In 198, mid-5th month of the lunar calendar, Xiakou City.

The city of Xiakou was only in early March this year after Li Su asked the emperor for advice, and became the new Jingzhou capital and the temporary shogunate where Li Su, the governor of the military affairs of the five southern prefectures.

In just two and a half months, the market in Xiakou was slightly thriving.

The business travelers from Yizhou were originally supposed to be transported and distributed in Baqiu, and most of them continued to go down the Yangtze River, and a small part of them moved into Dongting Lake, and sold Shu goods to Changsha and other counties.

But now, a considerable part of the freight distribution in Baqiu has been replaced by Xiakou, and the goods in Shu are more unobstructed. Only Xiakou, the checkpoint, collects 2% of the pass-through tariffs, and then scatters to various parts of the Han River Basin in the north.

In Xiangyang Wancheng, before Xiakou or the entire Jiangxia County were restored, they either endured the taxes in the jurisdiction of Liu Biao in their early years, or endured the difficulties of Sun Wu's investigation.

Now all this is finally gone. Paying it all at once makes the Yizhou businessmen have a much better experience, and invisibly creates a good basic atmosphere for the commercial tax reform that Li Su and Liu Bei will propose in the second half of this year.

In addition to the prosperity of the city, business and tourism, the military and civil affairs around Xiakou have also improved greatly.

Gao Shun followed the troops who started to spend money and food in late March. After finishing the brainwashing of basic military discipline and loyalty and explaining basic technical and tactical training, they were transported to Xiakou in batches, and the training officers also came together.

Anyway, as long as the northern soldiers adapt to the climate, water and soil of Xiangyang, they can adapt step by step as soon as they go south to Xiakou. They cannot practice where they train. Of course, they should try to put them close to the front line, and it is also convenient to engage in combat at any time if they have the opportunity.

In terms of civil affairs, the original geographical environment around Xiakou City was worse than that of Jiangling, so it had to be managed for eight years. There were also many swamps around Jiangling, and the remnants of Yunmengze were all over the east and west, so this was not a unique difficulty for a place. This was the case in the entire Jianghan area.

Jiangling was also the governor of Jingzhou. Because he had no other production base, he had to focus on managing the Jianghan swamp. He dredged and deep the large swamps and connected rivers such as Xiaze and Xiashui, and then dug out the silt to fertilize fields, and filled the small swamps around and built fields, resulting in at least tens of millions of new fertile arable land.

From this perspective, Liu Biao has managed the local area for eight years and has done a lot of things for the people. Without Liu Biao, Nanjun can support a population potential of at least one million.

Fortunately, Li Su was also a person who liked to build water conservancy projects. In the past two years, there was a lot of surplus grain in the imperial government warehouse. He could not spend all the remaining grain in the imperial government warehouse to fight and provide disaster relief. The road to transport to the north to support the northern battlefield was too much loss.

Li Su took the opportunity to assign grain to organize the people to build fields around the lake around Xiakou, dig the large swamp into a lake, and fill the small swamp with clear water and land, which not only increased the area of ​​the field, but also did not reduce the slightest "flood distribution storage capacity during the flood season."

The depth of the remaining lakes increased greatly, and the total water storage capacity in the rainy season was larger than before. Moreover, the fields created were all high-quality paddy fields with extremely fertile swamp silt piles, and the irrigation conditions were also inherently superior.

Of course, it is impossible to do all the best of this job without a few years of slow governance. The construction has only started for more than two months this year, and it has only been slightly refined. The entire Xiakou area is nearly a hundred miles in a radius, and it has become a large construction site for mobilizing civilians, auxiliary soldiers and soldiers.

Such an arrangement also prevents a large number of troops from doing nothing except training during the stalemate between Cao Cao and Sun Quan.

Anyway, the garrison always insists on not working, and they have to eat military rations. They pull the troops out to participate in the construction in turn to ensure that the front-line river defense is fine. They just kill two birds with one stone to recruit food for the corvee workers, and take out half of the saved food to add food to the working soldiers and exercise their bodies.

After more than two months of rectification, the area of ​​the town has increased by at least one million acres in the flat fields outside Xiakou City. A large area of ​​shallows in the northeast of Liangzi Lake, which was originally deep to the waist, was filled with mud dug from other deep water areas, and the surface of Liangzi Lake was divided into two north and south.

Only the width of a river is left in the middle, and the two lake areas in the northwest and southeast are continued to communicate. The depth of this river is naturally at least one meter deeper than before. Originally, this section of the lake could only pass by boats or ships, and even the battleships would be stranded when they came.

This has been confirmed in the battle between Zhou Tai's interception of Lu Meng three months ago. At that time, Lu Meng dared to take this waterway to try to break through, because it was because many places in Liangzihu Lake District were so shallow that they were just swamps and were not worthy of being called a lake.

Now that Li Su has been rectified, this river can overload at least 800 people in the fighter ships, and large and medium-sized merchant ships are also convenient for passing directly. All the business travelers worship Li Su's virtues.

Li Su also came to Wuhan in his previous life and looked at the map of Wuhan, so only he knew that the Liangzihu Lake area, which was now filled by him, was actually the East Lake of Wuhan in later generations.

However, the East Lake in 1,800 years later should be the result of the thousand-year natural siltation and the people's spontaneous land reclamation and land reclaiming by Liangzi Lake. The place was always fertile. The later Central China Agricultural University was built in the area south of the East Lake that was silted into plain farmland.

Now, all this has become a top-down government project. Therefore, the place name "Wuhan East Lake" will no longer exist in the future. People only call it Li Gong Lake here, which is the product of Li Su's water control.

Under Li Su's governance, all of this means that Xiakou is becoming more and more suitable to become one of the three major political cores in the future (Chengdu, Xiakou, Jianye).

After all, Jiangling is suitable as a place of heavy money, grain and fish and rice, and Xiangyang is suitable as a military fortress, shaking the north and south, but it is not suitable as the political core of a state.

Before the world was in chaos, the political core of Jingzhou was also Wancheng, the county seat of Nanyang County, the imperial town. Xiangyang became the governor of Jingzhou. It was originally the first time Liu Biao arrived eight years ago and could not drive away Yuan Shu, who occupied Wancheng, had to find a place to set up a shogunate, and then chose Xiangyang.

This idea of ​​site selection did not break away from the shackles of "the core of Jingzhou must also move closer to the Central Plains and Luoyang", and always leaned its core area to the northernmost place closest to Sili.

This is actually very unfavorable to the development of large fertile land in Jingnan. At least Jiangxia County and Changsha County are very worthy of development. If Li Su wants to allow the Han Dynasty to have a more comprehensive development, the land of China can accommodate more population and have a greater depth of civilization, changes must be made.

...

Early on May 16th, a transport fleet that had just passed through Baqiu two days ago carried some officials, soldiers, royal families and nobles' business travelers, and supplies from the court.

From Xiakou (the "Xiakou" here refers to the estuary where the Yangtze River split out of the branch and leads to the Liangzi Lake water system, not the city), it goes straight into Ligong Lake, and then berths on a pier on the northwest bank of Ligong Lake that had just been dredged for a few days.

The fleet is of very high level. The ship is hung with the throne of the imperial officials, and the car staff is directly carried by the ship. The car is also a red wheel and a bus.

With such a grand style, the passengers have arrived here, and there are obviously fewer options for the identity of the visitor. It is Gu Yong, the current Dianzhou governor who is waiting to hand over the new position, and the future governor of Yangzhou.

Although Gu Yong is also in a high position and powerful position, Li Su obviously will not come to take over the subordinates in person, so the only one who greets him on the dock is Lu Su, the governor of Jingzhou who is nominally nominally equal to him, but in fact he is slightly higher than him.

After all, although states and states are nominally at the same level, in fact, the rich and the poor have a great impact on the future and real power of officials.

Nowadays, Jingzhou is slightly more developed than Yangzhou after its complete revival. Even after Gu Yong was transferred to Yangzhou's governor, he was barely similar to Lu Su. Now he is still in Dianzhou, and it is inevitable that he is half a level away.

"Brother Yuan Tan has worked hard in the past few years and has worked in Nanzhong for more than five years. From the prefect of Jianning to the governor of Dianzhou, he has always appeased the southwestern barbarians for the court and opened up a place of malaria. When he came back this time, as long as Sikong did not make any mistakes in his errands, he finally had his merits."

Lu Su stood on the dock, greeting Gu Yong on the same page.

He followed Liu Bei with his seniority than Gu Yong, and his attitude was more frank when he was in office. Unlike Gu Yong, who was not optimistic about Liu Bei at the beginning, Gu Yong officially took office after Liu Bei took over the bases of Hanzhong and Brazil. Therefore, it is appropriate that Lu Su has a higher status than Gu Yong.

But Lu Su still called Gu Yong a brother, after all, Gu Yong was indeed four years older than Lu Su. Lu Su joined Liu at the age of sixteen, and Gu Yong was twenty at the time. After hesitating for a year, he came only at the age of twenty. Now eleven years have passed, Lu Su is twenty-seven and Gu Yong is thirty-one.

At the age of thirty, Gu Yong was also worthy of being the governor of the Dazhou.

Gu Yong doesn't talk much, likes to do practical things, check for omissions and fill in the gaps, and he always corrects the problem when he finds others' problems, and he always talks about things and not people in person. If he doesn't find any problems, he basically won't talk much, let alone mess with his subordinates.

In history, Gu Yong should have been the prime minister for Sun Quan, but Zhang Zhao did not get the position of prime minister. During the court discussion, Zhang Zhao was still talking nonstop. Gu Yong only added a few words to the point when Zhang Zhao had any questions about his opinion. If Zhang Zhao's plan was mature and the country was very persistent, Gu Yong would not seek any opportunity to show his performance at all, and said directly, "What I know is the same as Zhang Gong."

A person's temper is difficult to change. Although he changed to a serving monarch, Gu Yong still didn't talk much. Lu Su took care of his polite words. He just wanted to go back with politeness first, and then made a very reliable statement:

"How dare I make any mistakes with Sikong? All the things I want are here, which is definitely enough for the entire army to spend this summer, and the money and food they spend are less than Sikong's budget."

Among the merchant fleet he brought this time, part of the imperial court's official ships and military supplies were transported, which were loaded with several ships of flower dew and wind oil essence, as well as other special medicines for the treatment of tropical diseases, heat stroke, and mosquito plague in the south.

Fulu water was found in Li Suda Nanzhong many years ago. Fengyujing was only in the prototype at that time, and camphor and mint were used as the main ingredients. However, because it was relatively simple at that time, no suitable oil carrier was found, so this Fengyujing was strictly not "oil". It was as thin as water, and it was easy to evaporate and difficult to store for a long time.

At that time, Li Suda Nanzhong was manufactured and used locally, but did not need to be stored, so this disadvantage was not a big problem. Now, it is necessary to transport thousands of miles and use it in a long distance, and the shelf life and storage issues are important.

Li Su actually knew that the key to later generations of Fengliu oil and Panjin Oil was to add eucalyptus leaf oil, which was used to deworm and sterilize and prevent volatiles, but the eucalyptus was still in Australia. Fortunately, Li Su knew that the key to the problem was to find vegetable oils that were beneficial to the medicinal effect, so he pointed out this general direction for military doctors and Zhang Ji to develop and test them himself.

Zhang Ji is worthy of being a master of infectious disease prevention and control who wrote "Treatise on Febrile Diseases". He is quite talented in this regard. After Li Su pointed out the direction of his efforts, he used paraffin oil with paraffin oil/birch oil to replace eucalyptus oil, and it was a coincidence that the formula of pure Chinese medicine prescriptions and style oil essence in later generations was 70% or 80% similar.

It turns out that birch oil and salicylic acid oil are made by boiling sour water (salicylic acid) with some animal fats and boiling them. It is similar to the traditional method of making soap, forming salicylic acid lipids.

As we all know, the chemical component of the Western medicine aspirin that treats headaches in later generations is "acetylsalicylic acid". Various acyl esters of salicylic acid actually have similar effects.

Therefore, Zhang Ji's Feng Oil Essence has less effect on eucalyptus toxins than the Australian Eucalyptus oil version, but it has more cooling and curing headaches and is also beneficial for some fevers.

Even after Li Su himself got the sample, he chose to apply a little on his temple when his mind was swollen at night and let the slave bridge rub him. The medicine was actually very effective.

Seeing that Li Sikong was so relieved after being busy with official business, other officials in Jingzhou learned this operation instantly, which made it elegant. For a moment, after work, the maid's palms were tiring and massaged her temples, which was more popular than taking Wushi Powder to refresh her mind.

This time, Gu Yong came to report with supplies, so naturally according to Li Su's request, he had to provide a batch of fine products for Li Su's personal use and for rewards.

Use a high-quality celadon bottle to fill the veins, and add a round matte crystal bottle stopper. A small piece of elephant skin that is anti-seepage and anti-volatile (the elephant skin is particularly soft and does not penetrate oil, which is very suitable for this). It is so decent and luxurious to give it to people.

Lu Su chatted with Gu Yong and first brought the person to the residence of the Jingzhou governor. Tonight, Lu Su first greeted guests at his mansion, and Li Su was just a guest he invited.

Because the governor is not a permanent job after all, the welcome and sending off local administrative officials is at the highest level, and Li Su is too lazy to handle it.

Gu Yong, a guy who is taciturn and does not praise others, couldn't help but exclaim when he saw the prosperity inside and outside Xiakou City, and he couldn't help but exclaim: "Sikong governs Xiakou in just two or three months, and it can make the people live and work in peace and contentment. The prosperity of the place is so great. Brother Zijing has also spent a lot of effort."
Chapter completed!