No matter if you are a human or an immortal, you can still farm for me after traveling through time!

In early October, Li Erlang carried a bag on his back, a bamboo tube hung on his chest, took a horse, left the city and headed straight for the dock to catch a boat.

Going south, the boats traveled very fast along the river, and the saying "returning from Jiangling to Jiangling in one day is a thousand miles" was not a lie. But going directly north was not an option. Large ships had to continue southward along the river from Dongting Lake, reach the Grand Canal connecting the river and the river, and then go west along the river after entering the Grand Canal.

River water is much more difficult to navigate than river water. When there is headwind or encountering sharp bends and rapids, letting trackers pull the boat is the only solution.

It took almost a month for the boat to complete the traversable waterway. It should be noted that it took them less than a month to complete the entire journey south, which shows how difficult it was to sail against the current.

Li Erlang led the horse off the boat. Next, he would start from this place bordering the northwest and ride his horse all the way north.

Unlike Li Erlang who was only focused on his journey, Ji Qingyue in the painting had a wide variety of things to do every day. He thought he would be able to return soon, but he did not expect it would take so much time. The vegetables that he had planted in advance to compensate for Tai'an Building were already more than half mature, and now they could only be left in the field for breeding and composting. The small rice experimental plot near the waterfall was reclaimed by him into a shallow pond, which was used to grow lotus roots and raise fish, shrimps and crabs.

The trip to the south of the Yangtze River was extremely fruitful. Ji Qingyue looked at the two baskets of seed packets in the thatched cottage with satisfaction, like an old father.

Loquat, lychee, longan, kiwi, orange, persimmon, hawthorn, peach, ginkgo...

Water chestnut, winter melon, wild rice, water chestnut, chestnut, wormwood, chrysanthemum, water spinach, amaranth, taro, yam...

During the time on the return journey, Ji Qingyue was busy redividing the area and planting fruits and vegetables. He specially found a booklet and planned to record the growth time and growth rate of all crops. He planned to plant them outside after breeding. By comparing the two types of data, he could sort out the seasonality and habits of different crops.

As you go further north, the weather becomes colder, and in November it started snowing in some places.

Li Erlang put on a thick cotton robe and wrapped himself in a fur cloak. He rode on horseback during the day and rested at night. With Ji Qingyue, a powerful logistical supporter, the days of traveling were not particularly difficult.

The man, the horse and the painting traveled on the road for more than half a month and finally returned to Ganzhou before the arrival of the twelfth lunar month.

Li Erlang first went back to the barracks to return the warhorse and reported the mission to Deputy General Cao. Deputy General Cao had already received a letter from the Zhao family, stating that the marriage between the Chu and Zhao families would be finalized, and the date was set for the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month before the New Year.

"Okay, okay! I knew you could do it!" Deputy General Cao laughed loudly. He stood up from behind the table piled with papers and walked towards Li Erlang. He looked at the young man with satisfaction and said, "The promise I made to you before still stands. After the new year, you will be my deputy lieutenant!"

"Thank you, Deputy General, for the promotion!" Li Erlang knelt on the ground and saluted. After standing up, he asked hesitantly, "Deputy General, on the way back from Jiangnan, I heard people talking about the new recruits issued by the government. Is it true?"

Deputy General Cao turned and walked towards the desk. "Of course, the governor has posted a notice in the city and sent people to pass on the order to the counties and villages below. After the new year, the governor personally selected by the emperor can enter the camp and take charge of all the affairs of the barracks and deploy troops."

This is a big change!

The barracks were just training camps before, without a general to lead the troops, so they could not immediately dispatch a large number of soldiers when a war broke out. If we were the attacker, it would be fine, but if we were the defender, the emperor would often receive urgent reports from the battlefield after the war broke out, and then select a commander to bring the military order and tiger talisman to the barracks to mobilize troops.

Although this policy can prevent generals from keeping soldiers on their own, it greatly suppresses the soldiers' aggressiveness and causes great losses.

Now the government has set up the post of Jiedushi and delegated power to let generals lead troops to guard one side. Once a war breaks out, they can immediately dispatch troops. It is obvious that the government wants more.

Li Erlang left the barracks and returned to the provincial capital to stroll around. He found an inn and planned to rest for the night and set out again tomorrow to return to Shandan.

"Erlang?" Ji Qingyue came out of the painting. He heard the conversation in the barracks clearly through the bamboo tube. The emperor set up the post of Jiedushi in the border areas in order to improve the local military strength. More and more bandits were suppressed from the mountains, and these people had to be resettled. The county government re-naturalized some bandits, and then divided the land, and the farming situation also had to be supervised. The two-tax law was still in the early stages of trial, and the landlords and nobles would occasionally lead a riot in an attempt to resist the new tax law.

All of these require the intervention of the barracks' power. The few hundred people under the governor's command cannot handle so many things.

After the Jiedushi took office, he was equivalent to dividing the power of the governor and taking over the military and political power of a region. In wartime, he strengthened the management of the barracks, supervised the barracks granaries together with the governor, managed and dispatched the army's supplies, and supervised the soldiers to cultivate the land to ensure sufficient food supply when there was no war.

Li Erlang pulled Ji Qingyue over to sit down and said, "Just now I saw a notice posted in the city saying that the government has established ten Jiedushi, five in the northwest, three in the northeast, one in the southwest, and one in the southeast."

He seemed to be still thinking about the government's establishment of a Jiedushi, and slowly uttered a few words: "Yue Lang... there will be a war soon..."

Now Ji Qingyue gradually accepts the reality that he is a Dali person. No matter in the past or now, war has always been far away for him. Even though he has made mental preparations, but now Li Erlang suddenly tells him that the war is about to start, he can only smile bitterly and say nothing.

Ji Qingyue remained silent for a long time. Li Erlang sat beside him and did not comfort him. He just talked about the second very important thing: "Along with the military order, there was also a notice issued by the Ministry of Rites. The government ordered the reform of the imperial examination. The imperial examination will be changed from one exam a year to one exam every three years. After passing the imperial examination, you must also pass the examination set up by the Ministry of Personnel. Only after passing the exam can you be eligible for a position."

After hearing this, Ji Qingyue was just glad that he did not choose to take the imperial examination path.

It’s not over yet, what kind of exam hell is this.

Li Erlang calculated in his mind that next year would be the last one-year imperial examination. Now it was the end of the fifth year of Baoying, and next year would be the sixth year of Baoying. If Sanlang failed next year, the next imperial examination would be in the ninth year of Baoying.

If there is still the Nine Years of Baoying...

"There is an imperial examination every year. Even though the number of Jinshi candidates decreases every year, there are always people who pass the examination. In addition to the Jinshi candidates who passed the examination in previous years but were not assigned official positions, there are more and more people waiting in Chang'an for the Ministry of Personnel to arrange positions for them."

After hearing Li Erlang's explanation, Ji Qingyue thought that this change was not bad. It was said that those who obtained the top few Jinshi were lucky and could be assigned positions by the Ministry of Personnel, but these official positions were not only very low, but also in very remote places. Some of those unfortunate Jinshi waited in Chang'an City for almost ten years, but still did not get a job.

Ji Qingyue also thought of Li Sanlang. What would this kid think when he saw this notice? He wanted to pass the imperial examination and go to Chang'an. The imperial examination was difficult to begin with, and now with the time limit, he didn't know if he could succeed next year under such heavy pressure.

After dinner, the two of them washed up and rested early, as they still had to travel for two or three days to get back to Shandan.

On the day we entered Shandan, tiny snowflakes were floating in the sky, and the cold and dry west wind was whistling past. People in the city wrapped their cloaks tightly around themselves.

As soon as he got home, Ji Qingyue came out of the painting and checked the place he had not been back to for several months. Seeing that everything was normal at home, Ji Qingyue finally felt relieved.

"Sanlang and the others are all in the academy now. Yuelang, do you want to rest for a while before going out?" Li Erlang quickly put the luggage back into the room, and when he came out, he saw Ji Qingyue walking towards the garden.

The garden had been unattended for a long time, and with the arrival of winter, the garden was now desolate, with the plants withered and yellow, and there was much less water in the pond. There were dead leaves floating on the water surface, and a layer of broken ice. It looked like it would take a lot of time to clean up.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of the garden during the days you stay in the county."

Ji Qingyue nodded, tidied up the things, and waited until the weather warmed up before replanting the things.

The two chatted some more about the planning of the garden. When they were about to go to the farm outside the city to take a look, they heard voices coming from the backyard separated from the garden by a wall.

"Little horse, the master hasn't returned yet?" The speaker was a strange man.

The child answered timidly: "Brother, I went to the gate this morning and Brother Li San said that the master hasn't come back yet..."

"Oh... where on earth did they go? They haven't come back for so long."

"I don't know... Brother Li San and the others didn't tell us..."

"Okay, okay, you just stay on duty here and I'll come back later." After saying that, the strange man left, and silence returned to behind the wall.

When Ji Qingyue was still thinking carefully about who the owner of this familiar voice was, Li Erlang reminded him: "Do you still remember the person who stayed in this house to patrol at night?"

After being reminded, Ji Qingyue instantly remembered the man who was bundled together with Old Man Ma and the other two for sale. It turned out that he often visited Old Man Ma's family, so he could be considered a man of loyalty and righteousness.

Ji Qingyue didn't take this matter to heart, but Li Erlang became suspicious. However, he didn't say it out loud, but went out with Ji Qingyue.

Li Sanlang and his friends could not use the donkey cart when they went to school, so it was parked in the village. Li Erlang went to the pawnshop to rent a horse, and rode with Ji Qingyue to the farm outside the city.

By this time, the crops had already been harvested, dried and stored in warehouses, leaving the fields bare and even the wheat straw had been taken home as fodder and fuel.

The sound of horse hooves clattering on the open road alerted the nearby farmers, who came out to check as soon as they heard the sound.

The tenant closest to the village was Sun. He watched in front of the courtyard gate for a while, and when he recognized the person on the horse was the landlord, he immediately went back to the house to get something. He shouted to his wife to notify the other two tenants, and then he trotted towards the village at a quick pace.

Ji Qingyue opened the gate of the manor. It looked like no one had cleaned the manor for a long time. When he pushed open the gate, he actually startled some unknown bird, causing a cloud of flying dust.

"Cough cough cough..."

When the dust started to rise, Li Erlang immediately lifted his cloak to block the two men's way. When the dust settled, the two men looked into the farm and saw a thick layer of dust accumulated everywhere, as well as a lot of animal feces.

Looks like I need to hire someone to clean it.

At this time, Sun Fei ran to the door of the manor and saw the two people standing at the door. He immediately bowed and said, "Master and Mr. Li are finally back!!"

"Well, today we came to check on the results of your autumn harvest."

Sun Fei immediately took out a stack of papers from his arms and said, "Boss, this is the record of my family's wheat and rice planting. From sowing to harvesting, whether it is weeding, fertilizing, watering, or draining, it is all recorded here."

Ji Qingyue nodded with satisfaction and took it to examine it carefully.

The other two tenants also rushed over, bowed to Ji Qingyue and handed over their farming records.

Because they attached great importance to this farming activity, they would go to the fields every day, either to catch insects or to weed. They wrote down a thick stack of paper, and regardless of whether it was nonsense or not, they recorded the daily situation in the fields as detailed as possible.

"I will check these carefully when I get back. I wonder what each of you have gained." Ji Qingyue put away the records and asked about the purpose of this trip.

Talking about this, the three tenants were all delighted and vied with each other in talking about the situation on their own fields.

After Ji Qingyue listened to it and knew that the three families had good harvests, he went to their granaries to check.

The first place they went to was Sun Fei's house, which was the closest.

Sun Fei and his family had been waiting at the gate of the courtyard for a long time. This year was a bumper year for them, and a bumper harvest on a small scale was still a bumper harvest.

Sun Fei planted the 100 kilograms of wheat seeds and 100 kilograms of rice seeds given by Ji Qingyue in the fields, and planted two acres of each of the four acres of land that he and Ji Qingyue rented.

"Although we failed to achieve what our boss had expected, the crops grown with his seeds were all good harvests." They were much more than what they had grown in the past with their own seeds.

The other two tenants nodded.

The same top-quality land, the same fertilizer and the same water, the crops grown look different! In the past, the wheat that I had to carefully cultivate could only reach two stones at most, but now it has easily exceeded two stones and is approaching three stones!

"Boss, please look." Sun Fei pointed to the sacks in his own granary and opened all of them himself for Ji Qingyue to check.

Ji Qingyue and Li Erlang stepped forward. Li Erlang was more direct. He reached under the sacks and took out several sacks in a row. The wheat in each sack was round and full.

There is no doubt that it was planted from his seeds.

"Boss, Mr. Li, here are the rice." Speaking of rice, Sun Fei felt a little ashamed. This was his first time growing rice. His family had tried their best to find everyone who knew how to grow rice and ask for advice, but the results were still unsatisfactory. "Although the yield per mu exceeded two stone, it didn't meet the boss's expectations..."

Ji Qingyue comforted him, "It's okay. You just need to know that I can grow a lot of food from these seeds. If you work harder next time, you will definitely grow more and more."

Sun Fei straightened his chest and took a deep breath: "I will definitely live up to your expectations!"

Ji Qingyue went to check on the other two tenants. Fortunately, their harvests were very good, but only one of them had an yield per mu that met Ji Qingyue's expectations.

The tenant's surname is Wang. The per-acre yield of wheat and rice grown by Wang Lei's family reached 313 kilograms and 268 kilograms respectively!

These were all recorded under the witness of three tenant households. To ensure fairness, when each household harvested, the other two households would be present to witness the harvesting, threshing and drying of the grain. They were also present to supervise when the grain was finally weighed and stored in the granary. Therefore, they had no objection to the result that Wang Lei's household had the highest yield per mu.

"Oh?" Ji Qingyue looked at the taciturn young male owner of the Wang family with surprise and was very interested in how he, his parents and his wife did it.

Wang Lei took the initiative to explain: "I have written down everything the boss wants to know. To grow wheat and rice well, you have to start with soil, water, sunlight and fertilizer. When I was growing wheat before, I noticed that even if wheat was fertilized, more wheat would be grown in clay soil than in sandy soil. Clay soil stores fertilizer better than sandy soil, so I planted all the wheat seeds in clay soil and applied fertilizer at the right time and in the right amount."

Ji Qingyue nodded as he listened: "What about rice?"

"This is my first time planting rice. Like my two brothers, I asked everyone I could, and the answers I got were no different from those of my two brothers. My landlord said that we should breed and transplant strong seedlings. He also said that rice likes warmth and water, so I thought about how to get more sunlight for the rice seedlings, and finally came up with the idea of ​​planting the seedlings from east to west."

Ji Qingyue gave a thumbs up, and when he saw Wang Lei's puzzled expression, he remembered that they didn't know the meaning of this gesture. "I'm praising you for your intelligence!"

Hearing that Wang Lei had thought so much in private, it was no surprise that he could grow more wheat and rice than them.

Ji Qingyue did not forget his original promise: "You all did a great job! Wang Lei's rice and wheat yield per mu is the highest among the three of you, 10 catties more than expected, a total of 12 taels. Sun and Liu families, don't be discouraged after this, and don't be dissatisfied. Because of your positive attitude and detailed record keeping work, the three families will each get 2 taels."

As he spoke, Ji Qingyue looked at Li Erlang and blinked.

He had no money in his pocket, so he had to borrow from Li Erlang this time and pay him back immediately after supplying goods to Tai'anlou.

Li Erlang took out some silver money, which was a reward from the Zhao family after he successfully hunted deer in Jiangnan.

Every family was overjoyed after receiving the rewards, and were even happier with the joy of the harvest. With money and food, they could celebrate the New Year with peace of mind!

Before leaving, Ji Qingyue once again reminded them that they should carefully select seeds and seedlings for the next crop, use his seeds if possible, and sell some to others if possible. If others follow suit and plant them, it will only benefit the crops in their fields and not harm them.