When the drought caused by the dripping water lasted for the first month, the wells dried up one after another, and fights over water sources began to break out frequently.

What people are robbing is no longer the water for irrigating the fields, because the farmers in the fields have long since dried up and died, and the ground has cracked vertical and horizontal ravines, like the wrinkles of despair on the faces of old farmers.

At this time, the common people still have some surplus grain in their hands, but not much, because the autumn harvest is coming soon.

Because of the minor drought the year before last, the people didn't have much surplus food, and the food they had saved was only available until after the autumn harvest.

Many people even mix rice bran and wild vegetables into their grains and eat them together so that they can survive until the autumn harvest.

In recent years, the emperor has built palaces, built imperial mausoleums, imposed excessive taxes and excessive taxes, and the people have been unable to save money.

Everyone is waiting for this year's harvest to be good, so that they will have food to eat after the autumn harvest. Who knew that God would be so shameless, and drought would continue. Now there is no harvest, and people are about to starve to death.

Not to mention that during droughts, trees die in patches, wild vegetables have long since disappeared, common wild animals in the mountains have also fled, and rivers have long been emptied of fish.

There was really no way to get food from outside, so the people had to take out the money they had saved at home and prepare to buy food, hoping to survive.

The hearts of the people are very heavy. Food prices have risen during the famine years. Everyone who has experienced the famine years knows that, even those who have not experienced it have heard from the elderly at home who have experienced it. How unscrupulous the grain merchants are in the years of famine.

Now they just hope that these grain dealers won't be too evil and don't raise grain prices too much, otherwise they will really have no way to survive.

Who would have thought that the people who went to the grain store to sell grain with such negative thoughts were surprised to find that the price of grain sold in the grain store was extremely low.

It should be said that the price is surprisingly low, cheaper than grain in a good year. Although it can be seen that it is all old grain, this grain is clean and not mixed with sand, so it is good grain.

That is, every grain store is guarded by several accountants and clerks. Those who come to buy must obtain their household registration and queue up to buy grain. Each person is only allowed to buy ten kilograms of grain within half a month.

Ten kilograms of rice are used to make porridge, which can completely feed a person for half a month without starving to death.

Of course, there are grain stores that don't have so many rules, but the food in those grain stores is so expensive that they can't even afford a few buckets of rice without losing all their money.

The common people are not fools. It seems that a wealthy family is showing kindness. They feel pity for them. They all rush home to get their household registration, and then come back and line up obediently.

Occasionally, after buying grain, someone wants to unruly and want to buy it again. Unfortunately, the row of clerks standing outside the grain store are not blind. Anyone who has been here once will recognize it.

Even if this guy doesn't recognize him, others will. Once he is found to be trying to sell rice repeatedly, he will be fined to buy one less pound of grain.

Buying less than a kilogram of grain will not kill anyone, but it will definitely starve, and other people will be angry and scolded if they find out that they want to buy more rice without obeying the rules.

The grain store was kind-hearted and willing to sell rice at a low price to support them, but there was a limited amount of rice in the grain store. If this person bought more, if the amount of grain was not enough, other people would not be able to buy it.

Fortunately, the problem of insufficient grain quantity that the people were worried about did not arise. As soon as the grain in the grain store was sold out, grain trucks came immediately with a large amount of grain.

In the past years of disaster, the most despised thing for the people was the grain truck. During long periods of disaster, it happened that the grain trucks of large families were robbed by disaster victims.

However, when the grain truck from Qi Guan's family arrived, not only did not one of the victims become jealous, but they spontaneously formed a circle outside to supervise each other, thinking that the grain must not be robbed.

After Qi and Guan Shuang started the business of leveling grain prices, they went to the government to report, asking the prefect to help control the problem of people buying grain.

After all, there are so many places hit by disasters, and the Qi Guan family alone cannot do it. It is better to let the government help, and the prefect can also communicate with officials in other places.

When there is a severe drought, the people do not starve to death or cause major turmoil. This is a great political achievement for officials. Both Qi officials are not afraid that these officials will not contribute their efforts.

With the intervention of the government, the pressure on the Qigong family has been transferred, and they can just continue to transport food to the shops for sale.

However, the money in the hands of the people was not much. In the later period, many people had no money to sell grain. Even if Qi and officials lowered the price of grain to a slight loss, they still could not afford it.

Qi and Guan both saw that more and more people could only squat outside the grain store, begging for a little bit of food from the people who had money to sell food, and knew that they could not continue like this.

Since all the good things have been done, it is better to do it to the end than to do it half way. Soon the victims who had no money to buy food got the good news that they could receive food for free.

Of course, this is free of charge. It means that you can replenish the grain in the same amount after the next autumn harvest as much as you receive today.

Moreover, the grain seeds for the next year's farming can also be collected from the grain shop of Qi Guan's family. When the time comes, you only need to return the same weight of grain.

The common people who couldn't afford to buy food and still had some money were so happy when they heard the news. I don't know who started it. A group of people knelt on the ground and kowtowed to thank Qi Guan's family for the food store.

Their faces were filled with tears, and they were sincerely grateful. If it hadn't been for Qi Guan's family, they wouldn't know what they would be like now, at least many of their children must have been sold.

Seeing this scene, the shopkeeper and the clerks, who were sent by Qi Guan Shuangshuang to sell grain at low prices but did not understand Qi Guan Shuangshuang's methods, were also moved.

When you do good deeds, even if you don't ask for anything in return, when the person you help sincerely thanks you, you will inevitably feel moved in your heart.

The shopkeeper and the clerks came out and helped these people up one by one. They didn't have time to say a few words of comfort before they continued selling grain. Only this time, everyone was a little more active.

Although they could receive food for free, these people still calculated and carefully selected the amount to receive. After all, the Qi officials were really kind-hearted, but the court was not really kind.

Even if next year is a good year, after excluding taxes and necessary expenses, we still have to leave enough food to satisfy the next year. Therefore, the food that everyone chooses to take away is not much, just the amount that will not starve to death.

During this drought, the grain transport team of Qi Guan's family became a magical sight. There was a long queue of grain trucks, arrogantly traveling across the state and provinces, passing by villages and towns that were nowhere to be affected by the disaster.

This would have been impossible in previous years of famine. No convoy transporting grain would dare to pass through a place with many victims in the open.

However, the grain transport team of Qi Guan's family not only passed by the victims openly and openly, but the victims also entertained the people in the food transport team with water that they were reluctant to drink and that was considered very precious by every household.

When the imperial envoys from the imperial court arrived belatedly with the relief food brought with difficulty, the people had even been waiting for a light rain.

After the government provided food for disaster relief, Qi Guan's grain shops also closed down one after another, because the food provided by Qi Guan and Qi Guan had basically been consumed.

……………………

Zhao Laoyi is the village chief of Zhaojia Village. It has finally started to rain in the past two days, and some of the dry and cracked land has recovered. She has been wandering around the fields these days.

At this time, if there had been no disaster, it would have been just before the autumn harvest. The climate here was warm and they could continue to plant another crop of winter wheat.

Due to the serious drought this year, the imperial court exempted taxes, and the winter wheat grown was enough to repay the grain loan borrowed by Qi Guan's family, while still leaving enough food for next year.

Just as he was thinking about it, he saw a few villagers coming back dejectedly carrying bulging cloth bags. Mr. Zhao felt a little strange when he saw their depressed expressions.

She walked out of the field, stomped the dirt on her feet, and asked strangely: "Didn't you go to receive the relief food from the court? Why did you come back like this?"

The leader had a depressed face, and sighed to Mr. Zhao: "The relief food was given, but it's really too much... Village chief, you will know what's going on when you look at this food."

As they spoke, several people opened the grain bags in their hands. Zhao Laoyi lowered his head and noticed something was wrong. The grain in two of the bags was moldy and obviously inedible.

Although when you are very hungry, moldy food is still a treasure, but they have not reached that point yet, and this moldy food cannot be eaten easily.

The remaining few bags of grain look good, but there is a lot of sand inside that is visible to the naked eye. It takes a lot of time to pick out the grain. After picking out the grain, half of it is enough.

Zhao Laoyi frowned tightly. This was really too much. One of the villagers couldn't help but muttered: "The disaster relief food provided by the court is not as good as the low-priced food sold to us by the Qiguan family.

We didn’t come when we were going to starve to death. Now that the head of the Qi Guan family has helped us through the difficulties, why is the court so bothered to send these inedible things over here! Why don’t we just stop coming!”

Zhao Laoyi came in all of a sudden, raised his hand and patted the man on the head: "What nonsense are you talking about! The court can also be arranged by us ordinary people, I don't want to kill you!"

The person puffed up her cheeks in dissatisfaction, then finally closed her mouth and lowered her head to carry her bag of grain mixed with sand.

Feeling the weight on his back, the man couldn't help but sigh and said: "Forget it, I'll go back and let my husband choose. After all, it's for free. It can last a few days."

The others also sighed, took their own food and said goodbye to Zhao Laoyi and left. The ones mixed with sand were lucky, at least some of them were edible, while the moldy ones were really unlucky.

Zhao Laoyi looked at the backs of several people and sighed. They were all people who were blessed and didn't know how to be blessed. Although the prefects and county magistrates in their place were also greedy, they were not inhumanely greedy.

Excluding the taxes from the court, there won't be too much extra money, which allows ordinary people like them to still have a way to live. The younger brother she married is really miserable. The officials in that place are very greedy.

Her younger brother's family actually starved to death during the good years. Now in this disaster year, even with the low-priced food from Qi Guan's family, the family could not survive. They probably had to sell themselves into slavery. There really was no money left in the family.

Money.

But selling yourself into slavery basically means that the family will be separated from each other, because few people are willing to buy the whole family, and they basically buy the ones they lack.

For example, some families only buy strong laborers to do the work, or women to serve as washers, while wealthy families usually buy young servants, and long-term attendants who follow the young lady.

Zhao Laoyi thought about her brother for a while and felt a little sad. She couldn't help her brother or anything. Even though she was the village chief, her family had too many people and not enough money to support another family.

.

Shaking his head, Zhao Laoyi continued to look at the fields. If there were two more rains, the winter wheat could be planted. As long as this crop of wheat was used as a buffer, everyone would be able to relax.

The common people are like this, like the toughest weeds. No matter what kind of storm they face, as long as they are given a moment to breathe, they will recover again and rise towards the sun.

……………………

Qi Guan Shuangshuang was completely at a loss for doing good deeds this time, and she never thought of earning any benefits for herself, except for a plaque issued to Qi Guan's family by the magistrate on behalf of the court, with the words "Ji Shan Ji Ren".

Of course, at the same time, Qi Gong Shuangshuang also received gratitude from countless people. These were also unimportant to Qi Guan Shuangshuang. Now, the most important thing for Qi Guan Shuangshuang was the beautiful man who appeared in front of her.

What happened was that after the drought passed, Qigong suddenly received several letters from old shopkeepers, all urging her to inspect the property.

The main reason is that after Qi Guan Shuangshuang took over as the head of the family, they only inspected some nearby properties, and those far away, while Qi Gong Shuangshuang never took the time to visit.

At first, he was busy with Dou Fang's family, and then he was too busy selling food to spare no time. Now everything is finally over. The anxious old shopkeepers who were waiting for Qi Guan Shuang to inspect the industry couldn't help but urge Qi Gong Shuang Shuang to get up.

Come.

Qi Guan both thought that it was indeed time for him to inspect the property, so he did not refuse and directly took the four young men with plum blossoms, orchids, bamboos and chrysanthemums, and set off on the road in a light carriage.

The focus of the Qi Guan family's property is actually in the capital, so the Qi Guan family also has a house in the capital. In the past, Qi Guan Shuangshuang's mother lived with Qi Guan Shuangshuang's father here in the capital for most of the year.

Qi Guan and Qi Guan both acted as little overlords in Yuncheng alone, and their mother was beyond the reach of her whip, so she developed an increasingly naughty character.

When Qi Gong and his wife arrived in the capital, the first person they visited was Mr. Zhuo, the Minister of Household Affairs, the biggest supporter of Qi Guan's family. When they came back, Qi and Gong both passed by a small noodle shop that was doing very well.

Qi Guan Shuangshuang's biggest hobby is eating delicious food. When she saw how popular this small shop was, she knew that the food here must be delicious, so she went in directly.

It was indeed full of seats inside, and the people who were greeting them were all young boys, which was quite novel. Qigong both found a place to sit down, ordered a bowl of signature noodles and waited to eat.
Chapter completed!