No taboos

The boat went smoothly and arrived at the Lingnan boundary after 37 days.

The State of Chu set up an official office in the Lingnan area, which was managed by General Montaigne.

Montaigne himself is a native of Lingnan, brave and good at fighting. His family was the leader of a clan for several generations. Among the thousands of villages in Lingnan, they are the largest village and are very prestigious.

In order to prevent the Meng family from rebelling and monopolizing Lingnan as king, the emperor appointed Mengtian as the general of Fushun, ordered him to manage Lingnan, and gave him some weapons and power.

General Montaigne's clan moved out of the mountains, opened up flat land, and formed a small county town here; and then many clan members moved out of the mountains, but most of them remained the same.

The county town has only a population of five or six thousand households.

Eighty percent of the Montaigne family members still live in the mountains, and they are used to relying on the forests to make a living.

The emperor arrived in person, General Meng was shocked and excited, and kept waiting at the dock.

Finally, the emperor was waiting for it.

The savages did not receive much political education. Even if they read and read, they were like Xue Mei, and they had the ignorance and fearlessness of outsiders.

So General Montaigne only felt that he was very kind and not very awe when he saw the emperor.

General Meng is almost fifty this year, tall and strong, with the momentum of a savage king.

As soon as he saw the emperor, he swallowed and said, "I will not be able to enter the capital without summoning me. I thought I would not be able to see Tianyan again in my lifetime. Unexpectedly, Your Majesty actually visited me personally, and I was flattered."

He cried as he said that.

The emperor is an old man. Although he is quite tall, his back is a little hunched. Therefore, he needs to raise his hand to pat Montaigne on the shoulder: "Okay, okay, I'm here thousands of miles away. I'm not dead when I hear you crying."

Xue Mei: "..."

The emperor relies on his health and has no taboos.

General Montaigne stopped crying.

He saw Xue Mei again in the crowd and also came forward to greet him: "Miss Bai, I have not seen you for many days. Did you come with Your Majesty?"

"She is now the Marquis of Chengyang, I am not a Miss Bai, and she is inappropriate." The emperor interrupted.

General Montaigne: "I suddenly forgot about this, and I know I was granted the title of Marquis."

"General, you are getting stronger and stronger, not inferior to young people." Xue Mei praised him.

Montaigne was very happy and laughed.

General Montaigne was a little wise, but he was not as cunning as a political veteran. He was basically a simple-minded person and had not escaped from the blood of a savage.

As soon as he arrived at Montaigne's territory, Xue Mei felt a unique enthusiasm in Lingnan: straightforward, warm and sincere.

The emperor and Montaigne reunite, showed off his crocodile skin, and then talked about family matters, and then talked about the important things.

The emperor asked Montaigne, is there really rice ripe three times a year in Lingnan?

Montaigne looked at Xue Mei, who knew it was Xue Mei who told the emperor.

In this regard, Montaigne was also honest and reported truthfully: "Your Majesty, Lingnan has high temperatures all year round, and rice can indeed be ripe three times. But not all the food is everywhere, because there are a lot of wasteland and insufficient arable land."

This is the truth.

The sign that distinguishes savages from civilized people is whether they can use tools.

And tools are used to farm and farm.

Most of the people in Lingnan rely on the mountains and forests to survive and sprinkle handfuls of millet into the fields. They do not know how to plant rice seedlings, so they rely on the weather to make a living.

Montaigne did not deceive the emperor, and there was indeed very little arable land in Lingnan.

If you want to reclaim arable land, the first thing is to need a large amount of iron to make agricultural tools; the second is to build new water conservancy.

These two cannot be done by having money and someone can do it. He needs the approval of the court.

Villages under Montaigne's jurisdiction never starve to death. If you don't plant rice, you can hunt and pick wild fruits.

Only when people are forced to do so will they ask the court for this and that, otherwise who will speak out?

Montaigne never thought of asking the court to transform Lingnan.

Whether it is the court or Lingnan itself, they all think this is a barbaric land, just live and die.

Now that the emperor has come, he also asked about the rice that has been ripe three times a year. Montaigne was actually a little confused. He didn't know what to do with this.

"I want to reclaim wasteland here. From today on, I will set up a prefecture here. Montaigne, you will not only serve as the general, but also as the prefect." The emperor went straight to the point.

Montaigne's body shook, and he told the emperor with a loud voice: "Your Majesty, I am illiterate."

emperor:"……"

Xue Mei couldn't help laughing.

Seeing that the emperor was a little anxious, Xiao Jingcheng took a step forward: "Your Majesty, why not rest first. I will accompany you around and take a look. After a while, we will arrange for offices such as the prefecture."

The emperor also realized that he was indeed too impatient.

He nodded and asked Montaigne to arrange the meal.

The next day, Xue Mei, Xiao Jingcheng and the men led by Meng Tian began to accompany the emperor to the village.

The mountain road is particularly difficult to walk, but fortunately Xue Mei and Xiao Jingcheng are both in good physical strength, and the guards arranged a sedan chair to carry the emperor.

A total of three or four copycats were left.

On the morning of the sixth day, they encountered miasma.

General Montaigne was a little scared and told everyone not to go out, and they might not be able to walk on the mountain road today.

He pointed at the direction and said to the emperor: "That place is called Guigu, it is a gloomy and terrifying place."

Xue Mei knew that there should be a canyon with stagnant water. The uncirculated water, coupled with the rotten corpses of various animals and plants, and mosquitoes and flies everywhere, will form a certain miasma there.

They could not move forward on that day, until two days later, a breeze blew and the miasma was blown away, so General Montaigne continued to move forward.

On the tenth day, the general stopped moving forward: "Further inside, there will be deep mountains, and the deep mountains are even more dangerous. There will be wild elephants in the woods ahead. Such beasts can trample people into meat paste with one foot."

The emperor was moved again.

He had never seen wild elephants, but had heard people describe them, and he was very curious.

Xue Mei thought the emperor was quite pitiful. In ancient times, information was not developed and transportation was inconvenient. The ancients really had never seen anything.

They walked back but did not encounter miasma, because it is April and May of the lunar calendar, not the most terrible time for miasma.

If it were a month or two, Montaigne and the others would not have entered the mountain easily.

When he returned to Montaigne's county town, Xue Mei asked the emperor: "What is your Majesty's intention? Are you planning to go back or want to stay for more days?"

The emperor thought a little, and did not answer Xue Mei's words, but said, "I saw that rice is ripe rice. It's not until May that the first season of rice will be ripe. You didn't lie to me, but there are indeed three ripe rice."

When he said this, there was a light in his eyes, which was the light of struggle that only young people had.

Xue Mei knew that this old man must have to make trouble here.
Chapter completed!