Entering September, autumn’s atmosphere gradually thickened in Xuzhou.
After over half a year of construction, based on the foundation of Jiming Stockade, Chenzhong County town had also been built to an initial scale.
Chenzhong County town was located on the southern bank of the Chen River, divided into inner and outer cities.
The inner city remained largely consistent with Jiming Stockade, with its inner walls rebuilt by overlaying large and small city bricks onto the foundation of the stone stockade walls.
The inner city’s area was quite small. After planning, the buildings inside had undergone a round of repairs and a round of new construction.
Besides the various bureaus and offices of the provincial administration and residences for officials and military officers, it mainly consisted of living areas such as the provincial medical hall, engineering school, military officers’ academy, and student dormitories.
In the outer city, besides constructing a batch of corridor houses adjacent to the inner city walls as barracks for garrison troops, new streets and lanes had been planned and paved, along with drainage ditches. Generally centered on the inner city walls, two large, semi-enclosed ring roads were formed, then connected through straight roads linking to the inner city’s three gates and a riverside straight road to the north of the city, forming the basic layout of the outer city. Between the streets and lanes, civilian residences, workshops, markets, and so forth were built.
The outer city no longer constructed city walls but directly connected with the surrounding fields, mountains, and rivers.
If the outer city were to build walls, the total length would approach ten li. Even with rammed earth without brick overlay, the cost would be enormous and the project massive.
In Han Qian’s view, if one couldn’t repel enemies beyond the borders, waiting until the core territory had been penetrated by enemy forces before having to rely on a city wall as the last defense—even if one could barely withstand the strong enemy’s invasion, it would actually be nothing more than a death struggle.
Moreover, not to mention more powerful offensive war machines from later generations, merely after the widespread adoption of the whirlwind cannon, the defensive function of city walls had already been greatly weakened.
Rather than squandering money and grain on ten li of walls, it would be better to use that money and grain to cultivate thirty to forty thousand mu of terraced slope fields.
Terraced fields built along hillside slopes had good ventilation and sunlight exposure, beneficial for crop growth.
Also, because rainfall would bring large amounts of minerals and humus from mountain ridges and peaks, compensating for the depletion of soil fertility, the terraced fields built along contour lines actually had even better cultivation conditions.
The only problem was that building them in circles along contour lines, with water-retaining seepage-proof ponds needing to be constructed every two to three layers, made the cost of cultivation extremely extravagant—several times that of building embankments and opening channels for cultivation in river valley areas.
Some prefectures and counties in the southwest possessed vast expanses of terraced fields, which were truly the result of hundreds and thousands of years of painstaking accumulation by countless generations of working people.
However, Chenzhong had no choice but to open terraced fields.
Having forcibly occupied the river fields in the middle reaches of the Chen River to establish Chenzhong County, the original inhabitants numbered one thousand three hundred households with over eight thousand people.
After deducting the over thirty thousand mu of land directly under the former Xi clan’s control—used by Han Qian to settle the Xi clan people and for county town construction—the cultivated land held by the original inhabitants was only seventy thousand mu. With per capita cultivated land less than nine mu, combined with backward cultivation methods, grain production beyond self-use only had a small surplus for paying land taxes.
Through management of the Chen River banks, it was planned that before next spring a total of forty to fifty thousand mu of new fields could be newly cultivated, but this would only be enough as subsistence fields for the newly migrated thousand-plus households of Chishan Army western migration civilians.
Beyond this, the remaining potential for cultivation in valley and plain basin areas was extremely limited.
As for Chenzhong County’s subsequent internal population reproduction on one hand, the pace of attracting population inflow also couldn’t stop—they could only focus on developing hillside terraced land.
Not to mention other things, the northern bank of the Chen River extended east to west for a hundred li, with layers upon layers of hills spanning over thirty li north to south. Limiting to areas below one hundred zhang in height, facing south, with suitable slopes, after preliminary surveying, the terraced field cultivation potential reached nearly six hundred thousand mu.
Of course, for Chenzhong to want to cultivate six hundred thousand mu of terraced fields all at once was undoubtedly a pipe dream, but not only Chenzhong—Qianyang, Zhijiang, Linjiang, Zhongfang, Quyang, and other counties all advanced the cultivation of terraced fields as a long-term project. With seven counties and fifty-nine townships united, organizing villagers to cultivate twenty thousand more mu of terraced fields annually, accumulated over ten years would be quite considerable numbers.
In fact, after the surrounding areas raised their vigilance toward Xuzhou, strengthening pass controls, and after the Chishan Army’s western migration, the process of external population flowing into Xuzhou temporarily ceased—although passes didn’t prohibit merchant travelers from passing through, merchants and travelers entering and exiting Xuzhou ultimately weren’t coming to settle, and couldn’t directly cause an increase in Xuzhou’s net population.
However, even if external population inflow ceased, the scale of Xuzhou’s qualified labor force, due to internal factors, continued to increase without stopping.
Newborns needed time to grow into suitable labor force, but with improved material conditions, with improved township medical treatment and sanitation conditions, the disease rate among adult laborers decreased and the mortality rate among young children decreased—this directly manifested as the continuing expansion in the numerical scale of adult laborers.
In the past, Xuzhou’s population, in situations without large-scale external population influx, had remained largely stable over hundreds of years, mainly relying on high birth rates to resist high death rates.
In Xuzhou, it was extremely normal for a woman to bear six or seven children in her lifetime, but the disease rate during childhood and adolescence was extremely high—roughly if half the people didn’t die young and survived to adulthood, it was already quite remarkable.
This also meant that as long as Han Qian could improve medical treatment and sanitation conditions in Xuzhou, improve the living conditions of the poor common people at the bottom, even if he improved them just a little bit, lowering adult disease mortality rates and lowering child and adolescent mortality rates would directly cause qualified adult laborers to increase year by year, without needing to wait for newborns to grow into adults.
The provincial administration’s control over localities directly penetrated to townships, and population statistics were also an important task affiliated with the unified registration of native and guest households.
Not counting the period under Han Daoxun’s rule, calculating only from when Han Qian returned to Xuzhou at the beginning of last year, the number of male and female laborers sixteen years and older but under fifty years in Xuzhou’s interior, up until the end of this summer, had increased by a net two thousand people.
If one counted children under sixteen, Xuzhou’s internal population had increased by a net total exceeding four thousand people.
This was quite a considerable number, barely achievable only under prosperous governance.
Of course, if Xuzhou frequently erupted in armed conflicts with surrounding forces, with annual death and disability exceeding one thousand, it would cause the scale increase of adult males to stop.
This was also the awkward situation of having narrow territory and sparse population.
And everyone judged that even if Sizhou quelled the popular uprising, its vitality would inevitably be severely damaged—the reasoning lay here.
Xuzhou, with its population scale exceeding two hundred and ten thousand, still couldn’t withstand excessive casualties. If Sizhou’s casualties in quelling the popular uprising, including both provincial troops and uprising civilians, exceeded five or six thousand, given Sizhou’s difficult material conditions, it would need at least one or two generations before the population could possibly recover its former state.
From the outbreak and fermentation of the popular uprising until now, it had already swept through most of Jinhe and Renshan as well as small portions of Yezhou to the south. The uprising populace gathered at Panlong Ridge exceeded twenty thousand people. If Han Qian truly remained hands-off about this, the final death toll might not be contained even at five or six thousand.
Although the Xi clan of Chenzhou appeared extremely prosperous now, the population under their direct control had suffered extremely heavy losses through various great battles.
However, besides relying on provincial administration annual income and the court’s war merit rewards, after recovering Jinling city, Emperor Yanyou had over ten thousand criminal convicts and their family relatives exiled to Chenzhou, slightly compensating for the shortage of labor force within the Xi clan, enabling Xi Ying to still maintain a rotating battalion system with four thousand combat troops in Chenzhou, half of whom were Xi clan tribal soldiers.
After the popular uprising erupted in Sizhou, although Xi Ying hadn’t directly sent troops through the Chen River valley into Sizhou to assist in suppression, the elite combat troops gathered in Chenyang County already exceeded three thousand, with nearly a hundred large and small warships. It seemed they were just waiting for the court’s decree to arrive, whereupon a hundred boats would compete downstream, with troops advancing into Sizhou to assist in suppression.
Under the current tense situation, Han Qian hadn’t greatly increased the garrison troops in Chenzhong. On this night, he dictated while having Xi Ren record his judgment:
“Strongly violating the new unified registration law, obstructing marriage—Zhijiang County is sentenced to six months of hard labor!”
The land system reform, unified registration of native and guest households, and abolition of low-status people and slave trade not only caused litigation cases in counties and townships to surge, but also produced large numbers of cases with no old precedents to follow.
The so-called unified registration wasn’t simply merging native and guest household registrations together and calling it complete.
There was no such cheap thing under heaven.
The most crucial item was breaking through old barriers, enabling the two previously opposed groups to achieve free intermarriage.
However, the power of tradition remained extremely tenacious. Zhijiang County had recently seen several consecutive cases where parents agreed but clans intervened to obstruct marriages, even beating people until disabled or injured.
Han Qian’s consistent attitude toward such cases was forceful suppression. However, the sentencing standards for these new cases weren’t well grasped by the counties and legal offices, so case files could only be transmitted up to Han Qian’s desk for his final approval.
Seeing that the document in his hands was the last case file on today’s desk, Xi Ren couldn’t help but stretch her back and loosen her muscles, saying in a charming voice: “I’m exhausted to death.”
“How about I massage your shoulders for you?” Han Qian asked ingratiatingly. His hand had already reached Xi Ren’s somewhat stiff shoulders. Standing behind Xi Ren, his eyes glanced down at a surge of snowy whiteness above her bodice.
At this moment, Feng Yi barged straight in. Han Qian guiltily withdrew his hand and asked: “What is it? Why are you running over in such a panic?”
“Yang Hu and Cao Xiushi have returned to Chenyang carrying the decree. Jinling, responding to Sizhou and Chenzhou’s request, has ordered Chenzhou to dispatch troops into Sizhou to suppress the popular uprising. Xi Ying just sent someone into the city to notify that tomorrow Chenzhou will dispatch Xi Shepeng to lead one thousand combat troops along the northern bank post road of the Chen River to Hujian Pass, requesting that Xuzhou provide convenience along the way!” Feng Yi said. “My brother hasn’t sent back any news yet. Tan Yuliang and Dong Tai are holding Panlong Ridge, but under the combined pressure of Yezhou and Sizhou, their defense is already very strained. Now if Chenzhou additionally dispatches Xi Shepeng leading one thousand elite troops there, I’m afraid the situation will reverse in just three to five days!”
Han Qian also suddenly frowned.
Currently, Sizhou and Yezhou had gathered over five thousand troops outside Panlong Ridge, controlling the access routes for the uprising forces, but temporarily still lacked the strength to attack deep into Panlong Ridge.
Although Xi Shepeng was only leading one thousand combat troops into Sizhou, these one thousand combat troops were all veteran soldiers who had been trained and organized in units for years and experienced multiple bloody battles. Their weapons and equipment were also extremely complete, their combat strength so formidable it wouldn’t be much weaker than Xuzhou troops, far beyond what Sizhou or Yezhou troops could match, much less what the insurgent army could rival.
And although Xi Shepeng in earlier years had been beaten by Xuzhou like a dog, besides being exceptionally brave and fierce, over these past few years he had grown tremendously through the vassal reduction campaigns and the recovery of Jinling campaign.
Even if Marquis Changxiang agreed to conspire with Xuzhou, the two places were separated by great distance—the response from Yuzhou’s side absolutely couldn’t be this quick. But Xi Shepeng would lead elite troops into Sizhou tomorrow to assist in suppression. How many more days could Tan Yuliang and the others hold out?