particularly vicious. Li Su always made people wear long-sleeved clothes, and even a hat, and women had to wear veils.

Li Su is surrounded by Liu Miao and Zhou Ying. Zhou Ying is clever and gentle and well-behaved. Of course, she will not cause trouble to Li Su, and she will not say it even if she wants to play in her heart.

However, Liu Miao was originally here to follow him to travel around the world to increase his knowledge and help his practice. Liu Miao did not have the habit of thinking about others so much. When Zhuge Zhi went up the mountain, he pulled Li Su to climb a little. As a result, five people walked together for a while and climbed the mountain for a while, climbed up to the distance and looked out.

In addition to protecting Li Su climbing the mountain, Dian Wei hid far away after arriving at the place to avoid disturbing Li Su's serious business. When Li Su wants to go down the mountain, come to protect him.

Zhuge Zhi was the first to climb a small peak on the right side of Longyi Pass, holding a veil hat in his hand and looking into the distance, feeling excited: "Sister Miao Liang Ying'er, look, that lake is probably what Brother Li said about 'Qinghai'. It's really indigo and dark blue. There is such a deep blue sea water in the world, which is really refreshing.

Looking at it this way, the beach is only fifty miles away at most. The small and shallow Baisha Lake below are closer, probably only twenty or thirty miles away."

Li Su smiled slightly and did not correct the geographical errors of Zhuge's brothers along the way. Li Su actually told them at the beginning that this place was called "Qinghai Lake".

After all, Li Su received geographical education from later generations. Knowing the difference between lakes and seas, those that are not connected to the outer ocean water bodies must be called lakes. But unfortunately, his geographical definition is obviously not accepted by the ancients. The ancients called Baikal Beihai, and naturally they would also be called Qinghai Lake and Qinghai directly - even the later provincial name "Qinghai", which originally came from this lake.

Respect their traditional habits.

Li Su just pointed out calmly: "Don't underestimate the small lakes under your feet. You look small, because we stand tall and far away. When you walk to the lake, you will find that each of these small lakes is twenty miles wide. As for Qinghai, it is ten times larger than their diameter and two or three hundred miles wide.

The white next to those small lakes is not white sand beaches, but salt - the salt water is completely saturated and precipitated, so when the salt in the pond here is developed, there is no need to cook the salt, just dig it out from the bottom of the lake like digging sand, which is a huge profit. The whole cost is just the transportation cost of transporting it out."

Zhuge's brother and brother Liu Miao and Zhou Ying were all dumbfounded when they heard this.

Zhuge Liang: "What? This... isn't this a beach? Is it a beach made of salt? It's so much salt that even water can't dissolve? Master Li turned out that this is the concept of "saturation" you taught me...

Unexpectedly, Master Li, you asked me before if I had seen the sea in my life. I didn’t expect that I had not seen the real vast ocean in Jiaozhou, but I saw the salt flats in Qinghai first. No wonder the beach is so white."

Zhuge Zhi was not as surprised as her younger brother. Her surprise was entirely concentrated on wealth: "What? The bottom of the lake, twenty miles wide and ten miles long, is covered with salt? The area like white sand beach next to it is also salt? How much salt does this require?

It is only one foot thick rock layer, and a square of one foot is more than ten thousand kilograms... It is scary! Twenty miles long and ten miles wide is equal to three thousand feet by more than one thousand feet, which is no more than three million kilograms!

Each person eats at least eight kilograms of salt every year, which means 400,000 people eat it for a year. Now the big man still doesn’t know if there are 40 million people. Wouldn’t the people in the world be able to eat it for a hundred years?

Brother Li! Right General! Wang Ping has to quickly rectify the road construction! Dig the road from Linqiang to cross Longyi Pass and dig a flat and spacious road. If we lack money and food, our Zhuge family will pay for it. Don’t have anything else. Once the road is repaired, we will pack this salt lake for a year. We will pay the salt tax that should be paid to the court. The lake rights are considered as a deduction for the road construction. If it really doesn’t work, it will be possible to pack half a year.”

Anyway, as long as the contract rights are obtained, I will send people to the bottom of the lake and the beach to dig sand and salt!

It’s a pity that there are no excavators in this era, otherwise Zhuge Zhi would definitely send a bunch of big Lanxiang to deal with it.

Of course, Li Su was still selfless and did not want to leave the handle of giving huge benefits to privately. After all, the benefits here are too great, and Liu Bei was not willing to let Li Su use them for personal favors. So he said half-jokingly:

"It's okay to give it to you for a while. You and A Liang have done so many things for the country, and Ziyu is not an outsider. But the king has the final say for how long it takes to give it.

Moreover, how can you only build Longyi Pass? At least you have to build the Dadoubagu Road north of Qinghai to the source of Ruoshui in Diodan County, Zhangye. In the future, the salt and other materials on the plateau can be sold directly to Zhangye to facilitate the exchange of access with the Western Regions."

Zhuge Zhi did not bargain at all: "What the Right General said is that there is only one road to go out in such a good place? I have to catch more people, which means hiring more Qiang people to open mountains, split stones and build roads."

Everyone chatted for a while. Seeing that it was already afternoon, Li Su told everyone to get on the bus and go down the mountain as soon as possible.

Zhuge Zhi was originally in the same car with her younger brother and Huang Yueying, but because she was having fun talking about the important things with Li Su, she pulled Zhuge Liang to Li Su's car, chatted together, and threw Huang Yueying alone in the second caravan.

Zhuge Zhi had already thought a lot these days. At this moment, seeing the benefits of the Salt Lake, some of her ideas suddenly became clear. She could not make up her mind to make a decision. She was braver at this moment and dared to suggest Li Su to do it without reservation.

Zhuge Zhi said: "Brother Li, a few days ago, you also mentioned a lot of difficulties in building a caravan system that is not worth losing profits and losses, and I thought about it. This time it was indeed an opportunity.

Xiliang and even the current Huangzhong, in the future, there are so many materials that are of high value and are beneficial to the national economy and people's livelihood. However, because there are no professional businessmen who are dedicated to transportation, the government's direct operation efficiency is low.

If the court is willing to endorse some long-distance merchants who do business with foreign countries, it will make the border caravan more believe that these special transportation caravans will be of great benefit to the national court to absorb materials from border counties for the central government.

At present, the four counties in Hexi are not only private trade materials, but also taxes collected by the state. In fact, they have to be transported to Guanzhong and even in the east for use, and the road is very damaged.

If it were like Huan Lingshi, the local government would not only bear taxable materials, but also be responsible for transporting the things to Chang'an. The additional expenditure would probably force some of the people who had just surrendered to their lives. If there was no commission, Xiliang would not be able to significantly help the court with its material resources, except for providing war horses to the king."

After these days of adjustment, Zhuge Zhi spoke more from the court's standpoint and persuaded Li Su, indicating that this matter is indeed beneficial to the court's better control of remote areas and to enhance the dispatch and mobilization of national strength in remote areas, not just to make money.

However, Li Su has inspired each other these days and actually figured out one thing that principled issues must not be relaxed. In the future, it is necessary to reform and enhance the Han Dynasty's mobilization and extraction of border areas. Li Su has his own way.

So Li Su said: "Okay, this is not something you can understand after a few years of business. How could the court endorse some car and ship merchants specifically? It simply lost the court's tradition.

However, the previous rule over the border areas was either too restrictive and let them die on their own. For example, Xiliang and Jiaozhou did not bear the tax on all bulk materials, and only paid tribute to horses or local high-value treasures. The same is true for Nanzhong.

The Han Dynasty was known as the thirteen prefectures, and only nine and a half of them paid the money and grain. Liangzhou and Jiaozhou were all tax-free, and only tribute treasures were paid. The same was true for the Nanzhong and Jingnan and Yangzhou Shanyue. They paid tribute to taxes with levies. The key here is that the loss of transportation was not clearly defined by the court by laws and converted into taxes.

After I returned to Chang'an, I planned to calculate the transportation costs of these states based on my experience in the Western Tour and the southern tour of Jiaozhou in the second half of the year. At that time, I would discount the freight to the rent-in-one regime. For example, when the court asked about the taxation of Xiliang in the future, it would also include grain and cotton cloth and cotton in the scope of taxable materials.

If Xiliang does have a bumper harvest, and the grain is abundant and Guanzhong is short of food, the year will allow Xiliang to transport grain to Guanzhong for delivery. The price of plain water transportation is relatively transparent. The freight fee is calculated based on one monies per ten miles per stone, which will be discounted to the local tax of 300 yuan per person per year.

For example, a person now pays 300 coins (or equivalent textiles), 2 stone rice (official price 600 coins), and 900 coins of corvee service, and the rent and tuition are 1,800 coins per man. In the future, if you let Jiuquan County transport two stones of grain to Chang'an, it will be equivalent to two stone rice worth 600 coins, and the freight is worth 1,200 coins, which is equivalent to the rent and tuition of a strong man who should be served in a year. You can be exempted from the same kind of rent and tuition.

In fact, Jiuquan is not that far from Chang'an, so here is a hypothesis. But we can calculate the freight rate based on the plain land transportation of water transportation ten times, rugged land or mountainous areas, and based on the road conditions of each county and the previous corvee expenses, we can evaluate the average price, and convert it to fifteen to fifty times the water transportation fee according to the degree of danger and difficulty. In this way, Jiuquan to Chang'an is a land transportation of 500 miles on the plain and a water transportation of 1,000 miles is the same as the above results.

From then on, the court would not have to specifically collect local civilians and labor service transportation, but could find special transporters to transport at this price. Merchants could also compete. Whoever had a lower freight price than the guidance given by the court and had less freight fees to collect the court would do this matter, and the court would cooperate with them for a long time."

Li Su's idea actually transcended history, because in history, the Tang Dynasty only went to rent and regulate, and later the middle and late Tang Dynasty became the two tax law. After the Song Dynasty, in order to solve the supply problem of border troops, the method of citation was given, which was equivalent to converting freight into monopoly rights such as salt, tea and wine, and allowing merchants to bear the obligation to provide logistics transportation to the country.

But Li Su has not abolished the Rental and Medicinal Regulation Law and changed the Two Tax Law, so he directly proposed the "standardized freight pricing" of the Song people.

Therefore, Li Su's system has never appeared at the same time in history. If Li Su himself had to make a name, it should be called the "renting, mediocre, and transferring and expiration" method, which also turned the cost of "equal income" into a standardized tax target, allowing local governments to use transportation labor as a reflection of the imperial court's tax service.

This matter is actually not new, because the Han Dynasty originally had the matter of organizing transportation across regions, but it was not a legal system, but a temporary arrest of men. This leads to the rapid development of men once the peak of temporary arrest of men is seen, the local area will easily inspire rebellion.

Not to mention the distance, just talk about the war between Cao Cao and Liu Bei in history, when Cao Cao and Liu Bei fought against Hanzhong, Guanzhong and Wuguan in Chang'an, the people in Wanluo were everywhere, and there were even many Cao Wei people in Wancheng who were in trouble to respond to Guan Yu.

It was because Cao Cao temporarily sent additional transportation labor service to Hanzhong for the purpose of transporting grain from Shu Road, but he did not agree on an algorithm with the people. It was too casual. Although it was compensated by labor service, the labor service period was very casual and everyone felt that they could not survive.

The efficiency of material mobilization in remote areas is because freight costs are not standardized, institutionalized and legalized.

The law explicitly stipulates how much freight costs per stone per 100 miles in a quiet river and how much freight costs per flat land. After the people pay the tax and grain in one year, they will bear the labor equivalent to transporting the grain they paid by themselves to 600 miles away by land. At this time, all the obligations of this person to the country this year should end here, and they cannot forcefully enslave the people.

If someone is unwilling to do it, he can spend money to hire others to achieve the equivalent transportation effect. Or some people are fast-footed, strong and have many livestock at home. It is obvious that this transportation effect can be achieved by 45 days of corvee service, but in fact they only served for 30 days, they finished their work and transported so much materials to such a distance.

Then the 15 days saved by the people should be at his own control. The court cannot have to let him work for another 15 days just because he has high work efficiency.

With a reasonable "piecework wage transportation and labor service", the enthusiasm of the people to work will definitely increase exponentially. After all, if you finish your work early and go home early, who will work hard? People who are not good at rushing to transport goods know that they are not competitive, so they spend some money to ask people from fellow villagers who are good at doing this to help serve.

For example, Zhang San is good at farming, Li Si is good at transporting goods, Zhang San needs to serve 45 days to transport goods, and Li Si finishes it in 30 days, so let Zhang San discuss with his neighbors. He helps Li Si's land for 45 days to ensure that Li Si's fields are well maintained in a busy season, and asks Li Si to transport goods for 60 days a year, so that Zhang San's corvee will also do the labor service.

This is the improvement of the overall social production efficiency.

Li Su finally summarized and said, "...so, my general idea is like this. It has not been determined yet, and the court's guidance price will not be determined by me. We must investigate it. Please ask the king to agree to the Grand Secretary Liu Ba and the others. Then, Zi Ni can be invited back to discuss with Liu Ba.

Don’t use your brains. If you really want to contribute to the court, you can build your own car and ship transportation caravans and strive to undertake more official court guide transportation tasks. In this way, the private cargo owners will naturally trust these caravans with achievements.

If others do better than you, you have to reflect on yourself and find ways to control costs, ensure quality, ensure the safety and punctuality of goods, and reduce the price to win the imperial court transportation orders."

After listening to it, Zhuge Zhi felt that her previous thoughts were too immature. The key was that she did not consider how to prevent fraud and transfer of interests. She was still wise and not only came up with a feasible plan, but also very fair and lawful.

Zhuge Zhi gave in shame: "I have been fantastic these days. All I think about is how to improve efficiency, and do the most things with the least money and food, which can be considered as sharing the worries of the court. But I didn't think about how to ensure fairness and ensure that the people understand the hard work of the court. The right general is really the talent of the king's master."
Chapter completed!