Reborn as a bride, pretending to be virtuous, the prince held his waist and regretted

Zhou Jin was modest, "I didn't do anything. It was all the craftsmen's wisdom. I just made good use of their wisdom."

Gu Xiling shook her head, "Husband, you are too modest. In fact, there are so many things you can do, but you are too modest."

"Haha, humility makes people progress, and we should not be proud and complacent." Zhou Jin smiled, "You came here with me and gave birth to my children. You have helped me a lot. I will remember it in my heart."

Hearing this, Gu Xiling shook her head and smiled, "Husband, you only said that I helped you, why don't you talk about how much you have done for me? We are husband and wife, and we are one from beginning to end."

"If you continue to be so distant, I will be angry. Husband, you don't know how powerful you are in my heart."

Gu Xiling's praises confused Zhou Jin.

Zhou Jin smiled widely, feeling that he was indeed as amazing as his wife said.

The next day, Gu Xiling asked the wet nurse and the nanny to stay at home to take care of the child.

She followed Gu Xirong, Pei Jiuniang and Liu Sanniang to the mining area outside the city.

Although the bandits have been eliminated, we cannot be careless.

Therefore, there were more than a hundred guards accompanying him.

After about two hours, we finally arrived at the jade mine in Qinglong Mountain.

A small path has been built here, and everyone has built hedges to block the sun and wind.

Gu Xirong walked and talked, "I heard the report yesterday and came to see it myself. It is indeed a lot. Now I am thinking whether to sell jade or jewelry. You will know when you see it in a while."

Pei Jiuniang smiled and said, "We should all thank you for making a fortune this time."

Liu Sanniang nodded, "Yes, I must thank you handsomely."

Gu Xiling agreed, "After we visit the jade mine, I will take you out to Qingshui River. My husband asked the craftsmen to build a hydraulic jade grinding workshop based on the water-powered mill. It is lighter than manual labor and the speed is also very fast."

Liu Sanniang exclaimed, "I think you two sisters are the two money-giving maidens under the seat of the God of Wealth. If we cooperate with you, we will definitely make money."

Hearing this, Gu Xiling smiled and said, "We have come all the way here and are very bored. We can do business. Not only can we kill time, but we can also make money."

We soon arrived at the jade mine.

If it was a jade mine in the past, there might be jade in the soil and stones, but the jade mine in front of us looks like a stone and is very large.

Each piece is bright in color.

"Oh my god, there are so many jades here, and the green color is so beautiful." Pei Jiuniang reached out and touched them. She knew the value of jade. "This is top-quality jade."

Liu Sanniang turned her head and looked elsewhere, and there were also light yellow ones.

Gu Xirong was proud, "There are purple and black ones in other places. In short, this is a big mine..."

Following Gu Xirong and taking a look around, I found that it was just the tip of the iceberg, a drop in the ocean.

Pei Jiuniang is very warm to Gu Xirong. This jade mine is very large.

Because their homes are not in Qingshui County, and the income from farming is very little.

It is very uneconomical to arrange people to farm in this way.

Therefore, they did not think about buying land here. Now they can do business and the income is far greater than farming.

"Sister Rong, thank you for helping us make a fortune this time." Pei Jiuniang said with a smile, her tone very sincere.

Gu Xirong smiled and said, "As it should be. You, Sister Liu, and Sister Ling believed in me, which is why we are able to mine today."

Gu Xiling looked around and said, "It's getting late, we should go back. We can't help here, I'll take you to the Hydraulic Jade Workshop tomorrow."

Gu Xirong had already seen it and was quite impressed with Gu Xiling's approach.

Pei Jiuniang and Liu Sanniang were very curious.

The next day, despite their tiredness, they went to see the workshop again.

When I saw some tools, they could cut large pieces of jade into small pieces directly under the action of water power; some could grind...

The entire assembly line is very efficient.

Pei Jiuniang exclaimed, "Sister Ling, the efficiency of your workshop is much faster than the traditional one."

Jade jewelry is expensive, not only because of the material, but also because of the effort it takes to make it.

Some bracelets take several months to polish, and a set of jewelry takes half a year.

Now it is so big that many processes can be completed with these tools.

Then it is carved out bit by bit manually, which greatly improves the efficiency.

Pei Jiuniang and Liu Sanniang immediately asked for more money to expand mining and processing.

The money will be paid by the two of them, so Gu Xiling and Gu Xirong don't need to pay.

Since she doesn't have to pay, Gu Xiling is of course happy to do it.

A month later, the workshop produced more and more jade wares, which were transported to various places by caravans for sale.

Some are sold domestically, and some are sold abroad...

As production increases, so does income.

Worried that the river would freeze in winter and many tools would become unusable, they cut a large amount of rough jade, leaving the handmade parts for slow processing to increase output.

In just four months, they had recovered all their investment.

Like Gu Xiling, Zhou Jin's initiative to encourage people to engage in agriculture and sericulture has also been vigorously promoted in Qingshui County.

New farm tools, coupled with people’s desire for a better life.

Coupled with the high-yield crops, after five months of hard work, the harvest was finally achieved.

No taxes were collected last year or this year, and all the grain belongs to the people.

This year, the granaries in almost all ordinary people's homes were full.

Many ordinary people came to the county town and kowtowed in front of the county government.

Some couldn't squeeze in and kowtowed at the city gate.

If there is more food than can be eaten, people would like to sell it and buy cloth or other things.

So Zhou Jin began to gather grain merchants again and started collecting and selling grain.

For a while, production and sales were booming.

The government collected 70,000 taels of silver just from collecting taxes from merchants.

This is only the first year of resuming production.

In order to consolidate the border, the five thousand soldiers who originally came with Xie Jin.

Each person will be rewarded with 100 acres of land, and those who have made contributions will be rewarded with land according to their merits.

There was a man who made many contributions in the process of suppressing bandits. In total, he obtained 600 acres of land.

This made Li Dazhui, a man from the interior of the country, furious. His family had forced him to join the army because he ate too much and could not be supported.

The whole family owns only a dozen acres of land, and after paying taxes, it is only enough for food.

So he wrote a letter back, asking his family to come and cultivate 600 acres of land.

By planting high-yield crops such as corn, we can harvest more than 100,000 kilograms a year.

In this way, all the soldiers, unless they were wealthy people from their hometowns, moved their families here.

Zhou Jin gave another order, just move here.

Adults have 20 acres and children have 10 acres.

The more people come, the more land they will get.

It was then spread by word of mouth, with the help of deliberate guidance from the imperial court.

Those places in Guanzhong with less land and more population began to migrate people here in large numbers.

Zhou Jin and others cooperated to settle so many people.

In the past four years, Qingshui County, which originally had a population of less than 100,000, has now grown to 500,000.

This far exceeded Emperor Kangping's expectations, as he had been worried that there would not be enough land for so many people.

If there is not enough land, you can reclaim wasteland.

Many people are resettled in places where the mountain snow water flows.

Develop water conservancy projects and divert the water to the fields, turning flood water into good irrigation water.

Combined with agricultural and commercial taxes, Qingshui County earned 360,000 taels of silver that year.

The increase in population makes it particularly good to select soldiers.

The border troops have been gradually replaced in recent years, and even the generals have been transferred to the capital.

Emperor Kangping finally gave him some respect out of consideration for their past friendship and did not kill him, but he also fell into complete silence.

In the fifth year after Zhou Jin and Gu Xiling arrived in Qingshui County, the surrounding foreign countries invaded Qingshui County in winter.

With Zhou Jin's support, Xie Jin has taken control of the western border army.

They were loose on the outside but tight on the inside, pretending to have insufficient military strength and suffering many defeats.

Originally there were only two countries and 100,000 troops.

Later, the 300,000 troops from the thirteen foreign small countries all wanted to come to Qingshui County to plunder.

This will allow them to spend the winter safely.

However, they imagined it too simply. After the troops from Yunzhou and Qingshui County arrived, they would divide themselves into three groups and attack.

However, surround but do not attack.

When the 200,000-strong Kangguo army arrived from Qinglan County, they would take advantage of the fact that the troops of these foreign countries were outside Qingshui County, where they were short of manpower.

Taking advantage of the situation, they encircled the enemy from behind and conquered nine countries directly.

When the 300,000-strong army learned that their country was under attack, they immediately became anxious.

They immediately rushed back and left Qingshui County one after another.

After the good news came, Xie Jin began to attack the 300,000-strong army from three directions.

Defeat these scattered foreign troops one by one.

Either kill or capture.

In the end, the armies of the four countries were also defeated by Xie Jin, and only a few people managed to escape.

Xie Jin did not pursue the victory, but pushed Kangguo's territory forward a thousand miles.

The nine kingdoms that were destroyed also became the land of Kangguo.

Zhou Jin requested His Majesty to send more officials to manage these places and promote agricultural tools and reclaim wasteland for grazing.

The local people resisted at first, but later they found that becoming Kangguo people actually made their lives better than before.

At least they are no longer slaves, but good citizens.

As long as you work hard and graze well, you can get food and cloth in return, and you only have to pay very little tax.

Even Zhou Jin didn't expect that these people would be so obedient, but he found out later.

It turns out that these people were not good citizens in the foreign country, but slaves.

Only a small portion of the livestock they grazed belonged to them, while most of them belonged to slave owners.

Now that I have arrived in Kangguo, a small part of it belongs to the government, but most of it is my own.

Even if there were people from foreign countries who came to instigate rebellion, these people who had just become good citizens of Kangguo would report them, kidnap them, and hand them over to the government.

After two years, Zhou Jin completely stabilized the expanded land of Kangguo.

Forming a solid barrier outside will allow Kangguo to move to a higher level.

During his six years of working outside, Zhou Jin received excellent evaluations every year.

The court sent someone else to replace Zhou Jin, and Zhou Jin brought his children back to Beijing to report on his work.

Emperor Kangping personally brought the crown prince to greet Zhou Jin and gave him three views.

When he was less than 30 years old, he held an official rank of fourth grade and held an important position in the Ministry of Revenue.

After serving in the capital for three years, he went down to gain experience.

This time I went to Lingnan.

With the help of Gu Xiling, Zhou Jin once again started his journey of going outward.

Six years later, back again.

He held the third rank official position and served as Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue.

At this time, Emperor Kangping passed away and the crown prince ascended the throne.

Four years later, Zhou Jin became prime minister.

Gu Xiling feels relaxed and meaningful being with Zhou Jin.

It’s worth two lifetimes!