September has entered in a blink of an eye, and the autumn harvest is around the corner.

Liu An had already sent people to deliver the farm tools he had built previously to counties far away first.

When the last batch of farm tools is produced today, they will all be distributed to local farmers in Jiuyuan.

Wait another two days and the field crops will be fully mature.

Taking advantage of the last two days of free time, Liu An organized farmers to search for stones that could be used as stone bullets and transported them to the four walls of Jiuyuan City.

At the same time, Liu An opened official grain stores in various counties of Wuyuan in the name of the prefect Lin Fang.

In addition to selling grain and stabilizing market prices, official grain stores have also added a new function - grain storage.

Everyone is allowed and encouraged to deposit grain in official grain stores. For those who have deposited it for one month, the court will pay an additional one-thousandth of the deposited grain as a reward, calculated on a monthly basis. For each additional month of deposit, the reward will be accumulated.

But reward is not the point.

The key point is that after the grain is stored in the official grain store, all risks are borne by the court. Whether it is a fire or Xianbei invasion, if there is any loss, the court will be responsible for it.

The deposited grain can be withdrawn by the depositor at any time, and the depositor decides how much to withdraw. The reward will be settled when withdrawing the grain.

No matter how much the grain store loses during this period, it has nothing to do with the grain depositor. The grain depositor only needs to hold the receipt with the exclusive seal of the imperial court given by the grain store when the grain was deposited, and he can withdraw the grain in full.

In addition, when the grain depositor withdraws grain, he can also convert the grain into money according to the current grain price and withdraw the money directly.

Liu An opened an official grain store for two purposes.

First, reduce the losses of the people of Wuyuan.

The Xianbei invasion is imminent, and the people outside the city will inevitably be robbed by it. Liu An can only hold on to the city. He can let all the people outside the city enter the city to avoid it, but Liu An cannot guarantee that his property will be intact.

When Xianbei invaded, it would be too late for the people outside the city to take refuge with all their money and food.

If they can be allowed to store grain in the grain store in advance, a large part of the loss can be avoided.

But food is the basis for people's survival. Before news of the Xianbei invasion spread to the local area, they might not be able to hand over their food to the authorities with peace of mind.

After all, not all of the previous officials of his parents were good officials like Liu An, who had no offense against Min Qiu.

To put it bluntly, the long-standing contradiction between the government and the people has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Even if Liu An has implemented benevolent policies since taking office, he cannot instantly restore the inherent impression of the government in the hearts of the people.

He could only use two generous policies to induce the people to deposit as much grain as possible in the grain shop in exchange for grain deposit rewards and risking the court.

Even so, Liu An did not think that he would be able to successfully get all the people to deposit grain into grain stores from the beginning.

Second, the war with Xianbei is about to begin, and Liu An's army needs sufficient food to ensure logistics.

Although he could ask the powerful to provide grain to the army, but during this period of time, the powerful provided food and money, and returned the tenant rent to the farmers. In addition, Liu An ordered him to only collect 30% of the tenant rent this year, and the powerful had to

He maintained many private slaves at home, and if there was not enough, he could use the food saved by the people for emergency purposes.

Liu An is not short of money now, and many gold cakes made by blacksmiths are produced every day in the northern mountainous area.

After the autumn harvest, Liu An can use the money to buy grain in Linjun or even the rich counties in the Central Plains.

However, it takes time to buy and transport grain from various places. The war with Xianbei is imminent, so time is obviously too late.

After the grain store was established, Liu An asked local managers to go to the countryside to publicize the benefits of the official grain store, hoping that it would be effective after the grain was harvested.

After two days of this, the field crops finally matured.

Liu An immediately stopped the training of his soldiers and asked all his soldiers except the cavalry to help farmers harvest grain.

Metallurgical operations in the northern mountainous areas also stopped. Those with land at home went home to farm, while those without land took the wages given by Liu An and went to various places to help farmers harvest crops.

Xianbei is coming, and it is also dangerous for these people to continue to work in the mountains for metallurgy.

At the same time, Liu An also ordered all soldiers to try their best to persuade the people to deposit the grain they collected in the official grain store.

Each county also sent many petty officials, carrying weighing tools, horse-drawn carriages, and receipts with Liu An's new seal only for grain storage receipts and the official seal of the county magistrate, to collect grain for the grain stores.

The most obvious effect is in Jiuyuan City where Liu An is located.

The local people are grateful for Liu An's benevolent government, and many of them are loyal to Liu An. I heard that the grain shop was opened by the county magistrate Liu An, and many of the people are convinced.

After learning about the benefits of grain stores, half of the people immediately deposited their dried grains in grain stores.

With the farm tools distributed by Liu An and the help of many soldiers, Wuyuan County completed the grain harvest in five days.

However, farm tools are not distributed to farmers for free, but are only rented.

Liu An knows very well that if you get it too easily, you will not cherish it, and the principle of fighting for kindness and enmity.

If you give farm tools to a farmer today, when he needs money tomorrow, he can easily sell the farm tools to others to pay back the food.

If you give farm tools this year, the farmer will be grateful. If you give him farm tools next year, he will feel that this is the right thing to do. If you don't give him farm tools the next year, he will regard you as an enemy.

Excessive kindness will only lead to disaster.

The system designated by Liu An is to rent farm tools to farmers free of charge for one year. If the average yield per mu of his fields next year is equivalent to this year, the lease can be renewed for another year.

If the average yield per mu can be increased by 30% for two consecutive years, farm tools will be awarded to that family.

On the contrary, if the average yield per mu drops by 20%, the farm tools will be taken back.

Liu An was given a lot of farm tools for harvesting crops, sowing crops, plowing the ground, etc. He believed that with the reward and punishment system, even lazy lazy people would work hard to avoid having their farm tools taken back.

Except for Jiuyuan, grain stores in other counties had little harvest, collecting less than one-fifth of the people's surplus grain.

The grain store is settled on a monthly basis. Those who save grain choose to keep two months of grain storage for daily food, and the rest is deposited in the official grain store.

But there are still many people who have never deposited grain in grain stores, and Liu An has no choice about this.

He had tried his best, but those people did not trust the government and would rather have the grain in their hands snatched away by the Xianbei people and possessed by the local bullies than deposit it in the official grain store. What could he do?

It can only be said that the prestige of the Han Dynasty court has been seriously lost, and it has reached the point where the people do not trust the officials.

Of course, if Liu An forced all the people to deposit grain in grain stores, the people would not dare to resist and would just obey.

After all, they have been enslaved and oppressed for too long, so this kind of operation is the most accustomed and most effective for them.

But this will only aggravate the loss of the Han's prestige, and will also directly reduce the prestige Liu An has accumulated in the past two months to a negative number, which is something he does not want to see.

After the crops are harvested, they still have to go through the steps of threshing and drying, and the maturation times of the crops vary. Although they are basically concentrated in those few days, they will still spread out several days before and after.

On the fifth day after the autumn harvest began, all crops were finally harvested.

At this time, those harvested early have even been dried and stored at home or in official grain stores.

It was on this day that Liu An received news from the cavalry who had gone out to gather information.

The carrier pigeon flew directly to Cheng Ze's breeding farm. After Cheng Ze took down the letter, he quickly rode on horseback to the county government office and handed it over to Liu An.

Liu An opened the letter handed over by Cheng Ze, and there was a line of small words written on it:

Xianbei sent out more than 5,000 cavalry and set off lightly to the south - 500 miles northwest of Jiuyuan City.

The mark at the end is the approximate geographical coordinates of the sender when he sent the letter.

Five thousand cavalry... five hundred miles away from Jiuyuan, it can take as short as three days or as long as five days, and they will surely arrive at Jiuyuan City.

The letter stated that Xianbei set out lightly, which meant that he did not bring a large amount of food.

It seems that he only brought the food he needed on the road, and after arriving at the Han border, he relied on plundering the Han people to supply himself.

As a result, Xianbei's march was very fast, and Liu An only had three days to prepare.

After receiving the news, he immediately sent the news to all counties in Wuyuan and ordered the local county magistrates to prepare for the enemy.

and ordered:

Residents outside the city are allowed to bring bedrolls and tableware and take refuge in the city, but they do not cause trouble and do not disturb residents in the city.

Those who cannot find a place to live can choose to spread out mats in the corners of houses in the city and spend the night. The county government will give out porridge during the day, and all residents outside the city will receive food.

Within three days at the latest, all residents must enter the city. Starting from the evening of the third day, the city gates will be closed tightly and cannot be opened without permission!

Following the order issued from the Prime Minister's Office, starting from Jiuyuan City, the entire Wuyuan County gradually began to move.

Those farmers who had been hesitant to store grain in grain stores before heard the news had their first reaction of fear.

They thought of their relatives and friends who had been mercilessly killed by the barbarians in previous years. They were heartbroken and frightened whether they would be like them this year and be brutally killed without having time to escape.

Then I carefully chewed on the contents of the edict. I felt a lot more at ease when I thought that I could escape into the city this year.

But...the millet they had just harvested...thinking of this, their faces showed reluctance. They had worked hard for a year and finally had a harvest, so they just abandoned it like this?

Then I thought of the official grain stores that had been publicized in the countryside in recent days. In desperation, I could only choose to deposit the grain in the grain stores with the determination that I would not be able to take it back.

In short, even if they are killed by the imperial court, they cannot take advantage of those barbarians!

With this idea in mind, most of them approached the officials responsible for collecting grain and deposited their own grain in grain stores.

Although they didn't trust the government, when they received the receipt stamped with two red official seals, they still carefully kept it.

During three days, on two of them, the people were busy storing food.

They haven't seen the Xianbei army yet, and they don't know when the Xianbei people will come, but their food is right in front of them. They can't leave it alone, so they take their bedrolls and go to the city to take refuge with their families.

The city gate will be closed after the three-day period given by the court. Before that, those who want to deposit grain in the grain store are queuing up to go to the grain store to deposit grain.

The officials responsible for collecting grain, due to the power of Liu An or Lin Fang, could only bear to be frightened and stayed outside the city to transport grain to the granary in the city before Xianbei was about to invade.

The day after receiving the letter from Fei Ge, Liu An received similar news again, but this time the distance became three hundred miles.
To be continued...