These past few days, the situation in Jiangning City has been changing rapidly, leaving everyone stunned. Even Fei Hu had to admit that he had underestimated Lin Xie previously. With his assistance, Gu Wu Chen managed to turn the tide in Jiangning, achieving a breakthrough that no one could have anticipated before this incident occurred.

  Although throughout the whole event, Dong Chengwu Chen Zhi performed extremely foolishly, dragging down Jiangning Prefecture's Wang Xueshan who was confused and made mistakes repeatedly, it can't be denied that replacing him with someone else would find it extremely difficult to learn from Lin Xie how to be like a venomous snake hiding in the grass, seizing the opportunity at the moment of its arrival and biting down firmly without letting go.

  If such a person can be used by the Xie family, future things may become easier, Xie Feihu thought to himself. Even if he cannot make him surrender now, he must get along with him for future use. Along with his wife Song Jia and younger sister Su Lin, they walked up the steps and into the front hall of the grass hut.

  The thatched cottage was built on a slightly higher platform, with the south eaves extending outwards. The south wall of the front hall of the thatched cottage was open and transparent, with only a few thick bamboo pillars, without doors or windows, allowing an unobstructed view of the serene Purple Gold Mountain to the south.

  "They say 'picking chrysanthemums by the east hedge, carefree seeing the south mountain', I didn't expect Lord Lin to be living a leisurely life here." Xue Feihu sat down, gazing at the mountain peaks dozens of miles away shrouded in light purple mist, chatting idly with Lin Xuan as he instructed his attendants to present the gifts they had brought.

  No matter what Lin Xie's original intention was, even if he still didn't have a wife at this time, he would ransom Xiao Man from the feudal house, and others would only think that he had taken in a new concubine. However, since he hadn't married yet, it wasn't convenient to make a big show of having a concubine before marriage, but Hu Fei sending over betrothal gifts on his own initiative was also in line with propriety, and Lin Xie couldn't refuse.

  During the day, Qian Xiaowu's wife Yunniang came to help with the chores. At this time, she had brewed tea and brought it up. Lin Xie let Yunniang go and call Xiao Man to thank Xi Feihu and his wife as well as Xi Jia's eldest daughter Xi Mingyue for their gift.

  They refilled their tea cups, but Lin Xie couldn't think of anything to say and just chatted idly with Sha Fei Hu. Suddenly, Xiao Man slowly walked out.

  Lin Xie listened to the light footsteps behind him, and was about to ask Xiao Man why she came out so late. But when he turned his head, he saw that this girl had actually come out with extremely heavy makeup, wearing a pale green silk dress that fluttered like a lotus flower on water. A jade pendant hung from her waist, striking gently as she moved, and her sleeves revealed her slender wrists. Her fingers were delicate, and her eyes sparkled as she curtsied to Xi Fei Hu, Song Jia, and Xi Ming Yue, saying softly, "Xiao Man has seen the young master, the young mistress, and Miss Xi..." Only when she sat down beside Lin Xie did she whisper to him, "I don't look too ugly, do I? I'm so nervous I could die."

  Lin tied up her hair and smiled, adjusting the hem of Xiao Man's skirt. She was speechless in her heart. The little girl deliberately imitated Su Mei's daily makeup, and with one frown and one smile, she had about 80% to 90% of Su Mei's charm. Her face was beautiful, bright, and clear, with deep eyes that shone like a baby's. Her whole body emitted an enchanting charm, with a seductive and elegant flavor. Except for being slightly shorter, it was hard to believe she was still a fifteen-year-old girl.

  Song Jia and Xiao Mingyue came out of the city in the early morning, they had put on light makeup, but the road was a bit bumpy, sitting in the carriage, their hair was slightly disheveled, and they had also broken out in a fine sweat, although they were usually beauties, at this time they were all surpassed by Xiao Man.

  "This is Little Savage, how does she look like a different person?" Xie Feihu also looked stunned, in his impression, Little Savage was just an immature yellow-haired girl, didn't expect that she would actually be such a beautiful young woman. Thinking about it, after growing up a bit, her beauty wouldn't be inferior to Su Mei's, and he felt a little jealous that Lin Xuan had unintentionally taken in such a great beauty.

  Lin Xuan knew what Xiao Niuzi was thinking, she wanted to be his concubine and enter the public eye with elegance, thinking of making this a reality, fearing that she would be treated as a younger sister, what a silly girl. Lin Xuan didn't care about Xiao Man's thoughts, letting her sit beside him while chatting idly with She Feihu and his wife, as well as She Mingyue.

  Zhao Shuhan, Ge Sixu and others were in the government office when they heard that Lin Xie was leaving the city. Coincidentally, Wu Yanqing had also finished dealing with the Xuanjidang incident today and came out of the city together. They knew that She Feihu was at Caotangbian, so they all came to meet him. When they saw the extremely beautiful Xiaoman, they were all shocked and amazed.

  Song Jia originally wanted to stay at the river mouth for a while, to explore the situation here, but was forced by a young and beautiful Huang Mao to leave. After losing face, she naturally didn't want to stay long, so she made an excuse to go to the mountains to enjoy the greenery, without staying for lunch, and hastily left.

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  After Hu Fei and others left, after lunch, Lin Xie sent Wu Yanqing, a famous doctor from the Suspended Sustenance Hall in Jiangning City, to the prison island. From now on, Wu Yanqing will be the new medical officer of the prison island. Lin Xie selected four young men who were familiar with characters and were clever and eager to learn from the migrant workers to be Wu Yanqing's medical apprentices. He entrusted the old engineer Ge Fu and the bamboo craftsman Zhao Zui to build a new bamboo house for Wu Yanqing on the south end of the prison island within these few days. Fortunately, Wu Yanqing was also famous in Jiangning, and the previous medical officer of the Jiang Island Prison was actually one of Wu Yanqing's disciples. He had not yet graduated from the Suspended Sustenance Hall when he was asked to come to the Jiang Island Prison as a medical officer due to his family's connections. He had been barely getting by for seven or eight years, and Lin Xie let the previous medical officer be Wu Yanqing's assistant, which did not encounter any resistance. As the previous medical officer said, it was like following his master to relearn medicine, without creating new conflicts.

  Ge Fu and Ge Si Yu, father and son, were not going to finish compiling the "Jiang Zu Jing Zhu" in one day. On this side of the river, they were eager to help plan and prepare for the construction of a building. Old official Ge Fu and Jiangning Gongbu Shu Ling Ge Si Yu were both very enthusiastic about helping with the planning, drawing diagrams, and guiding craftsmen. Once the issue of funding and land acquisition for the repair of the road from the river mouth to the Donghua Gate was resolved, they began preparing for the construction of the road. Ge Si Yu rushed over, and he and his father brought several craftsmen and apprentices to survey the route. Lin Xie and Zhao Shuhan were both outsiders in this matter, and the difference between the measuring rods used by Ge Fu and his son and the official measuring rods was huge. Outsiders who saw it were completely confused, and Lin Xie and others could only assist Ge Fu and Ge Si Yu. They also let Xiaoman change into a young boy's clothes to help with the work outside the wall, so she wouldn't be bored staying in the house.

  Lin Jingzhong had selected forty guards in the morning, but Lin Xian was to entertain Xia Fei Hu, and did not want Xia Fei Hu to see the true situation of the guards, so he didn't disturb Lin Xian until after noon. They were all familiar faces, and Lin Xian didn't have anything extra to discuss with them; these men would be handed over to Zhou Pu for training along with the other guards.

  Lin Xuan was allowed to select 40 sets of armor and 40 fine horses from the Eastern City Garrison's arsenal; although the best batch of armor had been hidden away beforehand, Lin Xuan still chose the good ones without hesitation. Each of the 40 Imperial Guardsmen was equipped with a slightly curved bow, a quiver of arrows, a straight-backed waist knife, a long-handled halberd, a set of leather armor, and a horse, making their equipment already quite excellent.

  Although all forty of the Wu Wei were robust and strong, most people did not know horse riding skills, nor had they practiced knife techniques, nor did they know what archery was. Many people had roughly learned fist and footwork, but it didn't mean that Zhou Pu's burden of training them would be lightened much.

  Lin Zhen was unable to extricate himself to go to the shipyard; apart from ten people who were incorporated into the Wu Wei, there were twenty other Huaiyang anti-donation fishermen who fled to Jiangning to avoid disaster, and sixty people were selected from among the recruited workers and refugees to serve as sailors and boatmen, led by Ge Cunxin, Ge Cunxiong, Chen Enze, Hu Qiaozhong and others, to escort 4,000 taels of silver to Longjiang Shipyard for payment and deposit. These people will also be led by the two Ge brothers on Longjiang Lake to receive training from Longjiang Shipyard on how to operate this three-masted thousand-stone ship.

  Although a three-masted thousand-ton ship can only rely on wind power to move when fully loaded, it is sufficient to arrange 16 skilled sailors for one ship. However, in addition to the thousand-ton ship and four armed flat-bottomed ships purchased this time, Lin Tie also ordered two reinforced thousand-ton ships from Longjiang Shipyard under the name of Jiyun Society; so we need to train more qualified sailors and boatmen at once to prepare for future use.

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  At dusk, Yang Shi, who had gone to the north shore of Chao Tian Tang to select refugees to supplement the prison guards, finally returned with more than 100 households of recruited refugees on six ferries and landed at the bamboo dock on this side of the river mouth after leaving for four days.

  The military officer sent by the Admiral's Mansion to assist in this matter only complained about the hard work of these few days, and didn't even bother with the night feast prepared at the river mouth. After landing, he directly led his troops back to the city, leaving all the matters to be handled by Jiang Island Prison.

  These refugees were all to be incorporated into the military household register, but in fact, the Provincial Military Commander's office did not have any extra military land to allocate for these households to cultivate. Moreover, they had no intention of spending money to resettle these refugee military households, and the responsibility for resettling them was entirely shifted to the Provincial Surveillance Commissioner's office. In short, the Jiang Island Prison authorities looked down on the Jiangning military households as useless and were unwilling to recruit soldiers from among them. Instead, they wanted to recruit refugees to form new military households in order to improve the combat effectiveness of the prison guards. This wasn't impossible, as many places were doing the same thing, but the resettlement of these military households would require the Jiang Island Prison authorities to take on this responsibility themselves. However, this approach already violated the ancestral teachings of the great emperor regarding the division of responsibilities for military affairs, training, and mobilization in order to prevent military leaders from abusing their power and soldiers from becoming privately owned. But at a time when many things were happening, the atmosphere was gloomy, and the main manifestation of this was the abolition of laws and prohibitions, which made it convenient for people with ambitions to secretly nurture private armies.

  This matter, Lin Tie naturally didn't fear hard work. Although the appointment letter for Cao Zi'ang to take office as the head of the Li family had not yet arrived in Youling County, Lin Tie had already handed over most of the affairs related to resettling the refugees to Cao Zi'ang. On this side of the river mouth, it was openly led by Lin Jingzhong, but secretly controlled by both Cao Zi'ang and Lin Jingzhong. There were dozens of thatched huts inside the river mouth fence that had not been demolished, so these people could temporarily settle there today, and tomorrow 120 full-strength soldiers would be selected to go to Yu Island for training, while Cao Zi'ang's side would slowly resettle their families. Yang Shi understood Lin Tie's intentions, this time the recruited military households and refugees, even if 120 young and strong men were taken away to serve as prison guards, there were still many laborers and semi-laborers available.

  The second building with 40 separate courtyards will also be built, and the third and fourth buildings will start construction in two days.

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  As night fell, the sky above the Jiangning City building in the west was floating with a fiery cloud, colorful and multi-colored. Due to the large number of young and strong people from the recruited workers and refugees who were enlisted into the Wuwei or selected as sailors or watermen, or picked by the Ji Yun Society as partners, the labor force used within the fence and for future road construction was mostly hired locally.

  It was getting late, and the local laborers had also dispersed. If it weren't for Yang Shi bringing over a hundred households of refugees to be registered as military households today, the courtyard would have been much quieter than usual by now. However, the hustle and bustle everywhere had not subsided in the least. Lin Xie couldn't possibly attend to everything personally, so after seeing off Zhao Shuhan, Ge Suyu, and others, he returned to this side of the grass hut to rest.

  Zhao Shuhan and Ge Sixu also had the idea of settling down at the river mouth. They were originally idle officials in Jiangning City, and no one would bother them even if they didn't go to the government office for ten days or half a month. Moreover, after the road was built on this side, it would only take twenty miles to get to the government office, and taking a horse-drawn carriage would not take half an hour.

  Even among the scholars and literati in Jiangning City, Zhao Shuhan and Ge Sixu were not mainstream and unpopular. Rather than living in the noisy and frivolous city, it's better to come to the river mouth to seek some peace and quiet.

  As for Zhao Shuhan and Ge Sixu's willingness, Lin Xuan would not refuse. He thought about building a few houses for them, Wu Yanqing, Zhao Zui Gui'er and others to settle down at the river mouth, and having the opportunity to cheat more people into settling on Changshan Island would be in line with his wishes. Just as Lin Xuan was thinking wildly, he saw Wu Qi, the crow, and a spy driving a horse-drawn carriage rushing in from the south gate of the wall. Lin Xuan's heart skipped a beat. Wu Qi was best at hiding and escaping, usually low-key in the wall like an ordinary housekeeper, unless it was an emergency, it would not be possible for him to drive a carriage with his subordinates into the wall so recklessly and attract attention.

  Lin Bing and Zhou Pu went forward to greet him, but they really didn't know what had happened that made Wu Qi so anxious.

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  PS: Brothers, I need red tickets!