Infrastructure Throne

It wasn't until Shen Qingze looked at him that the militiamen around him glared at him, Zhao Li who was stunned woke up like a dream, and hurriedly called his brothers and sisters to hem.

Before he could bend down, a piece of pure white clothes appeared in Zhao Li's field of vision.

"Get up." The voice of the speaker was low and peaceful.

Zhao Li raised his head, the man was sunk in the backlight, and stretched out his hand to support himself.

Shen Qingze didn't like being surrounded by a large group of people to salute, but after mentioning it many times to no avail, he had no choice but to give up.

He looked at the recruitment sign on the teacher's post across the street, and then at Zhao Li who looked gentle and decent, and his tone became more gentle: "Are you a new teacher?"

He casually dropped a probe:

[Zhaoli, a bankrupt little nobleman in Nanji City, savvy 333, charisma 198, especially good at history and arithmetic, and has the ability of photographic memory]

Shen Qingze suspects that the luck of the little ichthyosaurs in the fish tank in the room is all added to the search for talents, otherwise how can they be so precise in helping the poor every time?

Isn't this guy a born scholar?

Zhaoli let out a bewildered "Ah", and seeing the recruiting militia keep giving him winks, he nodded hurriedly, "Yes, yes, I am literate and my name is Zhaoli. My younger brothers and sisters are all literate and can be teachers."

Shen Qingze's eyes brightened slightly: "Do you know how to do arithmetic?"

Zhao Li blinked: "Yes, we all will!"

"That's great, our school in Yuanliu City is short of teachers." Shen Qingze patted him on the shoulder lightly, he was too emaciated due to long-term malnutrition, as if it could be broken by the wind.

All of a sudden there were four or five scarce prospective teachers, Shen Qingze's mood index instantly rose by ten percentage points, and his tone became much lighter: "If you need anything, just ask, if someone bullies you, just tell me explain."

Scarce talents, of course, are the key protection objects!

People around immediately cast envious eyes. Is literacy so precious?

They are hopeless, but they hope that their future children will have the opportunity to be favored by the chief priest like Zhao Li, and suddenly rise from a bumpy refugee to prosperity.

Zhaoli's heart surged with passion. The misery, grievance, hunger and fear after his family's death tortured him all the time. He grew up overnight from a rich young man who didn't know much about the world. No one to protect.

He bit his mouth hard, suppressing the surging emotions, and couldn't say anything except the word "yes". When he calmed down and searched for Shen Qingze's figure, the other party had already patrolled elsewhere.

Zhao Li was a little disappointed, but he soon cheered up again, found the soldiers and civilians at the booth, and solemnly signed his name on the contract.

He looked up at the tall iron-gray city wall and the black-gold banner waving fiercely on top of the wall.

From now on, this will be their new home.

※※※

Shen Qingze rode on a dark steed, passed the newly opened road unhurriedly all the way, followed by Luo Xin and Brother Lance.

After a large amount of labor was replenished, Yuanliu City began to spin crazily day and night like a clockwork that had been wound up.

The city wall was expanded by ten kilometers to the outside, including several dense villages scattered outside the city, forming a new pattern with the original city as the inner city and the new city as the outer city.

However, Shen Qingze does not intend to learn from Pearl City, to separate the inner and outer classes, and to highlight the status of the inner city. In the future, Yuanliu City will have stronger military forces, and after he no longer fears the threat from the orcs, he will order the inner city wall to be demolished Let it go, let the inside and outside of the city be completely integrated.

Two school buildings have been built according to the template given by the system, one in the east of the city and one in the west of the city. They are both public. Teachers' remuneration is uniformly distributed by the city lord's mansion, and all school-age children in the city must go to school.

In order to alleviate resistance, the school promises to give the children a free lunch and cover most of the tuition fees. Each family only needs to pay a small amount of fees for books, paper and pens.

But even so, the notion that "reading is the monopoly of nobles" is still deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Most people don't understand what reading means to themselves, their children, and the future of Yuanliu City.

Most of them just hold the blind worship and trust in the officiant, and covet the free lunch.

Shen Qingze can't be more demanding on this, education is a vast and systematic project, without ten years of work, it can't see the results.

Even in the city lord's mansion, there are many officials who don't understand that the food and gold coins hoarded in the city treasury are not sufficient. Various new workshops need to be opened, and more refugees need to be resettled, but the chief priest has to spend a lot of money to do it. Such a thankless task.

At a very low price, the children in the city can go to school for six years.

During this period, the City Lord's Mansion has to spend a steady stream of manpower, material and financial resources to fill this bottomless pit, and will not receive any return in the short term. Isn't this a loss-making business?

Wouldn't it be better to use this money to open new plantations and new workshops?Immediately, new jobs will be created, bringing in big tax revenues.Anyway, working and farming do not require literacy, as long as you have strength.

For this, Shen Qingze didn't explain too much, this cake is too far away from everyone, it's useless to draw it, only relying on his own prestige in Yuanliu City to promote it.

Fortunately, Yan Zui stood by his side unconditionally and unequivocally supported this matter.The officials saw that the two bigwigs had reached a consensus, and it was useless to object, so they had to obey orders.

※※※

To set up a school is not only a school building and enough teachers, but also a series of supporting workshops that need to be perfected.

The original paper mill could no longer meet the needs of the city, so it expanded and expanded. After long-term practice, the craftsmen have summed up a complete set of papermaking techniques, and the paper that was finally dried is no less than the paper that the caravans brought from the Great Xia Empire. poor.

With paper, printing is also needed.Manual copying alone is absolutely not enough.

The technology tree system directly gave Shen Qingze two printing techniques: engraving and movable type.

Engraving printing, choose jujube pear wood and other fine-grained wood to plan into wooden boards, paste the template paper on it, engrave the whole page with a knife, and print directly page by page.Engraving is especially economical for printing books and materials that do not change much.

Movable type printing is smoothed with wood or copper blocks, and positive characters are engraved on one end. Although the cost is higher, it can be used repeatedly and has strong flexibility. It is suitable for printing newspapers.

With a large number of cheap books, retail bookstores also opened their doors in the East City Market. In addition to professional books such as history, agriculture, and medicine, novels, biographies, and various anecdotes have also begun to spread in the market. .

Yuanliu City's first newspaper, Yuanliu Weekly, came into being.Due to the limited number of literate people, newspapers and periodicals are tentatively scheduled to be released once a week, and the sales price is cheap.

It mainly compiles recent new policies, new announcements, policy interpretations of the City Lord's Mansion, as well as new things in the city, and even recruitment information and advertisements.

As soon as this new thing of newspapers was born, it immediately aroused heated discussions in the streets and alleys.

In small taverns and small teahouses in the city, new professions of storytelling and newspaper reading have gradually emerged. Even illiterate people can't help but listen to them when they pass by.

After hard work, people have added a lot of entertainment activities invisibly, and at the same time, they have a more intuitive understanding of the ever-changing changes in the city.

Don’t sell a copper coin just to read a newspaper. As people’s reading habits develop, with small profits but quick turnover, plus advertising costs, the profits are quite lucrative.

Luo Xin was so impressed by the officiant's ability to collect money, especially when he was collecting money, he also tried his best to benefit the people.

If it weren't for the city lord's eyes swishing over, Luo Xin would have shouted every day that the old godfather would take me, and that I would learn to make money.

※※※

Today, Yuanliu City's economy is roughly divided into three pillars:

The most important thing is agriculture.Shen Qingze has never relaxed his emphasis on the farmland for a moment. The most expensive gold coins are upgrading the soil, buying high-quality seeds, and raising livestock.

Give full play to the excellent style of the Tuntun mouse, farming!Tuntian!Tun food!

Originally, when there were not many fields, upgrading the soil wasn't too much trouble. Now that the unit of farmland has been upgraded from mu to hectares, upgrading the black soil once would cost tens of thousands of gold coins, causing Shen Qingze to collapse on the verge of eating soil every day.

Followed by various light industries, such as glass, porcelain, sugar, matches, paper, silk, cotton and linen textiles, briquettes, etc., these are the cash cows of Yuanliu City.

Finally, iron and steel, non-ferrous metal smelting, and armaments and firearms.

Shen Qingze's account balance, following the receipts and expenditures of the major workshops, went up and down like an electrocardiogram, sometimes he was very rich, and sometimes he was so poor that he wanted to sell his ass.

The power source of all kinds of workshops can use water power, if the conditions are not enough, it still stays on human and animal power, the long technology tree, steam power is still in the foreseeable future.

Although there is still a long way to go before true industrialization, it is still more than enough to beat other cities in the Northland.

※※※

Nanji City.

This poor city was devastated by brutal orcs during the winter beast tide.

When the beast tide subsided and spring came, the great nobles who had fled collectively back then brought their guards back to the City Lord's Mansion proudly.

Soon, they were dumbfounded.The ruined city walls, the rotting fields, the refugees like walking corpses, and the ruins of walls can be seen everywhere.

Although I hated these nobles who abandoned the city, seeing someone come back to reorganize order and production, the only people left in the city still had a glimmer of hope to rebuild their homes.

But soon, their hopes were dashed again.

The aristocrats will not distribute the fields, iron tools and seeds to the poor for farming because there is no owner. Decrease instead of increase.

Both food and force are in the hands of the great nobles, and the poor who have lost their property, in order to get a bite of leftovers, have to become the virtual serfs of the great nobles.

The serfs dared not speak out, and while they were working in the fields in a daze, a new news began to spread in each village—the grain rent in Yuanliu City was reduced from [-]% last year to [-]%!

The serfs couldn't believe it, but everyone spoke with certainty and insisted that it was true.

Gradually, one farmer after another abandoned the land and hometown where they had lived for generations, and rushed to Yuanliu City collectively.

Go to Yuanliu City to farm!

When the great nobles in Nanji City reacted, they found that most of the villages outside the city were almost deserted.

As for Yuanliu City, it was originally just a small earthen city next to the Chiyuan River on the map, but now it is expanding and enclosing land, constantly encroaching on the east, west, and south.

Now a large number of farmers in the outskirts of Nanji City have been fooled into defecting, and the actual sphere of influence in Yuanliu City has expanded nearly ten times compared to the original!

The easternmost point reaches the western suburbs of Nanji City.

If it is allowed to continue to expand to the southeast and be directly surrounded by "Yuanliu City's countryside", wouldn't Nanji City become an isolated island with an empty city? !

The nobles in Nanji City panicked, and Beiji City was not much better. The nobles on both sides agreed, let's go to Mingzhu City to file a complaint!

Punish Yuanliu City for crossing the border, so that it will know who is the real ruler of the Northland!

※※※

Yuanliu City.

At night, the noisy streets and alleys gradually return to tranquility, and people who have been busy all day are about to fall asleep with their lovers and children.

The third floor of the City Lord's Mansion.

Shen Qingze and Yan Zui, one standing in front of the bed, the other lying on the side of the bed, silently stalemate.

Shen Qingze held a string of thin chains in his hand, shook them, and made a crisp sound of jingling bells: "Today is the last night, just endure past midnight."

Yan Zui propped his cheek with one hand, and yawned lazily: "Unless you stay here with me."

He stretched out his other hand to the bed in front of him and patted the bed lightly.

Shen Qingze was silent for a moment, silently groping for something from the drawer outside.

Yan Zui stretched his neck, tilted his head to look out, waited for the other person to turn around, then retracted abruptly, and leaned against the head of the bed as if nothing had happened.

I saw his officiant, raised his hands, and brought four chains with no expression on his face, each with a soft wear ring, fluffy, more like some kind of fun than punishment.

"Then you have to wear them all."

The city lord's handsome face darkened: "Can this city lord still eat you?"

Shen Qingze nodded in a serious manner: "It doesn't matter where you eat."

At the end, he cautiously added: "Don't even think about being eaten!"

Yan Zui: "..."