Fu Chang lifted the curtain and entered, seeing the pile of materials still spread on his desk. He couldn’t help saying, “You’re still not resting at this hour?”

He felt that Fu Tinghan didn’t resemble his elder brother’s son, but rather his own. This work intensity—even he felt inferior to it.

Fu Tinghan briefly organized the materials on his desk. “Almost done. How are preparations for Camp Two’s New Year’s Eve feast?”

Camp Two was under Fu Chang’s management, thirty li away from here. Even on horseback it would take half a shichen. That didn’t sound far, but riding a horse in such cold weather…

Fu Chang said, “Preparations are nearly complete. I’ll leave the remaining matters to County Magistrate Lin. I was thinking our family could have a New Year’s Eve meal together tonight.”

Actually, he felt Fu Tinghan was too pitiful spending New Year’s alone, so he brought his two sons along to eat with him.

Fu Chang was someone who valued family affection greatly.

But Fu Tinghan genuinely felt quite comfortable spending New Year’s alone. Besides, he wasn’t truly alone—this camp had over ten thousand people. He had comrades, subordinates, and close friends like Fu’an by his side.

As the leader, he had many things to do. He wouldn’t feel sad just because he wasn’t spending New Year’s with family.

Fu Chang didn’t notice at first, but after they arrived, he saw that Fu Tinghan could only exchange a few words with them before beginning to receive people reporting from various camps.

They were all people Fu Tinghan had sent to inspect supplies at each camp, to ensure everyone had a full and comfortable New Year.

Then came receiving various materials. Even on New Year’s, the scheduled measurements of ground temperature, water temperature, and air temperature could not stop.

Finally came arranging patrol soldiers.

The laborers and construction soldiers were on holiday, but the soldiers responsible for security were not.

They had to prevent bandit raids and enemy invasions, and more importantly, ensure internal safety.

One camp had over ten thousand people—who knew if there might be fights or brawls?

Also, with the cold weather, they needed to prevent anyone from getting drunk and lying outside to freeze to death, so patrol soldiers were absolutely necessary.

Seeing how busy he was, Fu Chang finally confirmed that Fu Tinghan didn’t need their family warmth and comfort.

Fu Yong also felt his father was being foolish. “I told you, Father was overthinking. Elder Brother doesn’t look like someone who would feel lonely.”

Fu Hong nodded. “He’s been accustomed to loneliness since childhood. Such things are commonplace for him, so naturally he won’t feel distressed. Father, you’re thinking too much. Elder Brother isn’t like us.”

Seeing them criticizing their elder brother and the princess, Fu Chang raised his hand to smack their heads, but the two had already ducked and run off.

Fu Chang failed to hit them and didn’t dare scold too loudly, lest Fu Tinghan hear and feel sad. He could only mutter and scold the two children a few times.

At the Hour of the Monkey, everyone began lighting bonfires. The already-prepared food was placed beside the bonfires, and each squad’s bonfire also had a large pot hanging above it, containing sheep soup that had already been stewed.

Everyone could take their own bowl and ladle out a bowl of sheep soup. Besides the sheep soup, tonight there were also two dishes with pork and one with mutton.

The pork came from castrated pigs. After several years of promotion layer by layer, plus the prevalence of newspapers, everywhere except for breeding boars, they basically all raised castrated pigs.

Castrated pigs not only had better-tasting meat, they also grew faster with more meat.

So in less than three years’ time, common households could basically no longer find uncastrated boars. Apart from sows needed for breeding piglets, they were all castrated pigs.

By the way, both boars and sows needed to be castrated—only those needed for breeding would be kept as breeding pigs.

And among the two types of breeding pigs, the vast majority of families preferred to keep sows. Boars… were difficult to raise, had a strong odor, and bad tempers—they didn’t like them.

This created a situation where there were hardly any boars available for breeding among the common people.

Earlier this year, to solve this problem, Zhao Hanzhang specifically issued an order requiring each prefecture and county to ensure pig breeding. Each county office had to employ at least one pig keeper specifically to raise breeding boars, to ensure propagation of pigs within the county.

Besides this, she also wrote many pork-based recipes in various newspapers. For this, not only did she eat pork continuously for three months without eating a single sheep, even the imperial palace added pork to its procurement.

You must know, previously the imperial palace would never bring in pork.

To the powerful and aristocratic families, pork was a lowly meat—foul-smelling and foul-tasting, far inferior to beef and mutton.

When she required the imperial palace to procure pork, court officials had fiercely criticized her on the court floor, believing she was humiliating the emperor.

This was also one of the turning points where everyone’s impression of her deteriorated. Zhao Hanzhang was not as loyal as she appeared.

To boost pork sales and encourage people to raise pigs, she actually forced the emperor to eat pork. Was this still a loyal subject?

If she hadn’t subsequently led by example, eating pork continuously for three months with the General’s Mansion not bringing in a single sheep or piece of beef, her reputation would have been even worse.

Even so, many old ministers who had believed she wouldn’t replace the young emperor began to have doubts and no longer believed she would respect the emperor as sovereign.

But one must say, although this method drew criticism, pork prices in the common markets rose, demand for pork increased more and more, and more people raised pigs.

In a village, basically half the households would raise one or two pigs. They’d start raising them in spring, and by nearly New Year’s, the family would slaughter one head, keeping some meat for themselves and selling the rest.

The other pig would be sold whole, and they could actually earn quite a bit of money.

Fu Tinghan had the logistics department go around purchasing pigs. With Yellow River laborers and soldiers totaling over two hundred thousand people, all the meat during this period was pork, with only a portion of mutton used tonight.

The laborers and soldiers had all seen it the past few days—large fat pigs newly driven over by the logistics department, at least five hundred head, kept in an open area not far from the kitchen, enclosed by a fence.

Early this morning they continuously heard pigs’ dying squeals. When they finished work, they sneaked a glance and saw kitchen soldiers killing one pig per knife stroke—they’d slaughtered at least fifty pigs.

Heavens, just thinking about it was exciting.

Rumors had already begun spreading through the camp: “I heard once we finish eating these five hundred pigs, our work will be done and we can go home.”

“Really? Fifty per day…”

“You’re dreaming. Today they slaughtered so many because it’s New Year’s. Normally, eating ten pigs a day would be pretty good.”

“Ask the kitchen people and we’ll know how many they slaughter daily.”

“I already asked. Before, it was fifteen to twenty per day, depending on what work was being done that day. If it was heavy work, those doing heavy work needed to eat more meat, so the Minister would have them slaughter two more.”

Smelling the meat aroma in the air, basins of food were brought out. There were ten basins of each type of dish, one basin placed before each squad, arranged in a circle outside the bonfire.

Among them was one basin of meat that was most eye-catching—a basin of soybeans stewed with meat. The meat was cut into neat squares, each piece as thick as a thumb, perfectly square!

Stewed together with soybeans, when the basin was brought over and set on the ground, those sitting with their bowls could clearly see the meat in the basin quiver, obviously stewed soft and flavorful, looking like it would fall apart with one pick of the chopsticks.

Big Sister Feng wiped her hands and stood in the middle, proudly saying, “I made this dish following a recipe the General published in the newspaper. It’s called Four-Square Reunion! When cutting the meat, I calculated carefully—one squad gets twenty pieces, two pieces per person. No one is allowed to grab extras or eat more!”

Although Big Sister Feng worked in the kitchen, the kitchen now held considerable status, and no one dared offend her. As soon as she finished speaking, everyone loudly responded in agreement.

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