Dong Yuan is now a feudal official, and he personally went out of Haozhou City to the east wharf to greet the representatives of salt merchants, but he did not feel condescending.

Hongzepu is not a regular shape of the lake, due to the complex terrain of the surrounding hills and mountains, Hongzepu is also composed of a piece of river meanders, river bays, dry season, shallow lake area is bare / exposed, the whole Hongzepu is composed of a series of small lakes of the lake group, the waterway that is really conducive to the navigation of large ships, there are just a few.

The Huai River flows into Hongzepu from the northeast of Haozhou City, and the Hongzepu Lake area under the jurisdiction of Haozhou, also known as the Upper Huaihe Bay, corresponds to the Lower Huaihe Bay under the jurisdiction of the downstream Shanyin.

The hills and mountains in Haozhou stretch out, the terrain is higher than the Shanyang in the downstream, Hongzepu sends a big flood every time, and it spreads to the Shanyang and other counties downstream, and there are few flood disasters in Haozhou, so along the coast of the Shanghuai River Bay, there are few fields and many mountains, but a small number of fields are more suitable for farming than the downstream Shanyang County.

For hundreds of years, the local people who live and breed around the Shanghuai River Bay have built earthen embankments stretching for hundreds of miles along the river bay to protect their fields and houses, and have also competed for hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile land from Pubin. After years of war and destruction, the bay embankment was uncleaned and dilapidated, and a large area of Urahama fields was naturally abandoned and could not be cultivated.

After Liu Tingzhou came out of the Haozhou Prefecture, although he organized the people to plant and resume production along the Shanghuai River Bay, he did not have the strength to organize people to repair the bay embankment......

"I heard that Shanyang has started to build a stone pond along the shore of the Xiahuai River Bay, has Lord Liu heard of this?" In the early spring, the water was shallow, and the boat was slow in Puri, and when they learned that the salt merchant's ship would not arrive until an hour, they sat under the canopy and waited patiently. Chen Jingrong and Liu Tingzhou sat next to each other and asked him about the embankment.

"Yes," Liu Tingzhou said, "the water situation in the Lower Huai River Bay is usually more severe than here, and the Shanyang Levee will burst two or three times in ten years." When Liang Wenzhan was in office, he made up his mind to rebuild the Dayang Embankment, and it was not until Li Wei was in his hands that he began to do it. I heard that last year, 20,000 stones were used to build the embankment, and the problem from Xiahuaikou to the Baitang River was solved almost at one time, and I heard that this year it will be repaired from the Baitang River to the south......"

"The Huaidong Mansion Treasury is full, it's really enviable!" Chen Jingrong smacked his lips and said, "Drinking the water of the Huai River, Huaixi is starving all over the wilderness, but Huaidong is turning a blind eye, and at this time it is so extravagant that it spends a lot of effort to repair the stone pond......"

The stone pond is the most expensive to build the stone, the stone used in the embankment of Shanyang is thousands of catties, and the 20,000 stones used in the embankment of Shanyang last year are mined from the surrounding hills and mountains, and it costs countless manpower and material resources.

Shanyang can build a stone pond for two reasons.

First, the Mafu case and the new policies such as the inventory of land and land reclamation in the later period made the Shanyang County government treasury full, and the Mafu case alone added more than 100,000 mu of public land in Shanyang County, and the annual public rental income was nearly 100,000 stone grain.

Second, Huaidong and the imperial court agreed that the Huaidong Military Division would draw taxes from Hailing and Huai'an to support the army's money and grain, with a limit of 800,000 stone grain.

Over the past few years, Huai'an and Hailing Prefectures, on the one hand, have carried out large-scale inventory of hidden fields and sent fields, and naturalized households, and on the other hand, large-scale construction of water conservancy and reclamation of wasteland, resulting in a surge in taxes in the two prefectures and 11 counties.

In previous years, the taxes and grain of Huai'an and Hailing were only 1 million stones, and the part handed over to the county division ranged from 400,000 to 600,000 stones. However, when Liu Tingzhou left Huaidong and took office in Haozhou, the total tax of the eleven counties of Huai'an and Hailing was as high as 2.5 million stones.

Huaidong did not take a penny of silver from the imperial court, and naturally refused to let the imperial court draw a grain of rice from Huaidong. Due to the agreement of that year, the military department could only requisition the upper limit of 800,000 stone rice grain from the localities, and more taxes could only be used in the prefectures and counties, at least on the surface.

In this way, the 11 counties of Huai'an and Hailing have more taxes than in previous years, and millions of stone and rice grains can be used for local affairs and expenses.

Shanyang is the key county controlled by Lin Bin, after the Mafu case, the officials of Shanyang County, almost all of them are from Huaidong, and their taxes themselves are the first of the counties in Huai'an, and almost all of them have been intercepted in the past two years.

Of course, Lin Jian spent millions of taels of silver every year in Huaidong on ditches, water conservancy, roads, bridges, embankments and other affairs, on the one hand, for the local people's livelihood, and on the other hand, he wanted to use these local expenses to feed the workers and camps directly under the jurisdiction of Huaidong and with a scale of more than 100,000 people.

It's really worrying to think that there are more than 100,000 Huaidong soldiers today, and there are almost the same size of troops behind them.

In addition to Huai'an and Hailing, the taxes of Pingjiang and Danyang are directly catching up, and the core areas of Mingzhou and Huiji, Yongjia and Taizhou are all controlled by Huaidong. After the battle in Xuzhou, Huaidong gained eleven new counties on the northern front, including the Yinan region. Now the imperial court can still have a general understanding of the taxes of Huai'an and Hailing, and the sixteen counties in eastern and southern Zhejiang and the fifteen counties under the jurisdiction of Xuzhou are all under the cover of the iron curtain of Lin Binding, and the imperial court has no way to interfere in the appointment of officials, tax collection and other affairs.

Huaidong also only said that these places had just experienced war, were seriously damaged, the people's livelihood was extremely waiting to be restored, and the imperial court did not pay money and grain, so there was really no excuse to forcibly meddle in local affairs. However, based on Liu Tingzhou's understanding of Huaidong, it is speculated that Mingzhou Mansion, which was already on the inner line of eastern Zhejiang at this time, could provide Huaidong with millions of stone grain taxes every year.

If Lin Jian has no ambition, it doesn't matter, if he has ambition, who in the world can control him?

Thinking of this, Liu Tingzhou was very worried.

Liu Tingzhou knew that Chen Jingrong mentioned this at this time, and he was not purely lamenting the wealth of Shanyang, in Jiangning, there were also many people who hoped to squeeze out some money and grain from Huaidong to make up for the shortcomings in other places, but it was not easy to say!

The more worried Huaidong was, the more Liu Tingzhou felt that it was necessary to support Dong Yuan to take root in Huaixi, after all, there would be a figure to curb Huaidong's ambitions in the future, which would be conducive to the balance of the situation.

Of course, Liu Tingzhou knew that Dong Yuan was in the position of Lin Bin, and he may not be without ambition, but the situation was like this, even if he quenched his thirst, Huaixi could only pin his hopes on Dong Yuan.

Liu Tingzhou thought of the enthusiasm of Yuan Hancheng, the king of Chu, these days, and it was inconvenient for him to come forward to meet with the salt merchants in person this time, but he sent the palace steward to accompany Dong Yuanhaozhou, which also had the intention of building a bridge from it.

Liu Tingzhou sighed secretly in his heart: Since the beginning of the dynasty, it is very taboo for the clan and the royal clan to make friends with ministers and handsome generals, but in this situation, the foreign domain is strong and the imperial power is weak, as long as Yuan Hancheng, the king of Chu, does not go too far, he will only turn a blind eye.

The dispute between Ninglu and Lu, at that time, played a decisive role in Huaidong's attitude, or when the king of Lu was not in Qingzhou, but in Jinan, maybe he could fight for King Ning - at that time, Qingzhou did not have the strength to forcibly support the king of Lu, and Lin Jian led his troops to be stationed in Laizhou, but the Liang family has, as long as the Liang family has a move first, Huaidong does not want to fight with the Liang family to lose both, so he can only follow the king of Lu.

Liu Tingzhou thought to himself, could the King of Chu also see the subtleties in this?

But in any case, the current behavior of the king of Chu is not too outrageous, and the king of Chu has a deep influence among the Changhuai army and the Huaiyang salt merchants, which is probably what Dong Yuan hopes to borrow.

The relationship between the king of Chu and the Changhuai army can be traced back to the Huaisi war, when the Changhuai army was trapped in the city of Xuzhou for more than half a year.

Dong Yuan can only win over the generals from within the Changhuai Army to restrain Tao Chun at the moment - Tao Chun envoy went to Yue Lengqiu's protection, and if he wants to fight with Dong Yuan, he is afraid that it is still a little worse.

Dong Yuan squinted at the Hongzepu Lake outside the wharf, he is now also a feudal official, a feudal official came to the dock to greet the salt merchants, and he had to wait for an hour under the canopy that did not shelter the wind on all sides, which was originally a shocking thing. If it is to be transmitted to Jiangning, I don't know how much controversy it will cause, but Dong Yuan needs to show such a posture at this time.

said that it was a feudal official, Dong Yuan didn't feel that at this time, he had the scenery and ease in Weiyangli.

Although Huaixi has 100,000 soldiers and horses, and can get 2 million taels of silver from the imperial court every year, the gap with Huaidong is still too big, too big, if there is no support from Weiyang salt merchants, Dong Yuan does not know how to show his skills.

The arrival of Ding Zhiru made the situation in Huaixi better, and the support of Weiyang salt merchants played a very subtle and crucial role.

When you are a commander, if you can't control people, you have to control money and food, and if you don't have a fart, it's strange that the generals below will pay attention to you.

Now that everyone holds that Dong Yuan can raise money, their attitude is different - Tao Chun has returned to Wuyang, and he has already started to remove the weak pawns, and the first batch of 3,000 old pawns have been promoted to Shouzhou.

As long as Huaidong holds Xuzhou, there are enough 30,000 elites in Xuyang, so that the pressure on Huaixi in terms of military resources will be reduced a lot.

In order to avoid alarming Luo Xiancheng, Dong Yuan only sent Xiao Kuian's 10,000 elites to Xinyang to garrison and encircle and suppress Chen Hansan; Dong Yuan even only kept 5,000 soldiers in Shouzhou, and this time he wanted to turn more than 45,000 soldiers and horses into garrisons, and prepared to camp in Shouzhou first.

There is no way, in addition to the two soldiers and horses of Dongyang and Luzhou that are not controlled (fortunately, the number is also limited, a total of only 20,000 elites), Huaixi Xiao Kui'an, Tao Chun and Dong Yuan When they went to Huaixi to take up their posts, the 20,000 soldiers and horses transferred from the imperial camp army were not his descendants, and it was difficult to control them like an arm.

Only by taking the opportunity of Tuntian to break up some of the soldiers and horses to be made as cantonment soldiers, can he break the control of Tao Chun and Xiao Kuian, the military leaders, and Dong Yuan can install some cronies, or promote some generals from ordinary generals, so as to master a descendant army and horses who obey his orders.

Although the tun soldiers are all old and weak eliminated by the army, as long as they can govern the army, it is not a problem to make up 10,000 elites, and the key is to recruit Ding Zhuang from the exile army as a tun yong.

Dong Yuan thought in his heart that maybe it would take a year for him, the feudal official, to grasp the initiative in Huaixi.

Only when there are soldiers and food in hand can the military leaders such as Tao Chun and Xiao Kuian be obedient.

Dong Yuan had a profound experience of these lessons in northern Zhejiang. After the Fuyang War, Meng Yishan was very obedient, after the Fuyang War, Dong Yuan's descendants were hit hard, Meng Yishan couldn't wait to climb on his face, and finally gave Wu Dang and Huaidong to join forces, and gave up the last bit of descendants to Huaixi.

As for Yuan Hancheng's thoughts, Dong Yuan can understand some of them, but it is too early to talk about anything at this time.