Chapter 181- Spending Spree
Translator: TeamTWO
Editor: Nora
The lightning operation went unexpectedly smooth, and they didn't face any unexpected situations.
After completing the operation, the soldiers gathered all the residents together. They arranged for the residents to bring back all the material and resources to Shanhai city.
These villages were located outside of the territory of Shanhai city, so Ouyang Shuo decided to leave all of them empty. Once the territory area increases, these villages could act as settlements.
At that time, the farmers could be brought into the villages and reclaim farmland to plant rice. Then, it would slowly become a village under Shanhai city. They could open up the vast areas of land.
6th month, 26th day, 5:30 p.m.
The east and west armies brought back 7200 prisoners as well as large amounts of goods and resources to Shanhai city.
As it was already late, Ouyang Shuo didn't arrange for them to enter the city. Instead, he let them spend the night outside the city. Anyways, it was summer and the nights weren't cold. They also had tents, so it wasn't too hard on them.
Ouyang Shuo didn't have an interest in keeping the resources that were brought here, so he distributed it to the villagers. With that, it would lessen the hatred that they had toward Shanhai City.
The next day, the Household Registration Division started to work.
They had already created a perfect process for dealing with refugees and prisoners.
The Household Registration Division were situated at the north and west sides. There were specific points to welcome new refugees. When they arrived, the officials would help register them and place them into the household registry of Shanhai city.
After that, the official would split the refugees up based on their talents and occupations.
Farmer, fruit farmer, miner, lumberjack, and breeder—these occupations were suitable for living outside the city, so they were sent to the various settlements after they collected their basic welfare package. When they reached the settlement, the officer would arrange their living.
The Agriculture Division and Material Reserves Department had workers to help and assist the household registration division.
Artisans, tailors, businesspeople, and the like—these talented individuals were sent to the post house, which will be in charge of their meals and housing. The Household Registration Division would send recommendation letters according to the individual’s occupation. They could use these letters to find a suitable job.
After they found a job, the refugee would have to leave the post house and rent a house in the residential area for living purposes.
The construction division had built some resettlement houses for the refugees to rent.
With a fixed house, they could go to the Material Reserves Department and claim their welfare package.
After they had worked a while and settled down, they could go to the four seas bank to take a loan to buy the house that they had rented with a sizeable amount of savings.
With extra money, they could go to the market and buy some poultry to rear at home. The hardworking ones could buy vegetables or seeds to grow in their yards.
The even richer ones could go to the garment workshop to buy new clothing or the jewelry shop to buy jewelry. They could even occasionally head to the hotel to drink, or the tea house for tea, or the theatre to watch shows and listen to songs.
A large portion of refugees ended up there and just led their lives nicely. The younger chaps would consider their futures and marry to get kids.
As for the generals, scholars, and special talents, they would be recommended to the secretary of the household registration—Duquan.
For those at Gold rank and below, Duquan would recommend them to the respective directors based on their occupation. He would assign them to work in either the military or various departments.
Only the really special ones could get Duquan's recommendation to Ouyang Shuo, for him to personally assign them work.
The refugees who felt that they were suitable for the army could give up their jobs and join the military barracks.
The Household Registration Division had been well drilled in this process and was able to do it smoothly. Even with an influx of 7200 people, it was just a problem of sending more men to handle it.
Of course, this bunch of prisoners was much more special. Amongst them, there were still people who were loyal to their lord. A large portion were core members of the village, scholars, or generals.
To this bunch of people, Ouyang Shuo would not dare to be careless. He would demote all the generals to sergeants and sent them to various units. The civil servants would be sent to work in various affiliate territories as basic personnel.
Ouyang Shuo had his reasons for the way he handled the civil servants.
The city magistrates of the affiliate territories were all aboriginal people, so they wouldn't be too wary of these prisoners. At the same time, they would also be able to improve the administrative system and raise efficiency.
Of course, this was also his test to the three city magistrates. He wanted to see if he could persuade these bunch of civil servants.
What he expected was that in this bunch of prisoners, there wasn't a historical figure. The highest ranked ones were only two basic rank generals and a scholar.
After settling the prisoners, Ouyang Shuo started dealing with the financial matters.
The 7600 gold profit for the latter half of the 6th month had been collected. Now, Ouyang Shuo had 14600 gold on hand. He took 4600 and passed it to the financial department as financial expenditure.
Ouyang Shuo carried the remaining 10 thousand gold and went to the advanced market. It had already moved to the front of the lord's manor, west of the square and right beside the teleportation formation.
Come to think about it, Ouyang Shuo had rarely come to the market, as Shanhai city was basically self-sufficient. Apart from building blueprints, there was little that he had to buy.
He came to the market because of the huge system update after the galactic migration. Moreover, this update will change the settings of the market.
Ouyang Shuo wanted to make use of his knowledge beforehand to buy many items.
Ouyang Shuo first looked for secret manuals. He swept up all the authentic gold secret manuals, a total of 20 for 1000 gold.
With that, Ouyang Shuo had collected 120 authentic gold secret manuals.
Surprisingly, he found another emperor rank cultivation technique. It was the famous for 1500 gold. Ouyang Shuo bought it without hesitation.
The weren't of much use to him, but it was a treasure to Song Jia. Her dream was to open a clan and become a chivalrous swordsman, so this scripture would make a good clan cultivation technique.
Afterward, Ouyang Shuo spent 500 gold to buy a and a . Both the military grain pill and the military tent were great items that would be used a lot, so Ouyang Shuo needed to be self-sufficient.
Most importantly, military grain pills, military tents, alchemical fire oil, and alchemical fire oil cabinet were resources which would cease to be sold after the update.
Hence, Ouyang Shuo directly spent 1000 gold for 100 thousand barrels of alchemical fire oil. This batch was enough to last Shanhai city for 10 years. The combat logistics division shifted it to under the mountain range. In the huge cave, men watched them to prevent any person from coming close.
Apart from military resources, Ouyang Shuo also purchased a batch of grain.
Although in the 7th month, Qiushui city and Friendship city could both harvest their rice, but after calculation, the territory was still lacking food for the latter half of the year.
The fertile game land of Qiushui city produced 350 units of grain per mu, seven million units for its 20 thousand mu. On the side of friendship village, it produced 320 units of grain per mu, 20 thousand mu and that would be 6.4 million. This totaled up to 13.4 million units of grain.
The second harvesting season would be the end of the 10th month, a full 4 months of time.
Shanhai city and the 3 affiliate territories had a population of close to 40 thousand that grew at a rate of 1140 per day.
Based on the lowest consumption of 1 unit per day, they need 17.8 million units of grain to last till then. Considering that the military used double and the wine brewery and animals needed grain too, they would need 20 million units of grain.
All of this didn't factor in the influx of people due to mountain barbarians or prisoners. As this was bound to happen, he had to consider it.
Overall, the first collection of grain was just a little more than half. This was also under the condition that the farmers sold all of the grain they collected.
After the system update, the goods trading platform will be removed, and players could only buy grain through the auction platform or trading platform with other players. If the trader sees that you have a food crisis, they would raise the price and wouldn't be like the system that keeps a stable low price.
Hence, Ouyang Shuo spent the remaining 6000 all on grain, obtaining 6 million units of grain and filling up half of the newly upgraded city grade granary.
Although there was still not enough grain, this solved before the grain prices increased. After all, the 7th month was harvesting season, and no Town would have a problem of lack of grain.
So, Ouyang Shuo spent 10 thousand gold to lay a solid foundation for the development of Shanhai city. Ouyang Shuo clearly remembered what a cruel experience the grain crisis in the latter half of the year was for territories.