Chastity Layman

"This Luzon, after staying for a long time, I feel that everything is good, but the wind is always annoying." Wei Chang, who is in his eighties, has become more and more radiant after arriving in Luzon.

After a typhoon passed by, the rivers were full, and floods inevitably occurred. Fortunately, everyone has long been used to it. Typhoons also have warning signs. There is an organization in Luzon that specializes in forecasting the weather. The high-paying students from the Academy of Observatory of the Taishi Bureau, and Luzon’s special allocation of funds every year for research and teaching of weather forecasting, etc., have attracted many veterans who go to sea. These people still have a way of weather in the South China Sea. .

A lot of money has been spent, and the result is that the Luzon Meteorological Bureau is still doing a good job of weather forecasting. Generally, sunny and rainy weather and major typhoons can be predicted in advance.

Whenever a typhoon comes, Luzon will also notify all regions in advance to make everyone ready. Even the Luzon Academy of Knights has issued a special emergency preparedness and rescue plan for typhoons, floods and epidemics. Every year, it regularly preaches prevention and self-rescue guidelines, a list of disaster prevention and emergency supplies, etc. to the people.

Although every time a typhoon passes, hundreds of people will be killed, injured or missing, sometimes even more, and the economic loss will be great, but it will never cause a greater disaster.

Take precautions in advance, avoid in time, and even start rescue and resume production according to the plan as soon as possible after the disaster.

San Francisco, Xinjinshan, and the Luzon Plain between the two cities are fine, because there are mountains on both sides as barriers, which can greatly reduce the damage caused by typhoons every time. Luzon has been expanding over the years, and typhoons are also taken into account And flood disasters, the city's flood control and waterlogging are doing very well.

"A typhoon alone will kill hundreds or even thousands of people a year. It's really annoying." Qin Lang was also very helpless. is inevitable.

A big port like New San Francisco is okay. After all, there are many officials, and there are also military students such as Baoding. They have strong organizational skills and a lot of supplies. They are also well-organized in dealing with natural disasters. .

But in other places, there is no such strong force.

When the typhoon came, the workshops and schools were suspended, and even the merchant ships and fishing boats at sea all went into the harbor to avoid the wind, and everything came to a standstill.

The loss is huge.

After Lao Wei came to Luzon, because of his good health, he also started his old business and served as Qin Lang's intelligence consultant. He was skilled in this area and did a very good job.

Pass me a piece of information.

"Three Koreas are in trouble again. The Baekje monk Daochen and the old general Fuxin welcomed back from Japan a man who claimed to be the prince of Baekje Fu Yufeng. He became king in Baekje and started a rebellion. Liu Rengui ordered Went to North Korea to encircle and suppress, and killed many people."

Qin Lang didn't take it seriously when he heard this, the Sanhan Peninsula was noisy every year, just like Xiaoqiang who couldn't be beaten to death, but it was only a few days after the fall of the grasshopper, anyway, every year was not as good as every year.

After all, it has not been a short time since the Tang Dynasty conquered Sanhan, and the immigrant-replacement plan they implemented was very ruthless. Year after year, they were forced to relocate to the mainland, and the number of Sanhan people became less and less.

If this momentum continues, in another 20 or 30 years, even if there are still fish that slip through the net, there will be no waves at all.

"The imperial court just negotiated peace with the Dashihui, drew the boundary line in the river, and the war ended. Now the imperial court has issued a decree to recruit immigrants to go there. It also boldly entrusts the heroes and soldiers to grant fiefdoms." Wei Chang Smiled, "Nowadays, the expansion of the imperial court is a bit fast, but no one in the Central Plains can move to the border areas. The Three Hans have been pacified for more than ten years, but now 100,000 immigrants can't reach it every year. There are also new immigrants in Liaodong. Fewer and fewer, and now the imperial court wants to immigrate to Puyue, southern Tibet and the Western Regions, it is really difficult."

"Why are you telling me these things?" Qin Lang asked.

Now Luzon is very difficult to get immigrants, even if he finds a way to take advantage of the government's policy loopholes, take advantage of the current good relationship with the court, and set up a mainland bride plan, but it is for the bride price and to buy clothes for the girl's parents and family. There is also a sum of money to be paid to the local government, which is not easy to get now.

People with insight in the imperial court know that if they directly immigrate or even change species in newly conquered lands, it will be done once and for all, and there will be no future troubles.

In the Zhenguan Dynasty, there were still a large number of impoverished and proletarian people in the Central Plains. With one order from the imperial court, a large number of poor people could be easily recruited to move to Jiangxi, Lingnan, Saibei, Liaoxi, Longyou, Hetao and other places, and then to Annan and Guizhou. It is no longer easy to relocate places in China, Yunnan, and western Sichuan.

Although the population of the Tang Dynasty is large, it is still a few, but in the past 30 to 40 years, the population growth has not been so fast.

What's more, the development of industry and commerce is also competing for population and labor. If the imperial court had not expanded smoothly in recent years, a large number of captives had been captured and turned into slaves, and flowed into the industrial and commercial manufacturing industry and even supplemented the manor planting. The population of the Tang Dynasty would have been unable to support it. This is getting bigger and bigger.

Let’s talk about Luzon. In the past, there may not even be a million indigenous people. Now, it’s almost seven million. Where did it come from? More than one million Han Chinese were moved from the Central Plains, and then they were slaves brought from various places.

Luzon’s slaves come from various sources. Most of them are captives of the Tang Dynasty’s foreign wars, and some are bought through maritime trade. There are Kunlun slaves in Nanyang, Bodhisattvas in Indochina, Indian slaves, Haidong slaves, and black slaves from Taixi. Slaves, Persian Romans, and even barbarian Franks, Germans, Slavs, Bulgarians, in short.

People have become the most precious resource.

The imperial court has imposed more and more restrictions on immigration from the Central Plains to Luzon. The high-quality immigrants that the Qin family needs most are Han Chinese, but there are too many restrictions on Han Chinese immigration to Luzon. Now the only small gap is mainland brides, and they can only be found in those mountainous areas. , and sometimes you can only find some familiar barbarians, at least they can be regarded as semi-Chinese barbarian women, at least they are closer to everyone in appearance, which is better than those black, white, and brown ones.

Before that, Qin Lang had planned to name Australia as Nanfangbu State, and then planned to use it as a place where Luzon criminals were exiled.

But there is no possibility of realizing this idea at all, because Luzon is too short of people, even criminals, they are reluctant to throw them so far away, and they can just be exiled to islands other than Luzon's main island.

Even now Qin Lang has to find a way to find a relationship, and then try to make Lu Song a place of exile for the imperial court. No matter if it is an official who failed in the political struggle or all kinds of scum, Lu Song is willing to accept it. It's not bad, at least it can reproduce the population, right?

For this reason, Qin Lang had to agree to raise and lower the legal age of marriage time and time again. One must know that at the beginning, Qin Lang opposed early marriage and set the age of marriage at eighteen for men and twenty for women. Then it keeps going up and down, and now it is sixteen for men, fifteen for Han women, and fourteen for barbaric women.

It is to be able to get married earlier and have children earlier, and even Luzon’s annual budget has to increase the experience fee for childbirth subsidies, so that children can get a subsidy, and the more children are born, the more rewards are paid, even from birth to six. At this young age, Luzon will always provide subsidies to help raise children.

There is also a special law that strictly prohibits drowning and abandoning babies. Those who really don't want them and can't keep them alive can be sent to government-run orphanages, where the government pays for them, or they can be raised in foster families at the government's expense.

If we don’t do this, we won’t be able to increase the population.

Luzon's development is too fast, and population has become the biggest shortcoming, especially the number of Han Chinese who are the main ethnic group cannot keep up. Otherwise, with the current strength of the Qin family, it would not be a problem to fight all the way to Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea.

But the problem is that there is no population, and it is useless if you conquer 10,000 islands.

Since the imperial court regained Liaodong and conquered Sanhan, it has been recruiting immigrants. It's not like Qin Lang didn't know about it, but he couldn't fill Luzon himself, so he couldn't care less about going to other places.

To develop colonies, they always follow the sea trade routes, and establish some strongholds and business houses along the coast. This is to cooperate with Luzon's sea trade. It can be used as a sales point for Luzon merchants and a collection point for some cheap raw materials.

The Qin family has quite a few colonial strongholds, but they have never invested too much. They just run a stronghold port and rarely go deep into the interior. The key is because of the small number of people, Qin Lang is unwilling to divert his precious people to those places. Priority is given to Luzon main island.

Wei Chang said, "Three Koreas are getting worse every year. The Korean peninsula is recovering year by year. Some places in the Liaodong area are even very lively. I feel that there is great potential there. We also have plans in Haidong. Tangjin Port is also very lively now, and now that the imperial court has loosened some restrictions, why don’t we also deploy in Liaodong and North Korea? Now the land over there is basically free.”

Qin Lang still shook his head.

"Now let's not talk about getting land for free, even if there are mines, we don't have anyone to develop them. There is a shortage of people."

Those newly conquered areas are now full of vacant land, just short of people, and the land is worthless at all, and anyone who wants it can give it to you, but the problem is that if you take the land from the imperial court, you can’t waste it and have to plant it, but you don’t have it. What kind of people? At that time, the imperial court will not joke with you and be polite, and there will be severe punishment.

It is absolutely impossible to farm land without planting it.

"Establish a slave manor. This time, Sanhan is quite troublesome. Liu Rengui is also a ruthless man. There will definitely be many prisoners of war. We used to get land for free, and then buy the prisoners to build a plantation manor, and we can also go to mines. , we have money now, but no one. Saburo, you don’t want too many slaves in Luzon, but if they are overseas, then it doesn’t matter. By then, overseas plantations and mines will give us Luzon’s slaves Wouldn’t it be great if sugar mills, textile mills, smelters, manufacturing plants, etc. provide low-cost raw materials?”

"At that time, some tame and high-quality slaves can be brought back to Luzon."

The so-called high-quality slaves naturally refer to young and strong and even have a skill. The most important thing is that they have learned to speak Chinese, and they are even the second generation of slaves who have received Sinicization education. These people are naturally high-quality slaves when they are sent back to Luzon.

Wei Chang was so treacherous and cunning that he even offered Qin Lang a plan.

The Qin family can directly recruit Han people in Liaodong, North Korea and other places, and train them to be managers of manors and mines. will not be blocked.

Therefore, what the Qin family needs to invest in Liaodong, North Korea and other places is some funds, as well as some executives, other management, skilled workers, etc. can recruit Han Chinese for training in the local area, and grassroots farmers and workers can directly buy from the army. Surrounded and suppressed the rebels of the three Han survivors who were captured.

Taking advantage of the current special situation over there, it is almost free to acquire land, open mines, obtain high-quality resources, and even cultivate high-quality new immigrants for Luzon.

Isn't it good that resources and profits are sent to Luzon, and other troublesome things stay there?

"The Western Regions and the Southwest are similar. Now the imperial court encourages nobles and powerful men to go there, and even give away fiefdoms for free. I don't think this wool is for nothing. Although they are all remote and backward places, as long as they are well managed , and will never lose money, after all, it is a business without capital."

"We used to buy those captive local aborigines from the garrison as slaves for planting, grazing or mining. As for the other long-term future, we don't care at all. It's not our Luzon anyway. In the long run, it’s good to be profitable.”

Qin Lang nodded involuntarily, as if it was such a matter, if he thought about it this way, there was really no burden.

After all, when Qin Lang manages Luzon, he has to think about the future of Luzon in the long run. If you have a million Han Chinese in Luzon, and you end up with 10 million barbarian slaves, or even more, then you have to worry about the aborigines drowning the Han people in the future. , the Han Chinese may have finally been assimilated by the natives.

But if the Qin family just ran to the newly opened places of the imperial court to make money, free land, or even free mines, invest a start-up capital, send some managers there, and then buy those captives from the local Tang army to plant and mine, etc., Don't worry about anything else.

There is no need to invest in infrastructure, no need to consider local management, and no need to worry about the riots and resistance of indigenous people and slaves. There are Tang garrisons to maintain it, and there are governors' mansions or state and county government offices in the border areas of the Tang Dynasty.

What the Qin family needs is to spend start-up funds, and then send people to manage it, and pay taxes according to the regulations. Even in this newly conquered land, taxes are often reduced or exempted.

"We also took the land, the mines, the money, and finally responded to the court's call to develop the frontier for the court and contribute taxes. Isn't this a good thing for everyone and mutual benefit? Isn't it worth a try? ?”

Qin Lang couldn't help admiring Wei Chang very much, the older he was, the more treacherous he was, it was really speechless to so openly plunder the imperial court's wool, and even so confidently.

"Well, you can study it carefully!"