After Lin Hong learned about his son's career, he decided to make his son a military officer. Soon, Lin Feng became a hundred households.
Lin Feng looked at the horse and cupped his hands."Thank you, sir, for your thousand-li horse! I dare not disturb Your Excellency's official business, so I'll take my leave now!”
Although he had never learned how to ride a horse, he had ridden a horse for a few hours at a tourist attraction before he transmigrated. He knew a little about horsemanship.
After bidding farewell to the governor, he rode a horse in his official uniform and walked home with two servants, attracting passers-by to avoid him. Although the officials were small, the people of the Ming Dynasty had a natural fear of the officials, and they hurriedly made way for them.
It was only twenty miles from the transport lane to the Fan manor. After riding for more than an hour, they arrived at the Fan manor.
The Fan manor was two miles away from the Haihe River. It was not big. It was a narrow village surrounded by a wall. It was thirty steps long from east to west and one hundred and forty steps long from north to south. The wall was two feet high and was not covered with bricks. There was only one door on the south side. They had already sent two servants to the manor to inform Li Zhi. When Li Zhi arrived at the entrance of the manor, seven or eight officials of all sizes were already standing at the entrance to welcome him.
When they entered the manor, these people shouted in a mess,
"Greetings, Captain!"
"Hello, Captain!"
These people, with the two Rank-7 commanders as their leaders, greeted Lin Feng attentively and nodded before riding into the Fan manor with the welcoming officials.
The situation in the Fan manor had disappointed him greatly.
The manor was very dilapidated. There were piles of garbage and feces on both sides of the small main road. It was summer, and the temperature was very high. The entire manor was filled with a disgusting stench. There were many empty houses in the manor that were left unoccupied and unmaintained. The windows and eaves were dilapidated, and the bricks and tiles were missing. Grass had grown into the houses. Li Zhi guessed that these empty houses were left behind by the fleeing soldiers. There were not many cows and horses in the village. The few military households were also very poor. They were all emaciated and wore tattered short clothes. They stood on both sides of the dirty road and looked at the newly appointed with a confused expression.
Compared to these military households, the ten thousand servants appeared to be in high spirits.
He rode all the way to the Hundred Households Hall in the middle of the manor before jumping off his horse. In the main hall of the official hall, he saw the former team management officer who was about to leave.
The old team officer was called Yan Yue, in his thirties. He was about to be transferred to Liuheli as a team officer and was waiting for Li Zhi to take over. After exchanging some pleasantries with Li Zhi, he handed over the yellow account book of the Fan castle and checked the various armory and granary.
"Including the craftsmen and military households, there are a total of 61 households with a population of 371. Among them, there are 211 men, 157 adults, and 54 adults. There were 160 women, of whom 104 were strong and 56 were young.”
Lin Feng listened all the way and took the yellow account book. Yan Yue took it to the drill ground for verification.
Lin Feng muttered in his heart,"I've pulled so many soldiers to make up the numbers, but I can only make up less than 30. How serious is the actual situation of deserters?" Lin Feng glanced at Yan Yue again, thinking to himself that this officer had pulled in so many men to make up the numbers. Who knew how much empty pay he had eaten. The monthly salary of the soldiers in Tianjin Town was two taels of silver, and Yan Yue had been embezzling dozens of taels of silver a month just from the empty salary alone.
However, on second thought, not only would Yan Yue have to eat empty pay, Yan Yue's superiors would also want to pluck the feathers of the army, so Yan Yue might not be able to take so much. Moreover, he still had to support his family. "How much of the monthly salary can we get?" he asked Yan Yue.”
Yan Yue seemed to be extremely dissatisfied with Lin Feng's questioning. He snorted and replied,"You'll know when you come down!"
After the handover, Yan Yue clapped his hands and rode away with his servants.
After taking over the Fan manor from Yan Yue, he officially took up his post and became the centurion in charge of the troops..
As the old saying goes, a new official should do three things at once. The first thing he did after taking office was to clean up the garbages and human and animal excrement in the fort of Fan manor.
After transmigrating to this era, what he was most unaccustomed to was the poor hygiene of the Ming Dynasty. In the past, Li Zhi was a businessman who could only manage factories and workshops. But now, he was the chief of a village and had the ability to change the Fan manor. Of course, he had to start from the Fan manor to improve the hygiene conditions.
It was July, not the busy farming season. All the soldiers and civilians in the village had been mobilized to participate in the cleaning.
He organized the villagers to dig a big pit outside the village and transport all the garbage that was cleared into this pit. There was no plastic in the Ming Dynasty, so there was no need to consider the problem of decomposition. After being buried underground for a few years, it would all rot.
The entire village had been busy for a day and had cleared out more than a hundred carts of trash. There was too much rubbish, and only half of it had filled up the big pit. They could only organize people to dig another pit beside it.
After cleaning up the existing garbage, he made a rule with the military households that they were not allowed to throw garbage in the future. All the rubbish was thrown into the 20 large trash cans that Li Zhi had set up throughout the entire village, and he arranged for people to specially clean them up.
Anyone who litters will be flogged ten times!
Not only that, but in view of the fact that most of the military families in the village did not have toilets, they organized the military families to transform 20 abandoned houses into public toilets. On average, every 15 people used a public toilet, and the 15 people who shared the public toilet took turns to clean the public toilet. If the public toilets were not cleaned when the designated person checked, the person who cleaned them the day before would be punished with ten strokes of the cane!
Every public toilet was equipped with a manure tank for fertilizer.
After doing all these things, the entire fortress looked brand new. Even the disgusting stench had disappeared. Walking on the road in the manor, the road was very clean. There was no more trash to be found.
The garbage and feces on both sides of the road were cleared, and they brought people to dig drainage ditches on both sides of the road to prevent the road from being blocked by water on rainy days.
The sanitary conditions in the manor had suddenly improved, and the military households were very happy. Their gazes were filled with anticipation. To be honest, the military households were normal people, and they didn't want to live like pigs and dogs in garbage piles. However, what was most lacking in the late Ming Dynasty was the ability to organize. Everything was bad because of one's own way of doing things. In the past, the officer in charge did not care about this matter. The commoners had no one to organize them, so they could only throw rubbish and feces around. With a little organization, the cost was nothing more than hiring two people to collect garbage every day, and the village was completely new.
After cleaning up the village, he began to deal with the human relations in the village.
After observing the village for the past few days, the biggest corrupt official in the village was the former team manager. Not only did he deduct the army's pay, but he also enslaved the soldiers. It was easy to explain why they had deducted the soldiers 'pay. The so-called empty pay meant that after the soldiers fled, the management officer did not recruit them again and swallowed the salary of the fleeing soldiers into his own pocket. The so-called conscription of soldiers was to use soldiers as serfs and let them work on the private fields of the hundred households.
The monthly salary of the soldiers was personally paid by the management team, and the general flag and small flag below the hundred households could not tamper with the military salary. However, if they couldn't touch the money, they would be moved. The two commanders also took over the soldiers.
The soldiers were exploited layer by layer, and their lives were very difficult. It was no wonder that the Zhuang soldiers of the Fan manor had fled so badly. Except for the old, weak, sick, and disabled who couldn't escape, almost all the young people had escaped.
The first thing to do was to find the two Rank-7 chief flag armorers and draw a red line for them.
After the two commanders knelt on the ground and bowed, Li deliberately made them wait on the ground for a while before saying,"No need for formalities!"
When the two commanders got up and sat on the chairs, he made them stand and listen to him."I don't know what the previous commander told you, but now that I'm here, there won't be any more conscription. Zhuang Bing is a soldier. He is not allowed to participate in private farming in the future. Do you understand?”
The two commanders looked at each other and the older commander said,""Captain, letting the soldiers plow the fields is a routine. Those soldiers are used to it, and it's also the only benefit for the two of us. Why do you make things difficult for us?”
He knew that these middle-aged men had a deep habit and it was almost impossible to change their style in the officialdom. He did not intend to talk to them properly and only said coldly,"Since I'm here, I'll work hard to make the Fan manor a fortress that can raise and train soldiers! I'm warning you once today. If you knowingly violate the law again, you'll be punished by military law!”
Upon hearing this, the two commanders trembled and anger appeared on their faces.
The younger commander mustered up his courage and cupped his hands."Captain, didn't the Defender tell you? I'm an old acquaintance of the Defender, You Hua. Hehe! The management team can't force us too hard!”
Seeing how fierce this young chief was, he brought out Qianhu Youhua to suppress Lin Feng. The so-called old acquaintance was probably the one he would go to You Hua's place every year to show his filial piety and give him a few taels or a dozen taels of silver. This young commander thought that touching his interests was equivalent to touching You Hua's interests.
The corruption of officials in the late Ming Dynasty was not an isolated phenomenon. It was like a net that locked each other up from top to bottom. How could an ordinary centurion enforce the law impartially for the benefit of the soldiers and cut off the wealth of a thousand-man household? If it was an ordinary person, they would not have the power to break this network of relationships.
However, a transmigrator with the powerful strength brought about by future technology could slowly destroy this network of relationships.
"You Hua? Go ahead and sue him!" "Have you seen my Wusun horse?" That was personally given to me by the governor!”
Hearing Lin Feng's words, the faces of the two commanders turned pale. The governor had sent a horse. How big of a relationship was this? He could pinch You Hua to death with a flick of his finger. In front of such a background, what was You Hua? The two of them were afraid. They knelt down again and shouted,"Captain, we understand.”
"From now on, we won't hire soldiers to do anything!”
He glanced at the two flag-bearers who were filled with lethargy and secretly thought that these two people could not be put in an important position, so he asked them to leave.
After finishing the chores in the manor, Li Zhi began to think about the weapons of his future army.
The first thing to be made was the Mini rifle.
Mini Rifle was ignited with a flintlock gun, which did not require a matchlock, greatly improving the maneuverability of the rifle. There were rifling lines in the barrel, and it was fired with a conical, hollow mini-lead bullet. Due to the pressure of the rifling, the lead bullets spun at a high speed after being shot, and the flight was very stable. A rifle like this could hit a target from 400 to 500 meters away. It was definitely a great weapon of this era.
As a transmigrator, he imagined his own army to be fully equipped with rifles and a large number of light cannons. Such an army could basically blast the cold weapon army of this era into smithereens.
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