Chapter 1476.

Although Qing’an County did not fall, the damage done to the county by the roving bandit army was heavy and long-lasting.

The county of tens of thousands of people lost a large number of young men, so Ye Xiangming had to recruit strong men from the countryside and train them to replenish the garrison’s loss of soldiers.

In order to prevent the bandits to attack again, Qing’an County garrison also expanded to the size of 700 people.

Luckily, the previous copy of the large households to make a large sum of money, otherwise it really can not afford to support.

Waiting for the county inside and outside the situation is completely stabilized, Ye Xiangming only to the capital side of the message, informed the county magistrate Yu Heqian and a group of gentry killed things.

After half a month, the prefectural authorities sent a letter of appointment and a commendation order.

Ye Xiangming was appointed as the county magistrate of Qing’an County, and also as the county chancellor, in charge of the whole county’s military and political affairs.

This means that Ye Xiangming is not only the number one person in Qing’an County, but also has unrivaled power.

The capital city can’t really do anything about it, the roving bandit army is attacking everywhere in the capital city, repeatedly threatening the safety of the capital city.

In such a situation, no one is still willing to run down to the most dangerous county as an official.

So he simply gave Ye Xiangming a half rank promotion and left him and Qing’an County to fend for themselves.

For the lords of the Prefecture, there was nothing more important than the safety and security of their own families.

As for the murder of County Magistrate Yu Heqian, the Prefecture City side was not interested in investigating at all.

Anyway, Ye Xiangming can say whatever he wants, as long as he doesn’t ask for help from the capital city.

At this time of crisis, everyone can only take care of themselves.

The newly promoted county magistrate Ye Xiangming has not had much joy of being promoted to a higher rank, because after the retreat of the roving bandit army, the drought has not shown the slightest sign of relief, and the land and water transportation is basically cut off.

What makes people most angry is that the bandits destroyed more than a dozen artesian water trucks set up on both sides of the Qingshui River, resulting in a large area of rice paddies without irrigation and complete crop failure.

Ye Xiangming could only curse and organize manpower to rebuild the waterwheels, and then try to save the paddy fields that hadn’t been cut off yet.

It was even more tiring than dealing with the roving bandit army!

“This Thief God!”

On this day, Wang Chen and Ye Dai went to visit Ye Xiangming at the county office together, and the latter cursed as he drank the nourishing soup that his daughter had boiled with her own hands, “It doesn’t go down by now, it’s trying to drive us to extinction!”

Although the artesian waterwheel was rebuilt as fast as possible, the water level of the Qingshui River had dropped severely, causing the waterwheel’s water harvesting effect to be greatly reduced.

This year’s grain failure in Qing’an County was a foregone conclusion, and it was currently estimated that there might not even be 30% of a normal year’s harvest.

This is very scary.

If the drought continues, the fall harvest will be thankful if there is even one or two percent of the previous year’s grain in storage!

And now the waterway has been completely cut off by the roving bandits, the commercial road is extinct and no longer populated, Qing’an County has the money can not be purchased from the outside food input, so it is trapped in here.

“Xian son-in-law.”

Ye Xiangming put down the bowl of soup in his hand, somewhat difficult to say, “There is something that needs to trouble you.”

He wanted to reopen the merchant road and purchase a batch of grain from the south back to Qing An County.

However, it was obviously unrealistic to count on the local merchants to accomplish this, so he planned to organize a merchant team from the county government to go to the south to purchase grain.

Ye Xiangming hoped that Wang Duan would be the leader of this merchant team!

“I really have no choice either.”

Ye Xiangming said helplessly, “The grain stored in the county treasury is no longer enough to get the tens of thousands of people in the city through the barren year, and I’m afraid that a lot of people are going to die this year and next year if we can’t buy grain.”

He knew very well that given the current situation, the task of leading a merchant fleet out to buy grain was dangerous.

The long road was long, and it would take a month or two to go back and forth, during which anything could happen.

But Ye Xiangming was also out of options.

He used to be the county minister, only need to worry about armament affairs, but now the military and political affairs, after taking over the county government office, only to realize that the Qing’an County problems are big.

In terms of the most important county treasury, the grain reserve inside is less than one third of the required level!

Where did the other two thirds of the grain stock go?

Ye Xiangming wanted to investigate, but the treasurer burned himself and his family in a fire.

Including the account books!

Ye Xiangming knows that there are too many cats and dogs in here, but can’t clean the county office again, right?

There is no way to function properly.

Fortunately, the previous raid seized a large amount of gold and silver, so he could only hope to buy food from outside to solve the problem.

“Father!”

Ye Dai lost her color, not expecting that her old man just drank the nourishing soup and couldn’t wait to push Wang Chen into the fire.

Even if she was gentle and filial by nature, she couldn’t help but get angry at this moment, “How could you do this?”

Ye Xiangming smiled bitterly, “Dai’er, it’s not that father is heartless, it’s really …… alas!”

He exhausted himself during this period of time, his hair had turned quite white, his sad face looked extraordinarily haggard.

Let Ye Dai for a moment were unable to speak.

“It’s okay.”

Wang Chen patted his wife’s hand, then said to Ye Xiangming, “Leave this matter to me.”

Since he had married Ye Dai, he had to take over the karma of his wife’s clan, not to mention that it also concerned the people of Qing An County.

Ye Xiangming rejoiced, “Great.”

There was really no more suitable person to choose for this matter other than Wang Dust.

After receiving Wang Dust’s promise, Ye Xiangming organized a large merchant fleet as quickly as possible.

In order to ensure safety, he also drew out three hundred well-trained soldiers from the guard army, plus the county’s dart firm’s dart masters and trippers, as well as an even larger number of handymen.

Making the total number of merchants more than eight hundred.

Because only this many people could guarantee basic safety and transport back the grain needed to supply tens of thousands of people.

The mules and horses and wagons in the county were also all drawn out.

Three days later, this merchant fleet left Qing’an County City and headed to Yunze Province under the leadership of Wang Duan.

And before leaving, Ye Dai and the others moved to live in the county office.

Yunze Prefecture was neighboring Changyi Prefecture and was much larger than Changyi Prefecture, and there were a lot of water and swamps within its territory, so even if there was a perennial drought, there was still enough water to water the farmland.

It is known as the land of fish and rice.

In previous years, Changyi Province often purchased grain from Yunze Province, and the caravans usually traveled by water.

However, the drought in Changyi Province is extremely severe now, and many rivers have dried up, and the waterways are not only blocked by roving bandits, but also do not have the capacity to carry large merchant ships for transportation.

Therefore, the caravans from Qing’an County could only take the land route.

In order to avoid encountering the army of roving bandits, after leaving the county, the caravan purposely made a big detour to the west, and after more than half a month’s arduous trekking, it entered the territory of Yunzefu.

On the way was quite smooth, did not meet the bandits, some countryside vermin also can not produce danger to the caravan.

However, after arriving at Yunze Province, the situation changed.